If you are looking for a netbook then you might consider the HP Mini, it’s a small compact, light weight netbook with some good features. I don’t like small computers and would prefer never to have to use one but this one isn’t too bad. Once you get used to the keyboard and mouse it’s a pretty easy to use computer.
The Good
This is one of the biggest, small netbooks you can find, it has a 10.1″ diagonal screen, and I have to say I was impressed with the picture quality and brightness. Even when it’s not plugged in(and defaults to 80% lit, which you can change to 100% but it will eat your battery up) it’s still bright enough that it won’t detract from what you are doing.
Even though it is a large netbook it’s very light (weighs only 2.33 pounds, per HP’s spec list on their website) and compact (10.3″ X 1″ X 6.5″) all those figures are rounded. Easy portability means you can take this thing anywhere; my wife carries it in her purse to class and to doctor appointments.
With a wireless card already installed you don’t have to have any USB dongles sticking out of the side of it. It comes standard with 802.11B/G wireless card and it works very well. The HP Mini also comes with a built in webcam that works very well, picture is clear, better in well lit areas but sufficient to say the least.
With a 3 cell lithium polymer batter that lasts for the better part of a day, mine goes about 5 hours with heavy playback of video and music files. When I am just surfing the web or (god forbid) using it as a word processor it will last upwards of 6 to 7 hours. This will probably start to fade in the future but as of this writing I have owned this thing for about 10 months and it doesn’t seem to have lost its charge yet.
The HP Mini 1030NR (the one I own) has a 16GB internal solid state drive, which is good for battery life but not so good if you want a lot of storage. It does however come with an SD card reader and a strange hidden type of USB reader with a 1GB included stick. It’s like no USB stick I have seen it fits in a slot that is designed apparently just for this laptop, I checked HPs site and you can buy larger sticks from them for this slot but they are pricey.
Built in speakers that work very well, I think they rival any other laptop I have ever had and are sufficient for listening to music or video files if you are within ten feet of the laptop. Ten feet might be pushing the viewing distance of this little guy though.
Windows XP Home pre-installed what more can you ask for at this price? It’s XP so you know it’s easy to use and wont bog down your limited resources.
Two USB ports for any USB device you want to use with your PC, I typically have my 4GB thumb drive loaded with all my music and play it from the drive, works well and doesn’t fill up my small hard drive. For a small netbook 2 USB ports is enough.
Cooling, the HP Mini stays pretty cool even under heavy use; with vents on the both sides it keeps the air circulating throughout well enough that it doesn’t get very hot. I like when a laptop stays cool, when they get hot its uncomfortable to have them in my lap all day.
1GB of RAM paired with 1.60GHz Intel Atom processor (single-core) makes it a bit on the slow side. I was really expecting this thing to hum since it had a solid state hard drive but the processor and 1GB (max it can take) of RAM make it drag at times. I could only imagine if this thing had Vista on it, it would probably crawl. Don’t get me wrong for watching movies and playing music you won’t ever miss a beat. But if you want to play games or other resource intensive projects, you might want to check other options.
The keyboard is tiny, I hate small keyboards, which buying this I knew it would be small but it is still a con since it is hard to type for any prolonged period of time on this thing. Another annoyance is the location of the right and left mouse buttons, they are not below the touch pad (to save space) but are now on the left and right of the touch pad, once you get used to it it’s ok but in the beginning you will probably struggle with this. I am not complaining just want users to be aware of things they will run into and also let you know what you are getting when buying this.
Wireless switch and power switch on the front of the PC with a bright blue and white LED lights. These things are bright, and when the PC is in sleep mode they blink which can be annoying.
16GB solid state drive, I know I listed this as the good; I did that because it helps extend the battery life. This is only a con if you want to store a lot of files; if you don’t care then I guess you don’t have to worry about the small hard drive. There is another model with a 160GB SATA hard drive, but the battery life is a lot worse. If you only want a computer for web browsing and not storage then you can look past this con.
Well now you know some of the good and bad features for the HP Mini 1030NR. I hope that you will be able to decide if the good outweighs the bad and this article helps you to decide if this computer is for you or not. If you are looking for a good deal on this specific netbook Tiger Direct has a refurbished one for $249.
