Welcome to a Laptop Battery specialist of the Dell Laptop Battery First post by: www.itsbattery.com
Dell’s netbooks have always been in the middle of the pack. They’ve typically offered sleek designs and plenty of customization options, but not the best ergonomics or battery life. This time around Dell took full advantage of Intel’s new Atom N450 processor (Pine Trail) to give its Inspiron Mini 10 a major boost of endurance. Thanks in part to this more efficient CPU, the Mini 10 offers over 9 hours of battery life without a bulging battery like Dell Inspiron 5160 Battery, Dell Inspiron 6000 Battery, Dell Inspiron 600m Battery, Dell Inspiron 630m Battery, Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery, Dell Inspiron 640m Battery, Dell Inspiron 7000 Battery, Dell Inspiron 700m Battery, Dell Inspiron 7100 Battery, Dell Inspiron 710m Battery, Dell Inspiron 7150 Battery, Dell Inspiron 7500 Battery. We especially like the more distinctive look, not to mention the several fun color options. You also get a 250GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. At $369, the Mini 10 is fiscally attractive, too. But has Dell done enough to catch up to the likes of Acer, ASUS, and Toshiba?
Dell’s new Mini 10 is a fairly dramatic departure from its predecessor. This netbook sports a wedge-shape design with a lid that sits on top of the deck instead of dropping down behind the body. When closed, the rear of the deck is exposed, bringing to mind the design of Dell’s original high-priced Adamo. The black deck is also imprinted with a crosshatch pattern that adds a nice texture. At 10.5 x 7.7 x 1.3 inches, the Mini 10 is a shade larger than the Toshiba mini NB305, and is also larger than the older Mini 10 (10.3 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches). Weighing 3.0 pounds even, this model is also slightly heavier than the netbook norm of 2.8 pounds.
The shell of our Mini 10 was made of white plastic, which hides fingerprints well despite having a glossy finish. Other color options include black, blue, green, pink, purple, and red. Users will also have the option to select one of 229 different lids from the Dell Design Studio, ranging from a New York Yankees pattern to artists’ designs and lipstick colors. Personalization doesn’t come cheap however; these options cost $85.
The six-cell, 5600-mAh battery in the Mini 10 performed very well, lasting for 9 hours and 3 minutes on our LAPTOP Battery Test (Web Surfing via Wi-Fi). That’s a marked improvement over the previous Mini 10 (5:17), about 3 hours longer than the six-cell netbook average, and approximately 25 minutes longer than the Toshiba mini NB305. The only other Pine Trail netbooks that have outlasted the Mini 10 thus far are the Eee PC 1005PE-P (10:36) and HP Mini 5102 (10:08).
The 802.11b/g Wi-Fi radio in the Mini 10 notched decent speeds in our wireless tests. At 15 feet from our access point, its throughput of 19.4 Mbps was a little under the average (21.0 Mbps); at 50 feet, its speed of 17.6 Mbps was a hair above average (17.3 Mbps).
Aside from the different color options ($40), Dell will offer the Mini 10 with a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator and a high-res, 1366 x 768 display starting in the second half of February. Users can also add built-in mobile broadband (AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon Wireless) for $125. Less expensive options include Windows XP Home and a 160GB hard drive for $299, and Windows 7 Starter Edition and a 160GB hard drive for $329. Users cannot configure the Mini 10 with additional RAM via Dell's website, so you’ll have to add your own.
Dell will also offer pre-configured Mini 10 models beginning in the second half of February that include Media HD, HDTV, and GPS. All will include a high-res, 1366x768 display with the Broadcom Crystal HD media accelerator, and SRS Surround Sound, and the latter two will include a built-in digital TV tuner or built-in GPS with location aware services. These models will start at $425.
The Dell Mini 10’s performance fell squarely in the middle range of netbooks. Its 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and 1GB of RAM combined to produce a score of 1,326 in PCMark05; that’s about equal to the Acer Aspire One 532h, but about 150 points below the netbook category average and approximately 85 points below the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE-P (Seashell). Its Geekbench score of 902, while about 60 points higher than the netbook average, is around 25 points lower than the Toshiba mini NB305-N410.
The 5,400-rpm, 250GB hard drive booted to Windows 7 Starter Edition in 1 minute and 20 seconds. That’s over 20 seconds longer than the average netbook; we attribute this lag to the loading of McAfee antivirus software and the Dell Dock. However, the Mini 10 copied a 4.97GB folder of multimedia files at a rate of 22.9 MBps, which is 7.2 MBps faster than the netbook average, nearly equal to the Aspire One 532h (22.4 MBps), and 3.5 MBps slower than the 1005PE-P (26.4 MBps).
When transcoding a 114MB MPEG4 file to AVI using Oxelon Media Converter, the Mini 10 took 6 minutes and 14 seconds. That showing is about 25 seconds slower than the Aspire One 532h, and around 10 seconds slower than the mini NB305.
The Mini 10’s 3DMark06 score of 157 was just two points shy of the mini NB305. Surprisingly, an episode of How I Met Your Mother streamed smoothly at full screen; audio and video synced perfectly throughout, and there was no stuttering. As mentioned above, the Mini 10 will also be offered in late February 2010 with a Broadcom HD video accelerator (a $30 option), which promises even better video performance when streaming HD video over the Web using Adobe Flash Player 10.1.