Firefox

As far as looks, firefox is very simliar to IE.  They have tabs, they have back, forward, reload, stop, home buttons.  The difference I Have noticed is firefox seems faster, and I have not had freezes like I experienced with IE7, and very rarely on IE8.  I use both on my MINI 9s, but I don't have UBUNTU as I am a Windows loyalist and do not wish to use Linux, or Ubuntu or whatever the actual name of it is.

Firefox is bedtter then IE.  Not only is it more secure, but the community offers addons that you can install and do really cool things with Firefox. 

If you need more storage, try adding an SD flash memory card in the card reader slot.  I picked up a 4gb Sandisk Ultra II SDHC card for $10 with shipping from Amazon.com.  There are cheaper ones, but the Ultra II has a 15MB/s transfer rate, or about twice the transfer rate of a standard Class 6 SD card.  You can get a 16gb Ultra II SDHC card for about $30.  These cards come in other sizes too.  I mention the 16gb size because it is the most cost effective.  8gb would be ok too.  I use the 4gb SD card for storing large files like pictures and MP3 files.  I ordered my Mini 9n with an 8gb SSD.  I can see how 4gb would be kind of cramped for space.  If you have a 4gb SSD and add a 4gb SD card it will double your storage for about $10.

Mini 9 users with XP might also want to consider using an SD card.  I read that one person added a 16gb SD card and moved their My Documents folder there.  What a great idea to save disk space for the OS.

My Mini 9 came with a browser called 'Web Browser' by Mozilla.  After I reinstalled my system, I uninstalled a bunch of programs that I thought I didn't need, including games.  Then I reinstalled FireFox 2.0.  FireFox 2.0 is simple to use and very similar to Internet Explorer.  I ran that for a few days.  Somehow, the Update Manager updated it and changed it back to 'Web Browser 3.0.5'.  Firefox is based on Mozilla and based on the same code.  Now it doesn't say 'FireFox' anymore but it still works the same.

I've also tried the Opera browser on my Mini 9n.  If you change the appearance of Opera to 'windows_skin', it looks a lot like Internet Explorer.  I don't see any advantage to using Opera over Firefox/Mozilla, I just wanted to try something different.  If you are trying to save disk space, just stick with Firefox/Mozilla/Web Browser that comes with the OS.

Epiphany is a lightweight browser available for Ubuntu.  Maybe it uses less disk space, but it isn't as compatible with plugins as Firefox. 

Just wondering if you could elaborate a little more on the programs/files that you removed, where and how you found the locations, and how much memory you were able to free up.  I just bought a Mini 9 as well with 8GB SSD (and I put in a 2GB RAM).  Unit is not bad, in fact the speed kind of surprised me.  Delivered from Dell it showed 4gb free, but after the first two updates from the Update Manager, I'm down to 3.5gb and starting to sweat.  At this rate, I'm going to run out of storage all too soon.  I'd hate to have to avoid any future updates, but rather than run tight on memory, I may have no choice.

What I was thinking about doing was storing/running some of the programs on a 4gb SD I threw in.  As a long time Windows user, it seems quite a bit more difficult to locate the programs in Linux that I'd like to dump or relocate.  Programs that come to mind would be things like the word processor, spreadsheet, all the games (which I did find), the email system, etc.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

pbdude!

I just wanted to verify that you were able to use an SDHC card in the slot.

I have been using Firefox for several years and find it generally much better than IE, although there are some sites which require you to have IE.  Support is super and the developers are much more responsive to hacker threats than MS is.  You don't have the constant security updates.

As far as increasing storage, others have mentioned the SD card and that is a great suggestion.  You also have a couple of USB slots that you can use to store data or programs on, and which will act just like other hard drives for you.  Get a couple of USB thumb drives and dedicate them to the mini.  Plug the one in that has the application you (or data) that you want to use - works like a charm!

Speaking of applications, are you familiar with portable apps?  They are programs that are created, or scaled down, for storing on a USB thumb drive which can be transported from computer to computer and run off of the USB drive - leaving no trace on the host computer.  Computer technicians use them a lot.  There are browsers, office suites, games, anti-virus programs, encryption programs such as TrueCrypt which even the big boys can't penetrate, etc. - you name it.  There are even a couple of great Portable App menus which allow you to call the different programs up.  Just google "portable apps" and have a ball.  An especially good source is portableapps.com.

My point in bringing this up is that these programs are perfect for the mini 9 with its limited capacity - you can put them directly onto your C: drive if you want to, or just keep them on SD cards or USB drives (putting one of the portable menus on each of the cards or USB drives so you don't have to search for what's on there).  This is certainly not as convenient as having a 300GB hard drive, but with the willingness to swap a card or USB once in a while, you can actually have fairly extensive storage for files and data.

Sorry for the long-windedness, but I thought you might get some good out of this info.

The other problem I just noticed is that the Portable Apps don't offer anything for Linux/UBUNTU.  Therein lies the problem.  Their software all appears to be linked somehow, making it very difficult to remove apps.

It must be a conspiracy, or their way of getting back at me for jumping the Microsoft "ship".

I realized after I wrote that long reply that I was in a thread that is really oriented to Linux.  I just hoped that there are portable apps for it, also.  Sorry to hear that they are not.

I am very interested in the problem with deleting apps, because I intend to replace mine with smaller and more efficient programs (that's the plan, anyway).

The link  is to a good list of portable app recommendations, with some explanation of their selection.  Note that three of them, CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller and Treesize Free may provide a solution to your space problem.  I use CCleaner and have for 3 or 4 years, so I will vouch for it.  The others, I have not tried yet but plan to.  Before using them, I would do a little searching for other opinions, but this guy does seem to know his stuff.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/02/24-killer-portable-apps-for-your-usb-flash-drive