Meet Minnie

I was feeling a little down a few weeks ago after Jerry bought his MacBook Air. How nice it is for him to have a computer that doesn't have a noisy fan. And is light. And runs for more than 20 minutes without being plugged in. And doesn't roast his naughty bits.

I continued surfing the web and blogging under the weight (all eight pounds of it!) of my 17" laptop. And stuck with it in my recliner because the battery doesn't last long after it's unplugged.

Just a few days after he got his Mac, I got an email from Dell announcing their new Inspiron Mini 9. The "9" is a reference to its width. It doesn't have a hard drive. It's light. It goes anywhere. I had to get one.

It came today! It took extra time to build because it doesn't do Windows! I got mine with Linux! Open source! "Super Geek! Super Geek! He's such a geeky boy!"

Its solid state "hard drive" is small by today's standards. It's only 16GB. But that should be big enough.

The screen is small. Its resolution is 1200 by 600. The 1200 pixel width is fine. It's the 600 pixel height that will take some getting used to. I found the button to push to maximize the browser and remove all of the toolbars, tabs and other "chrome." So I'm getting used to the tiny screen.

Here is a self portrait it took. It's got a camera built into the lid just their above the screen.


The thing that will take the longest to get used to is the keyboard. They crammed the keys into a smallish space and rearranged some of them. Two things are annoying the heck out of me. They ran out of room on the "home row" and moved the key with the apostrophe and quotation mark to the bottom row of keys. So when I try to type an apostrophe I hit the Return key instead. That can cause embarrassment if the return submits a form prematurely.

Another annoyance is the touchpad is very sensitive and very close to the space bar. So when I press the space bar the cursor often goes flying to the far reaches of the window and I'm typing where I don't want to. This will take some getting used to. But I'll manage.

I just don't think that typing an apostrophe will come naturally.

But it's nice to have a light (only two and a quarter pounds) computer. And one that doesn't run Windows!