Dell Mini 10v Netbook Review for College Students

So it has been around four weeks into college and I decided it was time to get a Netbook. I brought a 15.4 inch HP Laptop with me with the knowledge that laptops were scarcely used during lectures. It turns out most of the lectures I am in do require a lot of note consuming. Why did I go for the Dell Mini 10v? Firstly, Dell has an awesome eCart which allows you to customize the Dell Mini 10v to a great degree. Second, it was relatively cheap and third, it looks slim and aesthetically pleasing.

Dell Mini 10v Design & Build

The Dell Mini 10v is really sturdy and it seems like a durable machine. This is very important if you accidentally drop your netbook or damage it in any way. The keyboard is nice and wide for a netbook. This makes it easier to type as the keys are not so packed together. I decided to get a black casing for the netbook but you can get it in a number of colors. The lid is also available in white, red, pink, blue, green and purple.

As you can see from the photo above, my fingers are in no discomfort. The keys are much wider than those you find in other netbooks.

Dell Mini 10v Battery life

The battery life is amazing. I decided to go for additional power and went for the 6-cell battery pack. This baby lasted more than 8 hours before I had to recharge again. Obviously, if you want to do something more power intensive on your Dell Mini 10V netbook like playing games and such then the battery life is going to be shorter but I would give it five stars in terms of using the Dell mini 10v for general use.

Dell Mini 10v Trackpad

Unfortunately, the Dell Mini 10V has one hell of an annoying trackpad. Dell seemed to have tried to mimic Apple’s macbooks because the left and right click buttons are not distinguishable from the pad itself. The buttons are touch sensitive therefore there will be those annoying occasions when you left/right click button triggers, even if you didn’t intentionally click it.

Dell Mini 10V Side Components

The Dell Mini 10V comes with all the common ports and components. The netbook includes 3 USB ports, Audio and microphone input, VGA port, ethernet port and a SD Card port.

Dell Mini 10v Display

This Netbook has a 10.1 inch display screen. I find this the perfect size for carrying around. For example, it fits perfectly on top of a lecture table. It also comes with a 1024 x 600 glossy display screen. This means it is extremely hard to use outdoors when there is bright sunlight. However, you would be using this indoors in most cases so the glossy screen should not be a big problem.

As you can see from the image above, the effects of the glossy screen can be seen. You can see a pretty clear reflection of me with a camera.

Dell Mini 10V Performance

This netbook comes with a 1.6GHZ Intel Atom Processor, 1GB of Ram and Windows XP. This is more than enough to do general tasks on your computer like using Microsoft Word and the internet. You would probably not be able to use power intensive applications like multimedia software and games.

The Verdict

Overall, I’ve been very impressed with the Dell Mini 10V. As a college student, I had no problems carrying it around to lectures and recitations. The fact that it has a very good battery life also means that I do not have to carry around my power adapter. I have also had no problems so far with its performance. It has never lagged at any point and it also turns off/on very quickly. I wholeheartedly recommend the Dell Mini 10V to anyone who is looking for a netbook with decent performance.