I’m the kind of guy that’s constantly on the move. To accommodate my mobile lifestyle, I’ve highly depended on my trusty laptop to keep me connected to the digital world and to function as an on-the-go workstation. Until very recently, my notebook of choice had been the HP dv6000 series entertainment laptop. A full 15” glossy widescreen display with an expanded battery cell and a case full of handy accessories sure seemed like a great idea to keep me digitally viable while out and about... and it was at first.

The problem, however, is that all the hardware has become a freaking beast to lug around all the time. Packing my irritably heavy notebook in the travel case, along with charger and usb mouse grew tiresome pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I had resigned myself to the fact that this annoyance was a necessary evil to endure if one desires to function within the realm of mobile computing.

Imagine my delight, however, when a few months back I began to see reports of “netbooks” hitting the scene. If you aren’t familiar with the term, a netbook is a very small notebook designed for the explicit purposes of web browsing, word processing, e-mailing, and other basic applications. Usually, the hardware on netbook is somewhat limited, so running memory-intensive desktop applications will probably be a bit much for the machine.

As for the price and size, however, they are both just the way I like them -- small. For the purposes of this article (and for my own enjoyment) I procured an Inspiron Mini 9 from the Dell Factory Outlet Store. A refurbished Mini 9 with the Intel Atom 1.6Ghz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 4GB solid state hard drive (more on this later) and Ubuntu Linux operating system only set me back $189 plus shipping. Talk about a bargain! I’ve spent a lot more money on computers that I have loved a lot less than this netbook, that’s for sure.

I also want to dispel your pre-conceived notions about refurbished hardware and let you know why I decided to go the refurb route with the Dell Mini 9 netbook. Most people equate the word “refurbished” to mean “broken” and this is absolutely not the case. In fact, you actually come out ahead as a consumer by purchasing refurbished merchandise. Right away you’re saving money because you’re paying less than retail for the product. Also, all hardware on refurbished items is required to be equivalent to the original factory specifications before it can be re-sold. So essentially, you’re paying less for a product that not only has be tested by the manufacturer, but it’s also been tested by a consumer as well. This is why refurbished hardware is significantly less likely to crap out on you in the long run. Trust me on this one, peeps.

Now you might be wondering why I went with the bare minimum as far as component configuration goes. It’s a fair question, to be sure. A paltry 1.6Ghz processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB hard drive storage isn’t exactly impressive by today’s standards. The thing with netbooks (especially the Mini 9) however, is that they are ridiculously easy to upgrade. If you can use a Phillips screwdriver, then you can take this tame looking little Dell and turn it into a mobile powerhouse within the span of two minutes!

I took it for a test drive with the basic specs to see what the out of box experience would be like. Surprisingly, it wasn’t terrible. Intense multitasking presented somewhat of a challenge, meaning the machine didn’t like it very much when I had 4 tabs open in Firefox and tried to launch the OpenOffice word processing application. With basic usage out of the way, I moved on to Phase II of the operation–upgrading the RAM.

In a mere 30 seconds, I popped out the 512MB DIMM module that came stock with the netbook and put in a 2GB DIMM module (the maximum supported by the Mini 9) that I acquired on eBay for $25, which is more than $50 less than Dell wanted to perform the same upgrade on the machine on the factory end. This greatly improved the overall performance of the machine, but there was still a bottleneck in the system speed that was causing it to hiccup in certain places. After doing some more research, I moved on to Phase III of the operation -- increasing the storage capacity. If you want a great step-by-step tutorial with images on how to replace the RAM, check out this article.

In lieu of traditional hard drives, the Inspiron Mini 9 incorporates solid state technology for storage. Next month, I plan to go into all the ins and outs of solid state hard drives, so forgive me as I skim over the finer technical elements here, but it is important to note how the solids state drives (or SSDs) can impact a netbook’s performance. First off, my Mini 9 came with only 4GB of SSD storage, which is practically nothing. This is why the machine was loaded with Ubuntu Linux rather than a Windows operating system, as the hard drive wasn’t large enough to support anything else.

Again, in less than a minute, I was able to swap this out for a larger 32GB drive. I know, 32GB still doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is a netbook we’re talking about here. Portability and ease of use override storage capacity as far as I’m concerned. More important to this discussion, however, is the that the write speed (more on this next month) on the 32GB drive I bought from a third party was more than triple compared to the stock hardware from Dell. As you would expect it to naturally follow, things now run about three times faster on my netbook after the hard drive upgrade. The downside of this upgrade is that it cost $119 for the new hard drive, which is more than half the cost of the netbook itself. Still, for my money, it was worth it. For your money, there are plenty of more economical options out there.

Ok, now that the internal modifications have been completed, let’s look at the outside of the machine. I expected the 8.9” screen to take some getting used to on my part, but it actually wasn’t that much of a stretch. What drove me crazy, however, was the shrunken keyboard. I think I would’ve dealt with this much better if only the size of the keys had been changed. Much to my dismay, however, Dell actually moved a couple of the keys to different locations on the keyboard to conserve space. This is a big no-no in my opinion, and the only clear black mark I have against this machine. Word processing is a nightmare (for me, anyway) when things like the apostrophe key isn’t where it’s supposed to be (clearly I use a lot of contractions).

The size sure is right, though. At 9.2” x 6.8” and 1.3” and weighing in at a featherweight 2lb 5.5oz, the Inspiron Mini 9 is ridiculously portable. I don’t need my big bulky case anymore because I can pop this baby in a protective sleeve and stick it right in my backpack as I head out. In this regard, Dell really got it right with the dimensions of this netbook.

So, if you can get past the keyboard shenanigans (I’m really trying hard on this one) and aren’t afraid to undo a screw or two, I’d highly suggest picking one of these up for your travels. You certainly can’t beat the price, and in the end you wind up with a machine that has comparable performance to the standard issue notebooks on the market.

See you next month when I go more in-depth with SSDs and why you should think about making the switch!