As some of you with sharp eyes noted over the weekend, today marks the official retirement of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, our first entry into the netbook market. It was a successful product by any number of measures, including the unofficial "modders dream" device with owners adding GPS modules, installing different OS, upgrading memory, etc.
As you may recall, the Gizmodo team ran into Michael at last year's All Things Digital and he shared a prototype Mini he was carrying at the time. We officially launched the Inspiron Mini 9 Sept. 4, 2008 for $349 and it became the first netbook product with built in Mobile Broadband support offered by a major wireless carrier, Vodafone, in EMEA. Since the launch of the Mini 9, Dell has extended its Mini family with several new products, incorporating industry-led enhancements and customer feedback inspired improvements, and we expanded the palette for personalization options, with more colors and original artwork by Tristan Eaton. For customers who were looking for the Mini 9, we suggest they consider a Dell Mini 10v, with a starting price of $299.
The Mini 10v features the same processor: Intel Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, the same OS choices: Windows XP and a Dell customized version of Ubuntu, and 1GB of memory. The Mini 10v also improves upon overall ergonomics with a 10-inch display and a bigger, better keyboard (92% of standard), as well as more storage space and options: choice of SSD (16GB) or traditional hard drives (up to 160GB). It appears up to the task of filling the Mini 9 shoes on the "modding" front as well. For those of you who purchased a Dell Mini 9 during the last nine months, thank you. We appreciate your business, and hope the Dell Mini 9 continues to deliver a great mobile experience.
For those of you in the market for a solid companion device for on the go computing and connectivity, I recommend you check out the Mini 10v.