Linux

Over the last few weeks. we’ve been adding more features and options to the Inspiron Mini 10, which will allow folks to personalize the popular companion device even more like a 720p HD edge-to-edge display, a bigger battery option and five Design Studio choices from Tristan Eaton.  For customers in the United States and Canada, today we’ve added Ubuntu as an OS option (starting price of $399) with additional hard drive options..

We’ve been tweaking the Dell-designed user interface on the Linux version of the Mini 10. For those of you who have never seen our unique UI, the best way to explain it is that it is activity-based. Our goal all along with our Ubuntu interface is to take the application out of the equation. Instead we are paving the way for people to interact with the Mini based on what they want to do – e.g. I want to browse the Internet, I want to look at pictures, I want to chat with my family, I want to play a game of Solitaire, etc. We’ve taken feedback from customers of the Mini 9 and Mini 12 and made some updates to the UI on the Mini 10, to make it more visually appealing. 

For a more visual explanation, here's a vlog from Doug Anson, Dell's Linux technology strategist:

The Linux version of the Mini 10 also gets some additional hard drive options, 32GB ($75) and 64GB ($125) solid state disc (SSD) drives. The Windows XP Mini 10 won’t get these hard drive options for now due to some original restrictions around what level of hardware can be offered on netbook-type devices – these guidelines are adjusting as the category grows.   

For the social media mavens and students who are on the go all day, the best news is we’ve added a 6-cell battery option ($30) for the Mini 10 that provides around eight hours of battery life (based on MobileMark 2007 and Linux BLTK (Battery Life Toolkit) v1.08) - mileage may vary based on configuration, settings, activities etc. We’ve also added a bigger 3-cell option (28WHr)($15) that gets about 25 percent longer battery life (just under four hours) than the base 24WHr battery. Obviously for a device like the Mini, battery-life is critical, so that’s why Dell offers two Minis that are capable of getting around eight hours – the Mini 12 also offers a 6-cell extended battery option.

We recently expanded the pallet of external personalization options an individual can choose from  to customize the Mini 10’s exterior. Joining the original six colors (standard Obsidian Black and Alpine White, or optional Cherry Red, Jade Green, Ice Blue, and Promise Pink- $40) are five original images by Tristan Eaton (The Muse in Purple  and Orange and Stickers in Green, Black and Blue- $60). For those of you looking for a Mother’s Day gift (hint, hint), remember a purchase of any of the  Promise Pink Minis generates a $5 contribution to the Susan G Komen For the Cure.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a feature we added a few weeks ago – an HD display ($35). The key benefits of this display are you can view more content on the display at one time – a LOT more content (around 70 percent more). So, even if you plan to just use it for e-mail and web applications, seeing more content is a useful thing. Besides that, the HD screen also delivers richer colors and wider viewing angles (meaning you can share the movie with the person sitting next to you if you want.)

For those of you who have read the fine print on the Design Tab on the Mini 10 product page will know we still have a few rabbits to pull out of our hat, including a 2GB memory option and built-in TV ATSC Tuner. I’ve confirmed they are on the way – and actually the Mini 10 with a built-in DVB-T tuner will be available Europe in the near future.

I’ll close with this. In the near future my colleague Lionel will post a “Dummy’s Guide to the Atom Processor” as there are two versions out there: the Zxxx series (a.k.a. Silverthorne) and Nxxx series (a.k.a. Diamondville). In general, if you are planning on using a netbook device for video playback you should look for a device powered by the Z-series processor family, as it can handle hardware decode of 720p content and with Cyberlink codecs (which we do include on the Mini) can decode most of the more popular video formats. It also, surprisingly enough, contributes to better battery life because of lower power consumption. Both the Mini 10 and the Mini 12 are based on the Z-series Atom processors, and that’s all I’m going to say about that – stay tuned for Lionel’s post with more details.

Later today, Stephen Schuckenbrock, president of Dell’s Large Enterprise group will unveil our Efficient Enterprise Portfolio of products in a webcast that will happen today at 11:30am Central Standard Time.

You can register for the webcast by going to Dell.com/switch or by clicking on the image below.

Many of you have been keeping track of the Mini 10 since we previewed some details at CES. Starting today, we'll begin taking preorders from customers in the United States through QVC. U.S. online availability through Dell.com will follow soon after—it's scheduled for February 26.  We'll begin shippping next month. The regional schedule will vary, but the Mini 10 will be available to Dell customers worldwide in the future.

It comes standard in Obsidian Black, but we offer Alpine White, Promise Pink, Cherry Red, Ice Blue and Jade Green as color options. Mini 10 pricing starts at $399. With the 3-cell battery, its starting weight is 2.86 lbs.

Update (2-26): The Mini 10 is now available for order at Dell.com.

The Mini 10 will be available with two Atom processor options: the Z520 and Z530. Standard features include:

• an integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam
• an HDMI out port
• integrated 802.11g Wi-Fi
• a 3-cell 24Whr battery
• 160GB 5400rpm hard drive
• a 4-in-1 memory card reader

Initially, all Mini 10s will come with 1GB fixed RAM (which means it will not be upgradable), the Windows XP operating system, and a 16:9 edge-to-edge display that supports a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. The default screen resolution is 1024 x 576, which is a better fit for the widescreen display. As far as ports, the Mini 10 features HDMI out, 3 USB ports, an Ethernet jack, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, AC Power in and 1 line out + 1 Mic-in ports.

Update (3-31): The high resolution screen is now available as an option on the US website. For $35 more, you now can opt for a 1366 x 768 display).

Update (4-30): I tweeted this last week, but forgot to update this post: The 6-cell 56W/Hr battery is now available as a $30 option. Beyond that, we now offer some designs in addition to all the color options I've mentioned elsewhere in this post. 

Update (8-15): Recently we just began offering a promotional Mini 10 configuration for customers in the United States with 2GB of RAM and Windows Vista Home Basic with SP1. For more details, check out my updated post on the 2GB topic here.

All Windows XP machines will ship with Windows Live Essentials and the Windows Live Toolbar. Microsoft Works will also be standard software. Microsoft Office Basic 2007 will be an option in the future.

If you prefer Linux, Ubuntu 8.04 will be an available option soon. The higher resolution 720P panel will be available as an option in the future and the integrated digital TV tuner will be available on a future model. While I'm on the subject of future options, Bluetooth, integrated GPS and mobile broadband, will all be options down the road.

I've been using the entry-level config for Mini 10 for the last few days. My verdict: I'm going to have a hard time giving it back. The keyboard is the first thing I noticed—at 92% the size of a standard keyboard, it's a bit larger than the one on the Mini 9. I adjusted to it in no time. The other thing I noticed was that overall performance on Windows XP seemed really snappy. Just about all my work these days revolves around e-mail and web-based apps, and for those kinds of things, the Mini 10 was great. I installed Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 and fired up several tabs to mimic what I do everyday. I used two of my favorite Twitter clients, Twhirl and Tweetdeck to have some conversations there. Beyond that, the Mini 10 performed well when I uploaded and viewed videos and  images on YouTube (even HQ and HD-quality ones) and Flickr, checked Techmeme and wrote most of this blog post on both Live Writer and the Community Server back end. Doing these kinds of activities, I was able to get about 3 hours of battery life with the standard 3-cell battery.

I'll update this blog post as new options become available. For a bit more background on the Mini 10 and where netbooks fit in the world of mobile devices, check out this StudioDell video. And if you want to see some photos of the Mini 10, take a look here on Dell's Official Flickr page.

Michael Dell this morning addressed attendees of the SC08 conference and spoke of the 'fourth wave' of supercomputing where powerful HPC-based clusters will be used by organizations of all sizes to solve complex compute problems.

SC08 is taking place in Dell's backyard in Austin, Texas, and Dell is taking the opportunity to show the gathering of some of the world's most prestigious scientists, engineers, programmers, researches and educators Dell's engineering prowess when it comes to high performance computing.

In his keynote, Michael spoke of how supercomputing was previously reserved only for those who could afford it - a trait traceable back to the beginning of supercomputing. In the 1970s, the first wave of supercomputing was dominated by specialized processors and proprietary operating systems. The second wave in the 80s and 90s was more focused on advancements in microprocessor-based systems. The third wave showed an increase in the percentage of HPC clusters in the Top 500 list. And finally, we're now entering a new period of high-performance computing that’s defined by further standardization across the HPC ecosystem. This “fourth wave” will make powerful HPC clusters accessible for the first time to more organizations, large and small, worldwide.

Here's what Dell announced during SC08:

-- Dell, Intel and Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) jointly announced the availability of LLNL's Hyperion cluster for use by the HPC community.

-- The Texas Advanced Computing Center's (TACC) Dell Stallion virtualization cluster will be the largest in the world comprising 45 Dell 30-inch flat panel monitors (307 million pixels) powered by Dell XPS desktop gaming systems.

-- Michael also discussed the new NVIDIA GPU that will soon be available in Dell Precision workstations.

Dell had numerous HPCC demonstrations during the show in its large booth and had a number of speakers that presented papers on a variety of topics. The show runs through Thursday of this week.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Reza Rooholamini from Dell's Clustering and Solutions Group about the latest trends in supercomputing. I've known Reza since I first joined the company in 1999, when Dell was first beginning its foray into the high performance clustering business. Back then, x86-based systems were a rarity on the Top500 list and our presence started with just a 64-node cluster at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing. Each node on that system had a quad Pentium 3 Xeon that ran at 500Mhz running Windows NT.

Today, the Top500 list features more than 400 x86-based systems and we are seeing the same peak performance that was previously only possible on a supercomputer now available on a mobile workstation.

Let's hear what Reza has to say about the state of high performance computing.

Following up from my blog post from last week, we now have a simple and robust resolution for the drive partitioning issue on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux. Since some systems with 8GB or 16GB solid state drives (SSD's) only have 4 GB of space formatted, we needed a simple method to extend the existing root partition and filesystem to fill the entire disk. The solution we decided upon is to add the fix to one of the operating system packages, and push this package out to customers via the software update process, so that the resolution is relatively transparent.

For customers that regularly update their system software, this problem will be automatically resolved the next time an update is performed. For those that don't regularly update their system software, perform the following steps:

1. From the Ubuntu main menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System -> Administration -> Update Manager
2. Once the Update Manager window loads, click on "Check", and enter your password when prompted
3. Click on Install Updates to update your system software
4. Once all of the updates are installed, restart your system when prompted.

During your system restart, the system partition will be resized, after which your operating system will have access to the entire drive. To verify that you this process is successful, from the Ubuntu main menu, select System -> Administration -> System Monitor, and then select the "File Systems" tab. Look for a line that starts with "/dev/sda2"; for a system with an 8GB drive, the "Total" column should list something above "6 GiB", while for a 16GB drive, this should list something above "14 GiB".

For those interested in the specific details, the fix for this has been added to the ume-config-belmont package, version 0.77.3 and later, and posted to the Ubuntu Mini apt repository.

Update: If you have already partitioned the remaining space manually, this update will not make any changes to your partitioning, and will have no effect.