As to the question of is it worth it, well, if you used mine for fifteen minutes, you would say yes too.

Netbooks share a common characteristic with all laptops ever sold: checkout the screen and keyboard before you buy – these are very personal aspects of a PC that you will live with for the life of the PC.

The keyboard is cramped – yes it is and it does take time to get used to it, I have a runcore 64gig SSD and 2 gig have had no issues with speed on the mini 9. Seems very responsive all functions work from the internal microphone to the dell 5530 3G wireless card.

For me this is the ultimate portable OSX powered mini. Yes the CPU is only an Atom and any core 2 duo will wipe the floor with it. The unit is not a replacement for say a normal apple mac – that is not what it is designed to be – it’s supposed to replace the mac for those trips where we only want carryon or – a drive over to the other side of town. No other package can match it for size vs capability and compatibility with OSX.

But it did manage to get Ubuntu 9.10 on there, a custom, sort of built-up-from scratch version of it, and it absolutely screams. Stock everything (16GB SSD, 1GB RAM) — usually idles around 250megs of ram, 3 gigs of HD space. Boots up in approx 25 secs, Open Office opens up in about 4.

These things (the 9′s) seem to definitely be built with Linux in mind. Just like there is a smooth thing going on between Apple hardware and software, there is a also a smooth thing going on between this Mini 9 (Vostro A90) and Ubuntu 9.10. They’re really built for each other (mine doesn’t even have a Windows logo).

I don’t recommend OS X on these — they’re passively cooled, too, so the amount of time it takes to get OS X up and running on them requires you to put it up on some kind of books and angle fans at it and so on.

It is kind of a novelty, but with Ubuntu + Entrance + Fluxbox + Gnome Do, it really is kind of a fun thing to play around with. Can always get a portable USB keyboard if you need.

I wouldn’t recommend installing OS X on it though. With a minimal Linux installation this thing is wicked fast out of the box.

I have long thin fingers so the size is absolutely not a problem but the key layout is terrible. The top row of keys (QWERTY) isn’t offset properly and I had a play with one and I just couldn’t type on it. Perhaps if you are a hunt and peck typist it might be OK but for touch typing it was unusable (for me at least).

One big plus point in the Mini 9′s favour is that it has full Ubuntu support unlike the AAO. Ubuntu does now support all the AAO’s hardware with a bit of tweaking (not for Linux n00b’s I wouldn’t say) but it has taken 18m since I bought it for this to be true.

It’s a shame because otherwise it’s a nice little machine. It’s pretty silly comparing this to a MacBook Air that costs 5 times as much. You have to understand what you are buying it for.