Hands-on with Dell's Inspiron Mini 9: portable power for $799

It's just nuts. I knew that with it's 9-inch screen, Dell's $799 Inspiron Mini 9 was going to be one ultramobile laptop.

But taking it out of its box and placing it beside my recent purchase, an HP Pavilion DV9000, all I can do is laugh. 

The Mini simply looks like a toy.

But it runs on Windows XP SP2 (Linux is an option, too), and under the bonnet, it packs grown-up hardware grunt. You get a respectable 1GB of RAM, and the 1.6GHz iteration of Intel's new Atom processor, which proves fine powering OpenOffice, web surfing, playing video and basic photo editing.

You also get 11g wi-fi, Bluetooth, a built-in, Skype-friendly 1.3 megapixel web cam, three (count 'em) USB 2.0 jacks, an Ethernet jack (Apple's MacBook Air, keep reading, relies on wi-fi alone) and VGA out out. Battery life is rated at four hours.

I've used the 7-inch iteration of ASUS pioneering ultramobile notebook, the eeePC (now also available in a $749 9-inch version), and that just felt too small. The Mini's 1024x600, 9-inch display (actually, 8.9-inch, though I guess 9 sounds better in the name) is fine for short bursts.

Before we move on to the negatives – and there are a couple of majors – let's also run a more realistic photo. I have to admit my DV9000 is something of a desktop-replacement monster, packing a 17-inch screen. Here's the Mini against a Lenovo Thinkpad with a more typical 15-inch display:

Actually, the Mini still looks very Mini Me. And that's part of the problem: the Mini 9's keyboard is just a fraction too small for me to touch type.

That really bugs me. It hasn't stopped me packing the Mini for my trip to Shanghai this week. I've simply stowed a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse in my main luggage, and I'm taking the Mini as carry-on.

And the Mini really does feel so light that I laugh at the near-absurdity of it compared to the shoulder-breaker form-factor of the average laptop.

Not wishing to bang on about it (wasn't this supposed to be the negatives section?) but the size ... the size ... well look at its 1.0kg, 23cm wide, 17cm frame compared to that not-so-endagered species, a Windows XP box

And again open to get the full effect:

So what's missing? Most consipicuously, there's no DVD drive. But this is a notebook the frequent traveller is going to use as a satellite to their regular notebook, so an optical drive is  arguablysurplus to requirements. An external drive or ethernet can be used for loading apps.

Also, the 4GB solid state hard drive (essentially a jumped up version of the same Flash chip you save photos to on your camera) has many benefits over the spinning magnetic platters of a traditional hard disk drive. Solid state runs silent, loads and runs Windows faster, has no moving parts so is less prone to failure, doesn't generate heat, and takes only a credit card slither of space. 

Flash drives are the future. In a couple of years time they'll be standard in all notebooks.

The downside: 4GB is modest in an age when even the cheapest, nastiest trad hard disk drive weighs in around 80GB, and 200GB to 320GB is standard on any mid-price model. But, again, this little fellow is your travelling companion, not your desktop replacement.

If you do need more storage, step-up models in the Inspiron Mini 9 line offer 8GB or 12GB. This time next year, 64GB will be standard for laptops packing Flash drives. In the US, Dell is also throwing in 2GB of online storage for Mini owners, a trend that in time will threaten Flash as much as Flash threatens trad hard drive makers now.

If that 1kg weight really appeals, but you do want an optical, a full size keyboard an a 13.3-inch screen, then check out Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 (which has a built-in optical drive) or Apple's MacBook Air (which is the most gorgous, but does cheat with its external optical drive and almost exclusive reliance on wi-fi for all connectivity). Both come in around the magic 1000g mark, but are thinner and wider where the Mini 9 is thicker and stubbier. You will pay for those engineering mavels, however, with both the Air and the X300 costing around $3500 with a trad hard drive, and around $5000 with a Flash drive.