[aklug] Re: Netbooks

I have two Dell Mini-9 netbooks and thanks to my enthusiasm for them
so does my mother. All run Ubuntu.

After months of study and thought, I bought a white Mini-9 in November
of 2008 as a portable web appliance. That first Mini-9 came with 1gb
of ram, a 16gb SSD, and internal bluetooth. All netbooks are a
compromise of one thing over another, but three factors greatly
influenced my decision to go with the Mini-9 and have kept me an
enthusiastic fan ever since: 1) linux support, particularly through
Ubuntu, is flawless, 2) the Mini-9 is easily THE most hackable netbook
on the planet, and 3) I could make the purchase without paying a dime
in "Windows Tax".

Dell's parts support for the Mini-9 includes selling as parts almost
everything you would need to assemble or rebuild your netbook, and the
hardware is easy to break down. This allows for economical aftermarket
conversions such as keyboard swaps, internal webcams, SSD upgrades,
ram upgrades, wifi -n upgrades, internal USB hubs, internal GPS, and
so forth. The modder community for the Mini-9 is flourishing. The
Hackintosh community for the Mini-9 is flourishing. Ubuntu support was
great in Hardy; it is awesome with Jaunty. Dell selling these
preloaded with Ubuntu was bonus, because it means (to me) that not
only can you save a few bucks by not buying a Windows license but that
the manufacturer is explicitly and commercially supporting the use of
linux on the hardware. I don't mind that by spending my "netbook
money" through Dell and on an Ubuntu netbook, some of that might
filter back to Canonical.

I started with that white Mini-9, and after a couple weeks my mother
came over and she got hold of it. A week later, she emailed me to
inform me that she was ordering one for herself with identical specs
to mine. It still runs Ubuntu Hardy, and she is well pleased. I'm
pleased that I'm not answering Windows questions as often.

In January of this year, I decided that we (the family) needed a
second netbook so that I could have one that I could hog all for
myself and leave one for the kids to use. My children had grown very
fond of the Mini at that point and preferred it for most computing
tasks to my wife's XP desktop. But I would often have the Mini with me
in my bag, at work or somewhere in the evening if I was out until
late. Dell had an EPP sale which slashed the price enormously, so I
picked up a second one: black, 512mb ram, 32gb SSD, bluetooth module.
I immediately did a DIY upgrade on it to give it 2gb ram and a
US-International keyboard instead of the stock keyboard. Those mods
took maybe 1 minute and required turning 6 screws.

Why another Mini-9 and not a Mini-12 or Mini-10? Dell had slashed the
prices on the Mini-9 preparatory for the launch of the Mini-10. I knew
well that the Mini-10 was coming within weeks, but I also knew that it
would be deep down inside a "Mini-12 with a smaller screen". I didn't
want a Mini-12 for hardware reasons: the Intel GMA-500 is poorly
supported for X and the 10&12 would be sold with soldered 1gb ram. No
upgrading. Other Dell documentation available at the time showed that
hardware hackability would be severely curtailed, the Hackintosh
community hated the 12, and the linux community didn't have any more
love either. I decided that I would need to see the Mini-10 in service
for many months before being willing to purchase one, and that maybe
by the end of 2009 I might want a third netbook. A second Mini-9 it
was.

By the time I had each netbook "the way I want it", I'd spent roughly
$350 on each. This is what I have:
White Mini-9: 1.6ghz Atom, 1gb/16gb, 8gb SDHC class-4, Dell Ubuntu
Hardy 8.04.2 (lpia)
Black Mini-9: 1.6ghz Atom, 2gb/32gb, 16gb SDHC class-6, US-INTL
keyboard, Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 (i386)

In addition, I've purchased a slim external CD/DVD burner drive to use
with either of them, but it spends 99% of its time in a drawer at home
and should never have been purchased in the first place. I thought it
would make it easier to backup, image, restore, and/or install with
the Mini. But there is nothing I can do with a DVD drive that I cannot
do with an iso and another computer on my network at home. The ease at
which one can image a DVD and mount the iso or burn the iso to a USB
stick makes actual DVD drives largely irrelevant. The drive itself is
a relic of a bygone era, and its absence in a netbook makes sense.

I've browsed and shopped other netbooks. I've handled a wide variety
of them. I think the best value is still the Mini-9. There is a lot of
competition if you want something cheaper, and several attractive
alternatives if you don't care about spending an extra $100, but
$250-$300 today gets a very nicely configured system that has flawless
linux support in Jaunty.
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Received on Wed Apr 22 13:50:48 2009