Re: Any Dell Mini 10v Users Out There?
I've had my Mini 10v for about one week. From order to delivery, the time was about two weeks. (Should grow worse after April 2010 when Dell shuts down its last remaining factory in the USA. The accountants say where the jobs go, mes amis. But *their* jobs stay here. )
Did you notice that if you order the Mini 10v with M-Windows, Dell doesn't offer the option of 2GB RAM? So I searched the Dell site for "Ubuntu" and found my way to the ordering page for the 10v with Ubuntu and configured it for 2GB RAM.
Another tip for those considering the 10v: spend the extra money to buy the 56WHR 6-cell battery. You'll never see the 56WHR battery offered for so little elsewhere.
My 10v came with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and everything worked without any fussing. Updates were available but I wasn't forced to install them because of any problems. Out of the box, anyone can use the 10v and Ubuntu!
I decided that things were too easy so I downloaded USB-Creator for 8.04, pasted an Ubuntu 9.10 ISO onto a USB stick and installed the latest Ubuntu. I use the standard Gnome desktop with the lower panel deleted and a bunch of Gnome applets pinned to the menu panel.
My thoughts: the keyboard is usable, the screen is nice, and the two front corners of the 10v become quite warm. I find it's a thrill to use a polished, powerful, open-source OS on a device as portable as the 10v.
I don't like "touchpads" (I really liked the X31-X32 Thinkpads) so I bought a Microsoft Compact Mouse for less than $20 at Wal-Mart. The whole kit works nicely... Alas, I'm now shopping for a 56WHR.
Edit: a final tip is to install the Compact theme for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3699
Edit 2: Found this information at Wikipedia.org:
Currently, the 32 and 64GB SSD and 2GB of RAM are not available for the Windows XP OS option due to Microsoft licensing restrictions. For the device to qualify as a ULCPC under the Designed for Windows XP logo program[5] Dell cannot ship any unit with more than 1GB RAM, although the memory is user expandable to 2GB.[6] (The chipset will not support 4GB.)
Last edited by cogitordi; February 21st, 2010 at 08:39 PM.
FOSS is the smart choice.
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