dell mini 9... what do to with

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I have a original netbook when they first came out. I had it and used it for a little bit til i got annoyed at it and tablets came out.

Its a dell mini 9, 1st gen with nothing. I opted to upgrade this as much as i could, was thinking it would of been a tuning/diag laptop ( before torque pro and BT elmscan stuff came out).

Specs are 1.6ghz atom, upgraded to 2gb of ram. using a 32gb RUNCORE SSD vs the stock 4gb HD. It came with some version of ubuntu, i could understand it back then nor could of tuning software so i got a 32gb SSD ($100 back then) and ran winxp.

Now i just want this as maybe something for the kiddos to go on youtube with or some simple stuff. Most kiddos have smart phones or ipods to surf so they might not even need it.

What OS can i use with this so it wont feel like a SLUG and make me throw it against the wall? I could throw it against the wall since this will be backup of the backup of the backup.

I'm not very tech savy, i can replace hardware with no problem and understand a good amount about windows but nothing with apple,or linux. I can root andriod phones by following youtube videos.
 
Honestly that old 1.6 GHz atom CPU is going to be your biggest bottleneck. As far as OS, you could try running Linux Mint Mate, which is not very resource intensive, but good enough for basic tasks such as web browsing.
 
any creative ways to use this mini9 for anything else?

is Chrome OS an option?
 
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Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Honestly that old 1.6 GHz atom CPU is going to be your biggest bottleneck. As far as OS, you could try running Linux Mint Mate, which is not very resource intensive, but good enough for basic tasks such as web browsing.



+1

I don't know Linux, but the suggestion to run something with minimal resource needs is pretty much a requirement. Even still, this is probably a single-core Atom that is beat handily by even the cheapest laptops and tabs these days when it comes to simple tasks.

My sister-in-law had one of the original netbooks and it was almost unusable with Windows Starter (I believe that's what it was, but it could have been XP.) They're cute and seemed to work for basic use, like web browsing and some productivity work, but were made obsolete before the package was even opened, IMO. Even a for the lightest users these things were pretty terrible.

I waited a bit and got what I now consider a pretty low range AMD E-350-powered 11.6" laptop for a hundred dollars or so more than other netbooks of the time (N330 dual core). I want to move on to something more modern, especially now that I'm getting '[random hardware problem]' Blue Screen of Death occurrences every so often.

Like you said, not only with the kiddos have smart phones and tablets of their own, they'll probably be more usable. So, either keep this as your bedside-use go-to or travel with it and use it as much as possible, until it either breaks itself or you do out of frustration; then you won't have to worry about what to do with it.
 
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Originally Posted By: bowlofturtle
any creative ways to use this mini9 for anything else?

You could connect a large external HDD to it and use it as a file server on your home network.
smile.gif
Although I'm not sure if these things were designed to run 24x7x365...

Quote:

is Chrome OS an option?

I suppose so, but I'm no expert on Chrome OS, so I'll let others respond here.
 
I'm kind of in the same boat. I have two netbooks, an Intel-based 9" Acer and a 10" AMD-based Asus. Both have SSDs and maxed RAM. Both work fine. And both are more or less paperweights nowadays in the era of cell phones and tablets. I may need up selling them cheap on eBay or giving them to friend's kids to play with.
 
I have one of the original HP Netbooks with an Atom Processor, SSD, and a mini version of XP and it still works well.

Runs Word Perfect great. It's the last device I have that still runs XP, and for some reason, it still gets updates.

I am considering moving up to a Surface, though, but I can't retire it to the warehouse of Junk, alongside the Osborn, Atari, Tandy, etc., because I have some programs for the purpose of programming other devices, that will only run under XP.
 
I love these little machines! Linux Mate is a perfect OS for them with the Chrome browser, and I much prefer having a laptop style format opposed to a tablet. I like the full keyboard and mouse - plus it stands up on it's own.

I still don't get the tablet craze, anything I would use a tablet for I just use my phone.
 
Peppermint OS

I'm running it on a Gateway Netbook with similar specs that I got from my mom, it is based on Ubuntu 14.04 and developed by a former Linux Mint developer. Light, easy to install, and easy to use. Designed as a "cloud' based OS but you can still load software on it for offline use.

I replaced W7 Starter (what a joke that was) and handed it over to my 8 year old who uses W7 at school. He never asked me how to use it, it was that easy of a transition.
 
Web cam, nanny cam,
video player on trips, e-mail / Facebook,
print / file server,
or a doorstop...
 
Or you could hook it up to your TV and use it as a media PC with something like Kodi or Plex installed. Maybe with some light version of Linux it would handle it.

I used to have an MSI netbook with that same CPU and 1GB of RAM, running Win XP. I would hook it up to the TV using the VGA output and play movies. It worked fine, but the movies were on the local HDD. Not sure if it would smoothly handle streaming via WiFi in addition to playing...
 
I am in a similar boat, I have an Acer Aspire One Netbook that has 2 gigs ram and a 60 gig SSD. I have not used it for about a year, it was just getting too slow on Windows 7 even just web browsing. I got an older laptop that I am using now.
I just updated it to Windows 10 for the heck of it, but have not messed with is since I updated it.
I hate throwing "good" tech away. It still works fine, but I just have no use for it. I loved it and used it for quite a while, but it has just been superseded by new tech.

Looks like they are selling for around $50-60 on e-bay, maybe I will sell mine on there (after swapping the SSD back to a HDD).
 
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