Dell is having a sale on all of their ‘Minis’ in honor of Presidents’ Day.  The Mini 9 starts at $199, and they have even included a free upgrade to 3 -5 day shipping.  This way you can have your new toy in no time at all.  The Mini 9 for $199 is the Linux version with 4 GB solid state drive.  The other version of the Mini 9, as well as the Mini 12, are discounted anywhere from $50 to $80 off.  The sale is only going on until tomorrow at 6am CT, so don’t miss out.

You have heard a lot of chatter, including numerous “spy-shots” of the next iteration of Windows Mobile.  Well, over at Gear Diary, we were able to get a sneak peek at Windows Mobile 6.5, which was officially announced today at the Mobile World Conference.  Rather than give you a link to our thoughts, I am reprinting the whole Gear Diary Gearchat (with permission) which was originally posted on Gear Diary this morning.  So, what do I think?  I think Microsoft needs to pull out all the stops in order to compete in a crowded mobile market, which includes more competition than ever before, with the iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre.  Will this be enough?  Or will it be too little too late?  After looking at the pictures which I am about to show you….I am cautiously optimistic about the future of Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone as they plan to call it.)  Hit the jump for tons of pictures and thoughts.

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If you are an avid fan of mobile technology, or even if you are just slightly interested, it will be hard to miss the coverage on the net this week, of the Mobile World Congress, staged in Barcelona annually. So this week there is going to be a glut of mobile news, and press releases, and new devices, some ho-hum and some ground breaking, but mainly lots of new toys that won’t be available to any of us for a while. Obviously I’m not there, I mean Doug wouldn’t spring for the trip , so I’m hooking in to a few friends, that are a bit more interested in current trends, rather than the latest Diamond encrusted iPhone case that only lets you tweet to the twitter elite.

So to subject matter, the Android OS, where will it be placed in the mobile market this MWC. My friend Sascha Segan is on the ground in Barcelona, and has already made an astute observation, how does android fit into the mix this year? Not very well apparently!

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After numerous installments in this series, we are finally done with the preliminaries.  we have talked about the design of each of these players, the controls, and even the menus.  Now, it is time to get down to business with what I think is the single most important segment in this series: sound and audio.  Let’s get right to it.

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Most of you would have heard of the devastating bushfires in Australia this past week, and incredibly, eight days after the initial fire storm, there are still a lot of fires on the go, and other environmental ramifications that are further reaching than the destruction dealt out in the immediate fire areas.

You’re probably thinking right now, “what has this got to do with a mobile lifestyle?” and I wouldn’t blame you for that, but I just wanted to share with you some of the mobile community experience, and how I benefit from my devices, and the services I use.

On Friday night, I realised I had run out of dog food, and Melbourne was covered in a thick smoke haze, as I was running up to the 7/11, I looked up and the moon was blood red. A consequence of the smoke haze.

I only had the Tilt, so I twittered a request, for someone with a high resolution camera to capture an image for me. Credit for the image goes to @neilcreek, a fellow aussie and blogger. Even though it’s serious times here, an example of another mobile networking use that I found tonight, really gave me a good chuckle

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