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World First Review of Dell's 12.1in Netbook
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Oct 27, 2008 05:20 AM
from the my-envy-makes-me-scoff dept.
from the my-envy-makes-me-scoff dept.
An anonymous reader points to what's claimed to be "the world's first look at Dell's 12.1" netbook," running at Australian Personal Computer Magazine. There's a bit of gushing at the beginning, but this is followed by some informative pictures, informal battery-life tests, and interesting background about the machine's components. Upshot: it's a well-made, decent-performing small laptop with a better keyboard than smaller netbooks and more wireless options than most. However, it's shorter on battery life (bigger screen, smaller battery) than Dell's smaller Mini 9, and less easily upgraded.
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Firehose:World first review of Dell's 12.1in netbook by Anonymous Coward
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pricey (Score:2, Interesting)
At $1000 I'm not sure who this is targeted at.
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Re:pricey (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:pricey (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:pricey (Score:5, Funny)
The chipset can only run Vista? Egads! What unholy portent is this? I cast thee OUT!
*throws netbook into the dark Abyss of Tortured Souls and Recycled Cardboard*
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*throws netbook into the dark Abyss of Tortured Souls and Recycled Cardboard*
LOL...that's pretty good.
But it made me think...who is going to be buying any of these things? I know I'm a bit behind trends here of late, but, I'd not heard the term 'netbook' till a couple weeks or so ago. Why are they coming out with laptops with such small screens, and underpowered CPU-wise? It seems they are going backwards in terms of
Re:pricey (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is simple: people who value size and price more than performance. I don't want to fall in a 640K is enough for anybody stance here, but be honest with yourself: how often do you use the full power of your machine when not gaming or photo-editing (for which these machines are woefully inadequate)? My work laptop, is currently using 1% to 5% of it's power and it's over two years old (the time I've been working at this company, and I'm not sure if it was new). That's it.... At home, my wifes desktop is much older (bought autum 2003) and it rarely uses up more than 10% for our typical usage. I consider our usage to be rather typical.
So, even 5 year old machines don't get to see much load. So, you're on the move want to surf a bit and read your email? Well, you don't need a Dual-Core Multi-Gigahertz machine for that anymore. So why spend more? So, that's for the performance part.
Now the size part: typical laptops are 15.4" or larger. I don't know about you, but that's pretty huge and not exactly something a woman would put in her purse. Indeed, there are machines that were small, but they were also very expensive...
Which brings us to price. The small portable machines from a few years ago were extremely expensive and also didn't have the oompha that their larger cousins have. I wouldn't ever spend 2500€ to have a small and slightly underpowered laptop. However, I have no qualms paying 300€ for a small-very-underpowered-but-adequate laptop.
As a matter of fact, up until January 2007, my primary laptop was an old P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM dual-booting XP and Linux... It ran absolutely fine for my light usage. Compare that to the underclocked Celeron 630MHz in the original Asus EEE PC... Well, the only differences? The Asus is much smaller and lighter: I do lack a bit screen estate. The Asus EEE 900, however has a 1024x600 screen, which is pretty close to what my old P-III laptop had, being 1024x768.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
well this is being posted from a netbook.
Screen size is 9 inch with 1024 by 600 resolution. This is quite a comfortable size and is sharper than my old hp 15inch with 1024x768 resolution. Smaller Screen with Smaller pixels. Admittedly the netbooks with smaller screens are a bit too cramped with 800x480.
Keyboard size on 9inch versions seems adequate I can type at a reasonable rate without hitting the wrong keys.
Processing power is good enough in ubuntu and Linux in general. 2000 in a Vm isn't super fast but
Australians (Score:5, Informative)
At $1000 I'm not sure who this is targeted at.
1000 AUD is about 600 USD, which seems in line with the competition.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In all fairness, the RRP costing might have been done before the recent dramatic devaluation of the $AU - A couple of months back it was around $US.95 - The Australian price could actually go UP in coming months to cushion Dell Australia's profits.
But anyway, as I noted in another reply, I purchased an HP 'notebook' for a similar Australian price about a month ago. I mightn't be Dell's target user but, at the same price, I would still prefer to buy the 12" HP.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm happy enough with my 12" HP 2230s, though it doesn't come with a cheap webcam built in. It's fatter and heavier because it includes a DVDRW drive. But for around the same price as this Dell (it's an HP; flame away), mine came with 3GB of RAM (expandable to 8GB allegedly), pre-installed with XP (Vista upgrade disks included), with a Core 2 Duo and an HDMI port.
I'd prefer better performance over a slightly thinner and lighter notebook.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I read somewhere it will be 599 USD, so I think that's pretty cheap actually. What actually are you comparing it to which is significantly cheaper?
World's first review? (Score:2, Funny)
I think I'm not alone when I ask "who really gives a shit?". This is a computer geek's equivalent of "f1rst post!" in a hardware review.
Captain Obvious to the rescue! (Score:3)
Ultra-slim and lightweight - not even room for two speakers. Is there really a need to state that it isn't "upgrade-friendly"?
Also, even though it's a sleek, lightweight laptop it certainly is not a high-end product (1,6 GHz Atom Z530, max 1 GB RAM and 60 GB HDD). So who's gonna pay the $1000 Dell want?
Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue! (Score:5, Informative)
I question too. $1000 (CDN) bought me my current laptop (an HP tx2512) in August, which has a 1.9ghz AMD X2 processor, 3GB ram, 250GB hard drive, half decent video (ATI 3200HD), same 12.1" screen size (same 1280x800 resolution too), and is a convertible tablet. About the only thing the Dell does better is that it is thinner, a little lighter (mine is only 2 and some pounds), and has a built-in 3G modem, though I can stick one of those in my expresscard slot (which the Dell lacks) if I had need.
Parent
Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue! (Score:5, Informative)
AU$1000=US$620=CN$788=GBP391=EUR492
Parent
Working mobile (Score:5, Informative)
I think it is quite useful of you want to work while travelling in an airplane on a train. The 9" netbooks are not really good for anything that involves a lot of typing.
A bought a DELL latitude x200 off ebay a couple of years ago for exactly that reason and I have never regretted it. Back then this was still a business notebook and costed $3000+ (I paid $250, years later). The $999 price point is not too bad.
The main drawback seems to be the battery. But did you know they had outlets in many european trains?
The 10" Eee PC has a pretty decent keyboard (Score:3, Insightful)
The only outstanding feature is the 1280x800 graphics (which is worth having, don't get me wrong...)
It basically fills in the gap between mini/maxi and more choice = good.
One thing it really does is pull the rug out from under those vastly overpriced $2500 SONY mini-laptops. The only reason to buy those was small size, and that reason just vanished.
Bummer it comes with Vista and not XP.
Price, Size / Weight and Battery Life, (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure when the reviewers and manufacturers will get the popularity of netbooks. There are a minimum set of features (which almost all of them have) but after that there are only three important points: price, size / weight and battery life.
The review sites seem to spend so much time worrying about the bells and whistles that they're accustomed to with bigger laptops, but these come at a compromise of the most important aspects.
This is going the wrong way (Score:4, Interesting)
This almost seems like it is a full blown laptop again. The EEE had me hopefull we would see really affordable laptops. But then it was a big hit. Prices went up specs went up. What do we have now. Normal laptops only they are called mini.
Hard to get a sense of scale (Score:5, Insightful)
Just me or is it hard to get a sense of scale in those photos when there's barely any other objects in there? There's a pen, half a hand, and another laptop that I don't know how big it is.
I always struggle with photos like this because it's obviously difficult to find a reference object /everyone/ is familiar with, but even a few little things might've been helpful in some of the photos.
Re:Hard to get a sense of scale (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a ruler?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
See how various netbooks size up versus a CD case:
Dell Mini 12 (12") vs MSI Wind (10") vs Dell Mini 9 (9") vs Asus Eee PC 70x (7") vs CD Case [sizeasy.com]
They used to call them laptops (Score:3, Funny)
Glad I didn't buy a first gen Netbook (Score:4, Informative)
The "netbook" market has moved so fast over the last year, I'm glad I didn't stump up for an early Eee PC. This looks like it may hit my sweet spot of price/performance/size.
I'm at least a year from buying a new laptop and I can't see me replacing my current MacBook with another mac. As much as I like MacOS, I can't justify the cost of a full spec laptop. Currently, little of what I do stretches my MacBook's performance, no games, no video editing. A cheap, portable and rugged netbook running linux is just up my street. Another MacBook would be a nice to have, but at a price-tag that I just cant justify.
I think this is something some manufacturers are missing, fewer and fewer people are pushing the limits of their existing hardware. There just doesn't seem to be the pressure from software as there used to be. I know there are applications that need more power than a cheap latop can deliver (games, high-end graphics work, video editing), but this is becoming an increasingly small segment of the whole market.
Paul
Little tiny keys! (Score:5, Funny)
From the article:
"Happily, the Inspiron Mini 12 adopts a more standard sub-note layout with near full-size keys (a quick measure of a prised-off letter key came in at 1.8mm x 1.7mm, but we could be out by a few mils)."
That's like 0.071 X 0.067 inches. Does it come with a stylus for those keys?