THE OFFICIAL: Dell Inspiron 9 (Mini I) Thread...

Very easy. Control Panel, Power Options, Power Schemes , change to Always On. That's it (unless the hard drive & stuff is set low).

 

It's done..so simple and easy! lol.

It is indeed, good and noticeable!

Thanks again!


Cin

 

Cool! I knew it wasn't my imagination.

 

Nope not your imagination at all! It works! And, any ways on improving the I9's performance are good!


Cin

 

There have indeed been some great outlet deals on I-9's but I'm going to have to put my I-9 purchase on hold a bit now that I caved last week at Best Buy and ended up buying a 14" ASUS X83Vm-X1. It's a Best Buy exclusive and they were on clearance for $795, so it was just too good a deal to pass up. It will soon replace my aging Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop with a broken hinge.

This new 14" weighs nearly 3 pounds less than my old Dell lappy, and is much easier to take on the road with me. However, I still NEED a netbook! It'd be soooo handy to take to Dunkin' Donuts with me! Those tables there are really small ya' know!

 

Pickles...I'm ROFL at the moment on your Avy!


Cin [/QUOTE]

He's my couch potatoe Old English Bulldog. My reading glasses didn't faze him one bit

 

OOooo speed increases are FUN!

So even setting just he AC power section to always on speeds performance? That's interesting, i'll get some benchmarks and do before and afters, just for giggles


Still isn't here yet, that means it wasn't on the UPS early truck

I'm going to call them and demand tracking information, that section of their website is broken.

 

http://mydellmini.com/forum/tv-tuner-t152s10.html#p24363

Managed to get local HDTV working on the Mini!

Ready for the digital transition now whether or not it gets pushed back

 

OOooo that's cool!
Wonder if digital will even be broadcast here.



Called dell, turns out they lied through their teeth about when it was shipped, it was actually shipped on tuesday via fedex, meaning that it won't get here till monday
That is pretty typical for my experiences with dell recently, absolute garbage for support/service. The computers they make range from good to excellent to great, but the support and such is lousy.

Last one i bought was a inspiron 9400 that was listed as a 7900gs and had a 7800. It took me a timed 162 minutes on the phone to get them to admit the problem and cough up a shipping label.
That is longer then i actually used the stupid computer for
Computer worked great though, nice and solid too, and it had top side fan intake vents! Awesome idea.


Anyway, i'm really looking forward to getting mine, even if i'm rather grumpy at dell right now

 

Really? I'v actually had very good support from Dell. My order was said to ship in a week. I called them and they expediated it for me.

 

Okay Cin! I'm lost. What did you just do that increased the speed.
I got lost somwhere???
Thanks

 

oh I got it... the power schemes.. I love these tips!! Thank you!!!

 

OK I see you got it!

Isn't that great? It does improve the performance, nicely!


Cin

 

It's a love hate with the mini, lol
couple deep scratches on the FRONT
(flesh wound)
the ssd is a miracle

 

Yes it's awesome the difference. Did you notice any heat change of the machine? Get any warmer?

 

Finally got my invisible shield installed. Inside palm area was easy, top outer shell was a little harder, but at least i know its a little more protected from scratches!

 

Nope I didn't notice any heat changes per se! It just works awesome for me!

Awesome! How long did it take to install the shield on the outer shell?

Cin

 

Glad you like it. I found the tip at a different site. I got so excited by the results I pestered Cin to try it.

I noticed it runs a tad warmer. In CPUID Hardware Monitor it's warmer by about 5 or so degrees. But then my ambient room temperature is warmer too.

I'm assuming you turned off indexing and stuff like that already. I like wringing every bit of performance out of this M9.

 

Yeah, it's great..I really haven't noticed a temp differential though.

How are you liking the sound on yours?


Cin

 

I guess you were asking me about the sound quality?

I have not hooked this up to my external drive to copy any music yet. I am too busy tweaking.

 

Yup....like stated sound = quality!

Tweaking is oh so fun!

Cin

 

I was decently impressed with the sound quality on the last one i had my hands on, it was better then my gf's laptop, but not as good as my m7700 or the dell 9400 i had. Admittedly both of those have four speakers and a pseudosub, so it's not really a fair comparison.

It was totally listenable though, and got louder then i expected.

 

Yeah! The first few times I used my I9, I didn't think the sound quality was that great. But then after adjusting to the size and capabilities of the I9, it has good listening qualities for a Netbook!


Cin

 

At the very least, the speakers on the I9 are loud. My I9 is super loud compared to my Eee Pc.

Compared to a lot of other netbooks, the Mini 9 is a freakin' boombox.

 

That's a good point, i think they may well be louder then my gf's sharp al27(fantastic laptop, lousy/quiet speakers.

I'd like to see a Boombox edition of a netbook, give it 5.1 speakers like the 9400 and my alienware m7700 have

 

Cin - It may be inappropriate to post links here but I got an e-mail about this on sale and I thought of you and Garnet -- http://www.buy.com/prod/western-dig...loc/101/207683099.html?adid=17070&dcaid=17070

 

Oh that's not inappropriate at all! Because some fellow I9 user's may actually need one!

Thanks for linking that! That's is a sweet Portable HD......*thinks* hmmm!

That would work with my lappy and my I9! Nice find!


Cin

 

Wow cheap.
Tempting, too
That is, roughly speaking, the total capacity of both my households current laptops AND the mini9 that should be here in ~4 hours.
I may well buy one.

 

As Cin stated, this is a nice find. I wish I had waited and purchased the red mini. Oh well, maybe next time. I love my 9 but I am also waiting to hear all the reviews when the 10 comes out. I'm in no hurry.

 

It got here!

So cute


C: is only 14gb though, making me wonder if it's a case of HDD style marketing (1gb being 1,000,000,000 bytes), or whether there is a 2gb restore partition or somesuch.

 

Bobnova your gonna love it. Got my I9 referb last Wednesday and it was a cream puff. Having a blast with it thanks to all for the info, especially Cin for the info for the 20% off.

Had to update everything as it must have been one of the first. No it doesn't have the WWan slot but has the 16 meg SSD,and 1 Meg of ram and !.3 web cam. All for less than $260 shipped.

Todd

 

Yeah...it's sold out already I was gonna get it! Oh well, maybe it will be around again soon, as it get's closer to Valentines Day!

Yeah, there will always, always be a next time...a good way to look at things..(from my POV, at least)

AWESOME...congrat's on the ARRIVAL...you are officially a I9 owner! :yes: :laugh:

Why thank you!

You got an excellent deal! It's good to hear its working out so well for you!


Cin

 

Help!! What resolution is everybody running at? Thanks

 

1024X600. Playing with Windows 7 again?

 

1024x600

Not Jane, She wouldn't do that..

I took mine to work today so a coworker could look at it. And, I almost didn't get Garnet back! Me thinks, they are going to order one!


Cin

 

hahahah no ,,, no windows 7..... lol
I know it's hard to show anybody , you can't turn your back!!!

 

No Win 7! LOL

Yeah, they spent their lunch hour with their own earphones listening to music on YouTube, and exploring the I9.. If they get it they are going to get it in the Obsidian Black!

And, will prob's get it thru the Outlet~! Great deals galore..


Cin

 

great deals for sure. probably should have waited.. oh well!

 

I put a 32 gb Runcore drive in mine and installed Win 7. It runs beautifully. It's so much faster with the Runcore and I'm very, very impressed with Win7.

 

I understand, I look at it like...I waited and got it when I wanted it!
There will always be good deals!

That's great info' to hear! I'm going to just stick with XP, for now...
A fast netbook = a very good thing, indeed!

Cin

 

I wonder how much the Win 7 upgrade will cost for netbooks when the beta expires?

 

One million dollars!





Ok probably like $100 or so i'd guess, if they're allowed to offer both win7 and xp without simply charging win7 prices for xp like they do with the "downgrade to xp" thing on the higher end notebooks.
I suspect it'll be another episode of microsoft screwing oems and the oems passing it along to the customers (not like they have a choice), just because that's kinda how microsoft rolls.


Now having played with my mini9 for a while, i'm very happy with it. It's far faster then i expected, it seems faster then the dellbuntu one my gf and i gave to her mom. It snaps windows around and such as fast as the p4 2.4 (also 1gb, but with three sticks of junk ram) we have at work.

First thing i did was uninstall about a gig of junk, then i turned off the page file as the last thing i want on a ssd is for windows to constantly write and erase the guts of one file. Plus a boot runs ~256gb, which leaves plenty of wiggle room. I haven't rebooted since junking everything in the registry "run" folders that i didn't think i wanted (like, everything Don't worry, i backed the folder up first!).

The 16gb ssd is painfully slow, that's my only gripe with the mini9. I can't say that i like the goofy/tiny keyboard, but i think i like the us-std version better then i would the us-intl, so i'm just running with it. I'm starting to get vaguely used to the ' " key being off in left field (or more like between the mound and 1st base i suppose). It helps that i didn't learn how to type the way you're supposed to, i just started playing a MUD and had to be able to type really fast to heal myself. As such my brain has a mental map of where each key is in relation to other keys, which makes it easy to adjust for spacing and such. Rather then having a mental map of where each key is supposed to be from a starting point.
In any case, i don't mind the keyboard.
I'd [/i]like[/i] a number pad and the page up/down keys that come with said number pad, but just the number pad on my m7700 is almost half the size of the mini9, so i can see why they didn't put one on



Next up, booting again to see if i broke anything trimming windows down


EDIT:
Actually, next up is eating breakfast.

 

Typed from my mini9

Now with some things uninstalled and the startup/run folders completely empty a fresh boot is 129mb, that's not bad at all.

Boots pretty quick now too, it must just be writing to the ssd that takes a while. Hell it boots faster then my m7700! Course that boot is ~360mb. Finding the ~ key just now took a bit

 

bobnova congrats on your new Mini 9.

I just noticed your signature and wanted to save you a lot of headache. You cannot boot from the SD card. In fact, the SD card is not even seen until the OS is loaded. You could do a Ubuntu install via Wubi. This will install Ubuntu to the SSD and you can uninstall at any time through the Windows control panel.

To get my Mini to Dual boot, I purchased a very small USB MicroSD reader and installed Ubuntu on that, which allows me to dual boot.

 

That's good to know, thanks!
I have a 8gb flashdrive thumbstick thing around here somewhere i might try, mini9's can boot off those, right?

 

Yeah, no problem booting from a bootable USB flashdrive.

 

Wow, that 20% off coupon recently was a winner. I just bought a second mini for $203.62 shipped. It's the 4 GB one with Ubuntu and a 1.3 mp webcam. Cherry red. It has only 512 ram but I have a 1 GB stick to put in it from my other mini. I want to use it at work.

My other mini, the fancier one, I am using everyday to surf the web. Amazing little laptops...well worth the purchase...

 

Congrats A-Gal

I also got one about a week ago but my daughter saw it and now it is on it's way to NV. Oh well kids come first right? Dell will have another special soon(I hope). Have fun It's a great little computer.

todd

 

bobnova,

If you still think the SSD is slow, turn off indexing, sys restore and uncompress the hard drive. That last step can take hours.

 

Wow! What a deal. Every time I read something like this I am tempted to get a second one, maybe with WWAN. I have to restrain myself because I don't need another one and I can do without WWAN for several years yet.