Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Netbook

Dell, the name that brought us some serious quality products over the years sent us a netbook from their Inpsiron Mini series. It’s small, it’s cute, and it's Atom-based. The netbook market has some insane choices and more are welcome. So here is our review of the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v.

Design and ergonomics.
The model comes in many colors - we received a black model. It has a glossy finish, extending into the interior surfaces too, except that the latter is metallic silver. The touch pad is silver too, but has a matte finish and is keyboard centric. The keyboard itself is almost full sized, that is 92 % of regular sized keyboards to be precise. Buttons sizes are large and Page up and Page Down are integrated into the up and down arrow keys, thus overall there is no clutter of buttons. The ergonomic feel of the keyboard is quite alright - the slightly stiff tactile response of the keys is good for me personally.

Here comes my first complaint - the touch pad. It sucks, when you’re using it at normal speed. Only when you slowly move your finger across it does it behave. Dell please call up China, replace it NOW. The netbook looks very nice but ergonomics are not. It’s like the mouse is on speed, and you’re trying to catch it like some cheap online flash game. But besides that, everything else about the netbook’s design and feel is great. One small point to note in the keyboard is that the function keys and regular ones are reversed, thus to press F1 one has to use the Fn key first.

System Specs
The CPU is Atom N270, 1.60 GHz. Chipset is Intel i945GSE with integrated GMA500 graphics. RAM is 1GB DDR2. Included hard disk is 160 GB, 5400 RPM. For connectivity we have 3 USB 2.0, (2 on the left and 1 on the right), one D-SUB on the right, stereo audio (mic in, headphone out) also on the right, and power adaptor input on, you guessed it, the left side. There are no hotkeys on the keyboard. The screen can fold out to about 160 degrees.

The screen is a 10.1-inch, 1024 by 600 native resolution affair. The Wi-Fi is upto Wi-Fi n, and of course we have regular Bluetooth capabilities and a 10/100 LAN port. The battery is a 3 cell Li ion model, with 6 cell optional.

As for software, we have Windows XP SP3 presintalled on our piece, along with Cyber link Power DVD 8.1, and McAfee Security demo. There are recovery and driver discs, about 3 of them in total.