OK! First time in my life I found a machine which is confused! Awww… I am not nuts but that is true. This wonderful eye candy has a dual character and I really don’t know what to call it as. It has an Atom processor that makes it a nettop but guess what: the 12 inch screen takes it off from the nettop platform!

Dell Inspiron Mini 12

So, what shall I call it? A netbook or a notebook? I am lost and if you have a better answer please let me know! Well the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 beats the traditional 10 inch display netbooks in the race of providing some extra size of the screen but in doing so, it has achieve the screen size of 12 inches and this makes it nearly close to the far more capable Dell systems in terms of screen size and price! Let us keep the confusion aside and let us see what it has in store for us!

Design

Never found any other to meet this standard. Well, the extended battery does not give it any extra weight and it is easy to flip and turn! The other best part of the design is the sandpapery texture at the bottom. This makes it very comfortable to handle and carry.

Keyboard

Umm… OK, I will better rate this clicky part as 10/10. Nicely placed and moderately sized, the keyboard is indeed one of the best features of the Dell Inspiron Mini 12. It gives a smooth typing experience and passes all the standard typing tests of a keyboard (some of you may however find the keys to be a little small). However, the touchpad was not u to my expectation and gave me a feeling of skin rashes when I touched it. The left and the right buttons recessed when pressed but over time I was habituated with the feature and started liking the mechanical feel.

Watch it!

You are going to love the screen which is a major reason as to why call the system to be a bit confused! The 12 inch wide screen gives a nice viewing experience. A solid 1280×800 resolution along with solid contrast and decent colors give a good feeling when you look at the screen.

The Heat!

I was taken by surprise. The system did not become hot while I was using it and to my amazement, I found it to be lukewarm at the bottom. This makes the system of the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 one of the best in terms of heat emission.

Performance

Don’t even think of multi tasking. Not possible. The specifications are bare minimum. 40 GB HDD, 1 GB Ram (cannot be upgraded) and 1.33 GHz Atom processor! It is suitable for XP and Vista Home Basic. In terms of battery life, it can only stand up to 1 hour and 20 mins with maximum resource usage. In case of a 6 Cell Li-ion battery, it can stand up to 4 hours and 2 mins.

Specifications

The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 has 802.11 a/g Wi-Fi and a Kensington lock port. The worst thing is that the system hardware did not perform well in terms of performance with Vista. Though many software applications could be easily loaded, opening several applications at a time caused problem. Boot time was significantly high and it took 2 mins to boot up to the Vista desktop. I nearly went off to sleep by the time all the applications were up which included the Dell dock. It took a staggering 4 mins. I really hate this!

Warranty stuff and software

Dell dock, Microsoft Works Suite, Google desktop, Dell’s video chat are bundled with the system. It gives a 90 days free trial of McAfee. It gives a warranty of 1 year on parts and labor!

Conclusion

Though it has a big screen to offer, the performance is not up to the mark. It is bit over priced at $654!