As with its competitors, Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 is fitted with Intel’s Atom N270 chip. This pint-sized processor has a surprising amount of muscle. Partnered with 1GB of RAM, it gallops through everyday tasks such as email and the web and uses programs such as Microsoft Office. If you’re in the market for a netbook, the Inspiron Mini should be near the top of your list.
In some tests the stock Eee Linux distribution was running quite slow and placing far behind Mandriva, Fedora, and Ubuntu, but when it came to the solid-state disk performance Xandros had the lead. Overall though, it appears that Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 had delivered the best performance on the Intel Atom architecture.
With a sharp 9 inch screen, 16GB solid state drive and optional 3G mobile internet functionality waiting in the wings, Dell’s new $599 mini notebook, the Inspiron Mini 9, has maximum appeal – unless you want Linux…
For new users though the Xandros Linux configuration is very easy to use with its IceWM-based manager and simple tabs for navigating between the different areas. However, we would have liked to see ASUS use Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix for the Eee PC. Perhaps we will see them make the switch for a future model.
As with the Eee PC netbooks, the price for the Eee Box B202, which was released in Australia this week, is a head-turner: $429 with Windows XP. Early October will see the arrival of a Xandros Linux version, although Asus has not yet announced the price or whether there will be any difference in specification between this and the XP model.
A few weeks ago we ran some rumored specs of Dell’s answer to the Eee, the Dell Inspiron 910 (aka Mini Inspiron and Inspiron Mini). Now we’ve gotten our hands on the full (internal) 910 web documentation. The system will go on sale in the US in just a few days—August 22nd our source says—but we still don’t know whether or not that $299 starting price is just a myth.
Available in two color options - Pure Black & Pure White, both ASUS Eee Box models are powered by Intel’s 1.6Ghz Atom processor, and feature 1GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard drive and Windows XP Home Edition.
To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy duty HD video decoding. But if you have hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an uber cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can’t be beat. Let the Eee Box knock-offs commence!
The Asus Eee Box B202, which goes on sale in just over a month, should work well as a media extender or a lightweight email/Web machine. It will have Intel’s Atom processor, at 1.6GHz, 1Gb of RAM, an 80Gb hard drive and Windows XP Home Edition.