HP Mini Netbook Review

Netbooks were invented with journalists in mind, I'm sure. In the age of 24 hours a day news, we no longer have the luxury of going back to the office and drinking a cup of coffee waiting for the muse to make her appearance.

Running from a city council meeting to the wreck on out on the highway to the fourth grade production of Silent Night, even the smallest laptop begins to feel like an anchor.

After much research, I took the plunge several months ago and purchased a Hewlett Packard Mini 1000 several months ago. Smartest money I ever spent.

With every computer maker jumping on the netbook bandwagon, the HP mini stands out, in my opinion. When I first started looking at buying a netbook, the Chiclets size keys on most of them were a real turnoff. The tips of my big fat stubby fingers would cover two keys at once, producing sentences like, “Mnow ois ther timne for sall good men yto come yto ther aid ofg theirt countryu,” not exactly the best way to the editors on the copy desk.

The larger keyboard on the Mini was a draw for me. HP fitted a 92 percent full size keyboard into the diminutive frame of the Mini. Granted, it still takes a bit to adjust to slightly smaller keys.

“Expert” IT people warned me not to buy a netbook because of poor performance. To hear them tell it, I’d be better off using my grandpa’s old portable manual typewriter than a computer powered by Intel’s Atom processor.

My Mini came with the 1.6GHz Atom N270 chip a one-gigabyte of RAM. If I’m being deprived of computing power, I haven’t noticed it. I keep multiple applications open, including the Photoshop like freeware program GIMP. True, I’m not batch processing or building files with multiple layers, but I can open and edit a 12 Meg photo in just a view minutes.

YouTube videos, movies and television shows stream quickly and without interruption.

The Mini’s 10.2-inch screen was a big selling point for me. The 1,024x600 pixel resolution lets you see from websites from side to side, but the 600 pixel vertical resolution means you have to scroll down a bit more than normal.

I’ve read that Microsoft mandated the shorter vertical view as a condition to license Windows XP for netbook use. Not being a technology insider, I don’t know if that is true, but it seems to be the industry standard.

I agonized over whether to go for the 60 gig 4,200 rpm hard drive (160 GB is the HP standard now) or pop for the much smaller but supposedly light-years faster 8GB flash drive. In the end, I went with the 60-gig setup. No regrets there -- from a cold start Windows XP is up and running and I’m word processing or surfing the net in just under a minute. Even for an on the go reporter, that’s plenty fast enough.

Some of the newer netbooks come preloaded with Windows Vista or 7, but I recommend sticking with XP; it’s been around long enough for Microsoft to finally work out the major kinks and it’s proven stable platform with the Atom processor.

The Mini’s speakers run across the top of the main body, and frankly, are rather pipsqueakish. A good set of earphones gives stereo quality sound for movie watching. HP has provided a port to hook up to a full size monitor should the need arise, but you’ll need a dongle cable.

My Mini came with a XP restore CD, but like most netbooks, it doesn’t a CD drive. That hasn’t been a problem as all the additional software I’ve added I downloaded from the Web. Our local Staples is selling them for about $60 and Amazon has a CDRW/DVD external drive listed for $39.

The built in webcam has proven adequate for online chats and conferencing with by co-workers back at the office. The two USB ports in the Mini are plenty. I generally only plug in a wireless mouse. If there is one feature I’m not super keen on, it’s the finger mouse pad. For some reason HP engineers offset it left of center, which is awkward.

The best feature of the HP Mini is the size and weight. After lugging around a seven pound Compaq Presario 2800 laptop for the last five years, the two and half-pound Mini seems like nothing. At about 10 inches long and 6 inches wide and half an inch thick, it slips easily into a pack, book bag or briefcase. Who says size doesn’t matter.