Couple things I will mention...
The 32 and 64GB Runcore drives are the fastest drives available for the mini 9. This is in terms of read and write performance. Anything else pretty much sucks even worse than the stock driver.....The killer on the stock drive is the write speed, 15mbps I believe with the read speed being around 70mbps. The runcores will reach about the same read speed but can more than double the write speeds making them fairly fast.
The drives from the factory will come with compression enabled on the drive. Not exactly great for performance but it helps save room. On my 16GB I disabled compression, disabled hibernation, and disabled page swap and told it to use memory only with 2GB of ram. This will free up some space and make the system perform better, but when you disable drive compression you are going to probably take up a little more than you freed up if I remember right.
If you have a valid XP Pro key I would check into TinyXP....my wife has it installed on her 4GB mini and she gets by pretty good with about 2GB of room left. I have a 32GB runcore on the way to replace the stock drive so she has some more room to play.
With regards to network cards....the stock card is pretty decent, its a broadcom model and supports B/G networks. It also works with OS X just fine with no modifications. If you wish to go up to N capabilities some of the better models to choose from are:
Intel 5100 series...supports A/B/G/N networks and uses the 2 stock antenna
Intel 5300 series...same as 5100 but uses three antenna. You can get a set of tyco universal antenna and install one in the upper left corner of the case to get better reception and faster speeds but usually the 5100 works just as good.
Gigabyte GN-WI06-RH is an atheros 5008 based chipset that uses three antenna, supports packet injection, ABGN networks, and works with OS X. This is one of the coolest running NIC of the ones I mentioned but also costs the most out of the three.
There are others but these are the three I have dealt with.
If you dont like the layout of the keyboard, there is an international ENGLISH keyboard that is laid out more like a regular keyboard. Unfortunately the keys are a bit smaller and makes it somewhat hard to type if you have big fingers.
Part numbers
U061H Keyboard-Single pointing, US-Internal 14.99 plus ship (There is a trick to set these up correctly, Hold FN plus the 6 key...plug in the AC Adapter and then release this combination.)
J613H Wireless bluetooth module (include cable) 20 dollars plus ship
To get these you will have to call or email someone in the Dell small parts division. I can provide the email of the man I dealt with, he spoke decent english and Im told he is good in spanish also. Trying to order from chat or a normal sales person generally does not work. Something about the small parts numbers dont reference in their system so they always think they are not available.
Wrapping things up a bit, if you want a ton of information including the disassembly guide from DELL internal or want other internal part numbers head on over to
My Dell Mini. There is a ton of information there. We also have an individual in the for sale section that is making cordura based sleeves for the mini with fleece lining. Very nice and reasonable price if anyone is interested....I have two from him and they are simply awesome for the price.
We also have a dedication section and some dedicated members to running MAC OS X on our minis. Please do not reference the MSI Wind hack version, its a crapastic install compared to whats available from the gents on the forums and costs you nothing to do it. It will require you to have a legal copy of Mac OS X but that really isnt all that bad.