Take a quick look at our round-up of netbooks and you'll find they've all been consistently good. However, this Dell is the first model that we haven't been completely enamoured with. And this is almost entirely down to one reason…
Design
It's like the Inspiron Mini 9, only now more bigger! The most obvious improvement is the large 12-inch screen, and apart from a little more keyboard leg-room (or should that be hand-room) it's otherwise the spitting image of its sibling. You get the same piano black cover on the outside and silver palmtop on the inside. What does look different though is the battery: where on the Mini 9 it was flush with the device, here it sticks up about a centimetre from the palmtop. It looks a little strange, but doesn't affect usability or impinge on opening the cover.
With the expanded real estate, Dell has obviously been able to fit a larger keyboard in, and the trackpad is also of a decent size and quality. While the trackpad shows high usability, the keyboard is still a bit cramped and the little space between the keys makes it easy to mistype.
What we did appreciate was the cool battery pack, which not only looks like an electric egg beater but is also quite compact.
Features
The Dell Mini's 12-inch screen runs at a native resolution of 1,280x800, and is driven by Intel's integrated GMA 500 graphics chipset. The guts of the machine consist of an Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz processor — which is actually slower than the one on the Mini 9 — a gigabyte of RAM and an 80GB PATA drive (not solid state). It's also quite light at 1.24 kilograms.
We were impressed by the amount of connectivity options made available on the Dell, which outdo a lot of full-size notebooks at this price. On the left-hand side of the device you'll find a VGA out, two USB ports and a Kensington lock port. Switching to the other side you'll find a third USB — an excellent provision for a budget portable — Ethernet, a mic and headphone jack, and finally an SD/MMC reader.
Being a budget component, it's not designed to be user accessible — which means you can't upgrade the HDD or RAM. At least not easily.
Performance
There is one problem with the Dell Mini 12, and the way in which you use a netbook should dictate whether this is the model for you. For a laptop (noun: lap top), it has a very strange centre of gravity, which sits somewhere on the hinge line — both the CPU and screen weigh about the same. For tabletop use this isn't a problem — it sits fine on a flat surface — but put this on your lap and you'll find it can tumble off.
Apart from this usability issue, it otherwise works in a similar way to the Dell 9, albeit with Windows Vista Home Basic instead of XP. Which leads us to another point — the combination of Vista, a meagre 1GB of RAM and the Atom processor leads to a sometimes sluggish experience. Windows don't always open when you ask them to, and boot-up seemingly took forever at one minute nine seconds before the desktop appeared.
However, unlike the Mini 9, we were able to run some benchmarks this time around. Being an underpowered device, we didn't expect the Mini to perform well, and it certainly met with our expectations. The most disappointing was the battery life, which was only average at about two and a half hours using the undemanding BatteryEater Pro reader test.
The Dell performed a little better in PCMark05 with an understandably low 891 marks, but tests on its integrated graphics demonstrated that this isn't a gaming device. 3DMark06 ran, but the textures were so corrupted, and it ran so slowly, that gaming would be impossible. The program rewarded it with 76 3DMarks in the end — every child wins a prize.
Despite having a bright, high-quality screen, this isn't a multimedia device. Not only are there no dedicated controls — apart from volume — but the on-board speakers are also unimpressive. But these are netbooks, after all.
While the build is good for a cheap laptop, it does still feel a bit plastic-y, and the small dimensions mean that some of the ports are a little too close together — for example it's difficult to plug something into both the right-hand USB port and the Ethernet port. But we have no complaints about heat, the Dell may be fanless but it doesn't get hot sitting on your lap.
Conclusion
If it weren't for its tendency to tip over, the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 would be a decent netbook. The device is further shackled by the inclusion of a slower Atom processor than its predecessor, and Vista Basic. Its retail price of AU$999 also puts it into the realm of full-sized laptops, which while a lot heavier will also have more features and faster processors. Unless you really need the screen real estate and the bigger hard drive we'd plump for the Mini 9 instead.
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