It’s time to retire an old friend. I’m permanently shelving my Dell Mini v9.
The fall of 2009 was the pre-tablet era and all the companies were pushing for smaller laptops. I got the Dell Mini because I researched it and found that I could mod it to run Snow Leopard, the then-current operating system for Macs.
My goal was to make it a Mac-like laptop with the sole purpose of running Scrivener. I bought it, installed extra ram, and turned it into a Hackintosh.
I got it on November 8th, 2009 and these are the things I’ve written on it these past eight years…
- Holiday Wars Vol. 1 (pictured in the photo)
- Finish the Script!
- Holiday Wars Vol. 2
- Holiday Wars: Monster Eater
- Tales of Holiday’s Past (Anthology)
- Cupcakes vs. Brownies
- Holiday Wars Vol. 3
- Mermaids vs. Unicorns
- Genie vs. Djinn
- The Eye of Hastur
- National Cthulhu Eats Spaghetti Day
- Elderealm Book 1: Wrath of Dragons
- Outline Your Novel
- Dinosaurs vs. Robots (short story)
- The 5 Day Novel
- Ameriguns
- Holiday Wars Vol 4.
- Resist Them
- Story Pitch
- The Greyness (short story)
- Tales of Elderealm Vol 1. (Anthology)
- Tales of Elderealm Vol 2. (Anthology)
My Dell Mini was my go to system for first drafts and I used it for most rewrites too. For what I paid for it, $195 plus $50 for ram, it has well earned it’s money back. It’s truly been a good companion.
UPDATE: I got a few messages asking what laptop I bought. I purchased a refurbished unibody MacBook for $140. It came out in 2009 but has been restored with a new battery, an SSD hardrive, and new screen. I also spent an additional $40 to upgrade it to 8 gigs of ram. It’s basically the laptop I would have bought eight years ago instead of the Dell Mini if I had been able to afford it. It’s in great shape, runs Scrivener 3.0 and Vellum without a problem and although I would LOVE a fancier MacBook Pro, I need to save money for editing (I have at minimum 6 books coming out next year!) and the new iMac Pro (upgrading my home computer is a MUST).