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stars
"Impressive but flawed" on by gconnery
Pros: 10" screen and nearly full size keyboard in a small (almost 9" netbook sized) and thin (1") case.
Great keyboard with full-sized right shift key
Teardown is well documented in HP's manuals on line, and clearly documents how to upgrade anything.Cons: TOO EXPENSIVE. The $399 model is 512MB RAM/8GB SSD/Linux. XP is $499 model, and $25.00 to bump the RAM to 1GB.
Stupid proprietary VGA out connector, requiring a $79.00 dongle to use it.
4200 rpm 1.8" drive means XP boot time of over a minute.Summary: Almost perfect. Expand the screen so it fits with an even narrower bezel and you could maybe fit an 11" display in here. Then bump the screen resolution back up to 1024x768. Get rid of the proprietary connectors and such. Move to the mini display port if you need to and offer VGA/DVI and HDMI out dongles if there isn't room for a standard VGA port. Move the trackpad on/off button, and make the trackpad a little taller. Make 1GB RAM standard. Make the hard disk 5,400rpm. And drop the price at least $50. Then you've got something.
- 3 replies to this review
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Prices are now lower (try circuit city close outs - I got mine with 1gb of memory, 60gb hdd and a web cam for $400); and the advantage of having a HDD (capacity) outweighs drag of boot time, which is still much faster than any laptop I own.
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Maybe it's come down in price since then but the same XP version with 1 gig of ram is only $399 at Best Buy and even less at other places.The dongle is not available yet but big deal if there's an adapter. At least there is ... or will be. Despite there being a lot of border space, the form factor is slim and very portable. Few seem to complain that all other laptops look like this as well. Upgraded ram to 2 gigs for $20 in a matter of two minutes. It is a netbook after all. It is what it is designed to be.
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So take any other netbook, and give it the keyboard from the HP Mini, and you've got what you describe.. :S
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