Dell Inspiron Mini 10
Rating: 80
Price: $399 Contact: Dell Phone: 1800 812 393
Web: www.dell.com.au
With so many full-size notebooks now under $500 (there are at least 10 at last count in major retail stores), the case for buying a netbook is hard to support.
The problem is the complete lack of application speed given by Intel’s Atom processor that invariably powers these units. Bang for buck, Dell’s Inspiron Mini 10 is arguably one of the best value netbook we’ve seen with its five-hour-plus battery life and $399 price tag. The problem is that it’s one of the slowest netbooks we’ve seen too. In fact, if you’re thinking about encoding any 720p video, you’d be better off doing it with a 2GHz Pentium 4 desktop circa 2002 based on our benchmark results.
The Mini 10 matches the Acer Aspire One Happy in memory (1GB), hard drive capacity (250GB) and operating system (Microsoft Windows 7 Starter) but only comes with the single-core 1.66GHz Atom N455 processor. Pioneer Computers’ DreamBook Lite M11 had the same chip but managed slightly better performance.
The Mini 10 isn’t exactly lightweight at 1.3kgs, nor is it all that sleek. But combining the 5hrs12mins battery life with its $399 price tag got it over the line, but it’s not deserving of a Best Buy award because of its slow speed.
The Verdict: One of the cheapest units we’ve seen, great battery life, slow.
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