mini 9 vs asus Eee PC 900HA

i bought a dell mini 9 for my wife and she likes it but i'm thinking of getting a small laptop for times when i travel (i just flew back from thailand) and i'm wondering if the asus Eee PC 900HA is a better deal?

the price for starters: $320 vs around $350 - $500 for the dell mini

of course, for the basic dell mini, there's only a 4 gig hard drive vs 160 gigs on the asus.

also, 1 gig ram for the asus vs 512 megs for the dell.

also, a 6 cell vs a 4 cell battery for the dell.

so off hand, it appears that one gets more bang for the buck with the asus but i'm open to hearing other points of view; i could be missing something and so i'm posting this here.

thanks for any info/ideas you might have!

 

THe asus will not only give you better bang for the buck for specs but would have better build quality, and better battery life/power

 

I own the Dell. I used to own an Eee Pc.

I'd get the Eee Pc.

It, basically, comes down to one thing. The Asus smashes the Dell's specs.

Don't over think it. You can't ignore that difference in spec.

 

but the dell looks better. at least in the ads or youtube

if asus can hire someone who can design the case, i will buy asus for sure

 

thanks for the feedback; even tho the specs look very lopsided, i was wondering if i was missing something cuz on the surface, it looks like a no-brainer! since you guys know about this stuff more than i do, i just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something.

i'm almost certain now that i'll get an asus.

i have the xps 1330 and i'm happy with it but for something light when travelling, the asus look good!

thanks again guys.

 

Here's the top 10 netbooks according to Notebookjournal. These guys do extensive benchmarking and testing. De Dell 9 is somewhere around place 14.

 

I recently purchased a Dell Mini for my girlfriend. We compared the Mini to the Aspire One and Asus and based our decision to purchase the Dell Mini on a couple of reasons.

The most important criteria for my girlfriend was the weight. She has a Dell 710M and found it took heavy to carry around with the charger, any work she might take home and her books for her evening graduate studies. Because the places she most often uses the Mini for extended periods of time has access to an electrical outlet the 4 cell battery was sufficient -- again weight was the major factor in making our decision.

Second, she hated the Aspire One's mousepad.

Third, she liked the look of the Dell over the other two computers.

Fourth, and this was a minor issue since the same story can be said for every PC manufacturer -- my girlfriend's co-worker had an awful experience with trying to get his Asus repaired while it was still under warranty.

Fifth - for me I liked the ease at which I could modify the Dell Mini. I installed a 2gig RAM in a matter of seconds. At mydellmini.com there are several how-to guides on modifications for the Mini.

Having said all that -- I'm not sure I would purchase a Dell Mini for myself. At the moment I carry my Dell M1210 everywhere and have no problems with the weight. If I thought about having a netbook to carry around and leaving the Dell M1210 at home I'd probably want a larger HD/SSD than is currently offered on the Dell Mini. Also, I'm often not able to plug in so I'd prefer a 6 cell battery in a netbook.

But I use my laptop for different uses than my girlfriend who is using her Mini to take class notes, surf the internet, e-mail and the occasional creation of a PDF. I installed Microsoft Office 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 8.0 which run without a problem on the Mini. After several weeks of use my girlfriend loves the Mini and says she doesn't even notice the weight of the Mini in her bag.