Dell Mini 9

Inventor

I'm looking at getting a Dell Mini 9, aka Inspiron 910 for Christmas this year. It's a cool little machine, only 9" wide by 6" deep with a 1024x600 display and some kind of mini processor. I mainly just want to run the PIC tools on it, but I know i'd eventually be running my CAD and music, etc on the thing as well.

Do you know of any drawbacks beside the usual complaints of cramped keyboard and no internal CDROm, etc? What are the shortcomings of this machine as a music workstation for light duty stuff like simple ChucK programs and the like?

BobTheDog · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 11:35 pm Post subject:

Well I have an EeePc 1000 which is a similar machine.

The main issues I have are that the screen is a little on the slow side and the solid state disks are very slow.

I started on linux and then gave up and installed XP, gave it 2GB ram and turned off virtual memory and it is useable, I have been running Reaktor and Max/MSP on it ok.

I want to update the SDD but the costs of decent drives are still about the cost of the whole machine.

Cheers

Andy

BobTheDog · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 11:42 pm Post subject:

Actually the price of the disks has come down quite a bit since the last time I looked all of two weeks ago!

OCZ Core V2 60GB are meant to be pretty good:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=877431&source=froogle

These where £350 a couple of weeks ago!

Inventor · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:18 am Post subject:

That's what my mom says (she'll be buying it with me). She says that prices for puters will go down dramatically as the recession sets in and grips its teeth on the average consumer's wallet with a vengeance. Well, she doesn't talk like that, I do. But sounds good to me, I can finally afford toys! Coolness.

If I don't go for a mini laptop, I'll go for a big screen onen devinitely, but it has to be a pc to run the PIC tools from Microchip. Then again, there are Linux tools...