HP Mini 1000 With Intel Atom and 10-Inch Display Gets Official

At long last, HP has finally released a follow-up (actually, two) to its flagship netbook, the 2133 Mini-Note. The newest model, the Mini 1000 (starting at $379 with Linux, $399 with XP), won’t replace the 2133; while the first was intended for educational and small-business use, the Mini 1000 which is now powered by an Intel Atom processor is clearly a more consumer-friendly netbook.

Available in 8.9 and 10-inch configurations, it looks the part: the 92 percent-full-size keyboard forgoes the 2133’s silver DuraFinish for a simple, matte black one. The speaker is built into the hinge, but alas, the touch buttons still awkwardly flank the touch pad. On the bright side, its 2.25-pound body feels light in the hands, and it’s less than an inch thick (the 2133 weighs 3.2 pounds and is 1.1 inches thick). To top it off, it has HP’s Imprint Finish, which is black with a swirl pattern. Check out our full review for more of our thoughts on the new netbook.

Whereas the 2133 is available with downgradeable Vista and SUSE Linux, both the 9 and 10-inch versions of the Mini 1000 will be offered with either XP or Mobile Internet Experience, a proprietary OS built on top of Ubuntu. (See our hands-on post for our first impressions of MIE. Suffice it to say, we’re impressed.)

The Mini 1000 will be available with an 8GB or 16GB SSD, or a 60GB  1.8-inch hard drive. It will initially come with a 3-cell battery, which HP says will deliver between 3 and 3.5 hours of battery life. An extended battery will follow  by January 2009. The 10-inch version has a 16:10 display, and both have a unique slot into which users can stow away a proprietary HP-branded flash drive. HP also promises mobile broadband/3G solutions later in the year.

Oh, yes. And there’s still another netbook we haven’t talked about.

Actually, we have. It’s that Vivienne Tam Mini we showed you back in September (it’s now called the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition).

The 10.2-inch Vivienne Tam Edition will sell for about $699. It will only be offered with XP, and will have 1GB of RAM. As for the Mini 1000, detailed pricing for the different 9 and 10-inch configuration were not available at the time of this posting. The XP versions are available for sale on hp.com today, but the Linux version won’t hit the market until January.