![]() Vista ready?Īfter plugging it in, I was surprised to find that the test unit came with Windows Vista Home Basic. The Mini-Note has one more feature that many road warriors will treasure - DriveGuard - which senses when the laptop is falling and automatically shuts down the hard drive to minimize data loss. At $599, this Mini-Note is $100 more than Asustek's current high-end Eee PC, although reportedly slightly cheaper than Asustek's next-generation Eee, which will sport an 8.9-in. As a result, it is easy for HP to justify its higher price. That extra width is well used by the Mini-Note's wider 8.9-in. That makes it roughly an inch wider but otherwise about equal in dimensions to the Asustek Eee. It's 10 inches wide, 6.5 inches deep and 1.05 inches (at the front). ![]() The notebook weighs in at 2.6 pounds and measures a hair over an inch high at its thinnest point. The first thing I noticed when taking the 2133 Mini-Note PC out of the box was its sleek anodized aluminum case. There are two other configurations: For $549, you get the same configuration I tested but with SUSE Linux, while $749 gives you a Via 1.6-GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, Bluetooth, a six-cell battery (rather than the standard three-cell) and Windows Vista Business. I tested a $599 version of the Mini-Note outfitted with a 1.2-GHz Via processor 1GB of RAM a 120GB, 5400 rpm hard drive and, surprisingly, Windows Vista Home Basic. In fact, the Mini-Note's big, bright screen, its ability to run Windows Vista and its reasonable starting price of $499 (for a version with a 1.0-GHz Via processor, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, 512MB of RAM and a 4GB solid-state drive) makes it worthy of serious consideration by travelers who need to regularly write e-mails and edit documents but who don't require heavier-duty computing tasks. It does a good - although not perfect - job of negating one seemingly immutable law of mobile computing: The smaller devices get, the more sacrifices are required in terms of usability. The new HP mininotebook computer is a bit bulkier and slightly more expensive than the Eee, but it is also more powerful, polished and usable. HP's new 2133 Mini-Note PC goes even further, providing a bigger, brighter screen and a host of other advantages that could make the device a mainstream hit. Last year, Asustek's Eee PC became a surprise hit by providing far more power and usability than a smart phone for light-traveling road warriors with far less expense and bulk than a traditional laptop.
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