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Dell Mini

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Topic: Dell Mini

Posted By: pntbl freak
Subject: Dell Mini
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 3:49pm

Ive been looking at the Dell Mini 9 and the Dell Mini 10 and have been thinking about getting one.

I was comparing the two and was wondering whats the difference between the batters. the 10 has 24WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (3-cell) and the 9 has 32WHr Battery (4 cell).

Ive never owned a laptop so what does that mean in run time?

Also, any suggestions would be awesome.

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Replies:

Posted By: High Voltage
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 3:51pm

It means more potential in the battery.

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Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 4:00pm

and the screen is 1 inch bigger in the ten.

I have a mini 9. I love it. My mini 9 batter lasts almost 4 hours.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: Rofl_Mao
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 4:07pm

4 cell is definitely better. But Dell mini's aren't that great. If you ask me you should get a http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?cid=3&id=39 - MSI Wind U100-432US. It has a 6-cell battery, larger keypad with a still small size, and way more memory then the Dell.

Posted By: pntbl freak
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 5:19pm

Rofl_Mao wrote:

4 cell is definitely better. But Dell mini's aren't that great. If you ask me you should get a http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?cid=3&id=39 - MSI Wind U100-432US. It has a 6-cell battery, larger keypad with a still small size, and way more memory then the Dell.

They have the same memory and the MSI costs more.

Memory =/= Storage.

The Dell Mini 10 has the same amount of storage but I dont really see a need for 160 gigs on a netbook. I have a desktop that has two hard drives for a total of 500 gigs so storage isnt needed. Plus I have a 4gig usb if I really needed to store something.

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Posted By: Rofl_Mao
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 5:42pm

Still doesn't have a 6 cell battery...

Posted By: Shub
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 5:59pm

My Aspire One gets around 2.5 hrs on it's three cell battery. I have seen six cell batteries for sale on the internet for as cheap as $50.

Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 6:02pm

Rofl_Mao wrote:

Still doesn't have a 6 cell battery...

But the mini nine runs a solid state disk where the wind uses a hard drive. You'd be surprised how much more energy it takes up by spinning that disk.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: Darur
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 6:18pm

mbro wrote:

But the mini nine runs a solid state disk where the wind uses a hard drive. You'd be surprised how much more energy it takes up by spinning that disk.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html -
Actually, not really

The mini nine does have a much smaller screen size which is LED back-lit however.

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Posted By: Shub
Date Posted: 27 March 2009 at 7:24pm

I love the idea of LED backlit monitors.

Posted By: chronic future
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 12:01am

mbro wrote:

and the screen is 1 inch bigger in the ten.

I have a mini 9. I love it. My mini 9 batter lasts almost 4 hours.

x2 very pleased with mine and i got it for 229$ check the dell outlet for previously ordered new dell mini 9's sometimes they pop up at a very low price

Posted By: mod98commando
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 5:08am

pntbl freak wrote:

...
Memory =/= Storage.
...

Very true, yet almost nobody understands that. People spend money on big hard drives thinking more memory = more speed and it almost brings a tear to my eye. Also, I hate to nitpick but I can't resist. Memory is storage but the term memory is always used to refer to RAM which is why people get confused. Hard drive space is used for storage. It is a type of memory, as is RAM, but they are different and are used for different things.

When you shop for a computer, don't let people talk you into getting a bigger hard drive for performance because that just doesn't make sense. And I won't get into the details about how RAM works but generally 1GB or 2GB of RAM is all you need for a low-end system depending on your OS and what programs you plan to use. On an XP system, 1 GB is good for the OS, a browser, and stuff like winamp or whatever to run smoothly and 2-3 GB would be better if you're using it for gaming. On a Vista system, you need a little more so I'd add another GB to the XP numbers. I advise against RAM upgrades through companies like Dell before checking prices elsewhere. I bought my inspiron with only 1GB of memory and bought more later because I could get quality stuff for significantly less than what Dell was charging for whatever brand they use. Same goes for the hard drive. You can often save a lot of money by ordering a system with less RAM and hard disk space and buying the stuff from another site.

Darur wrote:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html -
Actually, not really

The mini nine does have a much smaller screen size which is LED back-lit however.

Interesting article. I assume that will completely flip in favor of SSD's in a year or two but definitely a good thing to be aware of. I can't wait until they make mechanical drives obsolete and become affordable.

Shub wrote:

I love the idea of LED backlit monitors.

So do I, I'm surprised they didn't come out with that sooner. What I like even more though are OLED monitors. I can't remember if they started selling them yet (for retarded prices of course) but I know they've been working on them for a while and they sound pretty good. Should make LCD prices fall through the floor too, as if they aren't already getting dirt cheap.

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oreomann33: Everybody invades Poland

Rofl_Mao: And everyone eats turkey

Me: But only if they're hungary

Mack: Yeah but hungary people go russian through their food and end up with greece on everyth

Posted By: Darur
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 5:48am

mod98commando wrote:

I assume that will completely flip in favor of SSD's in a year or two but definitely a good thing to be aware of. I can't wait until they make mechanical drives obsolete and become affordable.

Theres a certain, nostalgic bit of me that hopes SSDs never replace them, just because when a hard drive fails, data recovery is almost always possible. Recovery from SSDs will be impossible however.

Aside from that, I'm looking forward to the massive advances we will see in solid state tech in the next 5 years. Once issues are overcome involving the SATA controllers and we start looking at south bridges a little more competitively, I see the hard drive being much less of a bottle neck. In time we may even find systems without RAM.

Shub wrote:

I love the idea of LED backlit monitors.

OLED is puuurdy.

Unfortunately, we'll be lucky to see it outside of small units for a long time still. LCD is just much cheaper and much cheaper to manufacture for the time being.

-------------
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Posted By: Shub
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 9:27am

I believe that they introduced big screen OLED TVs at this year's CES, to be out on store shelves this autumn.

Posted By: chronic future
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 10:02am

also you can go to mydigitaldiscount.com and they sell new runcore ssd's for the dell mini. they have 16, 32 and 64, gig ssd's and their write and read speeds are like 4 times faster than the stock dell ones. plus it comes with a micro usb port so you can clone your existing operating system to the new ssd the just plug it in and your all set, theyre all backordered now but i have one on order. and you can pick up a 2gb ram stick from new egg for like 20 bucks

Posted By: agentwhale007
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 11:47am

When I have enough money, and when my current laptop conks out, I am thinking about getting an EEE.

I don't know if it would be my only computer or not, but probably not. I would get a Mac Mini (Provided they still make them) because I have a monitor, keyboard and mouse already. Then use the EEE for class and field reporting.

Posted By: mod98commando
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 7:01pm

Darur wrote:

That definitely sucks but anytime you're storing data that really can't be lost you should have a RAID array or backup copies stored anyway. For the average user though, you definitely have a point. I imagine SATA controllers will get a kick in the butt once SSD's are more maintstream since they're way faster than mechanical drives and will probably get even faster over time. There were some crazy new things being worked on to significantly boost flash memory capacities and I believe there were good speed increases as well. I don't remember exact details but I'm sure we'll be seeing results of that work soon.

Also, the no RAM idea reminded me of something called a memristor. HP has been doing some work on this and you can read about that in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor - wiki for memristors . The basic idea was that it would be as fast as something like RAM but it could retain its state without being powered. So basically, the speed of RAM and it's nonvolatile like hard drive memory. That could potentially bring a big change to the guts of a computer. I imagine the RAM and storage space being shared eventually, requiring you only to get one big pool of this new type of memory for both purposes. That would significantly increase performance and it would be one less component to order when building a system. Here's the main part of the wiki page that I'm referring to:

Wkipedia wrote:

Williams' solid-state memristors can be combined into devices called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbar_latch - crossbar latches , which could replace transistors in future computers, taking up a much smaller area.

They can also be fashioned into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-volatile_memory - non-volatile solid-state memory, which would allow greater data density than hard drives with access times potentially similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random_access_memory - DRAM , replacing both components.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-25 - [26]} HP prototyped a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbar_latch - crossbar latch memory using the devices that can fit 100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit - gigabits in a square centimeter.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-EETimes-7 - [8]} HP has reported that its version of the memristor is about one-tenth the speed of DRAM.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-26 - [27]} The devices' resistance would be read with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_current - alternating current so that they do not affect the stored value.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-27 - [28]}

Some patents related to memristors appear to include applications in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_device - programmable logic ,^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-28 - [29]} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_processing - signal processing ,^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-29 - [30]} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_networks - neural networks ,^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-30 - [31]} and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory - control systems .^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-31 - [32]}

Recently, a simple electronic circuit^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-32 - [33]} consisting of an LC contour and a memristor was used to model experiments on adaptive behavior of unicellular organisms.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-amoebaexp-33 - [34]} It was shown that the electronic circuit subjected to a train of periodic pulses learns and anticipates the next pulse to come, similarly to the behavior of slime molds Physarum polycephalum subjected to periodic changes of environment.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#cite_note-amoebaexp-33 - [34]} Such a learning circuit may find applications, e.g., in pattern recognition.

I found that last part about pattern recognition particularly interesting. I'm taking an artifical intelligence class at school and I'm wondering if this will come up at all. Very interesting stuff.

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oreomann33: Everybody invades Poland

Rofl_Mao: And everyone eats turkey

Me: But only if they're hungary

Mack: Yeah but hungary people go russian through their food and end up with greece on everyth

Posted By: Boss_DJ
Date Posted: 28 March 2009 at 7:31pm

I have an aspire one that i use and it gets about 2-3 hours out the battery...not sure what kind it is though :/

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Posted By: pntbl freak
Date Posted: 29 March 2009 at 12:07pm

I was looking at the site again to see what software came with it and it says...

Microsoft Works 9 DOES NOT INCLUDE MS WORD

So is there a way to get a word processor on there?

EDIT- Ive heard of people using Open Office for a word processor.

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Posted By: adrenalinejunky
Date Posted: 29 March 2009 at 12:14pm

open office ^^

Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 29 March 2009 at 1:19pm

pntbl freak wrote:

I was looking at the site again to see what software came with it and it says...Microsoft Works 9 DOES NOT INCLUDE MS WORDSo is there a way to get a word processor on there?EDIT- Ive heard of people using Open Office for a word processor.

Works is a word processor.... it just can't do as much as word. I recommend open office. It's what I've been using for the past few years.

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Posted By: Benjichang
Date Posted: 29 March 2009 at 1:42pm

Open Office is awesome if you're not an Office power user, which includes most people. I just need Word for writing papers, and OO works great for me.

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Posted By: mbro
Date Posted: 29 March 2009 at 5:57pm

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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.