I got a Dell Mini 9 because I've used many Dell desktops and laptops and have always liked their products. The only thing I don't like about the mini 9 is the keyboard, but it's understandable why the keyboard has to be so cramped given the size of the netbook itself. I also bought the external DVD drive from Dell. The first time I plugged it in, the device can't be recognized. After doing some research, it seems like most people are having issues with the USB cable that is included in the package, so I switched to another USB cable and voila! Works like a charm now. The original spec of my mini 9 is 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM, with 8GB SSD. I did a little upgrading and changed it to 2GB RAM and 32GB SSD. Changing the RAM and SSD is super easy on the Mini 9, and it literally takes only 1 minute.
After upgrading, I then put Windows 7 beta on it. I downloaded the file on the internet, then googled and found instructions on how to create a bootdisk from a USB drive (although the left USB port somehow didn't work so I had to use the right USB port to boot). The installation process was not too painful. I forgot how long it took... the whole thing took an hr maybe. Most of the drivers were installed automatically. There are a few unknown devices shown under Device Manager. I followed the instructions of other mini users and reinstalled the JMicron driver, Synaptics Touchpad driver, and the Battery Meter/Wireless Switch (install from Mini 12 Vista version) from the Dell support website and the "unknown devices" went away. The only problem left now is to get the webcam working since the driver seems to have installed correctly but the software would not install the last time I tried. Windows 7 will definitely take me a while to get used to since I've never used Vista before, but seems like so far so good.
P.S. I downloaded the Google Pinyin method so I can type Chinese using Pinyin (Windows 7 comes with ChangJie, Quick, Phonetic methods, etc. but I don't know any of those).
