As most of you know, Dell announced the Inspiron Mini 9 sub-notebook this past week. This has been a much anticipated laptop from Dell for a few months now. I honestly didn’t find out about it until last week.
I’ve been in the market for a sub-notebook for a couple of months, looking at and researching the Asus Eee PC 900 preloaded with Linux and the 16GB SSD. I even put the item in my Amazon Wish List with plans to buy it as soon as I could raise the $400 it cost. However, these past few weeks have been tight financially with trips and unemployment weighing me down. I finally got a new job but some other road blocks got in the way of purchasing it so I placed the purchase on hold for a little longer. One of those road blocks was assisting my best friend pay for some major car repairs recently so that she could get her car rolling again. Well, this dilemma worked out well for me in the end.
After I found out that Dell was coming out with a sub-notebook to compete with companies like Asus, HP and Acer, who already had a strong foot print in this market, I decided to do some research on Dell’s version. Everything I read about the Inspiron Mini 9 had pretty good reviews. Since I was shopping it and since my friend owed me, and had Dell credit, I asked her to buy this for me, and, luckily for me, she did.
I ordered the following yesterday:

• Inspiron 910 Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache
• Obsidian Black Color with Gloss Finish
• 1GB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM
• 8.9 inch Wide Screen WSVGA TL
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
• 16GB Solid State Drive (mini-card Module/PATA)
• Mini OS powered by Ubuntu 8.04
• Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
• Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 32WHr 4-cell Battery

Price: $475
I know what you are thinking. What do I need this for? Well for…stuff. I like the idea of mini-computing. I’ve been a fan of it for quite some time. One of the items I had previously that allowed mini-computing, to a certain extent, was my HP iPaq Pocket PC. I sold that about three years ago and have missed it immensely. I’ve had a couple of substitutions since from a Samsung Blackjack and now my iPhone but there are limitations to what these gadgets have to offer compared to a sub-notebook. With this I can carry it around everywhere very easily and have access to all standard computing applications, like email (which I can do with my iPhone),internet browsing (which I can sort of do with my iPhone), word processing (which I can’t easily do with my iPhone), and so much more without having to lug around my standard notebook all the time.
Like I stated, I ordered it yesterday. What sucks is that it will not be delivered until October 13th. I just found out today that the Linux version, the one I ordered, doesn’t begin shipping out country wide until October 9th. So what I ordered was more like a pre-order. The Windows XP version begins shipping country wide September 18th. Why does Windows get all the privileges?
I’ll post once I have received and used it for a while to give you my hands on opinion.