HP Mini 1000

[Pugrider]

I just posted this on the HP Mini Forum web site. I came very close to buying a Mini, but the feedback from the forum, coupled with the reviews of the NC10, made me go with a Sammie Blue. I hope I like it as much as everyone else on this forum!

“First, I want to start this post by thanking all of the forum members for their thoughts and advice. As I have posted elsewhere, I have looked at a number of netbooks, and was very close to purchasing an HP Mini 1000. For what it is worth, here is why I ended up not buying a Mini, and which netbook I ended up ordering:

I thought about labeling this post “A Mini too Far”, as it seems like history has repeated itself. HP came out with the Mini Note 2133 before the Intel Atom processor was even released, and this well regarded netbook was sunk by the Via C7 processor, which rendered it too slow, especially for Vista.

Ironically, I think that a significant strength of the Mini 1000 – being able to put a 10″ screen in the same footprint as a 8.9″ screen, may also be the cause of some this version’s shortcomings. For example, the 1.8″ PATA HDD just doesn’t cut it, and the SSD doesn’t seem to do much better. The inclusion of a 0.3 MP webcam may be a size issue as well – the Asus S101 (priced at $699) has the same webcam. The inadequate webcam, coupled with the combined microphone/speaker jack, make it difficult to use the Mini for web calls or conferences. Finally, the lack of a third USB port may or not be an issue – if you have a thumb drive and wireless mouse plugged in you are out of luck if you also want to connect an external hard drive.

The feature I like least about the Mini is the glossy screen. I took another look at one in Costco, and could definitely understand why this has been an issue raised in several posts. I spoke to my brother-in-law over the weekend, as he just bought a new Macbook. Without hesitation he told me that the glossy screen was his least favorite feature of an otherwise excellent laptop.

The other significant issue that made me decide against the Mini is the cost. Not the initial cost, mind you, but the cost of upgrading to a six cell battery once released (battery life being one of the reasons I was attracted to a netbook), replacing the HDD or SSD with something that is faster and more functional, buying the VGA dongle so that I can show powerpoint slides, buying proprietary Mini Mobile drives, buying a docking station to make up for having only two USB ports, etc. If you add all these up it is not a small investment. I did not include the cost of upgrading to 2 MG RAM, as that is pretty standard for all netbooks.

With all of this in mind, I just ordered a blue Samsung NC10. It addresses all of the Mini’s shortcomings, and does so at a fair price. Now, I have yet to try it out, so I may be posting a follow-up telling all of you that I was deeply disappointed and have returned it. I hope that is not the case, but the proof is in the pudding. I also will be interested in what HP does with the revised Mini Note 2133, scheduled for release in January of 2009. If they use the new Via Nano processor and keep it at a fair price it might become the king of the netbooks.

I conclude by noting that the Mini 1000 netbook is great, it was just not the one for me. I plan on continuing to read this forum (as I do for Asus), as there are tips and recommendations that are common across all of the Atom XP netbooks.”

Realistically, it would cost approximately $850 to buy and upgrade an HP Mini 1000 to the same specs as an NC10. And it would still have that glossy screen…

Pugrider

[DjFIL]

I too was looking at the HP Mini 1000, they just got them instock at my local Best Buy. But main reason I won’t pick one up is the 3-cell battery. If they come with a 6-cell model before the Samsung NC-10 arrives here in Canada, I might pick one up as I liked everything else about the Mini 1000 hardware (it was the 10″ model [1gb ram/60gb hdd] they had in our store, $549 cdn)

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