Dell Inspiron Mini 12 Review
I finally gotten a netbook after staying on the sidelines for the past 6 months. The Asus Eee PC 1000H ($698 during SITEX) was the obvious choice, although you can consider it “outdated” seeing how fast netbooks seem to be popping up nowadays. In the end, I got the Inspiron Mini 12. Here’s why……
This is not going to be a technical review on the Mini 12, but more of what works and who is this for. You can get a detailed review here.
What’s Going for it
12” screen with 1280 X 800 resolution and 1.24kg. In essence, this was the deal maker. Portability was my priority, and the Mini 12 fits the bill with it svelte outline and feather weight. Next up is usability, and 8.9” is out of the question, so 10” is up. But at 1024 x 600, I had doubts, so the next best alternative, or I may say the only alternative was the Mini 12.
What was Compromised
User upgradability is going to be an issue with the Mini 12, due to the design of the notebook, and the hard drive in use is not the standard 2.5” drive you will find in the market. However, you must know that the maximum memory supported is 1GB, and you can’t do anything about it because that’s the chipset limit.
Who is it For
At this point in time, I won’t recommend the Mini 12 for “average joe” because of one reason: “VISTA”. I have totally no issue with the Vista OS, but simply put, it was never meant to be operated on a netbook with 1GB of ram. Unless you’re comfortable with formatting it and re-installing with XP and searching for drivers on the web, you really should stay away from the Mini 12, or at least wait till the official XP version is released. Just for sharing, XP SP3 runs fine, and everything works with drivers found here, but there are still no graphics driver for the Intel chipset available for XP. So be prepared to live with a messed up aspect ratio on the Mini 12 for the time being.
What I Wished Could Be Better
I have a few issues with the Mini 12. Firstly, the centre of gravity of the unit is towards the screen, away from the keyboard and body. This may prove to be a issue if you’re working with the laptop on your lap for prolonged period as the laptop feels like tilting over depending on the angle you adjust your screen.
Next up, there isn’t any HDD activity light, and this really annoys me as I am used to checking this light (don’t ask me why, because I am sure you do so too without realizing)
Finally, there are two issues I have with the keyboard, the “Fn” key placement and the reduced size “<” & “>”. It is noting to shout about though, just that I need to adjust.
Why I am Happy
There are many in the blogosphere who says the Mini 12 is suffering from an identity crisis. Well, I beg to differ. Personally, I think the Mini 12 is THE FORM FACTOR which netbooks should take. I see the market ready for only 2 sizes, the 8.9”, and 12”. 8.9” is really a second notebook for quick updates and such, and the 12” will deliver the user experience necessary for it to be used as a primary netbook, which fulfills the promise of working with office suite and web surfing. Next up is the question of price. In comparing form factors, $999 as compared to the Vaios and Macbook Air is definitely CHEAP, so I don’t see any conflict if you’re really sure of what you want. And then there are people comparing this with cheap notebooks which are available below $999, but when it comes to size and weight, it’s really comparing apple with orange.
The Mini 12 will no doubt be the first of many 12” netbooks to come, and why I wanted no longer was due to the fact that a XP and Linux version are in the pipeline, so I am sure drivers issue will not be a problem. Besides, I have the option to purchase a 6 cell battery and upgrade a mini-pci HSDPA card once it is released. Personally, these are all a netbook will ever need, and I know that the Mini 12 can be equipped with these if I decide to, so I see no point in waiting to see what the competition might come up with. Touchscreen? I don’t need it. GPS? My phone has it.
At the end of the day, I am glad with my Mini 12, and most importantly, I know the lifespan in terms of support of the product will be long as it’s a dell. But in the meantime, I am still waiting for that XP graphic driver……
Update 06/12/08 – XP graphic driver is available, and am running at 1280 x 600! Driver and instructions available here. So to sum it up, the Mini 12 can now run unofficially with WINXP SP3 and everything works.
Update 26/12/08 – Official XP and Linux versions are released! Time to downgrade from Vista and run on XP, get your drivers here .
Neowster is short for Noel's & Esther's Own World. This is a personal hobbyist site, maintained mainly for the purpose of honing my knowledge in WordPress, and sharing useful information or knowledge to make someone's life easier. To a smaller extend, I hope to propagate the ideology of Crowdsourcing, as I see it as the best mechanism in regulating our unregulated capitalistic world, overcoming humanity's trait of greed, self interest, and fear, in arriving at the best decision. 
March 13th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
This thing runs beautifully under Windows 7. The only part it lags in is Full Screen Flash video from sites such as Hulu or Youtube. I only acheived reliable quality when switching to 800×600 which is ridiculous. AVI, WMV, XVID and DVD all played reasonably well with only a slight hiccup here and there. Other than that, who can complain about a 1280×800 screen on a netbook? And 4.5 hours of battery life? Next I plan to replace the stock 4200 zif drive with a zif based MRON SSD drive at 64GB. Comparisions show about a 120% increase in read/write speeds and turn this machine into a real work horse. I know when I am at the data center trying to look at that little 9 inch screen that was on my Acer Aspire One and type on that cramped keyboard was such a pain. If they release this baby in a 2GB model with a better graphics option and a stock SSD drive they will hit that magic sweet spot in the market.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Hi Drew,
if you do succeed in replacing with a SSD, do share how you do it. A video will be great. I can’t see any obvious ways to open up the case, and it guess its not for the faint hearted.
But I am definitely loving the mini 12. Haven’t regretted the decision, but really find the absence of status lights a bit “lacking”. Anyway, I been wondering can I get stock ubuntu to run on this machine? And I believe the 1GB limit is due to the mainboard chipset limitation right? As Z series was meant to be for MID from what I read.