Dell Inspiron Mini Duo Laptop/Tablet

I got this a week ago and have been playing with it nonstop since.

There are three things you need to be aware of when purchasing this:

1) The screen is even smaller than on most netbooks because of the flip design. The versatility more than makes up for it though.

2) The battery is not removable and is good for about 3 hours.

3) Windows 7 Home Premium only likes to view drives on other machines running Windows 7. My home PC was running Vista. It could look at and access the drives on the Duo; but the Dou will only look at drives in it’s Homegroup. Only Windows 7 supports homegroups. I upgraded my desktop to Windows 7 Home Premium and now they network amazingly well. Setup was a snap.

I have thick fingers, but I haven’t found that I need to use the stylus (bought separately) with it. The keyboard is well laid out. The touch screen took a little getting used to. Voice recognition works very well in a quiet environment. Between the three, I haven’t even bothered to install the wireless mouse I got to use with it.

It boots up quickly. It’s nice and fast. It has a lot less bloatware than most machines come with.

I was surprized at how solid it feels because it’s so tiny. The entire unit looks and feels well made.

It’s small and light enough to go anywhere; but powerful enough to do real computing. It’s a great second computer. It syncs easily with my desktop now that both run W7. I was able to share my internal and external drives between both machines, including the DVD burner in my desktop.

We got this computer Saturday and have not stopped playing with it. My first impressions were that the size was perfect and the flip screen was an excellent added bonus. Just the flip screen alone would make me buy this over other computers, and then the fact that it is a touchscreen sealed the deal. All in all this, is a wonderful mini computer with a few flaws, but nothing that is a deal breaker. This computer comes with all the features standard on Windows 7. Also comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office, but I do not find the need to buy the license since this is not my primary computer.

Touch Screen
-The thing I was most excited to try out, it is responsive and easy to use.
-when the screen is flipped a little slide out keyboard can be seen midway up on the left side, one touch and it slides out.
-here you can type with the keyboard, or you can draw letters with your fingers and it will automatically turn it into text
-the touchscreen takes a little bit to get used to in terms of learning where to touch to get the right letters hit, but what helps you to learn where you are actually touching the screen, is a little tiny diamond appears where your finder hits the screen, so you can see if you need to go more to the left or the right to get a precise touch.
-if the computer included a stylus that would be a much welcome addition.
-I love the fact that I can flip the screen and use it as an e-reader. Works will with the Kindle app as well, plus you get the bonus of a color screen when you’re reading.

Camera
-We used google chat to test out the camera an it worked really well, no bells and whistles (there is a camera program that you can use to make different backgrounds, etc. But nothing special)
-the camera program takes a minute to load, but works well once it is loaded

Storage
-With a 320GB hard drive, it had more space than my first 4 computers did, combined! Need I say more?
-Immediately loaded over 4,000 songs onto the hard drive and this did not slow down the computer or even put a dent in the available space.

Keyboard
-I do not think the keyboard is small and the keys are just the right size
-the keys are reasonably spaced, like that of a MacBook and look nice

Battery
-The battery life isn’t spectacular, but 3.5 hours and it runs a whole computer I think is pretty good.

Flash
-Love that it has flash (Sorry iPad)

Cons
-with only 2GB of RAM to run most programs, sometimes things load slowly (well, most of the time things run slowly). When next to a MacBook Pro, the MacBook took 2 seconds to load most web pages while the net book too about 10 seconds. But this isn’t supposed to be a primary computer, and it has half the RAM that the MacBook has, so thats not a big deal.
-no card reader, but it has 2 usb ports which is nice for loading media
-I really wish it came with the dock, which has a card reader
-I wish it came with a stylus, but this can also be ordered separately
-sometimes the cursor gets lost on the screen while using the touchpad. The only way to bring it back is to touch the screen.

So long story short, this is definitely the best mini computer in its class because of the large hardrive (most are about $200 less and have 1GB RAM and a 250GB hardrive) with all the advances in technology, I think it is definitely worth the investment to get the bigger hard drive. This netbook is so portable, I cannot wait to travel with it, yet nothing is compromised or left behind because its large hard drive. Overall, I have to keep telling myself that this is a netbook, not a regular computer. As a netbook, this Dell does the job and does the job well. Dell hit the mark with the touchscreen, and I can’t wait to see what they come out with next!