HP Mini-Note

HP should begin selling XP versions of the Mini-Note any day now, but some of us eager beavers couldn’t deal with Vista any longer and “downgraded” to Windows XP ourselves. If you have been following my Mini-Note tales, you know that installing XP is simple, however the issues begin after XP is up and running and you discover all the missing drivers.

HP has finally updated its Web site with the needed drivers for XP, including the all-important Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver. My Mini-Note was without any wireless access for a few days and I have been tethered to an Ethernet cord. Not anymore. I simply downloaded the driver to the notebook from this site and the wireless network tool popped up in my system tray.

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I was reading Liliputing’s gripes about the Mini-Note and his number one annoyance struck me:

The Mini-Note heats up so much that you really might want to be careful about putting it on your lap while typing. I haven’t conducted any extensive tests here, but I can say the Mini-Note definitely feels hotter than the Eee PC or most other notebooks I’ve ever actually tried resting on my lap.

I can relate: I have been using the Mini-Note consistently for the past few weeks and, boy, does the system get toasty. Since my review system is an early build, HP relayed that the thermals would be improved; however, Liliputing’s system was a final unit.

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I have finally found the solution to end my Mini-Note Vista woes.  Or so I thought. This morning I braved the Windows XP installation on the Mini-Note. I spent a few hours attempting a dual Vista and Mini-Note boot up set up, but I think yesterday’s installation of Xubuntu might have royally messed up the boot-up manager.

Either way, my installation of XP was a success. Thanks to Brad Linder I had very detailed instructions.

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My eyes burn and are stuck in a squinting position. And my head, it hurts. This is what happens when you spend four full days working on the HP Mini-Note. For those that have been following my escapades with the HP Mini-Note, Vista has been plaguing me.

Vista proved decent for multitasking, Web browsing, and word processing, but even after several tweaks, it was just not able to handle Skype calls and other, more intensive tasks.

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Lots of my fellow Mini-Note troopers, including JKOnTheRun and Brad Linder, have found installing Windows XP on the Mini-Note to solve lots of the speed and performance issues. But as my colleagues know, I am a believer in Vista. So as a last chance for Vista on the Mini-Note, I decided to increase the preloaded 1GB of RAM with a 2GB stick.

Unfortunately, the Mini-Note has only one DIMM slot so if your system comes with less than 2GB and you want to upgrade, you’ll need to throw out the factory-installed RAM.

You can check out the video below for the full process of changing the RAM. It was pretty simple and only cost me $52 for a stick of Corsair branded DDR2 SO-DIMM Memory.

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I was reading Liliputing blogger Brad Linder’s experiences with the HP Mini-Note this morning and became increasingly jealous of his Mini-Note running Windows XP (his system was originally running Open SuSE). It isn’t so much that I dislike Vista (in fact, my Sony VAIO FZ which I am giving up for the Mini-Note for the next few days runs Vista Home Basic), but it seriously effects boot up time.

Linder’s Mini-Note (also configured with at 1.2 GHz VIA and 1GB RAM) running Windows XP takes less than 1 minute to boot up; it is even faster than the Eee PC 4G XP (see his video here). It takes my HP Mini-Note 2 minutes and 30 seconds to boot. The video below shows the out of the box boot experience:
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For me to truly replace my laptop with the HP Mini-Note it must, and I mean must, be able to run Skype. I sign into Skype daily to talk to my old colleagues and I periodically video call with my sister in California and my friend in China. So when I read jkOnTheRun’s review of the Mini-Note and that the system struggled to make video calls I was less than thrilled.

The Mini-Note handles chatting and audio calls over Skype just fine. A Skype to Skype call to my uncle in Denver, Colorado was very clear; he complained about an echo on my end, but when I plugged in a headset that disappeared. However, when we both enabled video calling, the VIA C7-M processor and the system’s 1GB of RAM just couldn’t produce. The system was very sluggish and and video was extremely choppy. In a few instances Skype simply just disabled video all together.

Figuring that the integrated webcam is built-in for some reason, I have been trying to improve the poor video quality. Closing all other applications running on the system helps. Going into the task manager and exiting all tasks takes care of making sure they aren’t running any more. Read the rest of this entry »

The initial reviews of the HP Mini-Note have been overwhelmingly positive, and HP itself has no shame in admitting it has made a killer system. A roomy 92 percent full-size keyboard and a glossy 8.9-inch screen are pretty sweet, but reviews of a system can only go so far. Thus I have taken the HP Mini-Note under my wing for the next few days as my primary computer.

My initial impression? This is one nice-looking system. It’s more attractive than the ASUS Eee PC (especially those Easter egg–colored options) and it’ll certainly turn heads. The brushed metal chassis feels and looks sturdy. However, my reservations quickly started kicking in after toggling the blue LED power switch on.

Ah, boot-up: You leave me enough time to knit a sweater. And since I don’t know how to knit, waiting around felt even longer. In all seriousness, it took 2 minutes and 50 seconds to fully boot up the Vista operating system. My Mini-Note’s configuration costs $599 and contains a VIA C7-M processor (1.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) and 1GB of RAM.

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