All week long, the light sound of clicking has emanated from the Mini-Dome–the battle ground for LAPTOP Magazine’s Mini-Notebook Type Off. Our typing gladiators have faced missed keys, cramped hands and punctuation frustration as they furiously typed Hamlet’s soliloquy on three mini-keyboards.

Avram “The ESC Artist” Piltch, Emily “Key Crusher” Kizer, Jeffrey “Hands of Steel” Wilson and TJ “Furious Fingers” Fink took on the ASUS Eee PC, the HP 2133 Mini-Note and the CTL 2Go PC to determine which keyboard is the best for typing.

Based on the average words per minute among our contestants, the HP Mini-Note easily conquered the Eee PC and the 2Go PC. Our typists produced an average of 53.25 wpm on the Mini-Note, despite concerns about its lack of tactile feedback. The 92% full size keyboard certainly provided the advantage over the child-sized keys on the Eee PC and the 2Go PC. Our traditional touch typists, ESC Artist and Key Crusher, found the extra real estate on the Mini-Note to be vital to their success.

Even though none of our contestants could find the apostrophe on the 2Go PC without an extensive search, the average scores for the 2Go PC and the Eee PC were surprisingly close. The Eee PC had an average word per minute score of 44.75, while the 2Go PC slid in just below it with 44.25.

Check out the tears, the laughter and the triumphant Mini-Note below.

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All Rounds of the Mini-Notebook Type-Off:

1. Eee PC
2. The HP Mini-Note
3. The 2Go PC
4. The Final Results