Thinking about a Mini 9: Can't decide if I should get the Linux version.

Hello all! I've been looking at the new Dell Mini 9 since it was announced. I'm a college student and I have a very nice Lenovo T61P. This is a powerful machine but for what I do at school, its pretty much overkill. Its heavy with poor battery life (even with the 9cell). All I really do at school its email/web and word documents. I'm thinking about picking up the basic version of the Mini 9 with Ubuntu. I have tinkered with Linux before but not to any great extent. What concerns me is the backwards compatibility of Windows based files (MP3, Office 07 documents,etc) on a flash drive working on the Linux machine. I often have to type documents (I use Word 07 on my T61 and desktop) and them email them through the school's online website as an attachment. Would the instructors have any troubles opening a OpenOffice document made within Linux on their Windows machines? This is the only thing that I'm concerned about as for everything else, I think the Dell Ubuntu looks great and would be fine for my basic computing needs. Thanks everyone!

 

MS Office 2007 files won't work in OpenOffice, the office suite used by most Linux distributions. That said, Ubuntu can easily handle PDFs, MP3s, and pretty much all the other major filetypes. I have used Ubuntu exclusively for quite some time, and as a student it served me very well. I wouldn't be deterred by Ubuntu for any reason.

 

Actually, you can choose to save files as .doc, eliminating any incompatibilities.
MP# will work for sure, out of the box.
You wont have to install a thing, unless you need something special.
You'll have to understand that Linux doesn't work like Windows though, its not a "free windows".
EDIT: Choosing to save 07 docs in 03 mode will make them able to open under linux.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I'm pretty set on getting it with Ubuntu but need an opinion on if I should upgrade to 1gig of RAM. I plan to use Firefox and OpenOffice for my main programs (probably have them running at the same time). Not being that familiar with Linux, how much RAM does it take on its own? Its only $25 for the 1gig option versus the 512MB but if I really wouldn't need it then I don't really want to pay for it. Thanks again!

 

The RAM usage varies a lot, depending on what desktop environment you run and whether you run graphical desktop effects or not. The most I have ever used was approximately 400MB or so, with KDE and Compiz Fusion running at full blast, plus tons of applications running. Needless to say, Linux can use as much or as little RAM as you want it to.

 

I would get at least 1 gig for Linux . . . Ubuntu is great and not as much of a ram hog as say, vista, however I fairly regurlarly got my usage up and around 700 MB.

Ubuntu will be able to work with all the popular formats, and I have been using Open Office for some time now in college also. I usually save in .rtf format, which should be usable by a variety of processors. I am waiting to hear if any of my professors are having issues with formatting so far.

If you really are not comfortable with linux I probably would shy away. You can always download Ubuntu and dual-boot, or install it to a spare harddrive and experiment with it. I thought that it was actually a lot of fun. It is just an OS after all, the problems that I usually had were driver related. There are TONS of free apps out there though that work good and handle anything that windows would.