Dell Drop the Price of Inspiron Mini 10v and Zino

4086645258 a45865fee5 Dell Drop the Price of Inspiron Mini 10v and Zino

The new flavor of Mini 10V hit the market for holiday season with RM999 price tag and lower spec. Comparing the specification side by side, you’ll notice the differences are on the hard drive size (250gb VS 160Gb) and battery cell (6 cellss VS 3 Cell). But the fact that it carrying lower price with RM200 price different from the older model making it one of the cheapest netbook in the market that run on Windows 7.

If you already purchase the same netbook before like me, you may upset why Dell doesn’t release this earlier. Paying RM200 more doesn’t seems worth the penny with the size of hard drive and battery cell being the different here.

4096202473 d6d0af2291 o Dell Drop the Price of Inspiron Mini 10v and Zino
image credit to Dell

Dell apparently love to release higher spec model prior releasing lower end flavor down the road . Just like Mini 10V, Zino which is the lower end variant of Zino HD (the higher spec) has been available for booking recently with price tag RM899 as compared RM1199 for the latter.Yep, that’s RM300 different!

Dell has stripped down quite a lot of considerably ‘generous’ specs in Zino HD to build Zino. Zino end up with Intel Atom (AMD Athlon),  Ubuntu (Windows 7 Home Basic), 160GB hardisk (500GB), 1GB Ram (4GB RAM) and without e-Sata and HDMI port  as opposed the spec in the Zino HD in bracket.

Now I feel the RM300 different is quite justifiable with only such specification in Zino . If you’re into entertainment, Zino HD is the obvious choice, but if you’re just looking desktop for typing purpose for instant, Zino is sufficient . However, just make sure that you compare Zino and Zino HD spec before decide purchasing any one of it.

- Thanks to Malaysia Ads that point this out.

How Inspiron Zino HD made Inspiron Mini 10 a bad purchase

4096202473 d6d0af2291 o How Inspiron Zino HD made Inspiron Mini 10 a bad purchase
image credit to Dell

I have made a wrong decision when I purchased Inspiron Mini 10. Really. It is under power, run on Win 7 starter pack and without HDMI port.

Inspiron Zino HD (released yesterday) is guilty for making me to think like that.

As my Inspiron Mini is a week old, the fact that Inspiron Zino HD has way better spec than Inspiron Mini made me sick. Take a look at the base spec below. With price tag RM1199 (less RM100 than Inspiron Mini) , I feel this is a bargain. It has a better CPU, Win 7 Home, massive hard drive, bigger memory, generous port and HDMI.

I know that it sounds unfair to compare netbooks, with its existence meant for portability with mini desktop, but because my purchase was merely to try a netbook with Windows 7, it is quite a waste of money.

Anyway, if I have spare money, I’ll turn this to multimedia storage connecting it to LCD TV through HDMI.. wow!

Seen it somewhere before? I know, you must be thinking of Mac Mini, isn’t it? Well.. sort of, except that Zino HD is colorful.. and made by Dell.

AMD Athlon(TM) 2850e Processor (1.8GHz, 512K)
Genuine Windows(R) 7 Home Basic 64bit (English)
2GB (2X1GB) DDR2 SDRAM Memory
500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with Native Command Queuing
Integrated ATI Mobility RadeonTM  HD 3200
Single Drive: 8X DVD+/- RW

Front Ports
Two USB 2.0 connectors
One headphone connector
One 4-in-1 memory card reader

Rear Ports
One microphOne connector
One line-out connector
One VGA connector
One RJ45 connector (10/100/1000)
two USB 2.0-compliant connectors
two eSATA connectors
one HDMI connector

Chassis & Case
Form Factor
USFF

Dimensions & Weight
Height: 197.6mm (7.8″)
Width: 197.6mm (7.8″)
Depth: 89mm (3.4″)
Weight: 1.6kg (3.53lb)

Power
65 W with UMA
75 W with MXM Graphics card

Security
Kensington Lock

Drive Bays
One 3.5″ HDD
One 12.7 mm trayload ODD
Memory DIMM slots: 2 available

p/s: now looks for other mini.