I managed to snag a good deal on a refurbished Dell Mini. It was a purchase I had been toying with for awhile. It probably wasn’t something that I needed, but could definitely find a use for. Let me give you some background. (It’s also an attempt to justify the expense, so bare with me)

I enjoy working at a desk. It’s a lot easier for me to focus in a designated space set aside for work, than say on the couch. So a few months ago I setup my office to hook my laptop up to a keyboard, mouse and monitor. (And external hard drives) The setup was great, except one thing; I typically want to surf the web when I watch TV or I’m in the living room. In the world of docking stations, this is an easy task, but with my Macbook Pro it’s a bit of a pain in the ass.

Now I’m using the Dell Mini as my web machine and I’ll put the Macbook Pro in the office, connected to all its devices where it belongs. The weird side effect of this arrangement is that I’m now beginning to see just how much of my activity is done on the web. While I enjoy and prefer thick clients, I must have silently been moving towards more web-centric solutions. With the use of Google Docs, the only thing I really can’t do on the Dell Mini is my task management system (I use OmniFocus) and any apps that require heavy lifting. (Photo editing, video editing etc)

Do you have a netbook? Do you use it as a primary machine? I’m a strong believer of the netbook being a small footprint device without a lot of actual applications on it. I’m currently running Ubuntu Netbook Remix which has a kind of stylized interface specifically geared towards the use patterns of a netbook. (Or at least my own use patterns)

My only complaint so far is the craptastic touchpad of the Dell. But to be perfectly honest, I find that most PCs have a crappy touchpad. It’s a far cry from the precision allowed on the Apple platform. PCs seem to implement a lot of features on the touchpad, but not very well. So you end up dragging icons places you didn’t want to, clicking places you weren’t supposed to and just a general lack of precision with the pointer in general. Turning off all the “extras” helped a lot, but it’s still not a good implementation.

All in all, I think I’ll really enjoy this device. Ubuntu has also been a PLEASURE to use. Linux interfaces have come along way since I last used them as a desktop. (1998)

Maybe some of you will be lucky enough for Santa to drop one of these in your Christmas stocking. (I think it will just barely fit) Happy Holidays to all!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.