Your shiny new Dell Mini 9 arrived loaded with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS but it thinks you're a regular person. You certainly are not. Let's fix it.

First, under your application drop down menu select Switch Desktop Mode and pick Classic Desktop. The Dell Launcher application was eating over 40MB RAM just to show the unnecessary animated application picker.

Next, launch a terminal and bring your old friends back:
sudo -s
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
# go ahead and reboot if upgrade installed a new kernel
# general goodies
apt-get -y install nmap vim vim-nox vlc minicom dict rrdtool aircrack-ng
# firefox goodies
apt-get -y install adblock-plus firebug mozilla-noscript flashblock
# programming goodies
apt-get -y install erlang mercurial haskell-compiler vlc minicom dict tinyscheme ocaml
# graph/image goodies
apt-get -y install gnuplot graphviz graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat
# book writing goodies
apt-get -y install texlive-science docbook-* # will fail eventually because of a pdf being included in the HTML docs. after everything is downloaded run again without docbook-* and it'll setup the previously downloaded non-conflicting packages.

# for virtualbox
apt-get -y install linux-kernel-dev build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` dkms

Download the latest virtual box from:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
and install with:
dpkg --force-architecture -i <downloaded virtualbox .deb>