Dell Inspiron Mini 12

The big brother of Dell's netbook line is the Mini 12, which refers to the screen's diagonal size, which makes it a giant in the world of netbooks where 10'' is where the majority of monitors stop.

Does an extra two inches make upgrading from one size to the next an attractive proposition? Let's take a look ...

Handling & Connectivity
One of the immediate advantages of the boost in size is a larger trackpad, which is now roomy and much more comfortable to use.


Interestingly, the trackpad is matt, unlike the glossy finish on the rest of the Mini 12, which makes it much easier to slide your finger over it. The keyboard, which was already fine on the 10'' version, is largely unchanged. In the photo above, though, you'll notice a good inch wasted on each side of the keyboard, which would have allowed some keys to be a little larger, including the four arrow keys at the bottom right. It's also worth noting that the keys and the trackpad buttons are soft, and perhaps a little too soft for some people's liking.

The image from the webcam struggles with movements, and it's best to stay right in front of the camera and remain as still as possible if you don't want to suffer from too much jerkiness. The white balancing is also problematic, creating a purple tinge to the picture by default. Sound captured by the microphone is a little muffled, and the recordings we made had noticeable crackle.

Around the outside of the netbook are three USB ports, an Ethernet port, a pair of mini jacks, a three-in-one memory card reader: the bare minimum is there. Underneath, the only part you can access is the battery, meaning you can't upgrade the RAM or change the hard drive yourself.

The large trackpad	Memory card reader, mini-jacks, USB port
VGA, 2 USB	Webcam

Processor Power
All of the different tests that we tried on this machine took a very long time. Switching it on takes 1 minute 15 seconds, compared to just 30 seconds on the fastest netbooks. Running our new suite of tests took between four and six times longer than on the most recent 18'' laptops. That's bad news, but it's not all bad. The Mini 12 managed to handle all of our tests without complaint, but took longer at it than other, more powerful, laptops.

I probably wouldn't choose the version of the Mini 12 that comes with Windows Vista, which requires too much power, but Ubuntu is there for those looking for a free, open-source option. Nevertheless, Windows XP would still be my choice, as it works very well on these smaller computers.

One last point about video: you should stick to Standard Definition content (DVDs, for instance) and not bother with High Definition.

Audio
The speakers didn't impress us--far from it, in fact. The maximum volume is very quiet and the sound is generally very flat.

Battery Life & Portability
We were surprised to see how light the Mini 12 was when we found it weighed just 1.2 kg with a 181 g charger. Unfortunately, we were soon disappointed when we realised how much the battery life had been cut to save weight. The small 2200 mAh couldn't keep the battery going for longer than two hours during our test procedure. That's obviously not long enough when the stars of this field manage five hours.