Our review machine was fitted with the 1.6GHz processor and the optional six-cell 5040mAh battery. Despite its more efficient CPU, when it came to the battery test, the 10 only just managed to beat the 10v. Lasting for 315 minutes while looping a standard def H.264 video at full screen with the volume turned up and with Wi-Fi radio on via VLC.
Video Playback Battery Life Results
Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better
That's an improvement of seven whole minutes over the 10v though five and a quarter hours of continuous full screen video playback is still not be sniffed at. With the screen brightness turned down low and the Wi-Fi off the majority of the time the 10 managed a not unimpressive 9 hours before the lights went out – half an hour more the 10v achieved.
The performance of the Mini 10 sits towards the lower end of the netbook scale – not surprisingly for a Silverthorne powered machine. Yet, despite the PCMark05 numbers being toward the bottom of the heap, the 10 never felt noticeably slower in day-to-day use than our N270 powered Mini 10v or even the Samsung N120 and N110 machines we had on test, recently.
PCMark05 Results
CPU
Longer bars are better
Memory
Longer bars are better
HDD
Longer bars are better
The Mini 10 managed to chomp its way through the Gimp Gaussian Blur test in an average of 5.7 seconds. This again is nothing to write home about being slower than the Dell Mini 9, 10v and 12, the last of which uses the same processor as the 10. When it comes to video playback, if your files are around 1280x720 or below you won't have a problem. 720p WMV, AVI and H.264 files all played back at full screen with no drama. However, 1080p AVI and also 720p MKV files were prone to frame drop and stalling, even when playing in-window. Needless to say 1080p H.264 files were a complete non-starter.
COMMENTS
Extra memory
I've heard they're adding an option for 2GB of RAM some time this month, which would make it that little bit more tempting...
for me
For me the 768 is tempting - a number of the visual novels I play need at least 768 to run. Still though - I can wait another year, and what with our police force do you really want to be carrying a netbook around?
@ El Reg site designers
"Not only does the higher than the netbook norm resolution mean you get to see web pages in their entirety..."
Do you? Really?
It's true that on a 1366 wide screen you do get to see a good deal more of web pages with a liqud layout. Which is all good.
Or... you get to see the full width of the few odd web pages that are fixed at a width wider than 1024. Which is nice to have.
But... for fixed width pages 'optimised' for 1024 width screens, the benefits are merely marginal on a 1366 wide screen. Which is easy to get frustrated about, considering the premium price of the otherwise useful larger screen.
But who would do such a thing?
Just saying.
Asus
Already ordered an Asus 1005HA-H.
Like the upped screen-res though, better than the current standard that all other netbooks have
Drivers
GMA500 is badly let down by poor drivers.
Drivers do exist for linux, but GPL issues causing packaging problems AIUI.
Ubuntu 9.04 drivers are getting there. Info here:
http://mok0.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/ubuntu-on-the-dell-mini-10-2/
If the reviewer had trouble getting 1080p video to decode smoothly, that suggests non-optimnal XP drivers were installed.
I have witnessed a GMA500 based system simultaneously decoding HD (1080p bluray rip) and SD streams (one on screen one on external display) as smooth as silk.
Vista/Win7 drivers seem to be more mature:
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/news/9767-new-intel-gma-500-drivers-finally-show-its-potential.html
