Dell Netbook for Sale for 99 USD?

I've already announced the first Dell netbook now the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is on sale, starting from $349 (USD) for the Linux variant with 4GByte storage (SDD) and 512MB RAM a bit too little to be honest.
The Windows XP version starts at $399 (USD) with the same 4GByte SDD hard disk and 512MByte RAM. For $449 (USD) you can buy the Dell netbook with Windows XP and more reasonable 16GB SDD hard disk and 1GByte RAM.
All include a 4 cells battery. Not much to be honest.

Bluetooth is not included (add $20 USD), you can also get a decent webcam (1.3 megapixel) for $10 USD more.

If you buy a Dell notebook you can currently get the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for $99 USD

Other posts about EEE PC Competition

Fanless Netbook with Atom N270? - Dell Mini 10v / Inspiron 1011

I can confirm that the Dell Mini 10v / Inspiron 1011 is very very silent/quiet.
Actually I think that this netbook is fanless: I've never heard the CPU fan, even in really quiet rooms and with the processor (Atom N270) fully loaded for some minutes.

Other posts on Dell Mini 10v

• Follow up with what I like and what I don't like of the Dell Mini 10v
  
• First hands on the Dell Mini 10v
• NEW: Mini 10v vs Asus EEE PC 1005HA vs Aspire One AOD150
  

EEE PC Competition - Dell E for sale in US on August - September

Informally known as Dell Mini Latitude now Dell announced the Dell E series, in direct competition with EEE PC, MSI Wind and all other subnotebooks recently announced by several brands.
With a very attractive entry price of $299, the Dell E will have a 8.9-inch display.

More news soon on EEE Journal

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v - Review - first Hands On

Today I got a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) with Intel Atom N270, 6-cells battery for 289 Euros (special offer at Lidl, a german discounter). Until yesterday I was struggling between EEE PC 1005HA and Mini 10v, then I decided for the Dell Mini 10v, why?
Both netbooks got a similar price tag and feature-set, actually the EEE PC 1005HA got more features, the new Intel Atom N280 and is easier to upgrade. I think that both are fantastic netbook, at the end I decided for the Mini 10v especially because the Mini 10v is quiet even under heavy CPU load while the EEE PC 1005HA can get a bit louder under stress.
Keep tuned on eeejournal, I'll post very soon more on my experience with the Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011).

NEW: Mini 10v vs Asus EEE PC 1005HA vs Aspire One AOD150

Netbook with HD Video (HDMI and HDTV) - Dell Mini 10 (Inspiron 1010)

As far as I know the Dell Mini 10 (Inspiron 1010) the only 10-inch "HD/HDTV capable" netbook: the Mini 10 got an HDMI interface (instead of VGA) and an integrated HDTV digital TV receiver.
The best is that now the price of the Mini 10 dropped to $329.99 (down from $399.99)

Complete feature set of the
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 10.1-Inch Obsidian Black Netbook with Integrated TV Tuner - Up to 6 Hours 20 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)

• Processor: Atom 1.6GHz Intel Z530 (512K Cache, yes it isn't a typo! It isn't the N270.
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory
• 160GB Hard Drive
• HDTV internal Digital TV Receiver (ATS), Mini TV Antenna
• HDMI digital display out insteady of VGA (analog)!
  
• 10.1-inch display, 1024x600
• Integrated Intel 500 Media Accelerator
• 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 6 Cell Battery
  
• Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card (802.11g)
• No Bluetooth, you can easy find a cheap Bluetooth dongle
  
• Windows 7 Starter

The main reason for the significant price drop is the introduction of the new Atom N450 (1.66GHz Pineview) netbooks, for this reason OEMs and shops are trying to sell all remaining Atom N270/N280 netbooks.

All major netbook brands are already shipping or at least announced new models with the just released Intel Atom N450 (1,66GHz Pineview).
As far as I know only a couple of netbooks are really shipping with the new Atom N450

• Asus EEE PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17-BK for about $370
• MSI Wind U135-206US for $324.99

Bestseller netbooks: EEE PC vs Acer Aspire One AOD250 vs Dell Mini 10v (1011)

The ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA is stable as absolute netbook bestseller at Amazon.com. This is definetly justified by the relatively low price for a well built netbook, good looking and (by the way) with top features:

• 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 Processor
• 1GB DDR2 RAM, 1 x SODIMM Slot, 2GB Max
• 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• 10.1" WSVGA 1024x600 LCD Display, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
• Windows 7 Starter Operating System (32 Bit), *10.5 Hours of Battery Life

These are the top 5 netbooks of the actual bestseller list

1. ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA-PU17-BK for $338.95
2. Acer AOD250-1197 for $279.99
3. Acer AOD250-1584 for $299.99
4. Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 (Mini 10v) for $296.99
5. ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BK for $329.95

The complete list at EEE Journal Bestseller Site

A quick look at the main differences:

• Build quality: IMHO the best is ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA
  
• 10 inch display: unfortunately all glare displays, the EEE PCs are not that bright (by default)... you know the eeectl mod...
  
• Operating system: the first 4 got Windows 7 Starter while ASUS Eee PC 1005H got Windows XP
• Processor: Very little/no difference, since the Inspiron Mini 1011 (Mini 10v) got the Intel Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, while all other netbooks use the Intel Atom N280 at 1.66GHz.
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM for all netbooks. It should be possible to expand them to 2GB, not sure for the Acer Aspire One models.
  
• Hard disk: 250 for ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA , Acer AOD250-1197 and Acer AOD250-1584 160GB for Inspiron Mini 1011 (Mini 10v) and ASUS Eee PC 1005HA
• Wifi: the fast 802.11b/g/n for the two EEE PC models and one Acer (Acer AOD250-1584). The Mini 10v and the other Acer Acer AOD250-1197 got the slower 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth in all netbooks but Acer AOD250-1197 in any case it is possible to add bluetooth with few dollars
• High capacity battery (6-cells) for all netbooks. Asus claims 10.5h for both EEE PC, while Acer Aspire One AOD250 and Dell Mini10v are between 8 and 9h.
  

Black Friday - Netbook - Dell Mini 10v / Inspiron 1011

Excellent Black Friday deal at Amazon.com: Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) with Windows 7 and 6-cell battery for only $299 (USD) and of course with free shipping. Hurry up, for the same price you normally get the 3-cells version!
I got the same netbook, I can really recommend it!

Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 10.1-Inch Obsidian Black Netbook - Up to 8 Hours 8 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter), $299 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping

Some details, actually not listed (it should be in though... is Bluetooth support!)

Product Features

• 1.6GHz Intel N270 Atom Processor
• 1GB Memory
• 160GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
• 10.1" Display, Integrated Intel Media Accelerator Graphics
• Windows 7 Starter, Up to 8 Hours 8 Minutes of Battery Life

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v - Review after a few days extensive use

Follow up from my post on Dell Mini 10v vs Asus EEE PC 1008HA

Actually the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) netbook fulfilled my expectation.

What I liked so far

• It's very silent, you barelly hear the hard drive
• Even if the display isn't the brightest ever seen in a netbook, it's enough even with sunshining
• Long battery time, with display dimmed to half I get 6 to 7 hours
• Bluetooth included
  

What I didn't like

• The surface is easy to scratch and you see the fingerprint
• The touchpad is horrible, I can't get used to the "buttons", you move the pointer instead of "clicking", I mostly use a small mouse.
• Suboptimal "standby", from time to time I see that the standby doesn't work well. The Mini 10v draws much current while in idle, sometime reboots after idle. I'll investigate more
• No hard disk LED
• Stupid powe supply LED, it is on even if not plugged
  

Neutral opinion

• Resolution, ok after resizing the system fonts
  
• Size and weight
• Webcam quality, actually not a surprice for a netbook, poor image quality and no image at all in low light conditions
• Only 802.11bg wifi, not 802.11n

NEW: Mini 10v vs Asus EEE PC 1005HA vs Aspire One AOD150

EEE PC Competition: about EEE PC 701 and 900, MSI Wind, EasyNote XS, Elox One, Dell Vostro 1400 and OLPC XO-1

CNET is one of the premium source for electronics review, I post quick links to CNET's reviews of EEE PC 701 and 900 as well as some of the most interesting competitors

• Asus EEE PC 701 and 900 of course, this is our benchmark! You can also read a full review of the EEE PC 701 and full review of EEE PC 900
• Packard Bell EasyNote XS. here you also find the full review of the EasyNote XS . This one is pretty expensive, to be noted that the Packard Bell engineers managed to fit a 30GB hard disk in that little form factor.
• MSI Wind this must be watched out, it is definetly a serious competitor, it is very similar to the EEE PC, the plus here is a bigger 2.5 inch hard disk and a very aggressive price. More details on MSI Wind from CNET
  

Actually this is not real competition for the EEE PC, nevertheless it is worth listing what you can get for less than 400 dollars. Some of them designed for shool childrens and with very little horse power.

• Elonex One, also called GeCube Genie
• One Laptop Per Child, the famous "100 dollars laptop". See also full review for the OLPC XO-1

Just for completeness CNET compares to the Dell Vostro 1400, much bigger than an EEE PC however with similar pricing, nothing impressive you may say. Well it is indeed: in the price a 120GB hard disk and a DVD burner are included!!! CNET previouw of the Dell Vostro 1400

All links from CNET.co.uk

More on EEE Journal Home Page

Stereo Music with your Netbook - Bluetooth Headset Review

What are the use cases for Bluetooth in laptops/netbooks?
The most common is probably to link and synchronize the cellular phone, on the other hand the Bluetooth link is very slow if compared to (wired!) USB2.0.
The most sensful application I found so far for Bluetooth on netbook is to connect a Bluetooth headset for VoIP calls (e.g. Skype) and listen to music and internet radio/video. I personally think that Bluetooth isn't a must in the standard netbook feature set, if you want you can buy a decent adapter for $10-20 (USD).
I wouldn't restrict the netbook choice to Bluetooth only devices. In any case my Dell Mini 10v got an integrated Bluetooth interface.
See also Netbook and Bluetooth: integrated vs dongle

Last week I finally got a stereo Bluetooth headset to be used with my Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011). Actually I bought a rather cheap one (Aiptek BW-M02, about $30) since I wanted to limit the damage, actually I wasn't really clear on the real advantage of a stereo Bluetooth headset.
The Aiptek BW-M02 is relatively light, the loudness, fit and link quality are ok, A2DP is of course supported. Very good: a 3,5mm to Bluetooth adapter is also provided, it means that you can connect the Bluetooth headset to any PC/laptop/netbook with a sound out interface and most of the sound systems in the market, you just need a standard 3,5mm sound out jack. Furthermore a mic is integrated, it means that you can use the headset for VoIP calls (with your netbook/laptop) and normal cellular phone calls. The pairing process was easy, however I lost a few mimutes to understand how to enable it on my Mini 10v (just enable the sound sink). There are dedicated volume buttons as well as a pairing and a mechanical on/off button.
Now to the negative side: sound quality is not that good, far below any $15 corded headset you can buy, furthermore you hear some background noise especially with low volume/silence. On the other hand I was clear on the fact that such a cheap stereo Bluetooth headset can't provide a very good sound quality: most of the stereo Bluetooth headsets cost more at least $50-70 (USD).

UPDATE: I got major problems with the Aiptek headset and I will return it!

All in all I'm very happy with the Aiptek BW-MA02, no wires any more, I can use it for both my netbook and my cellular phone to listen to music and place calls when I'm out. For home/office I prefer corded headsets or Bluetooth headsets with better audio quality such as the Sony DRBT50 Bluetooth Stereo Headset

Cheap Netbooks: Mini 10v vs EEE PC 1005HA vs Aspire One AOD150

Finally the market offers real netbooks, I mean really cheap tiny laptops (max 1.3kg) with decent battery life (6 or more hours), good keyboard, enough display and processor power, enough for casual and mobile usage.
For less than 300 USD you have the chooce between Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011), Asus EEE PC 1005HA and Acer Aspire One AOD150. If you want to spend 50 bucks more than the Samsung NC10 is probably the best choice, especially for the nice keyboard.
Until few months ago you had to spend 400+ dollars for a decent netbook, now we finally got below 300 dollars. This is what I consider a netbook price level.

Mini 10v vs EEE PC 1005HA vs Aspire One AOD150

• Processor: almost no difference, the EEE PC 1005HA is equipped with the new Atom N280 while Mini 10v and One AOD150 use the Atom N270.
• Noise: the Mini 10v is absolutely silent, I guess fanless; the EEE PC and Aspire One tend to be a bit louder under full load, nothing really annoying.
• Display: the 10-inch display of the EEE PC isn't as brigth as Mini 10v and Aspire One AOD150, in any case eeectl can help... at your own risk of course!
• Keyboard: Mini 10v and EEE PC 1005HA got a very good keyboard, 92% of full size keys, the Aspire One got slighty smaller keys.
• Touchpad: the EEE PC got a multitouch touchpad, nothing to say for Aspire One; I really hate the touchpad of the Mini 10v.
• Wifi: The EEE PC got the faster 802.11n (draft), while Mini 10v and Aspire One have only 802.11b/g.
• Battery: for the 300 dollars class the EEE PC 1005HA got a 8,5h battery life vs about 6,5 battery life for the other two netbooks with 6-cells battery. Be careful since Mini 10v and Aspire One AOD150 are also sold with 3-cells, giving you about 3h of battery life.
• Size, weight and remaining features are very similar: 1GB DDR memory, 160GB hard disk, Windows XP, 1.3megapixel webcam, SD-card slot, 3xUSB

My bottom line: if you want the most featured netbook for 300 dollars, take definetly the EEE PC 1005HA you won't be disappointed.
If you really need an absolutely silent netbook the Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) is the netbook for you!

The absolute topseller in the past 2 months is the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - 10.5 Hour Battery Life for about 350 USD.

Netbook free anti malware/anti spyware protection - complement free antivirus

As posted in Best free antivirus for netbook, you can get a good antivirus protection for free and that won't slow down your netbook.

What I forgot to mention is that an antivirus alone is not enough: it is important to get anti malware and anti spyware protection. Something that none of the free antivirus provide.

One of the free anti malware/spyware (possibly the best) is PC Tools Threatfire. If you use a free antivirus I warmly recommend you PC Tools Threatfire in order to get a complete protection.
You can get it for free from the PC Tools, no need of registration.

I use it since weeks in my Dell Mini 10v (Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM) to complement the free Avast Antivirus and I didn't notice a netbook slow down since the installation.

Netbook Deals 2010 with Intel Atom N450 and N270

2010 started with an invasion of netbook deals: excellent netbooks with Atom N270 and N280 are sold below 300 dollars (see end of the post) and many of the Atom N450 (Pineview) netbooks got relatively low prices..
Asus started first flooding the online shops with many Atom N450 models and I got the impression that the new EEE PC netbooks with Atom N450 got a lower average selling price: most Asus EEE PC Seashell models are available for well under 400 dollars, actually the Seashell 1001P is even below 300 dollars. I found only one premium model above 400 dollars (Karim Rashid collection).

• EEE PC Seashell 1005PE for $367.97
• EEE PC Seashell 1001P for $299.00

Beside Asus EEE PCs, also MSI started early shipping MSI Wind U135 with Atom N450, the models with small battery are sold for around 300 dollars. I strongly recommend the MSI Wind U135 with high capacity battery for just 20 bucks more.

As mentioned above, many deals are available especially for N270 and N280 netbooks. Top netbooks below 300 dollars

• EEE PC 1005HA, for $299.99
• Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 (10v), for $297.69
• Samsung NC10, for $284.99
  

Netbook and Bluetooth - integrated vs usb dongle

Bluetooth is a feature that you rarely find in the cheapest netbooks, say below $320 USD.
For example Bluetooth isn't included in most of the Acer Aspire One AOD250 and in many Toshiba Mini NB205. While most of the Samsung netbooks and the Dell Mini 10v and Asus EEE PC 1005HA include Bluetooth.

I personally love Bluetooth you can establish a wireless link to your netbook for example:

• with a Bluetooth headset: you can listen to music and/or make Skype calls (VoIP)
  
• with your mobile phone: to synch data, contacs ot to use the phone as 3G modem for Internet connectivity

My suggestion: Bluetooth support in the netbook shouldn't be a go/not go criteria, you can simply add Bluetooth support using a Bluetooth USB dongle, there are many starting just below $10 (USD) and some of them are so tiny that you even won't see it.
Some USB Bluetooth adapters are so tiny that simply disappears in the USB port of your netbook, so you can plug it once and forget it. You won't notice it! No damage to break it!

Be careful in the choice of the USB dongle, be aware of the fact that some cheap Bluetooth dongles got limitations. Some examples:

• Many cheap dongle don't support A2DP, necessary to listen stereo music
  
• With Windows XP 32-bit you're fine, however please be aware that many dongles got operating system compatibility problems with MAC, Linux, and 64-bit Windows
  
• Some Bluetooth dongles got a very limited wireless reach (2-3 meters)
• Some cheap dongles got buggy/crap software

These two micro USB Bluetooth dongle seem to be very good, according to the user review I read there are no issue at all especially with Windows based netbooks. The IOGear may have problems with Ubuntu 9.04.

Why so many netbooks don't include Bluetooth? Bluetooth is kind of "premium" feature, many people don't neet it. People needing it are supposed to give out few bucks more.
As I said, the average price is falling and the netbook OEMs try to reduce the costs, every cent counts in the netbook market! Netbooks are essentially mini laptops with the absolutely minimum feature set, Bluetooth isn't definetly something everybody needs.

HD Video for Netbooks: with Atom, Nvidia Ion or ARM CPU?

Today I tested my Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) with a couple of HD videos available in YouTube (full screen and HD selected), none of the two could be played smoothly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N2YWRJ-ppo (1080p, full HD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzscXeJ6FEQ (720p)

Not really a surprise, current generation of netbooks isn't able to play HD/full HD video. The Intel Atom N270/N280 processor doesn't provide enough performance and the graphics chipset doesn't help with video decoding.

Performance boost with Intel Pineview (Atom N450/N470) ??

Don't expect a significant performance boost with the adoption of the upcoming Intel Atom Pineview processors: the main news is integration of memory controller and graphics in the CPU, reducing overall chipset cost and power consumption. On the other hand neither CPU core nor the graphics engine will be more powerful, Intel "just" merged processor and north bridge in a single chip --> it's only an integration step.
Well, I must be a bit more precise: the Atom N450 will be clocked at 1.66GHz (as the N270) while the Atom N470 will get a 200MHz increase (1.86GHz) HOWEVER this is definetly not sufficient for full HD decoding.
This seems also to be confimed by Digitimes : Intel Atom N450/N470 will offer the option of an external chip (Broadcom BCM70015) for video decoding. I guess that this chip will eventually be adopted by "premium" netbooks, given the cost adder.

Performance boost with CUDA / Nvidia Ion Chipset ??

Another interesting possibility to finally have a full HD experience on netbooks is the adoption of Nvidia or ATI/AMD GPUs.
All new graphic chips from Nvidia and ATI/AMD in the past couple of years provide HD video acceleration, requiring little CPU intervention for video decoding (e.g. H.264). A significant number of desktop/barebone motherboards are already equipped with integrated graphics and HD video acceleration. Also very important: more and more video and graphics software make use of GPU acceleration provided by Nvidia and ATI/AMD chipsets. The software support got a boost in the past year, since the release of a more or less standardized API for GPU programming: the CUDA.
An importnat step forward is the CUDA/GPU acceleration provided by the upcoming Flash 10.1.
Even netbooks with the old Intel Atom N270/N280 if paired with a GPU (e.g. Nvidia Ion) would be able to play HD content, BUT: you first have to find one... netbooks with Nvidia Ion graphics are rare, insider say because of Intel's aggressive price policy (I've heard that Intel offers Atom+945 chipset at a lower costs than the Atom CPU alone!!!). This is of course a killing point for the netbook market, with a huge price pressure.
As of today, I know only of one netbook with Nvidia Ion, the HP Mini 311, with 11.6-inch display, Atom N270 and a 400 USD price tag.

What about Intel Atom alternatives, ARM CPU ??

As mentioned above, it isn't easy to build cheap netbooks with Intel and CUDA / Nvidia graphics. As far as I know Via Nano processors can't compete with Intel Atom because of the premium price tag and higher power consumption.
A realistic alternative for video decoding is coming from the adoption of the new ARM processors targeting MID and netbooks: Qualcomm Snapdragon, Nvidia Tegra and Freescale i.MX515. These are cheap enough to be competitive enough for price and power consumption. I think that the Nvidia Tegra got the best chance given the 1080p decoding capability and especially the support of CUDA, the standardized GPU interface mentioned before. I doubth that Qualcomm and Freescale are going to provide CUDA graphics drivers, this may be a problem.
BUT there are at least two factors playing against the ARM based processors

1. CPU performance: Intel Atom got an edge since the ARM processors don't support hardware multithreading (Intel Atom does, got two virtual processors) and got lower clock in actual products (max 1.2GHz ARM vs 1.6GHz in Atom)
2. Software support: Intel Atom got Windows support while ARM are so far supported by Linux (and derivates such as Android). This is going to be a major penalty for ARM, the only chance for ARM is to hope/work on a Linux distribution that can finally compete with Microsoft Windows. It's interesting to note that a very promising Netbook distribution is coming from Intel (Moblin), will Intel help ARM processors? :-)

See also

• Netbook Operating Systems and Processors 2009/2010
• All posts related to Linux on Netbooks
• All posts related to ARM Netbooks

Linux in Netbooks

Just notice looking at the netbook topseller list on my blog: none of the top 10 netbooks got Linux, they are all shipped with Windows XP.
Did Linux loose a chance to get to the people? High return rates burned fingers of Asus, MSI and Co. Mainstream netbooks in the next 18-24 months will still be shipped with XP and the new Windows 7.
In any case I do think that Linux still got a chance: a few OEMs (e.g. Dell) instist shipping netbooks with Linux and big names (e.g. Intel) are spending big money on Linux for netbooks and portable devices (mobile phones).
Help is also coming from Intel's competition: Linux is the only reasonable netbook operating system for ARM based netbooks and the recent announcement of Flash 10.1 supporting ARM is a great news: finally ARM based netbooks gotta a chance to offer decent internet browsing experience.
My bottom line: the situation can only improve!

See also Netbook Operating Systems and Processors 2009/2010

EEE PC Competition - One A120 and A110 - Cheap EEE PC 4G alternative?

In the past couple of months several laptop brands announced subnotebook alternatives to EEE PC . One announced the models A120 and A110. The One A120 is very similar to the EEE PC 4G, marketed in Germany at 279 Euro and equipped with a VIA C7 1GHz processor, 512MB DDR2, 4GB SDD, WLAN, 7-inch display, webcam and especially Windows XP home.
The A110 uses Linux and is priced at 229 Euro, misses a webcam and has only a 2GB SDD.

I've already posted a few articles about subnotebooks / ultra portable pcs in direct competition to EEE PC, see also

• HP Compaq Mininote 2
• HP Compaq Mininote 1
• MSI Wind 3
• MSI Wind 2
• MSI Wind 1 - Atom CPU vs Celeron
• Gigabyte M912
• MSI Wind, EasyNote, Elox One, OLPC and Dell Vostro

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