Finding Your New Netbook And Why Dell Is Winning

So, probably by now you've heard about the "netbook" revolution going on right now. Netbooks are sub-mini laptops ranging in size from 8-12 inches and usually under 1 inch width. Most Netbooks weigh in at around 2-3 pounds and fit in the palm of your hand. Most of them run on Intel's new Atom processor designed for small size and low power consumption:

Newly designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel® Atom™ processors pack an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm², making them Intel's smallest and lowest power processors.¹ All this while delivering the power and performance you need for full Internet capabilities.
(from Intel's website)

So, I finally took the dive and ordered the new Dell Mini 9 last week. It should be arriving next week and I'll have a full review and pictures here on The Horse for your enjoyment. In the meantime I'll give you guys some of my top contenders that were around $300 that I was looking at before I decided on the Dell Mini 9.

• Asus Eee PC 1008HA (Shell)
• MSI Wind U123
• Acer Aspire One
• HPMini 1000
  

In the end I decided on the Dell Mini 9 because my experience with Dell has always been great and they continue to put out great cutting edge gear and delivering top notch customer service. I felt confident that I could easily get a hold of Dell and get easy support if needed. The other reason I decided to go with Dell was that they took the chance on open source technology, mainly pre-installing Ubuntu Linux on most of their new Mini line of netbooks instead of continuing to feed Microsoft more money. I appreciate that option as I've been moving toward more and more open source software recently. (ie. OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird). It also didn't hurt that Dell had a discount day and I got my Dell Mini 9 for $199 (plus some minor upgrades ;-).

So, now I'm making the jump to Linux. Ubuntu 8 more specifically. I'm going to introduce you guys to Ubuntu and show you some cool features of this new OS here on The Horse starting later next month. Maybe I'll even do some simple tutorials and show you some of the cool things that Linux can do that Windowz can't.

(photo by Jeff Coleman on Flickr)