HP's Mini-Note is the most expensive netbook I've tested so far at NT$25,900 ($844) in Taiwan for the premium model running on Microsoft Windows Vista Business.įor a lot less money, you can get a much less powerful Mini-Note. But I’ve got more stuff to try, and more thoughts to share, before I wind things up.Hewlett-Packard's 2133 Mini-Note may end up as the premium choice among the entire mini-laptop, or netbook, category of devices announced so far.Īnd people interested in the device will pay for it. This isn’t going to be a long-term project–I borrowed the Mini-Note from HP, and need to send it back. Stay tuned for more Operation Foxbook updates over the weekend. I know I like the Mini-Note for what it is I also know that there are things about the MacBook Pro that I’ll enjoy having back when the experiment is over. The bottom line: Actually, I want more time with Operation Foxbook and the Mini-Note before I come to one. I’m living in Firefox, and it’s nearly identical in both OSes. But for the purposes of Operation Foxbook, it doesn’t matter much at all. Software: One of the biggest differences between the Mini-Note and the MacBook Pro is their operating systems. (Someday, a flight attendent will whip by with the drink cart and put a dent in it, I’m sure.) Operation Foxbook hasn’t involved any airplane trips, but this machine would work fine in a coach seat I sometimes have to angle the MacBook Pro out into the aisle to work on it. Portability: The Mini-Note is small and light–a laptop you can carry anywhere without giving it much thought. It’s not a perfect solution–a few sites I use have layouts that don’t quite work–but it’s close enough. I magnified everything a bit, and am no longer squinting. Then I remembered that Firefox has a feature I almost never use: Zoom. My biggest issue with the Mini-Note at first was dealing with type size. Or maybe my eyeballs have aged more than I realized over the past few years. Screen size: I’ve definitely grown used to having a reasonably roomy screen like the one on the MacBook Pro. If I used the Mini-Note permanently, I might do something I usually don’t do with notebooks: invest in an undersized mouse. The touchpad is really small, but the main issue I’m having with it is that the mouse buttons flank it rather than sitting below it. I feel like I’m angling my hands in a bit when I type, but I’ll bet I’m just learning to adapt to it, since I was happy for years with small keyboards in the past. Input: Like I said, the Mini-Note’s keyboard isn’t too small–it’s only about half an inch narrower than that of the much wider MacBook Pro. But I’m not positive about that and want to spend more time with it before coming to any conclusions. I’ve been opening up scads of windows at once–WordPress, Meebo, Polldaddy, Twitter, Picnik, two instances of Gmail and more–and it does seem like it may get a little sluggish at times. I’m not sure if I’d want to throw Photoshop at it. Performance: The Mini-Note is, by design, a basic computer, with a basic Via CPU. So how has life been with the Mini-Note? A few notes: Here’s a T-Grid comparing it to the MacBook Pro configuration I own, which weighs twice as much and costs close to three times the Mini-Note’s price–probably the only time you’ll ever see these radically different computers head to head: As netbooks go, it’s not cheap (you can buy a basic Linux-based Asus eee PC for less than half its $829 price) but it’s well-equipped, with stuff like a decently -sized hard drive, 2GB of RAM, Bluetooth, a long-life battery, Gigabit Ethernet, and a large-for-a-netbook keyboard that resists spills (HP aims the Mini-Note at students). So for me, the Mini-Note doesn’t feel exotic so much as a return trip to the kind of notebook I used to tote. And when I started Technologizer, I decided I wanted more screen space and resolution, and bought the MacBook Pro. Then I replaced that with the even larger, heavier 13-inch MacBook. I used to be addicted to subnotebooks like the Fujitsu Lifebook B112 and Fujitsu P-1000, but in 2004 I had an epiphany and bought my first Mac in years–the 12-inch PowerBook, which was a bit larger and heavier. And it’s the largest, heaviest machine I’ve carried in years. The MacBook Pro I use most of the time is relatively thin and light given how powerful it is, but it’s no subnotebook. And the hardware side of things is turning out to have as big an impact on the experience as the software aspect. Operation Foxbook–my experiment of dumping my MacBook Pro and desktop apps for an HP Mini-Note netbook and Web-based apps within Firefox–continues apace.
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