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The Inspiron Mini 9 is tiny. This is of course suitable with the name. It measures 1.07 by 9.13 by 6.77 inches–barely enough room to accommodate the 8.9-inch screen–and weighs about 2.28 pounds. Really tiny, right?

This is the great mini notebook. The keyboard is easy to use and it includes handy apps and online file storage although the display can be hard to see

The glossy 1024-by-600-resolution display looks reasonably sharp and reproduces color extremely well. All of the alphanumeric keys on the Mini 9′s keyboard are large enough to make cranking out a document easy.

But the Tab, Shift, and Caps Lock keys are in the unfamiliar location. Similarly, the mousepad is set to just the right sensitivity, and the buttons are firmly in place.

The front-mounted speaker, located just below the display, came across as a little hollow. In this department, the Mini 9 falls behind Asus’s $650 Eee 1000H 80G XP.

The Mini 9 includes two handy additions that make it stand above the competition. First, accessible through the Start menu, is Dell’s Support Center–a one-stop app for system information and performance tweaking. When you’re online the Support Center also serves as a glorified link hub to different parts of Dell’s support site for manuals, patches, and quick fixes. Second is a free, base-level account (good for 2GB of storage) with Box.Net’s online file storage service.

Dell has crafted a solid mini-laptop that’s good for kids and has plenty to offer anyone looking for an on-the-go system. I know that the Inspiron Mini 9 isn’t perfect, but it does offer a terrific design and a good price. Well, what do you think?