HP's 2133 Mini-Note PC addresses the same market as the Asus Eee at a similar price, but has the look and feel of a more expensive system.
The 2133's greatest asset is its unique keyboard, which manages to fit in full-size keys by eliminating dead space on the keyboard tray, but we're less enamoured of the pokey VIA C7-M processor, especially when Intel's Atom CPUs, seemingly designed specifically for systems like this, are just around the corner. Still, the HP 2133 Mini-Note works well enough for basic web surfing and office productivity tasks, and it's quickly become our new favourite pick-up-and-go notebook.
Based on our initial impression of the 2133 Mini-Note, which we first saw under wraps several weeks ago, we expected a much more expensive machine. Compared to most notebooks in this price range, the 2133 looks like it should cost a good deal more, with a solid brushed aluminium lid and a magnesium-alloy chassis. The system weighs around 1.3kg, but due to its small size it feels heavier than you would expect. The 7in. Asus Eee PC has a slightly smaller footprint and weighs less, and its plastic construction feels positively toy-like compared to that of the Mini-Note.
The Mini-Note's biggest selling point is its fantastic keyboard, which HP claims is 92 percent of the size of a full-size notebook keyboard. Both inexpensive mini-notebooks and high-priced UMPCs have been plagued by tiny Chicklet-like keys, which make typing a pain and typos plentiful. By expanding the keyboard right to the edges of the system, HP has been able to fit bigger keys into the tray. The result is a comfortable typing experience. It also presents a unique, eye-catching look.
The touchpad also has an unusual shape, stretched into a letterbox-like wide rectangle. The touch surface is a little small and the mouse buttons have been moved to the left and right sides of the touchpad, but this permits the system to have a minimal amount of wasted wrist rest space and seems to be a fair trade-off — even if it takes a little getting used to. There are no quick-launch or media control buttons, but a webcam and speakers are mounted around the screen.
We felt constrained by the Eee PC's 800 by 400 resolution, so the Mini-Note's 1,280 by 768 resolution felt positively spacious in comparison, and is very close to the 1,280 by 800 found on many 15in. mainstream notebooks. Text and images may be a bit small for your taste at this resolution on a 9in. screen, but we found it acceptable. The screen also has a scratch-resistant finish, which was very glossy and susceptible to glare and reflections. We generally prefer matte screens.
Although the Mini-Note lacks some high-end extras, such as optional mobile broadband or Draft-N Wi-Fi, it does have a welcome ExpressCard slot, so adding an after-market mobile broadband card from your network operator is a possibility. It also shows that you can add a decent number of connections without sacrificing portability, something we hope Apple will note in the next-generation MacBook Air.
There are an increasing number of options available for mobile CPUs, including Intel's standard ULV chips, Celeron M chips (as in the Intel Classmate PC), the MacBook Air's custom version of the standard Intel Core 2 Duo, and the smartphone-level Intel A110 (as seen in the HTC Shift). Intel is also readying a new line of CPUs for low-power devices, named Atom, which should be debuting in products very shortly. The 2133 Mini-Note uses none of these, choosing instead to go for a 1.6GHz (in our review sample) VIA C7-M. We won't beat around the bush: this CPU did not perform well at all on our standard benchmarking tests, coming in well behind even the HTC Shift, which has been criticised for its own slow performance. We can't say we're surprised; we've found similarly underwhelming performance on UMPCs that utilise the VIA C7-M, including the OQO Model 02.
That said, when web browsing and working on office documents, we found that the 2133 Mini-Note performed at an acceptable level, thanks in part to its 2GB of RAM and faster-than-usual 7,200rpm hard drive. Try doing much more than that, or open too many windows at once, and things will start to bog down. We also ran into a few bugs with the system, such as when it would occasionally 'recognise' a new display or optical drive, when, in fact, nothing was connected to it.
The 2133 Mini-Note ran for 1 hour and 31 minutes on our video battery drain test, using the included three-cell Li-ion battery. That battery sits flush with the system, but the high-end configuration also comes with a six-cell battery. This unit is the size of two 3-cell units stacked together, and it raises the bottom of the system off our desk by nearly 4cm. Anecdotally, we got close to two hours of use from the three-cell battery and around four hours from the six-cell version, which is merely average.
HP includes an industry-standard, one-year, parts-and-labour warranty with the system. Support is accessible by phone or via HP's web site, which features an online knowledge base and driver downloads.
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