BEST TOP 10 NETBOOK

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Dell’s decision to enter this arena helped reassure us the netbook wasn’t just a passing fad. Its first effort, the Inspiron Mini 9, is far from perfect, but it still incorporates features and innovative design touches that newer models lack.

Design and usability

The Mini 9 has an 8.9-inch screen crammed into a relatively small chassis, so Dell has little room to install a usable keyboard. Its designers have done a credible job maximising keyboard space, however, by reducing some ‘less important’ keys to small slivers. In addition, the entire F-key row has been removed. F1 to F10 are now alternate functions of the A-L row. It’s not as good as the keyboards on most 10-inch netbooks, or the Aspire One, but it’s a slight improvement over the Eee PC 901.

Connectivity

The Mini 9’s best attribute is its integrated 3G/HSDPA modem. Buy one from Vodafone with a mobile broadband contract — its 3G SIM card goes in the slot beneath the battery — and the Internet is your oyster. The Mini 9 has the usual array of three USB ports and you’ll certainly be making use of them — its tiny 16GB solid-state drive means you’ll need to keep some external storage handy.

Performance and battery life

An Intel Atom N270 and 1GB of RAM provide a versatile, if hardly speedy, platform for the Mini 9. Its four-cell battery pack kept it running for 3 hours and 21 minutes on our video-playback battery-drain test, which is a pretty decent effort.

Should I buy it?

The Mini 9 stands up well against its rivals. Don’t bother buying it if you need to type loads, but if you need go-anywhere Internet access and you’ll be away from a mains outlet for some time, it’s definitely worth considering.

Places to buy: AMAZON.COM

By Cnet.co.uk