Mini laptops: Is small really beautiful?

I am the proud owner of a Dell Mini 9. When Dell announced it was launching its own mini laptop, or ‘netbook’, I waited eagerly to get my hands on one. I’ve now been using it for about three months following a brilliant purchase experience (see my post on the Foviance website).Before I bought my own mini laptop, I thought they might change the world but now I’m not so sure. They certainly won’t change it yet, nor for the reasons I initially thought, but they may ultimately succeed for different reasons.

I originally wanted the entry-level Dell Mini 9 running the open source Ubuntu Linux operating system. My hope was that Dell had priced the overall package in such a way that I and other consumers would be prepared to try an open OS and potentially affect their purchasing behaviour when buying their ‘main’ PC. In the end though, I was actually steered towards the XP powered machine with more solid state storage (16Gb vs. 8Gb) and a mere £30 price gap.

After more than three months, my dreamed transformation in mobile working hasn’t been realised. The device in itself performs well, if a little slowly at times. With Skype loaded and launching at start-up, I could literally go away and make a decent lunch before it was ready to be used. First lesson then, load as few applications on to a mini as you can get away with; they’re just not designed for that.

What they were designed for is accessing the internet. In the US, Dell promotes a relationship with online storage company Box.net, and bundles 2Gb with its Mini 9 range through a special deal. Unfortunately, internet connectivity was the start of my own problems. I commute to London daily and anticipated using my mini on the train to blog and work online using a Vodafone USB internet dongle. Here’s an example of ethnographic research for you regarding my trip home:

17:13 – Get on train, power-up mini from standby in seconds, plug in pre-installed USB dongle
17:18 – Train departs
19.20 – Connection box appears. Press connect
19.22 – Connection is made. Launch browser
19.24 – Browser home page appears. Click WordPress to access my blog
19.25 – Start writing.
19.26 – Connection is lost, WordPress attempts to autosave but hangs
19.28 – Connection problems throughout journey. Give up after managing just 150 words

My connectivity dream was ruined. I naively believed that using the internet effectively on the train would be possible and it simply isn’t. I also had to abandon a US Skype call on the office wireless network in favour of a landline, partly driven by the unexpected launch of video that brought everything to a halt over a slow internet connection despite the promising presence of the Mini 9′s webcam.

None of this is a huge surprise. UK internet speeds have long been the butt of jokes, and late last year Ofcom conducted research to identify actual versus advertised broadband speeds. The results, covered by independent broadband analyst thinkbroadband.com, proved that UK users were still not getting the speeds they thought they were paying for. The average UK consumer broadband speed is just 3.6Mbps.

It’s hard to separate the performance of a device designed for connectivity from the device itself. If I had written a review of my mini after just a few weeks, I would have likened it to a glorified iPaq – great for movies, music and a bit of work stuff around the edges. This would have been entirely unfair. In China recently, Foviance conducted research into mobile phone usage, and found users complaining bitterly about their devices when what they were actually unhappy about was the connectivity. If users cannot separate one from the other – and in the future that will be increasingly difficult – device and software manufacturers must consider how they sign-post performance lags to consumers.

Now I have learned to work around the frailties of my connection I am much happier. I’ve installed OpenOffice which works very well and allows me to work offline until I have a better connection. So perhaps my mini laptop will change the world a bit by driving the adoption of OSS applications at the desktop. In some ways I hope it doesn’t, and that my dream of connecting “any time, any place, any where” is still delivered within my commuting lifetime.