My Dell Inspiron 910 Mini Experience
January 7, 2010 by John38 · 8 Comments
Having been amongst the first to purchase the Dell 910 Mini I wanted to share my experience with others that might be thinking about acquiring this item or one of the other sub-notebook or ‘netbooks’ as they have become known. I manage a web design agency and I’ve been contemplating the idea of acquiring myself a moreportable laptop as my old Dell Inspiron from 2003 is as heavy as a brick.
Shortly after having retired the old Dell to my girlfriends house (I couldn’t face lugging it back and forwards any longer so it just lives there now, I might well do the same with myself one of these days soon!) it stopped charging and wouldn’t run from the mains, so eventually when I gave it to my tech to repair he found out that it was one of the known faulty models, the 5150 which developed a problem with the motherboard overheating after prolonged use, this I found out about 2 years after they stopped replacing them as part of a class action lawsuit, shame I’m two years too late to get it replaced for free!
Ah well what’s 150 quid for a factory refurbished Motherboard off ebay, compared with years of loyal service in spite of being dropped a couple of times, spat on repeatedly, eaten over and all manner of other not recommended usage styles! I even used to have it hooked up to my TV via the onboard S-VHS port and watch films on it, so it has seen some action, oh yes!Not that I download movies off the internet you understand of course, oh no that would just be wrong, and illegal and I wouldn’t want to risk getting my broadband disconnected!
However, this was all inspired by my step dad who just bought a top of the range Toshiba Portege at around £1,200, but he’s at that time in life where 1,200 quid is affordable, where as I’m still in financial recovery from my last divorce (yes there was more than one!)! So I happened across the Dell Inspiron 910 Mini on the Dell site whilst looking at specs of notebooks for a customer, and there it was £299 inc VAT and delivery. What a bargain I thought! (If you are reading this three years after I wrote it and they are now giving them away free on the front of Corn Flake packets then I will be even more gutted, or maybe I’ll just get one for all the family!)
Anyway there I was flexible friend at the ready, wrist twitching ready to make a purchase, but hang on I thought, why am I buying this, do I really need it? No, I don’t NEED it I just HAVE TO HAVE ONE! So then some sensibility came over me and I put my credit card away, feeling all pleased with myself at having managed to resist an impulse purchase!
However, the next day my step Father needs me to investigate his new machine because he can’t get the music software to work and can’t get it to see the other machines on our network(this job for me, comes with the territory! ) So I have to genuinely work on this ultra lightweight Toshiba, wow I’m amazed at how light it is, especially when compared with my old Dell 5150! I wish I had cash spare to invest in one of these I thought! I noticed he didn’t have my prescribed security software set up though. I installed my ordinary internet security tool: Avast Anti Virus and Spybot Search& Destroy, which are fantastic packages.
The next day I had to go to a customers and as it was first thing in the morning I went straight from my girlfriends house and took the old laptop with me (which gives me a great excuse to call in on my way back and drop it off, coincidentally around about lunchtime when there might be the chance of a ham, cheese and salad sandwich on the go! Yum, she is soooo good to me!) So anyway, I about put my back out trying to put this incredibly heavy laptop in the car passenger foot well whilst sitting in the drivers’ seat! So having experienced the new lightweight machines first hand, and realised I do have a genuine requirement for the new Dell Inspiron mini after all, weighing in at around 1kg, you know I planned to get that credit card out again as soon as I was able!
So as I had a management meeting that afternoon I informed my Finance Manager I would be ordering one and that was that. It was Friday October 3rd when I placed the order on the Dell website, and on the 8th I got back from a client meeting to find a small cardboard box on my desk with the Dell log on the side, I thought it couldn’t possibly be the new mini as the confirmation email I got said it would arrive on or around the 20th October, but sure enough it really had arrived! Just a 5 day turn around, wow!
So I’m like a kid in a sweet shop thinking “best day ever” (See Heroes Season 3), I was ecstatic and carefully unpacked it, tossing instructions and disks to one side of course, “read those later” I thought. I got it out and started setting it up straight away, you know remove McAfee Security Centre and all the other junk software these things come with these days. Why they can’t just send you a blank windows installation I don’t know, more advertising!
As it has an integrated web cam I also downloaded Windows Live Messenger and had a quick video call with my girlfriend whilst she was doing her house work, fantastic! What a great bit of kit!So next I Googled ‘mobile broadband suppliers’ and toyed with ordering the USB dongle from Three, as their 5GB monthly allowance is only 15 quid a month so the best looking deal, providing those coverage stories you hear about Three Mobile are not really true! (Update: Yes the coverage is lousy in all the areas I want to use it, even at my desk I have to connect the dongle to a USB cable and hang it from my roof to get 1 bar signal strength, buy another brand!)
Anyway, it was soon time to go and pick up my daughter from school so I thought yeah I’ll take it with me and even though I don’t have the mobile broadband USB Modem yet I can continue setting it up in car park if I’m early. I was early, so I turned it on, it said:
Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
Please report this problem as :
load needed DLLs for kernel.
Please contact your support person to report this problem
As we say in England from the popular Catherine Tate sketch “Computer says no…”
Ah dear, it was great fun whilst it lasted, all of about 2 and a half minutes!Then followed a 2 and a half hour telephone marathon with Dell support in India 
Apparently they were so quick to ship the laptop to me that my service tag isn’t on their system yet.
Why did they refuse to send me a new one on this call? It was because they couldn’t look up the service tag on their system, that’s why! I really couldn’t understand it at all, it’s not like it was something really complicated a virtual pc for example.
They suggested I called back in 24-48 hours, well I told them exactly what I thought of their suggestion as I’m sure you can image, but to no avail. I did indeed have to call back today and they have agreed to send me a replacement unit as it is within 7 days of delivery.
I hope the replacement arrives as promptly as the original unit did…
So conclusion? Apart from the fact it doesn’t work (a faulty drive in my opinion) and for the life of me I can’t get it to boot from an external drive or USB key (it doesn’t have a CD or DVD drive you know) it feels really solid, looks lovely, and is nice to handle (sounds a bit like the ideal partner to an i-phone 2.0 doesn’t it!).
Like most reviewers have experienced, the keys are small (but blackberry users manage and they are larger than those keys) and the right shift key is tiny and means you can’t type an @ in the usual fashion. But the screen is nice, 3 USB slots, a monitor connector, Ethernet and earphones and mic connectors although it has both speakers and mic internally so you can video conference without having to plug anything in.
On the whole, I would recommend it, providing you get one that works ! I am also yet to try it with LogMeIn which is my preferred way of dealing with how to access emails, lots of passwords, specialist software and all that kind of thing when you are out and about. Possibly the screen is going to be too small to be able to work with for extended periods of time, but I’ll let you know when the replacement arrives and I have had chance to give it a proper testing, assuming that one doesn’t break on me as soon as I start urm ‘configuring’ it!
Further Update: So I have had the Dell Mini for about erm, wow nearly 12 months! It would never work with LogMeIn over the Three dongle. To be fair 3 were very helpful, until we took the dongle out and successfully used it in another one of my computers and were able to connect on LogMeIn without any problems, at this point they referred me to Dell, at which point I lost interest!
It is all to do with one of the browser settings, not remembering itself when you tick the check box and hit Apply. I can’t remember which one it was now, and maybe ie 8 will have fixed the problem or it might work on Mozilla browser instead, I just never got round to trying to sort it out again and tend to use the Mini more now to read the news in bed with my cup of tea in the morning.It’s just so convenient being so small, and another great feature is it’s near instant turn on. If you just shut the lid it goes into standby, open the lid and it comes back on again within seconds.
It is too small to use for really extended periods but it is great for checking your email when you’re out and about, or for a quick impulse surf when you’re watching tv and you want to remind yourself what other films that actor or actress was in!I don’t know much about lcd monitors but i reckon if you connected one to this externally it would work great.
It’s a cracking little machine though and also works quite well down the pub, because I can fit it in the pocket of my big coat, and that is proper cool, except it doesn’t like beer puddles much so I tend to avoid taking it most of the time, unless I know I’m going to need to log on, but then the pub has got a sexy new Mac which is already covered in beer so I prefer to use that (any excuse to get behind the bar really!)What is so magical about being able to go behind the bar at your local anyway? I suspect if I actually worked there it would soon wear off!
In summary though it has not had any hardware problems since the initial replacement was received. On the whole I have found that Dell kit tends to be pretty reliable anyway, especially when you are dealing with the more business based items whereas this is obviously more consumer focussed. With a Dell if they are going to go wrong they will usually do so within the first six months of use and generally after that they will keep going until recommended service intervals such as changing the disks after a couple of years and that kind of thing.
It should be made clear though that these mini Dell laptops/netbooks, call them what you will, do not having a traditional hard disk drive inside them. A normal hard drive has a disk inside it that physically spins round and a ‘head’ which moves backwards and forwards over the sectors quite like the relationship between the stylus and the tracks on an old fashion vinyl record(which being 40 next year I do remember from my childhood)!
The storage within the Dell mini, and other netbooks too I should image, are solid state, that is to say they are rather like USB flash drives or memory keys. In fact I think from a picture I saw they look more like RAM memory chips all joined together than a single physical device. The advantage of using solid state memory over traditional hard drives is that they use less power, they are not as heavy and they are quieter.
My Dell Mini is blissfully quiet in comparison to any of my other computers, desktops or laptops. Although if you are auditorily hyper-sensitive to noise like I am then you can notice a very slight hum or whine when you request a program that requires it to access the hard drive. Most people probably will never hear this but if you are familiar with the faint hum from your mobile phone charger or other devices of that ilk that transform power from one state to another then you might know what I am talking about. It certainly isn’t a problem though, although the power adapter for the machine itself does make some odd noises if you listen to it closely. It is similar to a mobile phone charger though, not like a traditional laptop power adapter, and this makes the whole thing much more portable.
My favourite aspect of this machine is that in some it elicits the same response as having a small puppy or kitten out and about with you, especially down the pub where if you get it out to a bunch of girls you can hear the ooh and ahhh’s of girls who think something is cute! That is priceless!
Buying a Computer Without Breaking the Bank
January 7, 2010 by John38 · 9 Comments
Let’s get a grip on reality, shopping for a new computer can be a bit of an uphill climb for many of us. If you don’t know the first thing about processors or RAM or chips or micro drives, how can you make a decision about what you need to buy when you get ready to buy the new computer? You know you need a new laptop to do all the tasks you already do on your antiquated desktop. And you know that you would like to have a mobile computer this time, but you have so much to choose from, you may not know how to start. When you go to a computer shop, you find that you don’t understand a word they are saying.
Most likely, there is someone within your influence, family and acquaintances that can assist you in making your decision. You may be surprised at the knowledge of the things a person who already owns a new laptop knows and can help you with. They already completed the research and if you can explain to them what you do with your laptop, they can most likely point you in the right direction.
After deciding upon what you would like, deciding how much you want to spend. How much, or how little, can you get away with parting with? If you can find what you want for pennies on the dollar then you are way ahead of the game.
Try this cool site for apple laptops discount. There you can get Apple laptops discount. You can get some computers for pennies on the dollar. This is a great place to purchase a computer without breaking the bank to get it done. When you use auctions4acause to obtain a laptop or any of the many offerings, part of the money goes to a good cause so you can feel good about your purchase as well.
Reviewing TomTom GPS Navigators for Your car
August 16, 2009 by John38 · 7 Comments
GPS technology started out very basic back in the day when global positioning was thought of as a scientific and engineering breakthrough. After that, its popularity started picking up and the primary demographic was motorists who travel routinely and cover vast distances. These days you may see GPS devices in different local retailiers and shopping outlets because these days with newer technology, GPS devices are now aiding commuters in getting to their destinations without delay and safely. TomTom GPS devices have further refined their lineup to appeal to both the average consumer and extreme traveler. TomTom even went to great lengths by making several product lineups, each encompassing its own numerical series. Another great unit to consider is the Garmin Nuvi 780 GPS System.
TomTom GO
TomTom GO was the first lineup, established in 2005 and is continuing healthy sales with its most recent product offered less than 12 months ago. TomTom GPS GO devices are all-in-one appliances that are designed to execute standard GPS tasks that are perfect for everyday travel using an auto or in a boat. Most of Tom Tom’s latest models offer Bluetooth, which makes it quite easy to synchronize with the Windows or Mac platforms. It also allows you to interface with smartphones. This feature will make it possible for you to initiate and receive calls through your TomTom GO without removing your hands from the steering wheel.
Some of the more expensive models come with text-to-speech capabilities meaning that the locations are spoken by the machine so motorists will remain focused on the road. TomTom Go is series of choice for GPS beginners since they are easy to use and the list of features are outstanding.
TomTom ONE
A TomTom GPS may be fairly pricey for regular consumers. The models in the TomTom GO series are good examples of this truism thanks to all the options they offer. This circumstance was answered by the release of the TomTom ONE collection which was made to accomodate drivers with fewer financial resources. Before you become too excited about their ridiculously low prices compared to the TomTom GO, consider perusing the list of features for the model that catches your eye.
With regards to performance, the processors are a bit slow, so it will likely stall if you operate it too rigorously, but the RAM is about the same and the ONE XL offers a widescreen, making it look more like a TomTom GO unit. Unfortunately, the text-to-speech software is not provided on the TomTom ONE, and not many of the devices can employ Bluetooth. If such limitations are acceptable to you, you’ll be happy with the dollars you’ll save by buying a TomTom ONE. Otherwise, think about getting a GO because it is more comprehensive and is more reliable.
TomTom RIDER
You will usually find GPS devices in automobiles these days, so the units mostly come with vehicle mounts. The problem is, those mounts won’t fit on Motorcycles. The TomTom RIDER is purposely engineered to be employed on motorcycles. TomTom’s RIDER has a respectable bundle of extras, making it on a par with the GO series and might possibly be the most dependable motorcycle GPS device you could find. Their price tag is rather up there, though. An alternative unit to consider is the Garmin Nuvi 780 GPS System.
Every one of the TomTom units are well-suited for GPS navigation. The TomTom ONE devices are less than stellar, but their price is more than reasonable. The perfect product for you is decided by which features you prefer. You’ll find a plethora of models to choose from, and it’s likely that one will live up to your standards.
Apple Laptop Discounts
April 30, 2009 by John38 · 7 Comments
Let’s get a grip on reality, buying a new laptop can be a daunting task for most of us. If you don’t have a clue about processors or RAM or modems or mother boards, how could you decide what you need to buy when you get ready to make your move? You may know you need a new computing device to do all the tasks you already do on your antiquated desktop. And you know that you would like to have a mobile computer this time, but you have so many choices, you may not know where to start. When you go to Best Buy, you find that you hardly understand a word the sales person is trying to say to you.
Most likely, there is someone within your circle of friends, family and acquaintances that can assist you in making your decision. You may be happy at the knowledge of some of the things a person who has a great laptop knows and can assist you with. They already completed the research and if you can communicate to them what you do with your laptop, they can probably get you set in the right direction.
After establishing the idea of what you would like, it’s probably a matter of price. How much, or how little, can you get away with parting with? If you can find what you want for about half the price then you are taking candy from a baby.
Try this cool site for apple laptops discount. There you can get Apple laptops discount. You can get some computers for as little as $9.94. This is a great place to buy a laptop without breaking the bank to get it done. When you use auctions4acause to obtain a laptop or any of their other offerings, part of the money goes to your choice of charities so you can feel good about your purchase in the process.