Dell Inspiron Mini 10 – Dell’s Tiny Mini
Dell, one of the powerhouses in the computing business, gave into the temptation and presented their netbook line a while back, aptly named the Dell Mini.
Our review unit was black in colour and is sturdily built in glossy black case. The exterior design simple, with just the Dell logo protruding in the middle. There is one USB port on the left, along side the power port and on the right lies two more USB ports and usual audio port.
What surprised us was the inclusion of an HDMI port. We don't recall seeing and HDMI port on a netbook before this. Opening the cover reveals the 10.1 inch display and a keyboard that has keys as large as the ones you find on a normal keyboard. We have to say that enjoyed typing on the Mini 10's keyboard as it's large and tactile feedback was good.
The trackpad's design is very interesting as it combines both left and right click buttons on to the trackpad itself. Most people have a tendency to place their thumb on the trackpad button while tracking.
On the Mini 10, when you place your thumb and track at the same time, its multi touch feature kicks in ans it'll either be rotate or scroll. You can turn multi touch off but what's the point of having multi touch and switching it off?
The Mini 10 is powered by Intel's Atom Z530 processor, coupled with 1GB of memory and Windows XP.
Although it uses a different Atom processor compared to the usual N270 that most netbooks use, its bechmark performance are roughly the same.