Dell Inspiron iM1012-799OBK Mini 1012 10.1-Inch Netbook (Obsidian Black) [Discontinued by Manufacturer]

My initial experience with this laptop was rather shocking. When I peeled off the protective tape the whole screen pulled away from the body of the laptop. Fortunately it snapped back in to place and now seems fine. Going from 8GB RAM on my home computer to the 1GB RAM in this I do notice a bit of sluggishness, but since I don't do any intense computing with the machine, it doesn't get in my way much.I've been thrilled with the battery life and would say it's a lot closer to 9 hours than to 6.In the end, I would never use this as my primary source of computing but it is a fantastic lightweight computer that I can easily take to my classes with me and it allows me to do some reading or research without having to sit in front of a desk th entire time.A+ for portability, battery life and priceB- for computing power

I've had this netbook for about a week now and have been using it to varying degrees every day. I bought it to use as an inexpensive secondary machine for home and travel. I've been very surprised with how well it works for browsing the Internet, checking email, and performing typical office tasks (e.g. creating docs in Word). I've also been pleasantly surprised with its ability to support video playback. I wasn't expecting it to support video well at all. I did not get the model that supports HD video since that wasn't offered at Amazon.Unlike some other netbook keyboards I've tried in the stores, the keyboard on this machine is fantastic with very good feedback. Size is nearly that of a full size laptop keyboard. Even with big hands and a preference for butterfly keyboards, I find I can type on it very well.The display is crisp and clear. Color seems to be good for the casual user. However, the viewing angles are limited. I suppose that is to be expected within this price range. The display needs to be right in front of you and perpendicular to your line of sight for best viewing. I'm used to using a Dell 24 inch Ultrasharp with my desktop and my work laptop is a Dell Latitude D830--both have much better viewing angles.The touch pad works well, but the integration of the buttons and pad make it more cumbersome to use than a traditional pad with dedicated buttons. I've found it most annoying when trying to grab something and drag. The buttons can also be difficult to push.Battery life has been pretty much as advertised. I get about 6-7 hours per charge.As mentioned above, I've been impressed with the machine's ability to support video playback. It seems to handle standard definition flash vids (YouTube), windows media video, and Silverlight vids (Netflix streaming movies) with no problems. I took the machine to my son's doctor appointment recently. They have wifi and I was able to stream video from both [...] and [...] with no trouble at all.It struggles with HD content such as you find on YouTube and with 640x480 AVIs that your typical point and shoot camera records. I have some 320x240 AVIs that play okay.I uninstalled MS Works and installed a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student. The office apps work very well to my surprise.I've experienced two performance issues with the machine. One was temporary and occurred when I initially started up the machine. Dell had several software installs execute during the first startup. This slowed the machine while those completed. The second occurs when playing HD video such as you find on YouTube. The video and audio are very choppy during HD video playback. Other than that, the machine works very well.The windows experience index is a 2.3 for this machine with the processor getting the 2.3 score. Video is 3.0 and 3.1 respectively for graphics and gaming graphics. Memory is 4.6 and disk is 5.9.My greatest annoyance with the machine is all the glossy surfaces that show finger prints and dust very easily.

So here I am looking for something cheap but really good and with some good reviews so I would not regret my decision of being cheap I stumble upon this dell mini. Seeing that it was a dell mini I began to think since my girlfriend has something similar to this and its pretty solid I figured why not get this I figure through all these good reviews this must be great deal right.... WRONG. As soon as I got it I notice the problems (which were speed and battery life) but because I now had my own laptop and no longer had to resort to using my girlfriend's laptop I overlooked them (thinking it may go away MAN WAS I WRONG). To my surprise it soon became unbearable and embarrassing. Its always freezing up on the internet like it has some kind of virus I cant even take it ANYWHERE with out having bring my charger with me(within an hour an a half the battery life was at 7%). soon afterwards I contacted the seller and he didn't seem surprised or nothing if anything he seemed as though he was use to this he tried giving me some tips on how to increase the memory. He told me to buy a memory card for about $20 bucks but I was under the impression that it came with about 250GB of hard drive space( truly false advertising). And The battery life problem he just said this is a use item so the battery is going to be weak( Are you serious i didn't tell him this so he could tell me why, I told him so he could fix the problem or tell me how to fix it on my own). The seller might be a nice guy or company but I'm going to have to return this and continue my search for a good laptop also I will no longer be fooled by reviews.

This netbook appears to be satisfactory. I wanted it primarily for email and the internet and have not been able to use it for that due to router problems. They are being resolved and I am paying someone to do that for me. I will see later today if it will perform as I have wished. I am soon to travel and will take it with me also to see if it functions as I want. A much more complete assessment could be done in 30 more days.

I am glad I bought this item. The size makes it so convenient to carry around and you can just take it out, work on it and pop it back into the case without any hassle.This is good for me since my job takes me on the road. I chose Cherry Red- beautiful color. The only thing I have a problem with is the wps default setting. So I have to be remembering to change every time.........I love my netbook, and my friends love it.