Jkk has uncovered some additional information regarding the type of SSDs used in the Mini 9, and the 3G situation.
When it comes to SSDs, it seems as though the performance will depend on the capacity. Jkk (who certainly knows something about these SSDs) notes that the 16GB Mini 9 will use STEC’s (fast) SSD module, while the 4/8GB models will use a (slower) Intel SSD. The STEC SSD apparently has a read/write of 85/25, while the Intel module sits at 38/10, which is the same SSD used in the Acer Aspire One.
As for 3G, we know that there is a SIM card slot behind the battery, and room for the WWAN unit, however it looks like some of the models are lacking the WWAN module (and the PCI-E connector) until they announce carrier locked 3G units. Jkk’s recommendation: wait before ordering! Head over to jkk’s blog for more info and some good pictures.
Thanks JKK for the info, i nearly bit the bullet yesterday but was put off by Dells offshore pushy sales staff.
Im amazed with the amount of netbooks we are seeing we cant get hold of a 3g one yet, these are designed primarily for email and internet yes?
WWAN is suck a sticky subject because the OEMs need to pick a type of 3G, then they need to make sure their device works with the networks that support that 3G service, or they may want to sign an exclusive deal with one carrier.
Hi, It would be great for the average user to know what the SSD read/write speeds translate to in actual real life usage scenarios. Something that average users can relate to. For example, how does a slow SSD compare to a fast SSD for booting windows? or opening MS Word/OpenOffice? Opening and saving an image file? Real world scenarios.
I had posted this on JKK’s site but still no response. It would nice for readers like myself to know.
Got a response… with the Asus 901 at $499 now seems like the best choice…
So the thing I got from the Anandtech article on SSD was a lot of the current SSD are very “jittery”. Meaning pretty good on average but during random writes you can get long delays sometimes up to 2 seconds due to some flaw in a commonly used controller chip from Jmicron. My boss had a Dell laptop with SSD and he had that complaint that sometimes he got pauses that were very annoying. He eventually asked them to replace SSD with HD. The latest Intel X25 SSD seems to have none of the problems of older SSD. Perhaps just buy one and do a retrofit with larger/faster Intel X25 later on?
I’m not willing to spend the extra $100 something for a notebook.
Next thing could be additional RAM, DVD-ROM drive, and bluetooth, and that’d cost me another $100 something..