HP Mini 1000 netbook

Click to enlarge

It wasn’t too long ago that if you wanted a small laptop you’d have to pay a premium for it. Thanks to the birth of the netbook, you can now go portable with a 10-inch or less screen, and not break the bank.

We’ve reviewed a number of laptops and netbooks in the past and recently I had the opportunity to put the HP mini 1000 to the test. When I first thought of taking a netbook on the road, I couldn’t see the value since I find that my primary machine, a MacBook, does everything I need and is portable enough. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Just a couple of minutes into using the HP mini 1000 and I immediately saw the appeal that these little notebooks have.

Specs
First off, the Mini 1000 features Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3. So, right off the bat you can run your favorite applications. Powering this little laptop is an Intel Atom processor, and my test unit featured a 10.1-inch diagonal LED BrightView widescreen display (1024×576), 60GB drive, 1GB DDR2 RAM, a built-in webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 3-cell Lithium Polymer Battery, SD/MMC memory card reader, USB Ports, LAN port, and more. The beauty of this configuration is that it’s only a mere 2.25 pounds.

Keyboard and Trackpad
The first thing I expected to not like was the keyboard. Surprisingly, HP did a great job with this one and it feels almost like a full-size keyboard. According to HP, it’s 92-percent the size of a full-size laptop keyboard. So far I’ve taken it on the road and used it for more than two hours without issue. The keys themselves don’t come up too far from the base of the laptop and have a very nice feel and travel to them. HP also placed the four arrow keys on the bottom right and included a Windows key to the left of the left-most Alt key.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that some laptops only have a control key on one side. Thankfully, HP included one on either side of the space bar.

As for the trackpad, it’s a solid enough response but I would have preferred the right and left mouse keys to be placed at the bottom of the touchpad as opposed to on opposite sides of the pad. I found it was difficult at times to click and drag as a result of the placement. Overall, they’re functional and have a great feel, especially when being clicked.

Display
The display is gorgeous, especially at full brightness. Unfortunately, when I used it in a number of coffee shops the glare and reflection as a result of the glossy screen was almost unbearable. The only way to combat the glare is to crank up the brightness, which then drains the battery on the Mini 1000 much faster. I’ve used plenty of glossy screens in the past so I don’t know what in particular is causing this one to pick up every little reflection. It’s not a show stopper, just more of an annoyance since you have to crank up the brightness to reduce the glare.

Ports
there’s no shortage of ports on the HP Mini 1000. There’s a USB port on either side and even an integrated LAN jack. One big gripe I have, though, is the lack of a VGA or DVI out. There’s what appears to be a proprietary port that you need to purchase an accessory cable for in order to hook up the HP Mini 1000 to an external display. I would have expected it to be included in the box and recommend that HP look into doing that going forward.

Standby and Hibernate
One of my biggest gripes with XP is its sporadic ability to properly go into standby or hibernate. I tested this on the HP Mini 1000 on a number of occasions and would just close the lid in the middle of doing my work to see how well the Mini 1000 would come back to life. I had power-saving set to go to standby after 5 minutes of inactivity and then hibernate after 30 minutes of inactivity. In all tests the Mini 1000 woke up without issue. This allowed me to go on the road with the Mini 1000, with occasional use, for an entire day without charging it.

Portability
I mentioned in the specs list above that it’s only 2.25 pounds. Pair that with the fact that it’s a 10-inch screen and you can see how portable it is. I brought it to a coffee shop and showed it to a fellow MacBook user who said, “Wow, I can’t believe how small that is!” Then when he opened it up, he was blown away with not only how fast it powered up but how efficient the netbook was.

For comparison purposes I put the HP Mini 1000 on top of my MacBook. You can see how much smaller it is.

I also put the Mini in my usual notebook bag that I carry around and it got lost in the compartment made just for the laptop. It’s definitely one of the best road warrior laptops I’ve had the pleasure of using. I can only imagine how well it would work on an airplane, where space is at a premium, especially in coach.

Battery life
I mentioned above that to reduce the glare I had to jack up the brightness. Even at full brightness the Mini 1000 lasted an entire day with a solid 2.5 hours of use and plenty of standby time. I would assume that means you can get more than 3 hours of life out of the battery, provided you tweak your brightness and other settings.

Road test
I took the Mini 1000 on the road to see how it would fare as a daily laptop performing my usual Geek.com duties. In this special case, though, I wanted to see if I could completely compute in the cloud so I literally took the HP Mini 1000 out of the box, installed Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 on it for a review, and then installed Chrome. Then I went about my day. Surprisingly, battery life held up and browsing and even editing photos worked just as if I was on my MacBook. The keyboard was great, even after more than two hours, and the only issue I had was the size of the screen, which at 10-inches doesn’t lend itself to too many applications being open side-by-side.

Overall, I think the HP Mini 1000 is not only a great portable solution, but if you can get the accessory cable from HP, this could be many people’s primary machines. Honestly, most people browse the internet and check their e-mail. That’s pretty much it. For these tasks and a bunch more, the HP Mini 1000 performed perfectly.

If you’re in the market for a new portable computer and all you want to do is basic browsing and light office work (supposing you don’t need an optical drive), seriously consider the HP Mini 1000. If you already have a heavy duty desktop or laptop but want something a bit more portable for when you hit the road, the HP Mini 1000 should on or near the top of your list.