HP has just released an update for their Windows 7 based slate tablet.  The newer Slate 2 has a faster Atom processor at 1.5 GHz, Swype input support and 32GB SSD to start.  They also changed the backing of their Slate 2 to be flat instead of the diamond style they had in the previous model.  Still no integrated stylus slot and you’re still stuck with a disappointing 3 MP rear facing camera.  On the upside, HP has lowered the starting price to $699.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, News

Tagged: HP, slate, Tablet

HP updates the Slate 500 and names it Slate 2 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 3, 2011 at 4:00 pm.

newPCgadgets is introducing the newest item in their line of “Surprisingly Unique Products.”  Their new Tablet Coasters are similar to their Smartphone Coasters we told you about last fall.  These stainless steel Tablet Coasters are designed to raise your tablet to a 35 degree angle.  They are 5 1/2″w x 7″d x 2 3/4″h, and they have non-skid rubber feet on the bottom and the top edge.  newPCproducts says the Tablet Coasters work with “all popular models including the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy, HP Slate, BlackBerry PlayBook, Toshiba Honeycomb, Motorola Xoom, ZTE Light and dozens more.”  The Tablet Coaster is $16.95, but you can get volume discounts as low as $14.95 each if you’d like to buy enough for the conference rooms at your business or as customer gifts.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, iPhone, iPad, iPod related, News

Tagged: iPad stand, Samsung Galaxy stand, tablet pc stand

Tablet Coasters from newPCgadgets originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 11, 2011 at 8:09 am.

I’ve been searching for a replacement for my Palm T/X  now that Palm has abandoned its users.  Although the iPod Touch seemed to be the choice, I refused to get sucked in by the Apple hype machine, so when I discovered an Android tablet for less than $100, I bit.  The Maylong M150 seemed to give me everything I wanted and more.  It’s available exclusively at Walgreens.com.  Did I get suckered?

The features:

• Google Android^™ Operating System
• 7 inches LCD color touch-screen
• Full Internet browsing capability
• Experience YouTube at your fingertips
• Pre-loaded e-Book reader
• Built-in digital picture viewer application with all features of a Digital Picture Frame
• Easy access to emails
• Included digital music, video player
• Download and install custom Android^™Applications,including Facebook, games and more.

The Specs:

Here’s what you get:

• Tablet device with 7-inch color touch screen
• Stylus
• AC Adapter
• Network/USB dongle
• User’s manual

There aren’t too many mechanical buttons to play with.

On the right side you have, from left to right, a micro SD slot, the dongle connector, earphone jack and power jack.  The speakers are on the extreme left and right.

On the top are menu button, volume control and the microphone.

On the left side is the power toggle.

To my eyes the device is solidly built.  The touch screen is resistive, better suited to a stylus than a finger.  This didn’t bother me considering the price and because I was used to using a stylus with the Palm.  Although a stylus is provided, there is no holder in the M150.

After charging the unit up for several hours I hit the power button and waited…and waited…and waited.  After watching the Android character dance around for what seemed like 5 minutes, I got the home screen.

There didn’t seem to be too much there, so I grabbed the manual to get myself oriented.  Truthfully, the manual is marginally useful.  It does define most of the icons, but doesn’t even acknowledge things like the camera.  Being moderately geeky, I did enjoy exploring the product’s capability, however, I’m not sure most people would.

I accidentially tapped a lightly visible arrow on the main screen and wound up with another display of icons.   The first one I tapped was for the Wi-Fi settings, so I could get online.  It was easy to setup.  It found my home network without problem and after inputting my key, I was ready to go online, so I fired up the browser.

After a long while, the page rendered well and there are options to zoom in and out.  Also, the M150 has a sensor that automatically changes the screen orientation, albeit very slowly, when you turn the unit from landscape to portrait.  To actually read multiple pages on the web, you need to have patience, because this device is slow.  I was getting frustrated with the sluggishness of the M150 surfing the net, so I went on to discover other features.

I wanted to see if I could speed up the device if I plugged into the net via cable, so I hooked up the supplied dongle, only to discover it didn’t work.  It was not recognized by the unit so I would not have ethernet cable access, nor could I use the 2 USB ports on the dongle.

Every time I turned on the unit it complained that the SD card was dismounted, which was interesting because there wasn’t one installed.  I bought a micro SD card to plug in and the unit stopped complaining.  I needed the SD card so that I could use the MP3 and movie players on the device.

The included MP3 player has an interesting feature where it will download the lyrics to the currently playing track.  The sound from the speakers was terrible, but using a set of earphones made the quality very acceptable.

I had several avi videos I made at 480×320 resolution and put them on the SD card.  The playback was very choppy and pixelated.

Oh well, let’s move on to the camera.  I guess you shouldn’t expect too much with a .3M pixel resolution and I wasn’t disappointed.  Not only was the output grainy, it was a photo of me.  That’s because the camera is on the same side as the screen, so you can only take a picture of yourself.  I got the same results when using the video app.

I wasn’t too discouraged yet, because I bought the M150 to replicate my Palm T/X and the applications I used on the Palm were available in the Android Marketplace, so all I had to do was download them.  Was I wrong!  The Maylong M150 does NOT have access to the Google Android Marketplace.  It has its own Maylong Appmarket which lists dozens of apps that have the word girlie in them.  I did discover, after some research, that I could “side load” Android applications if I could find the apk file.  This is NOT user friendly.

I was able to download an app called APKshare, which had some interesting things, one being a Kindle reader.  The reader seemed reasonably responsive and allows one to download books from Amazon, as opposed to the supplied reader which has some propriety format.

I approached this product with some excitement, but after days of painfully slow web surfing, extremely choppy You Tube videos, poor documentation and limited application support, I came to the conclusion that at best the M150 is a mediocre ebook reader/MP3 player/electronic picture frame.  Hopefully the product’s shortcomings are not because of Android, but just poor execution by Maylong.  I’m upset with myself for forgetting that you get what you pay for.  Apple should thank Maylong.  Because of the M150, which I returned, I purchased an iPod Touch.  Yes, I have succumbed to the hype.  In the future I promise not to get my prescriptions filled at Best Buy nor will I buy technology products from Walgreens.

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Android, Tablet

Maylong M150 Universe Tablet PC Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 16, 2010 at 2:01 pm.

Samsung has released details of their Galaxy Tab Android-based tablet. The specs include:

• Cortex A8 1 GHz processor
• Android 2.2 (Froyo)
• 16GB/32GB memory
• MicroSD slot (up to 32 GB)
• 7-inch WSVGA (1024×600) capacitive touch screen
• Full HD (1080p) video player and recorder (720 x 480) @ 3ofps
• Video support for DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and more.
• Front (1.3 MP)and rear (3 MP) facing cameras
• 3G HSPA connectivity
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 3.0
• GPS

This is serious Android tablet. It has all my must-haves:

• Latest Android OS (2.2)
• Capacitive-touch screen
• Powerful processor
• Plenty of memory

It also has a nice list of accessories out of the gate:

• Keyboard dock
• Case options
• TV out (though not HDMI)

Two words come to mind: “I Want”. It will be interesting to see where this lands. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Verizon version. You can see a video of it after the jump.

See more info on their press release: Press release.

Filed in categories: Android related, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Android, Samsung, Tablet

Samsung Announces Galaxy Tab originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 2, 2010 at 9:40 am.

According to a story on CNNMoney, Google announced – two days before Apple announced the iPad – they are also entering the tablet arena.  Google has announced they are working on a proprietary, open-source operating system.  The Chrome OS will focus on netbooks, but will probably also work for a variety of other devices, including tablets.  As with the Android system, it seems that Google will provide the operating system and others will provide the hardware to run it.  Chrome OS should be released late 2010, and concept designs for the table showed multiple open windows.  Read the story on CNNMoney for more details.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, News

Tagged: Chrome OS, Google, Tablet

Will There Be a Google Tablet? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 4, 2010 at 9:19 pm.

It might not be an Apple iSlate tablet, but the Camangi WebStation will keep me occupied until I can get my gadget greedy hands on one. The Camangi is a 7 inch Android powered internet tablet that caught my eye a couple of months ago when I placed my pre-order. I’ve been looking forward to using it as an eBook reader and gaming device.

It’s currently charging, but I wanted to give you all a heads-up that a review will be coming soon! More pix after the jump.

Hardware Specifications

OS: Google Android 1.5
CPU: Marvell PXA303 624MHz
System memory: 128MB Mobile DDR
Flash memory: 265MB NAND (system)
Display: 7-inch TFT LCD resistive, 16M True Color, 800×480 pixels
Size: 4.72 x 7.87 x 0.57 inches
Weight: 13.75 ounces

Click on images to see a larger view.

There are 3 hard buttons on the face along with power / charge status LEDs, and a microphone.

You can also see the AC adapter port, USB connector, mini USB connector, reset switch and earphone jack along the right side.

The opposite side has the volume adjustment buttons.

The power button and microSD card slot are located on the top edge of the tablet.

The device has a nice weight to it. It does not feel at all like a toy. The white plastic case has a pearly sparkle to it. The chrome edging makes you think of Apple products.

I can’t wait to start playing with it as soon as it finishes charging.

Filed in categories: Android related, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Android

Santa Just Brought Me an iSlate… I Mean Camangi WebStation originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 28, 2009 at 5:42 pm.

Netbooks have become extremely popular due to their affordable price and small size which makes them wonderful travel companions. But can a netbook make a great learning tool for kids? If it is the Intel-Powered Convertible classmate PC it can. The classmate PC isn’t just a regular netbook. It’s also a touch screen tablet computer. Let’s take a look.

The classmate PC is an educational tool that has been designed for school aged children ages 6 and up. It is being marketed to schools more than individual consumers. That’s not to say that you can’t purchase one if you want one. They are available through retail outlets such as Amazon.com

Hardware Specifications

CPU: Intel® ATOM™ processor N270 1.6GHz Processor
Chipset: Intel® 945GSE
Form Factor: Clamshell / Tablet
Memory: 1GB / 512MB
Storage: 16GB / 8GB / 4GB Flash or 1.8″ HDD
Operating System: Windows XP / Linux
Display: 8.9″ 1024 x 600 Touch Screen
Network: 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WLAN, Mesh support (Linux only)
Security: WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA2, WPA2-PSK
Audio: Integrated 2 channel audio
Camera: 1.3 MP
I/O: 2 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 SD slot, VGA port
Battery: 4 or 6 cell batteries are available
Dimensions: with handle 241 x 215 x (26.0 ~ 39.3) mm
Weight: 1.25-1.45 Kg

What’s in the box

Intel-powered convertible classmate PC
AC power cord and power adapter
Battery
Quick Start Guide
Stylus

As you can see from the image above, the classmate PC is similar in size to the HP mini 1000 netbook.

The classmate PC is thicker with a wedge shape though.

You might be wondering about the Mickey Mouse graphic on the lid. It’s a SkinIt skin. Skinit will be working with schools to create skins with team emblems.

The lid of the classmate has a built-in webcam that rotates 180 degrees so that it can be used in desktop mode or tablet mode.

The outside of the lid also has a small LED status panel that shows battery charging, power and WiFi status.

The back of the computer has the battery slot. There is a 4 cell and 6 cell battery available. The one installed here is the 4 cell (4400mAh), which can run for about 4hrs. The 6 cell is supposed to provide 6hrs of power.

You’ll also notice the built-in handle. It’s a flexible rubber handle that makes it very easy to for kids (and adults) to tote this computer around from place to place. It’s also important to note that the classmate is pretty rugged and has been built to withstand a 3 foot drop.

On the right site, you’ll find the stylus, microphone and head phone jacks, a tether attachment point for the stylus, as well as a USB and Ethernet port.

The stylus slot. The stylus itself isn’t special. You could use any PDA stylus on the screen, as well as your finger.

On the left side there is a VGA out connector, a 2nd USB port, an SD flash card reader slot and the power slider switch.

Lifting the lid reveals the 8.9 inch touch screen display. Below the display are the stereo speakers.

The keyboard like many netbooks is very compact. It’s also water resistant – a good feature to have for kids. No worries if they dump the contents of a juice box on it.

I didn’t find it to be as comfortable to touch type on as the HP mini 1000. You can click on the image above for a larger view. You’ll also notice the special function icons are printed in dark blue on the keys which I find really hard to see. My main problem with the keyboard has been the placement of the right shift key. I seem to always press the up arrow instead.

The track pad is adequate and works well enough. However, I wasn’t able to scroll pages using it.

The screen can lay completely flat as you see here.  It then rotates counterclockwise to…

…convert into a tablet.

The classmate PC has a built-in accelerator that auto rotates the screen to match the orientation in which you are holding it. Even to portrait mode.

On the left side of the display is an status bar that shows battery, wireless, power, hard disk access and caps lock status. The Blue home button launches the finger friendly application launcher.

The classmate PC has Windows XP installed but also includes several third party apps that take advantage of the table / touch screen features.

Some of the apps include Artrage, Foxit Reader and Evernote.

Artrage is one of my favorites. It is a really cool art program that almost feels like you’re using crayons, paint brushes and pallet knives.

Entering text can be entered using a touch keyboard or the handwriting input field. Both work best with the included stylus. The handwriting recognition is actually really good (even though my example image doesn’t reflect that) and works with printed letters or cursive. The input field can be resized to allow for writing more text at one time.

As a netbook, the classmate PC is on par with most of the other netbooks currently on the market, but what sets it apart is that it can be converted into a tablet. I haven’t had a lot of experience with tablet computers. This one is probably the first one that I’ve actually spent a decent amount of time actually using. For me, I’m much faster at entering text with a keyboard, so I’m not completely sold on entering text with a stylus. That said, I can see how this type of computer would be useful in school. I can envision kids using them to take tests where they select multiple choice answers with their styli. Or where they carry the classmate as a tablet when they are doing science experiments, etc. I even found myself using the classmate PC in tablet mode to surf the web while watching TV in my living room.

Now that portable computers such as netbooks are considerably less expensive than they ever have been, I can imagine devices such as the Intel-Powered Convertible classmate PC taking the place of text books in grade schools. I would have loved something like this back when I was in school!

What do you think? Would you choose the classmate PC over a regular netbook?

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, Reviews

Tagged: Netbook, Tablet

Intel-Powered Convertible classmate PC Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 28, 2009 at 3:17 pm.

I don’t know what it will look like. I don’t know how big the screen will be. I don’t know how long the battery will last and I don’t even know how much it will cost. But, despite not knowing any of those things, I do know that I’ll be buying one. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. The moment it’s officially announced, I’ll be slapping down my Visa to order one. I don’t even have to think about it. Am I too much of an Apple fan girl to know any better? No. I just know that when it comes to Apple products, that they are game changers and I want to get in on the game as soon as possible.

The buzz the last few months has been all bout the Barnes & Noble nook eBook reader. But in my opinion, as soon as the iTablet or whatever it will end up being called comes on the market, my favorite eBook reader will change from my iPhone to the Apple tablet. The same goes for my favorite handheld game system (which also happens to be an iPhone) and maybe even my favorite couch surfing device which is a Macbook Pro. I’m not so sure about the last one as I prefer a real keyboard. But we’ll see…

I’ve been We’ve all been waiting for this device for years and if we believe all the rumors about a special event to be held next month, that wait is almost over. Will you buy one?

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, News

Tagged: Apple, Spotlight Gadgets, Tablet

Apple Tablet – Will you buy one? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 24, 2009 at 5:20 pm.

There’s a new ‘WebBook’ on the market called Litl, and it’s a top-to-bottom operation that’s designing the whole widget with the philosophy of “The computer works for you ( not the other way around )”. Litl has designed both the hardware and the software with the web experience as the priority, and they call the resulting 3lbs beauty ‘Litl’. Besides it’s new OS, the high-end 12.1 LCD panel with a 178 degree viewing angle really sounds nice. Accompanying the awesome display is an Atom processor, 1GB of ram, 2GB of CompactFlash storage, and from the 720p video acceleration I’m guessing they’re using Nvidia’s ION platform. The OS appears to be a web-centric design with a ‘Card’ based homescreen that looks a Litl ( sorry ) like Safari’s ‘Top Sites’. Read on…

The hardware has some really useful features like HDMI output, an ‘easel’ display mode that swings the keyboard out of the way, and a ‘wheel’ control on both the unit and the remote to scroll through items. Plus, since most of your data is stored in the ‘Litl’ cloud, it looks like they can quickly swap units if your Litl breaks or gets stolen; Litl can even track down the thief using the stolen device. I think the keyboard looks silly, and it’s layout is going to take getting used to, but overall I like design. The Litl is a bit more expensive than a high-end netbook at $699, but the excellent design and unique feature-set seem worth it. Whats more, this company really stands behind their product with an unconditional 2 year guarantee; If you’re not satisfied, they’ll replace it or refund it.

http://www.litl.com/

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, Home Tech, Wireless

Tagged: Internet Appliance, Netbook

Introducing The Litl WebBook originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 19, 2009 at 6:40 am.

ViewSonic has expanded into the small-format PC market with the VOT132 PC mini. Weighing in at just over a pound, this tiny computer offers real performance in a miniature package with Win 7 OS, Intel(r) Atom(tm) 330 processor, latest NVIDIA(r) ION GPU, built-in Wi-Fi and 2GB internal memory and an optional attachable CD/DVD drive. The VOT132 uses up to 80% less energy and up to 45% less plastic than traditional tower PCs. The VOT132 (MSRP $499) will be available 10/22 and the VDD100 Super Multi drive (MSRP $99) will be available in November.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, News

Tagged: computer, Spotlight Gadgets

ViewSonic takes on small-format computing with VOT132 PC mini originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 19, 2009 at 1:13 pm.

Because you are reading this I would bet that you use some form of protection… (for your personal electronic equipment…).  While you may be OK with Junior  playing in traffic, you shutter at the thought of your Ipod or phone getting scratched.  Bodyguardz hears you, and while they can’t help Junior, they can help protect your gadgets with custom fitted strong plastic covers for your gear.

Evaluation of a product like this depends on what you are looking to get from the product.  Frankly I am more concerned about breakage of a device than scratches. My first iPod was a Nano.  Being a less experienced techie at the time, I just carried it in my pocket.  Bad idea.  Pressure on the screen ruined it. Fortunately Apple replaced it.  How are Bodyguardz intended to be used?  Here is a quote from their website:

“Looking for a product to protect your device from scratches, but not hide the beauty of it? Look no further. BodyGuardz scratch-proof transparent skins are designed to custom fit each particular device. These protectors are made from the same material that is used to protect the front of automobiles from stones and other abrasive elements. BodyGuardz is tough and durable, and you can be assured that your device is protected by BodyGuardz.”

So it seems the covers are designed for those who want “scratch” protection but still want to enjoy the beauty of the device item, or they want their device to have the smallest “footprint” in their pocket, purse or gear bag.

Successful second try at placing Bodyguard

The number of devices they have custom made covers for is quite staggering and includes phones, media players, gaming devices, MacBooks and even cameras. Their website is easy to navigate and you should have no problem locating the cover of your choice.

Application of the coverings is a bit challenging, but the company realized this and included two sets of coverings stating:

“We include 2 protectors because, for most people this is the first time they have ever installed anything like this. We recognize that you may want a second try. We also know it is always nice to have a spare, just in case you may need to send your device in for repairs and have to remove your first one. Or for the lucky ones, maybe you have 2 of the same device. Either way 2 is always better than 1.”

Fit of Bodyguard on top of Blackberry

Good idea!  I used both of mine with the second attempt coming out much better than my first attempt.  The kit comes with a spray bottle of a lubricant that you spray on the sticky side of the covers.  This allows you to handle and place the covers fairly easily.  The lubricant then dries and the Bodyguard is firmly in place on your device and does not move. Should you need to remove the cover (as I did) they remove easily.

Fit of Bodyguard on back of Blackberry. Air bubble noticable near bottom of device.

Viewing the screen is no problem. The covering is crystal clear and really hard to tell it is in place, except in a few areas where the fit (or likely placement) is not perfect.  Placing these reminded me of placing decals on the models I used to build as a kid.  It took me a few tries to get the decal where I wanted it, and I ruined a few of them along the way. When holding the device you can’t tell the covering is in place and it reduces device “slipperiness”.  It helped the device pass my console test…I place the phone on the console and see if  it stays in place while I drive.

Well, as I now had my tough Bodyguardz cover on my Blackberry I was unsure what to do next.  As I mentioned, I’m more concerned about breakage than scratches….so…I just put the Blackberry with Bodyguardz attached back in my old case. It fit perfectly!

Blackberry with Bodyguardz cover placed in my old case

A package of two of these costs $25.  If you strictly want scratch protection then I think it is worth it.  If you also want protection against breakage then I think there are better products out there!

Filed in categories: Blackberry related, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Blackberry protection, Bodyguardz, Generic PDA related

BodyGuardz Personal Electronics Protection Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 19, 2009 at 9:23 pm.

With the approach of mid August so approaches the Back To School Season.  You know what I mean; whole sections of WalMart, Target, and warehouse stores dedicated to pencils, pens, rulers, white glue and notebooks and folders featuring Hannah Montana and High School Musical all over them. It’s retail’s dedication to sending you or your children back to the Halls of Academe.  But today’s student requires much more than a backpack emblazoned with Zac Efron’s face.  Today’s student is wired to go.

Enter the Acer One Aspire Netbook.  Laptops are cool.  They’re portable, easy to use and handy for homework, surfing, listening to music and these days, catching up on the last episode of Survivor.  But they’re heavy.  My Dell Inspiron 1521 weighs 6 lbs just by itself.  Forget everything else I carry with it.  And I’m not a high school student, so I’m not carrying around textbooks, binders and other school stuff.  The Acer Aspire One, weighing in at a mere 2.2 lbs lightens the load.  At less than ten inches across, (lid closed), it fits anywhere a 15 inch laptop (lid closed) does not.   Whether you are in class as a student, a mom waiting in a doctor’s office, a writer hanging out at a coffee house, size DOES matter and the Acer Aspire One simply has full sized laptops beat pound for pound, inch for inch.  It’s portable, light, and boasts plenty of features to make it as sufficiently attractive as its larger brethren.

Regarding connectivity, you get three USB ports, an SD card reader which I really like, an Ethernet port and VGA-out as well as headphone and microphone ports.

Acer Aspire One Ports

It comes with a memory card port, Kensington lock port and boasts 160 GB internal hard drive.   No, there is no CD/DVD player and quite frankly, I’m fine with that.  I’m one of those writers I’m talking about.   When the inspiration to write hits me, I don’t need to pop in a CD of classical music; that’s what I have a Zune for.  Writers are tired of writing down ideas on napkins and airsickness bags simply because they didn’t want to lug around their six pound laptop to Starbucks.  And most high school students already have iPods or iPhones filled with their fave tunes.  Added to that, with sites like Zune and iTunes plus sites like Hulu, needing a CD/DVD player installed into one’s laptop is slowly becoming a moot point.  I honestly do not see this as a deal breaker for this computer.

The Acer Aspire One does not come without its own set of cons however.  The screen is viewable but small.  If you’re a high school student, you probably have eyesight that can handle it.  If you’re me at 43, you’re using your reading glasses.  (But I’m using those to read grocery store labels anyway.)   The keyboard is also on the small side but what I have a hard time with is the trackpad and the right and left click.  The right click is on the right side of the trackpad and vice versa and honestly, I’m so used to my larger right and left click keys located directly under my Dell’s trackpad, that I find it frustrating to use the Aspire One’s trackpad.

Aspire One track pad. Very small right and left click. Track pad severely limits scrolling movement.

To solve that issue, I purchased a small laser mouse and I’m fine with that.  The computer itself feels solidly made, however having said that, the hinges give me a cause for concern.  My Dell’s lid can be opened up and back flat.  The Aspire One’s lid can open to about 145 degrees before I’m scared of breaking the hinges.

The hinge can only allow the screen to be opened to about 145 degrees. Be careful.

Regardless of who carts it about, get a sleeve for it and/or carry it about in a padded bag.  I’m at an age where I am over my “designer handbag” fetish, so the Targus netbook messenger bag doubles as a purse and laptop bag.

I can carry my netbook, power cords, mouse, checkbook, pens, lipstick, keys and handcream. Large wallets won't work so I use a small coin purse with slots for ID. Works perfectly.

Let’s talk boot-up times.  If you have Acquired ADD, (you know… the condition one develops when they can’t go five seconds without fiddling with some electronic device) the bootup time is going to feel hellishly long.   If you’re booting up and getting your latte settled, it’s probably no great shakes.  Also, if you’re looking for a Blast You Across The Room processor, you’ve come to the wrong laptop. Again, think about what you want your laptop to do for you.  Battery life is do-able.  I get about 2 1/2 hours out of my Aspire One as long as I don’t use the brightest screen setting.  Again, for students, writers, et all, this is a fantastic, lightweight way to get the job done.   The 3G feature is fabulous.  I love it.  At the risk of sounding extremely spoiled however, I must say that, for me, it runs about dial up speed and I get impatient because I’m used to high speed.  That’s not 3G or Acer One’s fault.  I do not live in an area where I can get true 3G.  I live in a rural farming community and am lucky to get high speed internet at all. My Dell is on our home network and runs much faster.  In metropolitan areas, however, my Aspire One runs like a little jet.

This laptop has its uses and they’re all good.  For high techie types like my husband, this laptop’s limitations would sincerely frustrate him to insanity.  But this wasn’t made for high techie (Read; uber nerd) types.  This is a perfect laptop computer for your high school/college student.  It’s perfect for an aspiring writer or journalist.  It’s perfect for mom.  It’s perfect for smaller kids to learn on at home.   It’s portable.  It’s lightweight and you can get the internet on it wherever you can get a cell phone signal.  These are all good positives.

This laptop is also very moderately priced at $300.00 – $ 350.00.  I paid $80.00 for mine at a participating Radio Shack because I agreed to indentured servitude for two years which is otherwise known as a 3G (AT&T) service contract.  You can go either way but I knew that I wanted the ability to get internet anywhere so I was going to spend the money anyway.  The price you will ultimately pay for this laptop depends upon how well you do your shopping homework.  Wireless providers are offering competing deals for netbooks at fabulous prices but again, you are theirs for a period of two years, if you know going in that you want internet capability on your netbook. It’s worth thinking about in terms of size and portability if you want to get one of these netbooks for yourself or for your student.  And yes, ladies…it comes in pink.

Acer Aspire One in Pearl Pink with Zune. Zune sold separately.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Netbook

Acer Aspire One Netbook Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 16, 2009 at 2:00 pm.

The Archos 704 wifi Mobile DVR is packed with features that are sure to appeal to many different types of consumers.  And although it carries a premium price, Archos is hoping that you’ll see the value in the plethora of features and options that the 704 wifi offers.

If you want a device to carry all your audio, video, and image files, you have lots of choices.  You could buy something like an iPod Touch or a Zune, which are small enough to carry in your pocket.  Or you could buy a laptop or netbook to do the same thing, but lose the small form factor.  In the middle of those 2 types of devices are products such as the Archos 704 wifi, which is not small enough to fit in your pocket, but not so big that you can’t carry it in your hand.

The Archos 704 wifi ($549.99 street) does many things, some really good, some just ok.  But there is no denying that it is a compelling choice for those who are looking for a multimedia player.  With its brush-aluminum case and ample 7-inch touchscreen, I must admit that it feels impressing holding it in your hand.  This device does not feel cheap.  It has some weight to it, and it does not feel ‘plastic-y’ like other multimedia players that I have seen.  You can’t carry this in your pocket, but with the included padded carrying case it is very comfortable carrying it in your hand, and you can feel secure tossing it into a backpack or purse.

Additional included accessories:  Remote control, power supply, earbuds, 2 styli, 2 USB cables, and a plastic insert to be used with the (optional) DVR Station.

It comes with 80 GB of storage which is not outstanding, but certainly ample enough for many people.  It obviously holds much more content than my 30 GB iPod Classic.  Disappointingly it does not have a card slot for additional storage, but then again neither do most of the other devices that would be competitors to this device, so that is a non-factor in my opinion.  I believe that most manufacturers will start including card slots in their devices in the near future as that trend is picking up steam, and I am sure that Archos will follow in that regard in future iterations of this product line.

The touchscreen is responsive, although not as responsive as an iPod Touch screen.  The interface isn’t breaking any new ground here, but it is organized well and easy to use.  You can also customize the color and background of the main screen, which is a nice touch.  Because the device is a touchscreen, you get a virtual keyboard for entering information when required.  The virtual keyboard is actually big enough to use with any finger and I found myself typing much quicker than other touchscreen devices because the size of the keys is so big.  The package included 2 styli, but I have yet to pull them out to use them because the entire interface is so touch-friendly.

The battery is on the back of the device, and unlike some of the more popular devices like the iPod Touch, it is removable.  I have never understood why Apple, and others, make consumer devices that have non-removable batteries.  That is just dumb to me, and thankfully Archos has made it easy to pop in a replacement battery if you want.  Archos claims 5 hours of juice for video playback, 16 hours of power for music playback, and 5 hours of web surfing time.  My personal experience exceeded all of those times, which is refreshing.  Instead of bosting huge battery claims on the box and then coming up short, why not let the consumer experience longer hours than what is claimed, therefore being pleasantly surprised?  Under-promise, over-deliver.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The stereo speakers are on the front of the device, and sound very good for their size.  It has a kickstand on the back of the device so you can stand it up on a surface.  This is excellent because as I stated before, this device has some weight to it.  I would hate having to hold this thing for long periods of time just to watch a video.   It also has an infrared port on the front that enables you to use the included remote to control the device.  This is a great touch because you can set it across the desk or across the room and not have to get up.  I can’t help it… I have a lazy streak!

On the left side of the device you will find the power button, a headphone jack, the power jack, and a button to switch between ‘TV’ and ‘LCD’ (more on that later).  On the right side of the device is the battery release button.  There is nothing on the top except a small bump where the wifi antenna is located.  On the bottom you will find 2 types of USB 2.0 connections, which can be used to attach the 704 to your computer to drag and drop files.  Beside the USB ports are 2 ports that are used with the available DVR docking station (not reviewed here).   Using the USB connections I was able to connect the 704 to both Macs and Windows pcs easily, without having to install anything.  Transfer speeds were very good because it uses USB 2.0.

You can manually drag and drop files onto the 704, and create any type of folder structure that you want.  Or you can let Windows Media Player manage the files for you, creating playlists, etc (more on playlists later).  Included on the main menu is a file manager that lets you navigate around the 80 GB harddrive and even delete files if you want.  The speed of the processor was respectable but not blazing fast.  There were times that I had to wait a couple of seconds for a menu or screen to load while the thumbnails were generated.  But it seemed to move faster after the thumbnails were cached.  But it is important to remember that even though this device looks and feel similar, for example, to a mini tablet pc, it isn’t meant to be that.  So don’t expect this device to be as quick and snappy as a laptop or netbook.

The 704 has 4 main features that I’ll review first, then I’ll list the multitude of ‘extra’ features that come on this handy gadget.

Video

The main thing that people will do with the 704 is watch video, and you won’t be disappointed.  With 80 GB of storage you will be able to watch about a 100 hours of DVD-quality video.  Of course you’ll also load music and pictures on this device, so you won’t use the entire 80 GB for video, but you get the point… it can store dozens of Hollywood blockbuster movies for your trip to the beach.  The supported video formats are AVI (including MPEG-4, DivX, and XviD), ASF, and WMV.  If you want to play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or H.264 you’ll have to purhase the plugins for Archos for $20 each.  Video playback was very good and the screen is plenty bright and easily viewable from various viewing angles.  The only ding I can give the 704 in this area is the matte finish on the screen.  Matte finishes dull the image slightly in my opinion, but because this is a touch-screen the matte finish was chosen I assume to protect the screen.  So I guess it is a tradeoff.  The video controls allow you to pause, rewind, fastforward, etc, and the controls worked very good for me.

Audio

Audio formats that are supported are MP3, WAV, unprotected WMV, and the PlaysForSure WMV content from online services like Rhapsody.  As mentioned above, you can use Windows Media Player to manage the files on the 704, so you can create playlists on your computer before transferring the files to the 704.  But you can also create playlists directly on the device which is a nice touch.  You also have numerous sound customization features to adjust the sound, such as an equalizer and various presets to quickly adjust the sound.

Pictures

The 704 supports JPG, BMP, and PNG photos.  A nice touch on the main photo screen is the ability to press a picture thumbnail and see a little popup of the picture to see more detail.  When you select a picture to load on the screen, you can then use finger swipes on the screen to go from picture to picture, just like on an iPod Touch or iPhone.  You can also rotate the pictures on the screen if you want.  Other nice features are being able to have a slideshow of your pictures on the 704, complete with various graphical transitions (just like one of those digital picture frames).  You can even play your music while the picture slideshow is going on…. sweet!  Having a party at your house?  Maybe a family get-together for Thanksgiving or Christmas?  Set the 704 on the coffee table, play some music and show a picture slideshow.  Then Aunt Edna can see those funny vacation pictures of your trip to Yosemite!  I did this at a recent family get-together at my own house and the 704 provided endless entertainment as the pictures came across the screen and everyone ridiculed and made fun of each other.  Good wholesome family entertainment!

Web Surfing

The name of the product includes the word ‘wifi’, so obviously that is a pretty important feature.  The 704 has 802.11g built-in, so you can use the included Opera browser to surf the web using any wifi hotspot.  A useful feature of the browsing is one that Opera includes in all their mobile browsers… when you click in an input field on a webpage, the virtual keyboard automatically pops up.  You have tabs to surf multiple websites at the same time, and you save bookmarks just like you would expect from a browser.  Because the 704 has a touchscreen, you can navigate around webpages using finger swipes.  You can zoom in of course if you need a closer look at something, and you can change the render mode from ‘desktop’ (which is like a normal browser) or ‘smart’, which will attempt to adjust the page content to fit in one-column so you don’t have to scroll left and right.  I found that websites using the newer CSS-design structure were mangled badly by the ‘smart’ rendering mode.  So I found myself using the ‘desktop’ mode almost exclusively to avoid the hassle.  It should also be mentioned that just like other mobile browsers, it does not support flash on web pages.  So you won’t be watching YouTube videos on it.  Sorry.  But you can’t do that on any almost every other mobile device either.

The speed of the web surfing wasn’t that great.  If I had to use the 704 as my main device to surfing the web every day, I would be very disappointed.  I get the feeling that Archos added wifi as an extra just to make it more attractive to consumers.  Some of the extra features listed below will detail some additional reasons for adding wifi, but the bottom line on the wifi is that it is nice to have, but you won’t use it as your main browsing device.  I took the 704 on a recent trip and left my laptop at home.  I don’t like using webmail accounts anyway, so using web-based email on it was frustrating to me because I couldn’t type fast enough on the virtual keyboard.  But it was nice knowing that I could hop over to Google to search for something if I needed to.  And it connected to every wifi spot that I needed to.

Extra features

If those 4 features were the only features on the device, I am not sure I could recommend it highly enough over other devices.  But it is precisely these ‘extra’ features list below that cause me to be excited about the 704 wifi.  Here is a summary:

- If you pause a video you can shutdown the device and it will remember where you are, so when you turn the device back on you can ‘resume’ where you left off.
- Because it has built-in wifi, the 704 can be used a file server on your wifi network.  So you can not only transfer files over wifi from your pc to the 704 for extra storage, you can stream music and video from the 704 to your pc.  I connected it to my home network and within 3 or 4 minutes I was seeing it from all the computers on my network.
- You can purchase an adapter cable that connects to the bottom of the 704 that has a webcam attached to it which you can strap around your head.  So you could record video directly to the harddrive using the camera, which also has a built-in microphone.  Mountain biking anyone?
- You can use the USB ports on the bottom to attach other devices, like digital cameras and USB jumpdrives, so you can transfer files from those devices onto your 704.  Nice touch.
- If you purchase the optional DVR Station, your 704 can be hooked to your TV setup in your house and can record shows like a true DVR.  This is an amazing feature because not many other devices out there can do this.  Simply set it up next to your TV setup in your house, schedule your shows to record, and you’re done.  Then just life it out of the cradle and away you go.  You even have the ability to trim off the ends of your recordings to get rid of parts you don’t want, therefore saving harddrive space.  (NOTE: videos recorded directly on the 704 can only be viewed on the 704.  Sorry, you can’t share with others.)
- The optional DVR Station can also be used to allow the movies on your 704 to be played on a TV, by pressing the TV/LCD button on the left side of the device.
- The optional DVR Station can also be used to connect to your stereo system, record player, microphone, etc, and record audio using the AudioCorder program on the 704.
- Archos has a free program available on their website called ArchosLink, which can be used to download RSS feeds, podcasts, etc, and transferred to the 704.
- You can use the 704 remote control to control your TV by setting up the “TV Remote” settings inside the 704 settings to match your TV.
- You can load and/or download and read PDF documents from the web.  The PDF reader isn’t as user-friendly to navigate as say Adobe Acrobat Reader, but it works.  I loaded a PDF of the Archos 704 user manual on the device so I can always have it with me.

Bottom line

I guess the best thing that I can say about the Archos 704 wifi is that I ended up buying one for myself.  It is pricey, no doubt.  But considering all that it does, I think the cost is justified.  I had been in the market for a device like this for some time, so I evaluated many types of devices which included everything from the iPod Touch to various netbooks.  When I added up all the features of this device, nothing came close.

On my recent trip that I mentioned before, I loaded all my pictures, all my mp3 files, a dozen movies, 4 or 5 podcasts that I regularly subscribe to, and several TV shows that I recorded off cable.  After my trip I was convinced that this gadget is one that I can’t live without.  And the fact that it has wifi was simply icing on the cake for me.  And when you consider the numerous times on my trip that I heard someone say “that’s pretty neat, what is that thing?”, my inner-geek can’t help but smile!

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, Travel Gear

Tagged: DVR, Video, WiFi

Archos 704 WiFi Mobile DVR Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 8, 2009 at 9:42 am.

I’ve been using the HP Pavilion dv2 laptop off and on for about a month now. As it tends to go with most gadgets that pass through my hands, there are things that I really like about this device and then there are some things that cause me disappointment.

Before we get to my ultimate verdict, I still need to tell you about my experiences using a few of the features that I didn’t cover in the other two installments of this series.

The optional Blu-Ray drive

The dv2 doesn’t have a built in optical drive. That may or may not cause you to disregard this device as a potential purchase. It doesn’t bother me in the least. I so rarely have a need to load software from a CD or burn a CD, that I could care less with its absence.

If you don’t think you can live without an optical drive, you can opt for the external Lightscribe Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer USB drive for $129.99. This drive is supposed to be plug and play, but the first time I plugged it in and tried to load a Blu-Ray (and several other regular DVDs), it kept telling me to put a DVD in the drive. Shutting down and rebooting the laptop seemed to have fixed that issue.

Now, when I plug in the drive, open the tray and pop in a DVD, it will automatically launch the video player software and start the movie. It launches the HP Media Smart DVD player for Blu-Ray DVDs and the Windows Media player for regular DVDs. Playback with either type is smooth and enjoyable to watch.

The only problem with the external drive is the fact that it’s external and you have to carry it with you if you want to use it. If you plan to use this laptop for travel, watching movies on a flight will be a bit inconvenient as I don’t think the laptop AND the external drive will fit that well on a regular tray table.

Take it to the big screen with HDMI

The dv2 has an HDMI out connector (a cable is not included though) that you can use to display your computer screen on your TV.

When I first plugged the dv2 into my 65″ TV via HDMI, it defaulted the laptop’s resolution to a lower level. I then reset it to the max resolution of 1280 x 800, which you can see in the image above. Surfing on the big screen was great. I could easily read the text. Using the dv2 with the Blu-Ray player was a nice experience too.

System performance

The dv2 is small and portable, but it’s not a netbook and isn’t powered by the 1.60GHz Intel Atom processor like the current crop of netbooks. The dv2 has the AMD Turion Neo X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor L625 (1.6GHz, 1MB L2 Cache). Instead of running XP like most netbooks, the dv2 is running Vista. I think the AMD processor is a bit under powered for this operating system. It runs fine as long as you don’t load up multiple apps. Once you do, it starts feeling a bit laggy and the fan starts going full force. I’m very curious to see how well Windows 7 runs on it.

I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of performance graphs. My eyes always glaze over whenever I see them in other laptop reviews. If you want to see that kind of info, just google for hp dv2 review and I’m sure you’ll find all kinds of bar graphs

I’m not a gamer, so I can’t comment on the gaming power of this computer either. But for normal day to day surfing, media playing, image editing, writing, etc, it works very well.

Boot time for various modes…

Time to boot up from a powered off state = 44 seconds to login screen.

Time to boot up from hibernation (saves session and then powers off) = 45 seconds.

Time to boot up from sleep (keeps session in memory and puts computer in low power mode) = 7 seconds.

Battery Life

Battery life with the 6 cell hi-cap battery is supposed to be about 4 hr and 45 minutes. I did a couple of tests of my own and came up with the following real world results.

Test 1
Started at 3pm with a 100% full battery.
Display brightness set to full bright. The only application that is running is Firefox with 3 tabs. One is playing music from pandora.com at 75% volume level via WiFi (I played music for about 45 minutes and then paused it). In another tab I was typing this article while logged into the wordpress admin interface of The Gadgeteer. The last tab had GMail running. At some point during the battery test, I opened another tab and did some surfing and some hulu.com video viewing.
At 5:18pm I got the 25% battery warning symbol in the task tray.
At 5:42pm I got the 5% warning.
At 5:45pm, the screen blanked, but the computer continued to run for a minute or two and then turned off.
Result = 2hrs 45 mins total run time.

Test 2
Started at 6:05pm with a 100% full battery.
Blu-Ray movie playing via USB drive with audio set to 50%.
At 7:38pm playback stopped with a message.
Result = 1hr 33 minutes

Neither test lives up to the almost 4hr 45 minute run time stated on  HP’s site. I suppose I could squeeze out that much time if the screen brightness was turned way down and WiFi weren’t in use, but um… what’s the fun in that?

You can’t even watch one full length movie without running out of juice.

Random hardware thoughts

As far as size, weight, keyboard feel and display quality, it’s been a pleasure to use the dv2.  Things that haven’t been a pleasure are the constant fan noise and hot air blowing out of the left side of the keyboard area and the trackpad.

My biggest complaint by far has been the location of the exhaust fan. I don’t understand why they have it at the front left side of the keyboard. I think it would be much better if it were placed at the back of the laptop. Then the display would probably shield some of the noise.

I’m not a big fan of the trackpad either. I don’t like having the scroll feature located along the right edge of the pad. It doesn’t seem to work that well 100% of the time. The trackpad buttons are also pretty stiff to press. I ended up using a small wireless mouse instead.

Random Vista thoughts

I went into this series of articles with the plan to see if I could live with Vista as my primary operating system for the week. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I had feared it would be, but that said, it wasn’t as comfortable to use as OS X. That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that I’ve been using Macs for the past 3 years. Sometimes Vista just feels like a chore to use. However, these days so much of my work is done in a browser, that the operating system almost doesn’t matter to me anymore. I think the dv2 would be better off running an OS that requires a little less overhead though. I’ll be very interested in seeing how Windows 7 performs on it. Or maybe I can hackintosh it

When it’s all said and done

I prefer the keyboard and display size of the HP Pavilion dv2 to that of any 10″ sized netbook that I’ve used so far. The ability to see more info on the display is so much more comfortable to me. The added weight over a netbook hasn’t really been that much of an issue and I will more than likely use the dv2 as my travel computer from now on. Even though it the battery doesn’t last almost 5hrs as claimed, it lasts significantly longer than my MSI Wind and the same as the HP Mini 1000 netbook. Overall, I think HP has a nice little machine here and I like it a lot.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Blu-ray, HP dv2, Laptop, Vista

HP Pavilion dv2 Wrap Up originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 26, 2009 at 9:41 pm.

A who did what? Huh? Ok, so Tegra itself is not a gadget, and many of you have probably never heard of it. We talked about it a little bit in The Gadgeteer’s ZuneHD Rumor Mill Roundup  a while back. What Tegra is, is a platform, an entire system on a chip, geared for mobility. There are two Tegra variations at this point:

Tegra 600 Series
Tegra 600 Series products are true computers-on-a-chip in a package smaller than a US dime. With advanced multimedia functionality and low-power design, the Tegra 600 Series will power the next-generation of visual computing on Microsoft Windows CE-based mobile internet devices (MIDs).

Key features:

• Up to 1080p HD video playback
• Ultra-low-power GeForce GPU for intuitive and smooth 3D user interfaces
• Integrated media processor for over 100 hours audio and 10 hours HD video playback
• Image processor with advanced DSC and HD camcorder processing
• Connectivity to support Web 2.0 and social media applications
• Display support for up to 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD, SXGA CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV-Out

Tegra APX Series
Tegra APX applications processors bring the power of visual computing to the palm of your hand, powering next-generation Microsoft Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Android-based smartphones, portable navigation devices (PNDs), and portable media players (PMPs).

Key features:

• 720p HD video capture and playback
• The lowest power for demanding applications like 720p HD video
• 3D user interface that enhances browsing and content navigation
• Premium HD video playback with NVIDIA® PureVideo® technology
• Ability to access visually intensive online applications like mapping and gaming

So is it clicking? The 600 series will most likely power the new “Smartbook” category that is emerging, something larger than your smartphone, yet smaller than your netbook, with the functionality of a fairly well equipped laptop. The APX Series will power the next generation of smartphones and other PMP devices.

What’s it all mean? We’re here, at least very close to here. Everything is portable and integrated into one device with REAL functionality and performance that won’t frustrate you. Movies, music, games, Internet, it’s all in there. True convergence.

I can’t wait to see what pop’s out of the factories over the next year. Is this the platform for the elusive Zune Phone? Will Tegra power my next car stereo with mobile Internet, GPS, and media capabilities? Who knows, but keep your eyes peeled, things are about to get very, very gadgety.

Learn more about Tegra here.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, Miscellaneous, Windows Mobile related

Tagged: Linux Based PDA related, nvidia, tegra

NVIDIA Unleashes Tegra at E3 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 2, 2009 at 7:59 am.

I have now carried the HP Mini 1000xp with me daily for three months. This is a short article on the lessons I have learned about the Mini, netbooks, and me.

Lesson: The Mini is tough! I’ve dropped the poor thing several times, once badly enough for the screen cover to pop open and some panels in the back to pop off, and I have worn a spot on the space bar- other than that, it looks new with a little polishing. Remember- I carry it with me almost everywhere and it shows little sign of it.

Lesson: It is not perfect. The fairly low screen resolution tends to bug me a little when I am doing text stuff, like writing this article. It is not bad, just not as crisp as I would like. There is also an occasional lag in streaming videos from the Internet, etc. Just enough to encourage me to use a different computer when doing a lot of that. Also, the proprietary video connection, memory slot (they have a name for it, but who cares), and power jack size irritate me sometimes- especially the power jack thing- I cannot seem to find a 3rd party ‘universal’ cord that works for it.

Lesson: Netbooks are socially-friendly devices. Do you see my spouse in the following picture?

Family room with Fujitsu Lifebook, 12"

That is the top of her head, and about all I see of her when I am working with my ‘small’ 12″ Lifebook. Same shot, using the Mini:

Family room with the 10" Mini 100xp

Not only can you see a good chunk of her, you can see that she is on her own laptop (a gigantic 15″er- when it is on the table, she can’t see me either!) I have noticed this over and over- using the Mini, I am better connected with things and people around me. It does not block faces at meetings, it does not chew up table space in hot spot coffee shops, and I can even watch TV while on-line- truly this is a wondrous thing!

At the same time- I have noticed that other laptops create ‘don’t bug me’ zones around the user. There is a lot less interaction, the user’s attention is more focused on the screen, and people are conditioned to leave users alone. The Mini does not do this as much. Not only do people ask about it, but it does not seem to send out the ‘invisible force field wave’ as much as a ‘real’ laptop does.

I am sure that the eeePC and other netbooks do this as well- netbooks are just plain more socially-friendly machines! I think anyone that works with people should take this into account.

Lesson: Who needs a CD drive? Certainly not me. I bought one for the netbook- and have only used it a few times- most notably for installing Microsoft Office, and when I decided to restart everything. Other than that- downloads and flashdrives, baby! I have noticed that I rarely even use the drive on my Lifebook or desktop either.  (Attention inventors: how is this for an idea- a small DVD/CD player that also has a USB cord and can act as a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive? If I had one of these, I’d be a happy camper!)

Lesson: Open source is great! But… I tried, man, I really tried! Ubuntu, OpenOffice, FoxIt… but Ubuntu and Linux are not very Palm friendly, and I NEED my Palm. (Anyone have any good solutions for this, let me know- I would love to try them out!) OpenOffice is wonderful, but I need 100% Word compatibility for my huge library of articles and work activities. I just got tired of the small, on-going differences. Besides, I already own Office, may as well use it. On the other hand, I am loving Google’s Chrome on it- good use of screen space! (Gmail is also winning me over- already deleted the Mozilla programs on the Mini in favor of it.)

Lesson: The netbook has changed my life! Not radically, but it makes it so much easier to carry one smallish bag and be e-ready. I almost never use my MP3 player anymore because this thing is so convenient, and I can do music for jogging (if I ever start) on my Palm. I have not read any paper-based media in a while, and if I do, I often scan it into the Mini for later perusal. (Gotta love the new wireless printers/scanners, eh?) I tend to toss it in the car when we go

Would I buy one with my own money? Yes. Absolutely yes. As I said before, I was looking to replace my aging Lifebook when Julie surprised us (thanks again, Julie!!!) I was toying with the idea of a netbook, but now I clearly see that this is what I was looking for when I got my Lifebook. Something small but powerful enough for my non-gamer, non-graphics heavy needs.

What would I change?

• I would have gotten a better case from the get-go. My cheapy DVD travel case is already coming apart at the seams.
• I would have gotten a wifi sniffer and a USB light earlier- these have been wonderful!
• I’m popping in Windows 7 as soon as I can afford it… unless I can get Ubuntu to play with the Palm well- then I am riding Linux all the way!
• As far as which model- my biggest complaint with the Mini is the proprietary power plug- I cannot find a 3rd party plug, battery unit, etc. that fits it, which really bugs me.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables, Laptops and Gear

Tagged: HP, Mini 1000, Netbook

3 Months with the HP Mini 1000xp originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 25, 2009 at 1:00 am.

I was excited when Julie told her main article contributors that she was sending us HP Mini 1000 netbooks in December, but for an entirely different reason.

See, I’d already purchased an Acer Aspire One only a few months earlier, and I was quite interested in seeing how the HP Mini stood up against the stiff competition of the netbook I’d grown to love so much. And when I say “love”, I really mean “love”. My AAO has a 160GB hard drive, 1.5GB RAM (I went ahead and upgraded), a long-lasting six-cell battery, and all the standard fare for a netbook – 8.9″ 1024×600 display, 0.3MP webcam, USB 2.0 ports, integrated SD/MemoryStick reader, and the requisite 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor.

One has to wonder – with all the netbook offerings on the market, are they really that different? The technical specifications are very similar across the board. Every netbook available (in the United States, at least) packs the 1.6GHz Atom. Microsoft has put the kibosh on allowing more than 2GB RAM in any netbook running Windows XP, so you’re likely to get 512MB or 1GB preinstalled. Although more 10″ displays are finding their way onto the market, the resolution is the same on every brand, make, and model – 1024×600, and the graphics are always an Intel integrated mobile chipset.

What sets apart one netbook from the others are subjective things, like the aesthetics of the case, the quality of the webcam, or the feel of the keyboard and trackpad. In these ways, I love, love, love my One. It’s got a sparkly blue exterior, a good webcam (for what it is, anyway), and a fabulous keyboard. I have little bitty hands, and the One’s keyboard is amazing – I can touch-type on it just as quickly as a full-size keyboard, at my normal speed of roughly 120-130WPM.

In fact, I love this little $400 laptop so much that I frequently find myself using it in lieu of the $2,000 Dell XPS M1330 I received through my employer. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts all day, and it does everything I need from a laptop except handle gaming or particularly heavy Photoshop work.

So did the HP Mini win me over? Could it convince me to switch from my beloved Aspire One to a different kind of netbook?

The short answer is no. The long answer takes, well…a longer explanation.

The Specs

There are some differences between the two laptops, to be sure. As previously stated, the technical specs are similar – the real differences are in the details:

Acer Aspire One

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics
• 1GB RAM stock (512MB onboard + 512MB SO-DIMM)
• 160GB 5400RPM SATA 2.5″ hard drive
• 1024×600 glossy 8.9″ LCD
• 0.3MP (300,000 pixel) webcam
• Integrated Atheros 802.11g wireless
• 6-cell battery
• Three USB 2.0 ports
• Two media slots (SD storage expansion and SD/MemoryStick media reader)
• VGA video output

HP Mini 1000

• 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics
• 1GB RAM stock (1GB SO-DIMM)
• 60GB 4200RPM PATA 1.8″ hard drive
• 1024×600 glossy 10″ LCD
• 0.3 MP (300,000 pixel) webcam
• Integrated Atheros 802.11g wireless
• Integrated bluetooth 2.0 EDR+
• 3-cell battery
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• One media slot (SD/MemoryStick media reader)
• VGA video output

The Aspire One has the disadvantage of having 512MB soldered directly onto the motherboard, which means it can only be upgraded to 1.5GB total – adding a 2GB DIMM won’t do anything, since the chipset on the motherboard is only capable of supporting a 1GB DIMM.

The Mini 1000, on the other hand, has a much lower quality hard drive – not only is the speed slower (4200 RPM vs the One’s 5400RPM), but it’s PATA and 1.8″, whereas the One uses a standard laptop-size 2.5″ SATA drive, making future upgrades much easier.

Additionally, the Mini has bluetooth built in, while the One does not. There are plenty of sites online talking about modding the One to support bluetooth. In the meantime, I picked up a super compact USB bluetooth adapter for mine.

The One has one additional USB port and an option for a 6-cell battery, which I chose (I got my configuration on eBay, although at most retailers it is available with a 3-cell or a 6-cell). this adds to the bulk and the weight of the laptop, but it also means I can go for five or six hours without really needing to recharge it.

Both have the sub-par Atheros wireless card. Personally, I think this was a poor choice, although I’m guessing that card costs less per item than a Broadcom or Intel-based card. My One’s wireless card randomly quits working, forcing me to turn off the computer, unplug the charger, and remove the battery just to get wireless working again. My research online has indicated that this is a problem with the wireless card, so it’s an easy fix – since both machines use a standard MiniPCI-e form factor for the wireless, I can just replace the existing card with an Intel-based module purchased online.

On paper, the technical specs are fairly similar. The HP’s mediocre hard drive is offset by the larger display and inclusion of bluetooth, while the One’s extra bulk and smaller screen are offset by a bigger, better hard drive and much longer-lasting battery.

Exterior Impressions

This is one area where the HP can pull a little more weight. It has a larger keyboard, a far more attractive casing, and a larger trackpad with bigger buttons. While I like the blue casing on my Aspire One, the HP has a nice patterened lid, and the entire device looks sleeker and more symmetrical.

You can see a big difference comparing the HP to the Aspire One and the eeePC 900:

Here’s a close-up of the swirl design on the Mini 1000 (enhanced so you can see the pattern more clearly):

The larger 10″ LCD on the HP has good and bad – the glass on top of it covers the entire display area including the bezel, so getting cat hair and whatnot off it is a bit easier (dust and hair gets stuck in the corners of the LCDs on both my XPS and my Aspire One). The downside is that the display itself is noticeably lower quality than the hardware in the Aspire One. The backlight seems weaker, and the quality of the image is just subpar – blacks appear very washed out and almost gray. It’s harder to tell this when using the HP by itself, but when placed next to the Aspire One or my XPS, it definitely stands out.

There is a single switch to toggle bluetooth and wifi on the HP. I do prefer this hardware – the switch is sturdier and feels higher quality, and the HP uses sexy blue and white LEDs instead of the more boring, ho-hum orange and green ones on the Aspire One.

Usability

Between the two laptops, there were some surprising differences in general usability. I’m a very fast touch-typer and discovered that the extremely low-profile keys on the HP’s keyboard meant I frequently missed letters while typing. While I could probably fairly easily adapt to the shorter travel on the HP, I definitely prefer the Aspire One for typing.

My boyfriend, however, has big, manly hands, and he finds that the HP’s keyboard is much, much better – the keys are physically larger, and he found that adapting to it was much easier than using my Aspire One. He also prefers the larger display, even though the colors are more washed out.

I think the keyboard is probably the most important component of a netbook (along with the display), because you’re likely going to be typing on it plenty. You can see a comparison of the two keyboards here:

And here’s a handy visual comparison of the keyboards on the Mini 1000, the Aspire One, and the eeePC 900 (which has a much smaller keyboard) for your reference…

HP Mini 1000:

Acer Aspire One:

Asus eeePC 900:

The HP’s power switch is a little weird – it springs back, so you have to push it and hold it in place for a few seconds to get the machine to turn on. When the laptop is in standby, the power switch’s white LED slowly blinks. The Acer has a more standard power button above the keyboard, which illuminates with a green LED when on, and blinks orange when the machine is in hibernate or standby.

I didn’t find that I had problems using the Acer’s trackpad buttons. The HP’s trackpad buttons are a bit larger and easier to find with your thumb, and the HP includes a handy one-click button to disable the trackpad. All in all, I definitely prefered the HP’s trackpad over the one on my Aspire One. The One’s trackpad is also glossy, and the buttons are flush with the sides – too often I find myself trying to scroll on the right button instead of the right edge of the trackpad!

That being said, although both machines use the high quality Synaptics line for their trackpads, the Aspire One has the added bonus of supporting multitouch. Scrolling through long documents is accomplished through what Synaptics calls ChiralMotion – you start sliding down on the trackpad, and then move your finger in a circular motion to scroll. It’s much faster for long webpages and documents than the traditional scrolling method of coasting at the bottom right corner of the trackpad.

The Verdict

Both machines have certain advantages and disadvantages. If you want something that’s very sexy with an almost full size keyboard, I’d recommend the HP. However, the Aspire One is definitely has better technical specs for the price, and being the frugal-minded girl that I am, I’m glad I chose it over the HP when making my original purchase.

If you’re interested in buying a netbook, I highly recommend hitting your local shopping area to look at models on display. Your best bets for checking out the physical laptops are Best Buy, Sam’s Club, and Fry’s. The technical specifications are so similar across the entire netbook line that it comes down to subjective preferences on appearances, keyboard, port placement, and other fairly minor details. I love my Acer Aspire One, but my boyfriend Dan much prefers the HP Mini 1000 – it’s just a matter of what’s important to you.

At the end of the day, we both adore having netbooks. We tend to keep ours on our nightstands for late-night browsing and light gaming (these little guys are great for old-school DOS games!), and we’ll be taking them along when we go to Florida at the end of April. Even though Dan’s a heavy gamer, he’s already decided that his next laptop purchase will be a netbook – they’re just that great.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Acer, HP, Netbook

Netbook Face-Off: Acer Aspire One versus HP Mini 1000 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 8, 2009 at 5:06 am.

I’ve wanted something like a netbook for a long time — and I’ve gone through a lot of PDAs, phones, and other portable devices without quite finding it — so when Julie decided to do a team review of the HP Mini 1000 I was excited to give it a try.

Within the growing market for netbooks, we’re seeing a renewed interest in Linux for the consumer. One of the main reasons for this is cost: when the whole computer costs $300, the price of a Windows license can be a significant percentage of the total. Another reason for the interest in Linux is its customizability, which allows it to have a small footprint on a device which only has 4GB or 8GB of SSD storage.

I’m interested in it for a slightly different reason: besides maintaining the Gadgeteer site and the server it runs on, I do software development in Python and Ruby, and have used Unix-ish systems for my work since the 80s. While I’d prefer a Mac OS X netbook (to match my Mac desktops and laptop), I’m a bit too lazy to hackintosh my Mini, so I’m going to use Linux until Apple gets around to entering the netbook market.

Linux on the HP Mini

HP sells a version of the Mini with its own consumer-focused “Mobile Internet Experience” version of Linux. That’s not what I’m going to talk about here, even though an installation image for it is available for download from HP. My main reason for passing up HP’s official Linux is that the installer completely wipes out the Mini’s hard drive, and I would rather maintain the flexibility of being able to dual-boot into Windows.

Instead, I chose the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu has two things in particular that make it especially useful in this situation. First is the Wubi installer, which makes installing Ubuntu on a PC that is already running Windows quite pain-free by putting the entire Linux installation in a Windows folder, without making any other changes to the system. If you decide not to keep it, you can just delete its folder and it’s gone. Wubi also does its work without requiring a CD, which is quite useful if you don’t have an external CD drive to use with the Mini.

Wubi

The second reason I chose Ubuntu is the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is a set of customizations for Ubuntu to make it more netbook-ish. Although the netbook remix is available as an installation image, you can also add it to an existing Ubuntu installation, such as one created using Wubi. The technical details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this article, but you can find them here if you’re interested in trying it yourself.

So, here’s what it takes to install Linux on the Mini:

1. Download Wubi.
2. Download “http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download”>Ubuntu.
3. Make sure wubi.exe and
   ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso are in the same place (a
   USB stick, for example).
4. Run wubi.exe and wait for it to do its work.
5. Reboot, and choose your new Linux installation from the
   menu.

At this point, you’ll have a basic Ubuntu installation to play with. You don’t need to install any drivers or special packages to support the Mini; everything just works, including Bluetooth and WiFi. Ubuntu comes with just about everything you might need to get started, including an office suite, the Firefox web browser, music and video players, and so forth. It looks a little like this (note: this screenshot comes from a desktop computer, not the Mini):

Ubuntu Desktop

But, like the Windows XP the Mini came with, this version of Linux isn’t really optimized for a small screen. This is where the Netbook Remix comes in. After installing the packages (from the instructions here; please keep in mind I’m glossing over a rather technical task!) you must go into the Appearance preferences and turn off visual effects, as the Mini’s graphic processor isn’t quite powerful enough if you leave them on.

Ubuntu Appearance Preferences

With that, you get something more like this:

Ubuntu Netbook Remix Launcher

That’s the UNR launcher, and the reorganized status bar. The tabs down the left side are categories from Ubuntu’s system menus, and the ones down the right side are shortcuts to commonly used folders. In the upper right, you can see that Ubuntu recognizes the Mini’s wireless and Bluetooth interfaces with no additional drivers. The Ubuntu logo in the top left corner brings up this launcher at any time.

Firefox on Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Here’s Firefox. The Netbook Remix desktop automatically maximizes applications to use the whole screen, with no borders or title bars. When you only have 1024×600 pixels to use, this is usually the correct decision. I’ve got a couple of other applications running in the background; their icons appear at the top left, and whatever space is left in the task bar is used for the window title.

Vertical space is at a premium on the Mini (as on all netbook displays) so I’ve customized Firefox a bit, by turning off the bookmark bar, and using a nice extension called Personal Menu to get rid of the menu bar as well. Bookmarks, history, and the main menu now appear as icons to the right of the search box. Windows users, you can do this too, if you want to squeeze every last pixel out of your Mini’s display.

OpenOffice Writer on Ubuntu Netbook Remix

This is OpenOffice. Like Word, it’s definitely a candidate for having its toolbars turned off when you don’t need them. If there is one thing I hope the rise of netbooks does, it’s to instill in application developers a new appreciation for screen real estate.

Dialog Too Big For Display

Use a netbook long enough and you’ll come across something like this. Unfortunately, Linux isn’t immune to it, any more than Windows is. Evolution is Linux’s answer to Outlook, and it shows: where’s the bottom of that dialog? Who knows.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix Package Manager

One of the main differences between Linux and Windows is that with Linux, most of the applications you can run on it are available directly through a built-in package manager. There is too much here to describe, from the mundane to the extremely geeky.

Conclusions and Opinions

Is Linux on the HP Mini right for anyone other than me? Linux in general seems like a good fit for netbooks — it does everything a typical netbook user will probably need, it’s usually pretty efficient, and it can be customized by vendors in ways that Windows can’t be. (Look at HP’s “Mobile Internet Experience”, for example. Without being told that it’s Linux, you’d never know it.) As a long-time Unix developer, I’m perfectly at home with a terminal and a text editor alongside Firefox and Thunderbird, so it suits me just fine.

I should note that though installing Ubuntu with Wubi is very easy, installing the Netbook Remix packages on top of it might be a bit too daunting for new Linux users. On the other hand, installing the entire Netbook Remix at once is possible, but is also somewhat technical, and it requires partitioning the drive like a more traditional Linux installation. If you try Linux on the Mini, feel free to let us know how you fare in the comments; I’ll try to help as much as I can.

That said, the HP Mini is an excellent netbook for Linux, as far as I’m concerned. With Ubuntu, everything works out of the box, and the keyboard is more than adequate for a little bit of coding — it even has CTRL and ALT keys on the right side. The hard drive is a bit disappointing, as it is slow and not easily replaced due to its size, but 60GB is plenty for me as much of my work is on remote servers anyway. Although I might need a netbook with more storage in the future, for now I like the way the Mini feels.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: HP, Linux, mini, Netbook

HP Mini 1000 Netbook – Running Linux originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 17, 2009 at 6:00 am.

For my portion of the HP Mini 1000 Team review, I volunteered to ‘hackintosh’ the netbook. Hackintoshing is where you get a windows/linux computer running a hacked version of the Mac OS. So, in this review I will be discussing the level of difficulty of acquiring and installing the hacked OSX, usability on the Mini 1000, and comparative look at it against real Macbooks.

To begin, I was a complete newbie to downloading this size of file, reconstructing it into a single, usable file, installing, tweaking, using terminal, etc….. So, the learning curve was pretty steep. But with the assistance of Julie, Rob, and several other helpful souls out on the Net, I was able to stumble my way through the process.

When I was researching how to make this transformation happen, all the threads would discuss the various different ‘builds’ of the hacked OSX and (for the most part) only elude to where to acquire it/them – saying that it was available at ‘the usual places’. With her MSI Wind experience, Julie pointed me in the right direction to download the 36 – 100mb pieces that the OS was chopped into. Downloading these took a long time and there were errors in several of the downloaded files. So, during this process, I had to determine which of the 36 were corrupt and replace them. Once that was done, I had to figure out how to put them together.

There are many programs out there that can do this task. I played with three, UNrarX, Split & Concat, and Stuffit Deluxe. After trying this and that with each of these applications (failing many times), I finally got Stuffit Deluxe to successfully complete the operation. What came out the other end, was a 4.4gb .iso file ready to be restored or burned to a media that the Mini can boot from.

This is the step in the process that really slowed me down. I read in the threads that many people were installing the hacked OSX via ‘the thumb drive method’. It seemed like the easiest/simplest method to me….but let me tell you, it was far from that. I tried for DAYS to get the Mini to boot from the thumb drive. I read so many threads I lost count. I tweaked the thumb drive 50 times hoping that some little change would get the process moving forward. I was just about to give up, when I decided to try burning the iso file to a DVD and loading it onto the Mini via an external DVD drive.

Low and behold it worked like a champ. The Mini booted into the OSX installer and off I went . I cannot tell you how happy I was that it finally was working. So, during the install process, you have to choose the specific drivers necessary to get your former Windows laptop/netbook operational. But with all the threads I had read, I knew just which ones needed to be selected during the install. And about half an hour later, the Mini 1000 was transformed into a Macbook Mini. But that was not the end of the tweaking to get my Macbook Mini fully operational and for the most part, stable.

The next step was to load the video kext (Mac version of a driver) that changed the resolution from 800×600 to 1024×600. After that, I had to use Terminal (for the first time) to get the WiFi working, using scripts provided out on the net. The final step was to load approximately ten kext files (once again downloaded from the net) to get everything working correctly and the system stable. I need to mention, that after each step you had to ‘repair the permission files’ using Disk Utility and reboot the system. Once I figured out how to start the boot process, the installation took less about an hour.

Loading my software onto the Macbook Mini went well enough, Office, Lotus Notus, FireFox, and Stuffit Deluxe installed just fine. Adobe CS3 was not able to load, it had nothing to do with the hackintosh but the screen resolution of the Mini 1000. The screen resolution was too small for CS3 to install. The system is pretty stable, only crashing once due to a thumb drive hanging during an operation. Other than that, it runs perfectly fine, but it does hang/crash during shutdown about every tenth time. (UPDATE: I found a workaround for installing CS3 on the threads. It involved loading SwitchResX and forcing the Mini to the minimum resolution CS3 can load with (1024×768). CS3 loaded just fine, after that all you have to do is put the resolution back to 1024×600).

In the netbook hackintoshing world, the HP Mini 1000 is one of the more difficult to transform into a Mini Mac. Boing Boing has created a good chart detailing what has been accomplished on each of the netbooks. The short of it is that the MSI Wind and Dell Mini 9 are both completely transformable where as the Mini 1000 still needs the audio and ethernet drivers to be developed (although I believe the ethernet issue has been overcome). Neither issue was a deal killer for me. I would much prefer the Mini 1000 (or Mini-Note) as a piece of hardware versus any of the other netbooks.

As for speed and performance, the Macbook Mini is very similar to the Macbook Air (I upgraded the ram in my Mini to 2gb the day I opened the box). It is zippy enough to do email, IM’ing, dancing the Net, writing a review, etc (although, it is really slow to startup). And like the Air, the Mini does not have the computing horse-power to do video editing or enough screen real estate to do much photo work (although I do the tweaking for my review photos on my Air, but that is about it). I can definitely see why kids, college students, and travelers find netbooks a compact useful tool.

As a piece of hardware, I really like the quality and performance of the Mini 1000. That said, its compact size is a bit too cramped and screen too little for me (although I am going to write my next couple of reviews on it). However, I did enjoy the challenge of hackintoshing the Mini and creating my very own Macbook Mini (something Apple should do….). I learned a great deal during this effort that I can take away with me to potentially use on other geeky projects For my next Mini project, I hope to install a larger (& faster) hard drive in the Mini and make it dual bootable into the Mac OSX and Windows 7 beta.

Filed in categories: Do-It-Yourself, Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: OS X

HP Mini 1000 Team Review (Hackintoshing) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 20, 2009 at 5:03 pm.

I have to be honest, when Julie communicated to her Gadgeteer Geek Gang that we would all be getting a new HP Mini 1000 XP Series Netbook, I was overcome with a feeling much like when I was a kid at Christmas.  You know, that happy/joyous feeling of anticipation that fills the youthful spirit until the climax of ripping through the paper on the very last gift. Fortunately, I have been using my HP Mini for a few weeks now and that warm and fuzzy feeling has yet to wear off.  I love it, almost completely.

I know that is too vague, so specifically:

I love the small, sleek and ultra-lightweight design.  At just under an inch thick and slightly more than two pounds, it is comparable in size to a standard hardcover book.  Very easy to carry in a bag, a medium/large purse or comfortably in your hand.  The 10.3 x 6.5 x 0.9 plastic shell, which differs from the aluminum case used in the previous model, seems fairly sturdy, passing my creak/pop test.  I am sure the switch from aluminum to plastic was done to reduce manufacturing cost and weight.

I love the stylish design.  The onyx-toned “Swirl” Imprint design is subtle but provides a certain alluring characteristic to the exterior.  The groovy pattern bestows depth to what would be a rather plain glossy exterior.  If you really want your Mini to make a less subtle  statement, check out the Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition.

I love that the keyboard is nearly full-sized.  One of my primary concerns when I considered the size of the device was would I be able to easily type on the keyboard.  Well yes, I can easily utilize the Mini’s keyboard without hunting and pecking.  HP boasts the keyboard is “92% of the standard size”.  Nice to see the engineers did not compromise usability for the sake of size.  I think the keyboard, with its over-sized square keys stretching from edge-to-edge,  is the biggest selling point for the unit.

I love that the screen is appropriately size and bright.  My second biggest concern was the screen.  Would it be big enough for me to use without straining my eyes?  Would it be bright enough for me to see?  The upgraded 10.2″ diagonal screen is nicely sized proportionally with the overall unit and the HP LED Brightview Infinity Display (1024 x 600) puts out plenty of light.  I used the device for hours and never noticed any strain on my eyes.

I love the fact that HP did not fill the netbook with a lot of unnecessary pre-loaded software.  Netbooks were designed to be highly mobile and offer enough computing power to complete the elementary tasks, such as surfing the Web, working on documents and some fundamental multimedia playback.  HP ensures that the basic are covered with Microsoft Works, Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player loaded on Windows XP Home edition.  I must admit that I am not a big Works fan but you can easily replace that with the basic Office tool set.

I love the battery life.  I was expecting to get 2 hours max  out of the 3 Cell Lithium Polymer Battery.  I was pleasantly surprised that from 5 duration tests, I average 2 hours and 44 minutes of life before the battery finally gave out.

I love the sound quality.  Again, I think more times then not we often expect small speakers system to lack anything near a decent sound.  Fortunately I found the HP Mini 1000 did not comply with that stereotype.  The unit delivers above average sound quality without experiencing any noticeable distortion.  The engineers ingeniously placed the speaker as the inside hinge, saving space and providing a perfect position for the tunes to flow.

I love the built-in SD card reader.  Great way to easily add some memory to your device.  For less than $30, you can easily add 4GB of storage with a SD card.  I filled a card with my favorite MP3′s and I had my music in my Mini without eating up hard drive space.

Just like any real relationship, we have our dislikes too:

I hate the idea behind the Mini Mobile Drive.  The Mobile Drive is HP’s proprietary hardware, like a small jump drive, that fits into the recessed USB port on the unit’s right side.  I love the concept of additional memory options but to make it a proprietary piece that you have to buy as an extra leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  At this time, the Mini Mobile Drives are not available so I am unsure of the cost.

I hate the glare from the overly glossy LCD screen.  I tried to use the unit outside once and the glare made it impossible to see anything.  This is opposite edge of the nice and crisp picture that I loved above.  If the manufacturer would have included a anti-glare screen, I assume the brightness would have been compromised.

I hate the audio out (headphone) and audio in (microphone) share a single audio jack.  I experienced no issue with the shared audio connector but I just think that it might have made more sense to leave the proprietary slot on the drawing board and give each audio option there own jack.

I hate the limited angle of the screen.  Occasionally I prefer to work while standing standing up at our kitchen island.  To do this comfortably, I normally will extend the screen open to an extreme angle, almost parallel to the counter top.  Unfortunately, the Mini will not permit me to open it very far.

I hate the Synaptics Touchpad.  I found using the touchpad with the buttons flanking each side difficult to maneuver for navigation.  Maybe this is more from my experience with my Dell’s mouse ball set in the keyboard but it definitely took me some time to become proficient.  The technique that I most often use is putting my thumbs on the bottom of the device and use my pointer fingers to direct the movement of the mouse.

I hate the built-in WebCam.  The concept of including peripherals that are built into the frame of the hardware is great.  Unfortunately, the picture quality captured from the camera is fair, at best.  Regardless of the lighting, I was unable to improve the quality.

Now that you understand the spectrum of emotions that I have felt using my HP Mini 1000, I hope that you can understand its impact on my domicile.  Normally, my family is uninterested in the gadgets that I review.  They are usually interested for the first 5-15 minutes of me opening the box, then their interests wanes like ice cream on a August day in Indiana.  Unfortunately this was not the case with the netbook.

My wife was instantly drawn in by the look and feel of the HP Mini.  The sleek, stylish and lightweight device instantly grabbed her attention and once I completed the initial set-up, including the establishing the wireless connection, I started to notice the Mini and my wife became very close friends.

It started with a simple “let me see that for a second”, and she would take it and check her Facebook account and be done with it in 15 minutes.  No harm, no foul.  Then slowly I started to witness a shift, she would take the Mini with her upstairs and sit in bed and surf the net.  After the girls went to bed, she would wrap herself in the warmth of a blanket with the Mini nestled in her lap.

Now it is to the point where I feel like I have been knocked down the ladder of love.  Our girls still command the most attention from her but I have been replaced by the Mini.  It is like the device is connected to her hip by some type of electrical umbilical cord.  I have to ask permission to use it so that I can get data to write an educated review and even then she acts as if it in a inconvenience.

I almost anticipated my wife’s obsession but my two little girls forced me to do a “say what” double-take.  They are less than six years old and the HP Mini 1000′s small size drew them to it like moths to a light.  They thought it was one of their toy laptop computers and to be honest it is actually smaller then their play laptops.  They both asked a few times if they “could play with daddy’s new toy”.

Interestingly side note, I was discussing this phenomenon with my mother-in-law, who happens to work for an Indiana school corporation, and she was telling me that they recently purchased HP Minis for their second grade student population.  When I was seven years old and in second grade I know that me and my peers did not have access to anything close to a computer or anything nearly as cool as these little babies.

In conclusion, just like any natural relationship my HP Mini 1000 and I have our ups and downs but in the end I definitely felt the love.  The small, stylish design and the nicely sized keyboard are the two biggest selling points of the netbook, while the glare from the super glossy screen and the touchpad are the major deterring factors.

Overall, I would definitely purchase a HP Mini 1000 if you are looking for a nice, small netbook that offers great options for the highly mobile user.  Even if mobile is define as moving in between rooms in your house.  My only reservation is that you might want to consider buying more than one or you will find yourself in a situation similar to mine where you have to fight your love ones for the opportunity to utilize this great little device.  Gotta go, my wife needs to spend some quality time with the Mini that I am using to write this review.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: HP, Netbook

HP Mini 1000 Netbook – Love and Hate, Plus Its Affect On My Domestic Life originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 18, 2009 at 1:00 am.

Can a laptop create a fashion statement? It can when a famous New York designer like Vivienne Tam puts her artistic stamp on it. Case in point – The HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Designer Edition Netbook. It has the same bits and pieces inside that the regular Black swirly Mini has in it, but this one is like a little Red sports car for geek girls. I’ve never considered myself fashion conscience, but I can’t help but like this netbook. I mean it’s Red, it’s shiny and it has flowers on it! What’s not to love?

Specifications

Operating system – Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
Processor – Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz)
Memory – 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
Hard drive - 60GB 4200RPM PATA Hard Drive
Display – 10.1″ diagonal SD LED BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1024 x 576)
Graphics card – Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Personalization – HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Vivienne Tam)
Keyboard – HP Matching Keyboard
Networking – Wireless-G Card with Bluetooth
Primary battery – 3 Cell Lithium Polymer Battery
Dimensions – 10.3 in (L) x 6.56 in (W) x 0.99 in (H)
Weight – 2.45 lbs

Package Contents

HP mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition
Red silky sleeve
AC Adapter
CD with Windows XP and drivers
Polishing cloth

The deep Red shiny fingerprint attracting case has a vibrant design of peony blooms that signify good fortune and prosperity. The flowers are eight shades of Pink, Mauve, Lavender and Yellow.

The flower design is only printed on the top cover, but the rest of the mini is an energizing Red.

The Left side…

The Right side…

There’s even a place to attach a hand strap. Ummm, would you carry around a netbook like a camera or cellphone, dangling from your hand? Yeah, me neither. I guess you could use it to attach a sparkly little babble though

Open the cover and wow, there’s a matching Red keyboard and trackpad!

The keys are slick and shiny just like the rest of this netbook. I prefer the matte finish of the regular mini, but the Red is pretty nice looking. I do wish that the keys were backlit though.

Click the thumbnail to view full-size image

The keyboard on this netbook is fantastic. It has a great layout and is very comfortable to type on. I love it.

I’m already a fan of the HP mini 1000, so I don’t have any additional complaints against the Vivienne Tam edition. Of course I know that people will complain about the premium that you pay for a designer edition laptop like this one. It’s like designer clothes, you pay for the label. The same thing applies here. If you configure the regular Black mini 1000 the same way that you do the Vivienne Tam edition, the price difference is $245. For that price difference, you’re getting a Red case, Red keyboard and a Red silky slip cover. Is it worth it? That all depends… are you willing to spend an extra $245 to get it? Then yeah, it’s totally worth it to you So tell me, are you a gadgeteer girl that would pay extra for a laptop like this one?

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Fashion, HPVT, Netbook

HP Mini 1000 Netbook – Vivienne Tam Designer Edition originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 13, 2009 at 5:00 am.

Field Report: Ocho Rios, Jamaca. January 27, 2009. This is Bond, James Bond, reporting. Q has issued all field agents a new plaything and HQ is insisting on reports on the device. I am taking time during a recuperative stay on the warm white sands to accommodate them. Excuse me for a moment, however. The hostess is bringing me my vodka martini and obviously needs me to make a charming and witty double entendre. Let’s see… I open www.doubleentendre.net, click on both ‘witty’ and ‘charming’, hit search… 

Oh, sorry! Whenever I play on this thing I get into fantasies of some sort of stealth ninja secret agent lifestyle. If you substitute my name for Bond’s, Julie’s for Q, and bitterly cold snow for the warm white sands, the first couple sentences are pretty accurate.

Ever since Julie told us about this project, I have been drooling…, er I mean ‘contemplating’ what I can do with it. The original plan was to use it in classes, etc. but the reality is that this thing is much more versatile than I imagined it would be. Instead of my original plan, I am now going to enter my  Fujitsu T4020 Lifebook, the new HP Mini 1000 XP, and even my Palm (Sprint) Centro into a three-way deathmatch!

• In this corner is the 2004 Fujitsu T4030 Lifebook. At 11.5” x 9.3” x 1.4” with a 12.1” (diagonal) screen, this aging contender weighs in at 4.3lbs naked. It has 2Gb max RAM, a 60Gb hard drive, built-in WiFi and a Bluetooth PCMCIA card, and a SD/MC reader.
• Over here we have the 2008 Palm Centro. Measuring 4.22” x 2.25” x .75” with a 2.25” (diagonal) screen, it weighs a mere quarter pound. It has 68Mb of memory, plus whatever size Mini-SD card you add. It has built-in Bluetooth and connects to the Internet via the integrated cellphone. A small camera rounds off its offerings.
• Finally, the challenger- the 2009 HP Mini 1000XP. 10.5” x 6.5” x 1” with a 10.1” screen (diagonal). It weighs in at only 2.2lbs stripped down and packs 1Gb RAM, 60Gb hard drive, integrated WiFi and Bluetooth (optional but included in mine), a SD card reader, and a webcam.

Centro, Mini, and Lifebook- top to bottom

Centro, Mini, and Lifebook, all showing the-gadgeteer.com

The specs may make the Lifebook and Mini seem close, especially when one recalls that the Mini does not have a floppy or optical drive, but the reality is that the fairly small differences are critical. The Lifebook is just big enough it takes two hands to hold and work safely- it feels unsteady holding it in one arm while typing on it. The Mini can easily be held in one hand and typed on with the other.

Both units are similar in speed and start-up (take the time to learn the standby and hibernation modes, however). I do notice that when I play solitaire on the Mini (which I swear I only do to test the system, which I obviously have to do several times a day), it deals the cards, then makes the sound effect. I have not noticed a lag in other programs. The Mini’s keyboard is great- almost the size of the Lifebook. The flat keys allow for packing them in tighter- but it does allow for a few more mis-strikes on neighbors. I spend a little more time correcting myself on the Mini, but since I am not a great typist, it is not a big deal for me.

Comparing the Mini to the Centro- the Centro is the obvious winner in sheer size and weight, and it can indeed do much of what the Mini can, but the Centro quickly shows its limitations side by side. The Centro cannot multi-task, the screen makes almost all tasks more difficult (things are ether small or need a lot of scrolling), the Internet connection is slow, and, like many Palms, the email function is not very good. The Centro’s small keyboard is a sort of a moot point- it is fine for short messages but was never intended for longer use, and keyboards are available if you want them.

So, what does one do with this marvel? How about…

WORLD’S GREATEST COOKBOOK.I was making Breakfast Cookies the other day and just propped the Mini on the counter to follow along. I noticed my bananas were not really very ripe, and I wanted to toast the coconut and nuts. A quick surf told me how to do all of this. Certainly the Lifebook and Centro can do this- but I never used them for it. The Lifebook, small as it is, is too bulky and the aging batteries do not last too long anymore. The Centro’s small screen makes it hard to read especially when your hands are too dirty to scroll.

Mini 1000XP in the kitchen

With the Mini, I honestly do not need the cookbooks I have collected, and I can really put my favorite recipes in it and use them for real. When I put them in other computers, I would always need to print them out for actual use.

It can do the same thing for other books- it is also the world’s greatest and most up-to-date world almanac, dictionary, user’s manual (you did know that you can find the manual to almost every remote control, small or major appliance, tech toy, etc. on-line, right?) trivia book, encyclopedia, etc., etc., etc. (We’ll talk about it as a book reader later.)

FIELD ACTIVITY LOGGER. I am trapped by two realities at work- I need access to my computer all of the time, but spend most of my day away from it. Our network is pretty closed- no USB, CD, card readers, etc. so the only way to get files from it to another computer is to email them. What I usually do is to carry a clipboard with print outs of inventory, phone lists, activity log, etc. and type it all in when I am in the office. One reason I got the Lifebook was to be my field unit- but it is just a little too big and clunky, especially when I am also carrying tools and parts. The Centro does not show the charts and tables I need well, and as mentioned, does not do the email well.

The Mini is almost perfect. I can email the needed files back and forth, and sync them any time I am near a WiFi (more on that later also.) Now, I can check my work email in my office, type my activities into the Mini as I read them, and go about my day- updating as I do things, referencing what I need immediately, and syncing when I can. The 3 hour battery life may be a bit lightweight for students, but it is fine for people like me that use it in bursts between charges.  Other benefits include that I am on the office computer less, and can do a lot of database stuff after hours!

Besides field tech stuff, I can see this being used in the field by lots of people for lots of activities- birdwatcher life lists, geocaching, sports, etc. It is  not a ‘hardened’ unit, but it would fit neatly in a drybag with a little padding.

PARKING LOT SURFER. WiFi hotspots are popping up all over- like the Burger King drive-thru lane a block from work. With the Lifebook, I never carried it ‘just because’, and the Centro does not need WiFi- but the Mini is perfect for popping open quickly when in line (inside or in the drive-thru) and doing a quick surf- even if it is just downloading email to read offline later.

Sort of a spin-off of this is that I find myself not interrupting what I am working on as much since I can just take it with me. I found myself using it in some inappropriate locations- like at the meal my beloved wife sweated over. Oops! The Palm always allowed me to do this- but I can do so much more, and more easily, on the Mini!

GAMEWATCHiKINDLEPODMANBOY. While the screen is not quite as large as my Lifebook, and it lacks a DVD player, it nonetheless makes a great game machine (remembering that to me, games are fairly simple things like cards, not graphic-heavy, processor- intensive ‘video’ games), music player, movie player, etc. The internal speakers are actually better by far than those in the Lifebook, and it is so easy to hold this while you look at the screen that it makes a good book reader (try something like eReader.com’s “eReader for Windows” for example). I was stuck by myself in a hospital waiting room for four hours while a family member had a routine procedure. I stayed plenty entertained with just the Mini (and talking to people staring at it!)

The unit is tough enough that I would be comfortable letting some kids use it for entertainment as well. Load some movies, games, and music onto a flash drive or portable hard drive and go on that long road trip! Someone in the peanut gallery just shouted “Use an iPod!” I have a video iPod, but the Mini is quickly replacing that toy as well. (I am thinking about reconfiguring it to be the main family stereo unit.)

Can you find the Lifebook, Mini, and Centro in the book case?

MEETING WARRIOR. The person that ‘wins’ in most meetings is the person who has information at their fingertips, and can capture and act on action items the best. While laptops may be standard devices in many businesses, no one here uses them for that. Before the Mini, I was using a notepad and the Centro to limp along. Now, with the Mini, I can rule meetings… of course, I get asked to take the minutes a lot, but that’s OK too. Where a laptop often seems bulky and pretentious, the Mini is more like a ‘padfolio’ and more respectful of other people’s space.

One other interesting thing about the Mini is that it does not block sight-lines! Most laptops interfere with seeing other people in the room, watching TV, etc. while working- but the small Mini sits well below eye level, even on a low couch. This is a much more social-friendly machine than most computers.

STUDENT BUDDY/TEACHER’S AIDE. By this stage, the fact that this thing can help students and teachers alike is almost a moot point. If the battery life was better I would suggest that it be standard issue for all students- take notes, do interactive research, check your mail, and still have room on that small desk for your massive bookbag!

I teach a lot of different classes as a part-time job and each one has a thick binder of stuff I need to have with me. I have been working on digitizing the stuff to carry electronically- until my scanner died. The plan was going to be to make up a PowerPoint version of each class with links to supplemental materials, and park all of the data on an SD card or two. The classes I have tried this with so far have worked fine. The Lifebook did have one major advantage for this, however- it could act as an emergency DVD player, which comes in handy sometimes. I can solve this detail with a peripheral we will discuss later. Bottom line- the Mini is just so easy to carry!

…………………………………

Gee, even with all of that, there are still features we have not discussed, like the optional built-in web cam. I have not used the webcam much. Mine seems to have a glitch where every time I use it, a badly groomed Sasquatch appears on the screen. When my wife or kids use it, it shows them just fine. I assume there is just a setting I have overlooked. There is a also a port for a special HP Mobile Mini USB drive- it is basically an ‘internally docked’ USB flash drive from what I can tell, and regular flash drives are cheaper.

Speaking of peripherals… here are some I have tried so far…

MEMORY

• Flash Drive. A 2Gb flashdrive lets me store and shuttle info back and forth, and serves as a backup for the documents  I want to protect the most. edcforum.com has info on using the flashdrive as a survival tool with vital documents, small programs, etc. you can use on almost any computer.
• Secure Digital Cards. I have been using these as semi-permanent storage tools- one is dedicated to photos waiting to be CD’ed or printed, one has my all-time favorite music, etc. The smaller cards are dirt cheap, and you can store a lot of them in an Altoids tin.
• Portable Hard Drive. I got a super-portable Apricorn Aegis 160Gb USB unit that is a bit bigger than a deck of cards and has an integrated USB cord, and is powered off a USB 2 port- although it comes with other power options. I have my Mini and iPod backed up on it, and loaded in a few DVDs and stuff from the desktop. I thought I would use this all of the time, and so far have only plugged it in a few times. (NewEgg.com, $80)

A few peripherals...

POWER

• iGo Power Cord with replaceable tips, and auto cord. This has been a great investment. When power cords to any of our laptops (there are four in the house) or other electronics go bad, all I need is the right tip to keep on going- and tips are only about $10. The iGo has also allowed us to carry laptops in the car and keep them fully charged. For me, the iGo is usually at work and tossed in the gear bag when I plan on traveling. (FYI- the Mini is not listed yet. If they respond to my email, I will pass on the key info.)
• StayOnline.com 3-Prong to C5 Connector (#2840, $5.00). This adaptor basically lets you plug your brick straight into a jack without the bulky high-voltage power cord. Have not ordered mine yet, but it looks like it will be a well-invested $5.00. I’m getting the 2-Prong to C7 Connector (#5028, $5.00) version as well for my wife’s laptop.
• Power Brick Hack. I have a plan to attach a flat plate to both sides of the power brick so I can wind the cord around the brick and the plates will hold everything in place. A little Velcro and it should make a neat, compact package. I will update if I do it. If I was REALLY brave, I would hack the cords as well so the high voltage cord was about 12-15″ long and use an extension cord if I needed the length.
• Teach and Travel Kit. When I am in an unfamiliar classroom, hotel, etc., Murphy’s Law guarantees that the outlets will be badly located and full, so I carry an extension cord and a small 3-way tap in my ‘car bag’. The lit also includes batteries, chargers, a DVD and DVD player cleaner, and other supplies I don’t need often.

CASES

• Case. I wanted a slim case, but one that would hold other stuff- pen, notepad, cord, gum, microfiber cloth (stongly recommended to keep the Mini clean), etc. The usual recommendation is a DVD player bag- and I found a Denali bag I like at Target. Your mileage may vary.
• Sleeve. The uber-portability of the Mini is a bit off-set carrying a whole bag, so I use a home-made fleece sleeve when I am just carrying it around. I’m working on a better padded sleeve.

OTHER

• Portable DVD/CD Drive. (I’m using the  LG GP08NU10 Slimline CD/DVD Read/Write drive ) It was meant to make up for the lack of a CD drive in the Mini, and I only used it once so far- to install my copy of MS Office. I tried OpenOffice and other freeware options, but too much of my stuff is specifically done for Office. A lot of it looked funny in the freeware versions, although I would strongly recommend <OpenOffice>, <Lotus Symphony> or <AbiWord> to anyone who does not want to deal with Microsoft.
• Small soft ‘microfiber’ cloth, to keep the screen and case clean. One even comes with the Mini!
• WiFi/Connectivity Aids. I am looking for a good keychain WiFi sniffer, and a way to use my Centro as a modem. I tried one program that worked via Bluetooth or cable, but kept messing up the settings on the Lifebook. Any recommendations? (I’ll review a good option if I find any!)

One hand, effortlessly

It may seem like a toy- a whole computer that weighs under 2.5lbs with no optical drive and few ports for under $400- but it is an incredible machine . Frankly, I have been looking for a new laptop, and looking at the new super-light netbooks. I was a little afraid to buy one because I don’t have 24/7 access to WiFi and I really thought I would miss the optical drive. But you know… this guy is right- you really don’t need it. If you are still thinking you need the drive, read the linked article. It has a lot of good tips on living without a CD/DVD drive.

…………………………………

By the way, Q, there are a couple things about the Mini 1000 XP I don’t like…

1. The top case and screen show fingerprints like they were designed by a CSI
2. The touch pad has a little scroll feature along the right side I keep inadvertently activating
3. The power plug keeps pulling out a tiny bit- just enough to stop charging
4. (As long as I am at it- I wish the charger tip was a more standardized size! It can be hard to find these proprietary sizes when on a mission.)
5. The pre-loaded software, especially Works 9.0, was largely a waste, and
6. I could not find the controls for the ejector seat or built-in lasers.

Overall I think this is a smashingly good piece of gear that should become standard issue for our agents.

So, until the next review, this is James Bond, Code Number 007, signing off from Jamaica.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: HP, mini, Netbook

HP Mini 1000 Netbook vs. Fuji Lifebook originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 11, 2009 at 5:00 am.

With all the netbooks on the market in the last year or so, it almost makes a person wonder if the days of full-sized notebooks are numbered. Considering the economy the way it is, people are looking for a bargain and these little netbooks sure can provide one. I have been using an MSI Wind Netbook lately, but my true love was the HP 2133 Mini-Note that I reviewed last year. I loved its metal shell, 8.9 inch 1280 x 786 display and keyboard. The only issue with it was the fact that it came with Vista installed, ran warm and didn’t have the more efficient Atom processor.  Now it’s several months later and we have the HP Mini 1000. Let’s see if if is good enough to make me dump the MSI Wind as my travel computer.

Specifications

HP Mini 1000 with HP Swirl Imprint Finis
Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz)
1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
10.2″ diagonal WSVGA HP LED Brightview Infinity Display (1024 x 600)
Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Hard drive: 60GB 4200RPM PATA Hard Drive
HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Swirl) – For 10.2″ Display
Wireless-G Card with Bluetooth
3 Cell Lithium Polymer Battery

Package Contents

HP mini 1000 netbook
AC power brick with detachable cord
Windows XP and driver CD
Polishing cloth
HP paper notepad
Getting Started poster

The HP mini 1000 is available in four different configurations. Two with XP, and one with a Linux based OS. These three have Black plastic cases. Then there’s the special Red Vivienne Tam designer model that has XP.

As you can see from the image above, this review is for the Black XP version. The case is a shiny Black that has a cool swirly design on the top.

The thin Grey swirls are not super noticeable. You have to actually get close up to see them.

On the front edge, there are two slide switches with LEDs built into them. The Left switch toggles power and the Right switch toggles WiFi and Bluetooth. There are also two status LEDs for hard drive activity and the battery.

Here’s a back view of the screen hinge. There aren’t any connectors on the back of the netbook. They are all located on the sides.

The Left side has a power connector, USB port, air vents, an expansion port, audio out (headphone) / audio in (microphone) jack and an Ethernet jack. The Ethernet jack has a protective rubber cover over it.

The mic/headphone combo connector is an area where HP has skimped. I rarely use headphones or a mic with my netbook, but if I did, I might be grumbling at the lack of two separate connectors. I’m more annoyed at the lack of a regular VGA video out connector. As is, you have to buy a special adapter for the expansion port if you need this ability.

On the opposite side, we have more air vents, with an SD card slot below them, a USB port, a plastic slug where the HP mobile Drive (only available on the SSD models) would be located and a security cable connector. If you’re wondering, the mobile drive is a recessed USB slot that only specially sized HP USB drives can fit.

I was a little bummed to see that there are only two USB slots. The MSI Wind had three. That said, two should probably be enough for most people.

As far as size, the HP mini 1000 is a bit smaller than the MSI Wind netbook as you can see from the image above.

The mini 1000 can be purchased with either an 8.9 or 10.1 inch display. I opted for the 10.1 inch. The screen is held closed with friction and a strong hinge.

The actual display is glossy, which some people may or may not like. I will admit that I seem to have way more problems with glare on this little netbook than with the glossy screen on my 15″ Macbook Pro.

Here we see the display open to its maximum angle.

To compare with another netbook, we have the HP mini 1000 on top of the MSI Wind. Both have their displays fully open. As you will notice, the Wind’s display can open further than the mini’s. I have found myself wishing that I could open the mini’s display just a bit farther. I think that it would help a bit with glare issue.

As far as picture quality is concerned, the mini has a very nice display. It’s crisp, bright and vibrant. I just wish the resolution was as high as the mini-note (1280 x 786). Even though the mini 1000 is physically larger, its maximum resolution is only 1024 x 600. To get around the vertical resolution limitation, I found a nice compact Firefox theme (Classic Compact), turned off the Firefox status bar and also auto hide the Windows task bar.

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

My main complaint with the MSI Wind was its cramped keyboard layout. As a touch typist, I had all sorts of trouble with it and was constantly pressing the wrong keys with my Right hand. I absolutely loved the HP 2133 mini-note’s keyboard though, so I had my fingers crossed that the mini 1000 would have the same layout. Luckily, it does, or it’s really similar. Either way, it’s much nicer to touch type on than the Wind. Yay!

The keyboard is flat, as are the individual keys. But the keys themselves are large. Actually this keyboard is 92% the size of a full size keyboard. You can definitely tell. It is very comfortable to type on. I love it.

The track pad is a nice size and has a button on either side to mimic Left and Right ‘mouse’ buttons. You can also run your finger up and down the Right edge of the track pad to scroll pages up and down. The tiny button above the track pad toggles it on and off.

Above the keyboard’s top row of keys in the hinge area, is the speaker. Audio quality is really good with this little netbook!

If we flip the mini over, we can see the large battery area and then the memory slot above it. That’s right, if you want to upgrade your RAM, you won’t have to do any scary dismantling.

The door easily pops open so that you can swap out the DIMM. Tip: Order a 2GB DIMM from NewEgg for about $17. It will be the easiest memory upgrade that you’ve probably ever done.

One of the reasons why netbooks are so popular (other than price) is their small size. They are easy to carry around with you as they don’t add a whole lot of bulk and weight. But they thing that always gets me is the how bulky most laptop/netbook AC adapters are.

You have to admit that carrying around a bulky cable and adapter really detracts from the whole portability advantage netbooks have over regular sized laptops. I have found a solution to help with the bulk though…

You can replace the cable with an adapter like the one you see above. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing and does help to save some space in your gear bag.

Battery life on this little guy is thankfully better than the MSI Wind. Both have a 3-cell battery, but the Wind is lucky to get 1 hr and 45 mins of use per charge. I was able to work an additional hour on the mini. I suppose 2hrs and 45 mins isn’t that bad. Of course, I wish it were longer.

The mini 1000 gets a little warm on the bottom after it’s been running for awhile. It’s not exactly hot, but it is warm enough to cause the internal fan to kick on. Fan = noise, which I’m not a big fan (ha!) of. I’m being really picky here, but hey, that’s just me. It’s definitely not a deal breaker…

I have read that people are complaining about the web cam being too dim. I don’t seem to have that problem with mine, but the image quality is grainy and all around pretty crappy. Again, not  a deal breaker for me, because I rarely if ever use a web cam.

This netbook has the same Atom processor in it that the MSI Wind has, and as a result, it feels the same as far as launching apps, loading files, etc. I have no complaints as far as performance is concerned. It’s a great little worker.

When it’s all said and done, the HP mini 1000 had no problem kicking the MSI Wind out of my gear bag. The superior keyboard and better battery life are a no brainer. I’m very happy with my purchase!

Stick around to read what the rest of the Gadgeteer team think about the HP mini 1000. I purchased one for each team member and they are all going to share their own thoughts on this netbook.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Laptop, Netbook

HP Mini 1000 Netbook Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 9, 2009 at 5:49 am.

Mobile gadget enthusiasts can’t visit their favorite gadget news sites without being bombarded with news about the latest netbooks. Whether you want to refer to this category of extremely portable and affordable laptops as subnotebooks, ultraportables, UMPCs, MIDs or netbooks, is entirely up to you. What I call them is a whole lot of fun and convenience in a small package. The first netbook to capture our interest was the ASUS Eee PC, then it was the HP Mini-Note. Now it’s the MSI Wind. Let’s see if it’s worthy enough for a spot in your gear bag…

Hardware Specs

CPU: Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, Front-side Bus 533Mhz, Cache 512K
Chipset: 945GSE+ ICH7-M
Operating System: Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
Display: 10″ WSVGA LCD, LED backlight, 1024 x 600 resolution
Graphics: Intel GMA950
System Memory: 1GB DDR2 667MHz
Hard Drive: 120GB SATA I
Communications: 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth
Touchpad: Sentelic
USB2.0 Port X 3
1.3M Webcam and microphone
4-in-1 Card Reader, SD/MMC/MS/MSpro
Output: 19V DC, 65W / Input: 100~ 240V AC, 50/60Hz Universal
Dimensions: 10.23″(L) X7.08″(D) X 0.748″~1.24″(H)
Weight: 2.3 lbs (3 cell)

Package Contents

MSI Wind Netbook
AC adapter
Power cord
Zippered slip case
Windows XP Home SP3 recovery CD
Driver, Utility, Manual CD
Quick start guide

Style and design

The MSI Wind netbook is currently available in four colors and two hardware configurations. The colors are Black, Pink, White and the Love Edition, which is White with heart line graphics. The hardware config choices are just between an 80GB or a 120GB hard drive. The 120GB version of this netbook is only available right now in the Black and Love Edition colors. At the time I placed my order last week, I didn’t even know there was an 120GB version. I was having a heck of a time trying to find any online stores that had any models in stock. I lucked out though and found the MWave store and they had some 120GB Black models in stock, so I snapped one up. I originally wanted a 6 cell battery model, but since I couldn’t find any in stock, I decided to go for the higher capacity hard drive model instead. I figure I can always get a 6 cell battery later.

Since I’ve already had the opportunity to try out two other popular netbooks, I was hoping that the MSI would fall somewhere in between the slightly toyish looking ASUS Eee PC and the really cool looking HP Mini-Note. Thankfully, it does. I like the design because it isn’t flashy. It has rounded sides and corners, with no sharp edges. The lid is shiny slick Black that has a tiny bit of sparkle to it. If you look really close, you can see multi-colored specs in the surface. The MSI logo is silk-screened in White in the center… perfect for slapping a sticker over it at some point ;o)

According to the product page on MSI’s site, the lid has “Special Insert Mold Roller Technology (IMR). The special IMR technology protects the notebook from fading and also reducing the fingerprints which makes the Wind always look glare and outstanding.” Ummm… do what? Trust me, the lid still shows fingerprints, smudges and smears.

The bottom half of the Wind is not shiny; it has various heat ventilation slits and five Grey rubber feet. There is also a speaker in the front corners.

On the left side, you’ll find a security lock slot, power connector, heat vents and two USB ports.

The opposite side has another USB port, a 4-in-1 card reader that supports SD, MMC, Memory Stick and MSPro formats, a Video out port and an Ethernet jack.

The lid / screen is held closed with friction. There isn’t a clasp or any other mechanism to keep it closed. The hinge feels sturdy enough that when you open the lid, it will lift the whole computer along with it. So opening it, is a two-handed operation.

This little guy should fit easily on an airplane tray table…

Here you see the screen open to the maximum angle.

Sizing it up

I purchased the MSI Wind netbook to serve as my travel companion for an upcoming vacation to Florida. I usually take my 15″ MacBook Pro with me whenever a travel, but I get tired of lugging it around the airport with me. I love it dearly, but it’s big and bulky. I decided against a MacBook Air a long time ago because I think they are overpriced and under powered.

The Wind is significantly smaller than the MacBook Pro as you can see here…

It is small and light enough to fit in almost any gear bag.

All by itself, it weights in at 2 lbs 8 oz on my scale. Great right?

Well, when you add the necessary AC adapter, the weight jumps up considerably. Actually, the AC adapter brick isn’t all that cumbersome by itself, but when you pair it with the bulky power cord that plugs into it, that’s when we see the issue. Why is it that the littlest gadgets seem to have the most massive power adapters / cords? Grrrrr. I knew I wouldn’t be happy till I could find something to help me lessen the weight and bulk problem…

It didn’t take me too long to find a cool little solution thanks to the fantastic MSI Wind forums at MsiWind.net. This little $3 adapter can be found at StayOnline.com and totally replaces the included power cord.

It plugs directly into the AC adapter. Nifty huh? It reduces the overall weight of the netbook and AC adapter from 3 lbs 3 oz to 2 lbs 15 oz. I know that’s only a 4 oz savings, but every little bit helps and it definitely saves some space in your gear bag too.

Using the keyboard and touch pad

Following an initial charge of the battery, I was ready to start putting this little netbook through all the same types of things I use my Macbook Pro for when I travel. I may be The Gadgeteer, but I’m really not an over the top power user when it comes to what I want out of a netbook. Basically, I want to be able to touch type on it, surf all my favorite websites on it, read and respond to emails with it, offload digital camera images to its hard drive and maybe do a bit of photo editing if the mood strikes me. Let’s start with the keyboard…

The size of the Wind’s keyboard is not an issue for me as far as hindering my ability to touch type on it. My hands fit comfortably on the ‘home’ row, without having to adjust the spacing of my fingers. The keys themselves are flat, but have good travel and tactile feedback.

The keyboard would be perfectly fine for me, but due to the layout, I do have consistent problems correctly typing the following characters: . ? /

The location of the . key under the L key is almost directly under it as you can see above. On regular full-size keyboards, the location of the . key is usually where the ? key is. So, when I want to end a sentence with a period, I almost always get a slash. When I want to type a question mark, I end up pressing the Right shift key instead. Same goes for typing a /. I also almost always accidently press the Right up arrow when I mean to press the Right Shift key. So, it ends up that I have to slow my typing down in order to keep from making mistakes. I’ve only had the Wind for a week now, so maybe with more time with it, I’ll automatically start adjusting to the layout. Maybe. I have to say that I really long for the HP Mini-Note keyboard. It was perfect for me.

The built in touch pad on the Wind is small (2 x 1.5 inches) and only has one button that can be pressed on either end, instead of two separate buttons that map to the Left and Right mouse buttons. Unfortunately, MSI stopped using Synaptics touch pads and started using Sentelic finger sensing pads for their Wind netbooks. The touch pad is quite sensitive, so I have had no problems using it like a mouse. Even the one button doesn’t bother me. I do miss not having the ability to do two finger scrolling like I can on my Macbook Pro though. The Sentelic driver does have a corner tapping scroll feature, but it doesn’t work very well at all. I ended up just disabling it. I’ll probably end up using a small Bluetooth mouse…

The power button is located in the upper Right corner of the keyboard. It has a Blue star LED built into. It’s small, but easy to press.

A row of status LEDs is located along the bottom Right edge of the keyboard. These LEDs show the battery charging status, Bluetooth and Wifi status, and hard drive activity.

The display

A 10 inch display was an important selling point for me as I didn’t like the Eee PC’s tiny 7″ screen at all. The HP’s display was the bigger at 8.9 inch and with a resolution of 1280 x 786, it was significantly better. The Wind’s display maximum resolution is 1024 x 600 and features an LED backlight that gives it really good color and brightness. Even with the brightness set back to 50%, the display is easy to read.

Here we have the Wind next to my Macbook Pro. Both machines are set to maximum brightness and are pointed at http://the-gadgeteer.com. Although I wish the maximum resolution was higher, I have had no problems using the Wind to surf all my favorite sites. Up and down scrolling isn’t that bad, and horizontal scrolling isn’t necessary thank goodness.

I haven’t tested the display outside in direct sunlight – I never use my laptops outside anyway… Today is gloomy, so I can’t do a valid test. Hopefully someone else will chime in and comment about that aspect of the display. So far, I can’t find any real faults with the screen. The colors are vibrant, text is crisp and the size is just fine.

Sound

I wouldn’t rely on the MSI Wind as a boom box. Sound quality through its small bottom speakers is only slightly better than mediocre. For videos on Youtube it’s fine though. Audio quality through the headphone jack is much better.

Battery performance

MSI claims that the 3 cell battery can last up to 3hrs per charge. In all my testing, I didn’t even make it to 2hrs. In all three full charge to automatic shutdown tests that I did, the battery lasted for about 1hr and 45 minutes give or take a minute or two. Not exactly stellar huh? All my tests had the screen set to 50% brightness and consisted of me surfing via WiFi with Firefox to my various fave sites including some Youtube video watching, RSS reading, email reading and responding, and a game or two of Spider Solitaire. Nothing too strenuous. That tells me that if I use the Wind at the airport before my flight, I better use it plugged into AC. The flight from Indiana to Florida is only about 2hrs, so I should be ok there… I am hoping that I’ll be able to get my hands on a higher capacity battery soon. The folks at Mugen Power Batteries have one on the works. Probably not in time for my trip though.

Overall system performance

The MSI Wind netbook is a very capable little device. It runs XP Home quite well. Rebooting from power off to ready to work, takes my machine 45 seconds. Not bad really. Launching applications, surfing, etc., all feels snappy to me. I really have no complaints with system speed.

Out of the box, the 120GB 5400RPM hard drive is partitioned into a 39GB partition for C:\ and a 68.8GB partition for D:\. There’s also a hidden restore partition. Not sure why that’s needed though as the Wind comes with an XP Home restore CD.

The Wind runs cool and relatively quiet. After an hour and 45 minutes, the bottom of the netbook is warm, but no where near hot. As for noise, you can hear the fans running and the hard drive accessing, but it’s not distracting.

Conclusion

So far so good. I love the size and weight of the MSI Wind netbook, that’s for sure. I also like the display, but wouldn’t mind a little bit more resolution. The touch pad is fine too. The keyboard layout is probably my single biggest complaint, even over the 3 cell battery life. I can live with less than 2 hours of battery life because I know I’ll soon be able to get my hands on a higher capacity battery. The keyboard layout isn’t something I can really fix though. I’m hoping my fingers just need more time to adjust to it. We’ll see… Even with that one complaint, I really am enjoying this computer and am looking forward to taking it with me next month on my trip to Florida. That is unless HP comes out with a new Mini-Note that has an Atom processor in it ;o)

My next plan for this little guy is to try my hand at putting OSX on it. Wish me luck!

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Handheld PC, Netbook, Ultra Portable, UMPC

MSI Wind Netbook Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 5, 2008 at 2:30 pm.

Last year, Asus rocked the UMPC world with their announcement of a small, ultra-portable laptop – for only $200. Several
revisions, image leaks, speculative reports, and price increases later, the eeePC line was officially released – with
$200 added to price tag and 512MB RAM pulled from the default specs. I’ve had the flagship 701 model with 4GB of
solid-state disk space and a 0.3MP (300,000 pixel) webcam. Other model options include the 2G ($300) and 4G ($350)
Surfs with 2GB and 4GB SSD and no webcam, as well as the 8GB SSD/1GB RAM 8G at $500.

Since the initial eeePC release, Asus has upped the specs and released the 900 and 901 models. Additionally, Everex, Dell, HP, and MSI have announced and/or released hardware competitors to the eeePC. The eeePC appears to have introduced a previously-ignored hardware niche: cheap, portable laptops. Historically, the cheaper the laptop, the heavier the hardware. My Dell XPS M1330 weighs less than four pounds, with an $1800 price tag – an Inspiron 1420 with relatively similar specs weighs upwards of six, but costs about $700 less. The eeePC weighs less than 1kg (about two pounds), costs $400, and has quite low specs for a machine manufactured in 2007.

My stock eeePC 701 came with the following:

• 900MHz Intel ULV processor (underclocked to 600MHz)
• 4GB solid-state disk (SSD)
• 512MB DDR RAM (single DIMM slot)
• 7″ 800×480 WVGA LCD
• 802.11b/g wireless card
• Three USB 2.0 ports
• SDHC slot
• 0.3MP integrated webcam
• Integrated 10/100 NIC
• VGA out

Accessories included a polyester/nylon sleeve, a compact power adapter, and a reinstallation CD.

The Hardware

You know, I’ve been using this thing fairly regularly for the last month and a half, and I can’t really say that I’d
recommend this model to anyone. Given that 9″ models are coming out with 1024×600 displays, the paltry 800×480 WVGA
on the eee looks even more cramped than usual. You will barely be able to browse on this thing, let alone do any
basic computing tasks, like word processing, chatting, and email.

The keyboard is small. I mean, it’s *really* small. I have very tiny hands – adult gloves don’t fit me – and this thing
is cramped to me. I make a lot of typos. The more I use it, the more I can adapt to it, but it’s definitely not
something I could use regularly. Not only that, but as an aside, the right shift key is to the right of the up arrow
on the inverted-T directional keypad. This is backward from any standard desktop or laptop keyboard, and I frequently
find myself hitting Up instead of Shift when I’m typing. The punctuation keys along the right side of the keyboard
are smaller than the other keys (which are already quite small), and I’ve just about quit using periods and
apostrophes when I chat.

Here’s a comparison between the eeePC 701, the Dell XPS M1330, and an old 12″ Apple iBook G3:

The 900MHz processor has been underclocked to 600MHz, and there’s no apparent way to clock it up in the BIOS. 512MB
RAM is enough to run the preinstalled custom Xandros installation, but I would have been happier had Asus gone with
the 1GB announced for the original model.

The 4GB SSD is enough for the OS and some applications (Xandros takes a gig, and the restore partition takes
another gig), but the SDHC slot is a blessing when you quickly need to add more space.

My eeePC is one of the later revisions of the 701 – early models had the Mini-PCIe riser, allowing the addition
of bluetooth or extra storage. There was also a standard modem connector on the underside of the board. Both of these
have been removed in later revisions – the Mini-PCIe slot is present in the 8G model, as the 8GB of storage is
comprised of 4GB soldered onto the motherboard and a 4GB Mini-PCIe card.

Battery life is, in a word, appalling. For having a tiny, low-powered screen, an underclocked processor, and no
moving parts, this thing only gets around two and half hours on the battery with the wireless on and screen
brightness turned down. I believe that part of this is due to how Linux handles power management compared to
Windows. Additionally, faulty BIOS code can cause power management issues at the basic hardware level. One can
only hope that Asus releases a BIOS update to improve battery life, at least a bit.

For all these bad points, there are some good points. The integrated webcam is good if you like video chatting with
friends (although there is extremely limited support in Xandros – apparently only the latest Linux beta of Skype will
work at this point). The VGA output on the right side of the machine could be extremely handy if going to a meeting
where you’ll need to hook up to a projector. More than anything, of course, is the size. This thing is tiny.
I’ve taken it with me to work (before I got my XPS M1330), and I never cease to be amazed at how minute the eeePC
is for only $400.

The included sleeve is actually fairly nice – it’s stretchy with a velcro closure. The eeePC is obviously far too small
to require a normal laptop bag, so the sleeve protects it and allows you to toss it into anything. The included
power adapter is compact, and has a nice velcro strip attached to it to keep the cord wrapped up. The prongs of the
adapter fold into the side, so it’s well protected from any kind of damage.

The build of the machine itself is surprisingly sturdy. The hinge is strong, and there’s no latch to keep the LCD closed –
it uses a spring mechanism, which I’ve noticed has become more popular lately in notebook computer design. The screen is
usably bright, although it’s definitely not as nice as the LED-backlit display on my M1330. There is virtually no flex
in the plastic of the lid, which is very nice. The battery latches in securely, and SD cards don’t stick out at all when
inserted. The keyboard feels a little cheap, particularly due to the fact that it flexes up a bit on the left side of
the spacebar. The trackpad feels good and is very responsive – I suspect it’s from Synaptics. The single mouse button,
which rocks in either direction for left or right click, feels all right, although the chrome finish is too fingerprinty
for my preference. The SSD is certainly fast, but there is that caveat about limited read/write cycles on flash storage.
At some point, the eeePC will just quit working because of this – if you install Windows, make sure to disable virtual
memory, as this will eventally significantly reduce the lifespan of the internal storage.

Overall, I tend to give the hardware about a 5/10. It’s not unbearably bad, but it’s not good enough to make this a
primary machine. I mostly use mine for playing around, or when I don’t want to pull out my XPS M1330 or my old
clamshell iBook.

The Software

The eeePC comes preloaded with a custom build of Xandros Linux. It’s very simple, with large single-click icons and a
tabbed menu interface. It’s backed by a full installation of KDE, which can be enabled through system hacks. However,
I’ve found that the eeePC default interface works pretty well for what the eeePC can really be used for. The stock
interface is a modified copy of IceWM, which can be customized to add a few features, like a Start button.

Startup is extremely fast. It takes a few seconds from hitting the power button to seeing the main OS interface. When
you power the eeePC on for the first time, your user account defaults to logging in automatically, which helps speed
up login time.

One interesting thing of note is the recovery partition on the eeePC. Most home computers have this, but restoring
several gigs of software and Windows is pretty slow. The eee’s OS image is only a gig total (including software), so
restoring the image takes only a few seconds. While you do lose a quarter of the internal storage to the recovery
partition, I’d highly recommend keeping it around – the only other way to restore your eeePC is with the included DVD,
which requires a Windows machine to use. If you start playing with the system configuration to increase performance or
make the most of the UI on such a small screen, you’re likely to eventually break something – I know I did! It’s
very, very handy to be able to reboot, hit F9, select restore, and be back to a working machine. With the SDHC slot,
you can invest $30 in a 2GB or 4GB SD card, and keep your files and settings on that – then, restoring will barely be
painful.

Now. Onto the interface. The main menu screens can be manually customized, to add your own wallpaper and icons. Additionally,
it’s possible to customize the IceWM interface to remove some of the less important buttons from the taskbar.

This is what the stock interface looks like:

This is what it looked like after I tweaked IceWM, added an icon for DOSBox, and made some custom wallpaper:

I might be a tiny bit of a Harry Potter fan. Ahem. Moving on.

Most applications are preconfigured to sort of optimize the UI to the small display, but even regular toolbars take up
a large amount of screen real estate. Menus scroll off the screen in many cases, which can make navigation difficult.
For instance, the default configuration for OpenOffice.org Calc is rather unusable:

Removing the toolbars and relying on keyboard shortcuts and menus helps, but it’s still not an optimal situation. You’ll
also notice that the eeePC comes default with a Windows XP Luna-esque theme. This is a little annoying – not only is
Clearlook for Gnome far more asthetically pleasing, but there are plenty of Linux GUI themes out there that use less
vertical pixels for the main application title bars.

Fortunately, some of the applications use GTK+ to render interface elements. You can create a custom .gtk-rc file to
use 8pt fonts in application menus and interfaces, which significantly improves the screen situation. Take, for instance,
the difference between the stock GTK+ settings and custom settings when using Pidgin:

Firefox can be customized similarly, using the chrome UI settings within the application.

The stock configuration:

A customized configuration with a smaller text size, theme, and toolbar placement:

Other fairly useful pieces, like the file explorer and network connection utilities, are fairly easy to use. The
file manager looks a lot like Windows Explorer, with a tree view to the left and the ability to view files as icons,
thumbnails, or in a detailed view.

Wireless and other network setup is fairly easy. One major caveat, however – the eeePC does not natively have support
for newer networking standards, like L2TP IPSec VPN and WPA2 wireless encryption, which is a problem for me, since my
employer (Purdue University) has minimal support for PPTP VPN.

There’s a simple wireless configuration window, like most laptops have these days – you can hit Fn+F2 and quickly see
a list of available networks (including networks with no broadcast SSID, if you’ve already setup profiles for them) and
connect to them.

There’s also a more advanced networking configuration utility, which lets you manage the wireless, internal NIC, and
any VPN connections you might want.

Shutting down, rebooting, and putting the machine to sleep is very easy – hitting the power button brings up a
simple, large window with several buttons:

The eeePC also comes preinstalled with a number of apps, including OpenOffice.org, some games, and some various
control panels for managing mouse options, power management, etc. In addition, you can download more apps from
Asus’ eeePC-specific repositories. If you want to grab anything else, you’ll have edit your config files to include
unsupported repositories.

Overall, I give the UI a 7/10. It’s definitely well-thought-out to accommodate the tiny screen, but certain things
are a little rough around the edges – I’d rather see GTK preconfigured with a smaller font. In general, though, the UI
has a very low learning curve and is quite easy to use.

Real-world Applications

I’ve found the eeePC useful for several things. When I moved 70 miles to a new town in April, I was able to keep
connected to my friends and email without needing to leave my desktop unpacked. I also find my eeePC quite useful in
the mornings. These days, it lives in my kitchen on my breakfast bar, and I use it in the morning to check weather,
email, and where the bus is on its morning route.

Theoretically, the eeePC could make a pretty stellar DOSBox rig – the low-resolution screen is better in this case,
because most DOS games are only CGA (320×200) or VGA (800×600). Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a good DOSBox config
that doesn’t cause the sound to skip, pop, and eventually get stuck on the same tone.

The interface is quite well-thought-out. Everything you need to get started is already installed. However, it’s
definitely still Linux. For instance, I was getting no sound in Pidgin, because it was set to use a GTK+ call to the
audio hardware that IceWM and KDE don’t support – a quick Google search found the solution, but not everyone would be
able to get even that far.

When you insert an SD card, the UI pops up a Windows-like screen that lets you import pictures or music, or open up
the file manager to the card. Removing the card is similar to Windows – you right-click the icon and select “Safely
Remove”, which unmounts it in Linux.

The default terminal is extremely limited xterm. However, a configuration change will allow you to bring up KDE’s
Konsole app instead, which is much more familiar to Linux users.

I’ll give the overall usability of the eeePC another 7/10. It’s got some room for improvement, but for what it is,
it’s quite good. It’s certainly the most dumbed-down Linux distro I’ve ever used – Ubuntu seems overly advanced compared
to this. I could see use as a quickie webserver with LAMPP. It’d make a nice little box to show Grandma your digital
pictures, since the screen is certainly bigger than the little 2″ one found on most digital cameras. It would
definitely make a good little machine to take on vacation or long car trips for the kids to use. You’ll need to get a
DC-to-AC converter, since the battery won’t last too long, but the portability and simplicity make it very kid-friendly.

Final Conclusion

The eeePC is an excellent effort. It’s the first of its kind on the market, and I think it’ll always be a little special
as a result. I’m quite interested in the MSI Wind at this point – the screen on the eeePC makes it almost unusable, and
there are too many quirks about the keyboard for a fast typer like myself to adjust easily. The Wind has a better keyboard
layout, a 9″ 1024×600 display, and a pretty attractive price tag – and pretty colors. It’s tempting, to say the least.

Most importantly, the eeePC has opened up an entire new market of compact, low-end, and extremely affordable laptop
computers. HP’s already released theirs (and sent it to Julie to review!), and Dell’s announced theirs (which I am
also extremely interested in – I have been very happy with my XPS M1330). Asus themselves have released better models
since the initial eeePC launch. I do think, though, that I’ll be installing Windows on mine. I need support for things
like L2TP VPN and good video chat, and I have too many Windows apps I really depend on to be productive.

As an aside, if you do plan on installing Windows XP on your eeePC, there’s one thing I found out the hard way – you must delete the four partitions on the eeePC completely in order to install on the internal memory. There are plenty of tutorials on installing to an SDHC card, so you could do that as well – just remember to disable the paging file (virtual memory), as the constant read/write cycles will significantly decrease the life of the internal SSD or an SDHC card.

Filed in categories: Handheld PCs / Ultra Portables

Tagged: Handheld PC, Netbook, Ultra Portable, UMPC

ASUS Eee PC 4G (701) Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 9, 2008 at 11:00 am.