HP Mini 1000 Review – HP brings laptops back in the lap

Monday, November 24, 2008, 4:42
Laptops
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HP has finally come up with a netbook that guarantees to justify the name laptop. Having the dimensions of 6.6x10.3x0.95 inches, HP Mini 1000 is made in lightweight plastic. It has a large comfortable keyboard and it is the Mini 1000’s best feature. The processor in this netbook is the much anticipated Intel Atom. Priced at around $550, it is a good value for money laptop, especially if you have a lot of travelling to do and your bulky notebook is hindering with it.

There are two options for the hard disk either one can opt for a 16 GB solid state drive or a 60GB, 1.8 inch hard disk drive. It has a pretty big display that stands at 10.2 inch with a resolution of 1024 × 600 pixels. The RAM options start from 512 MB to 2 GB and are user upgradable. It also hosts a variety of connectivity options like, Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0, and Wi-Fi. HP Mini 1000 also has built in webcam and microphone like the commonly available laptops in the market.

It also features a SD card reader and has a port for “HP Mini Mobile Drive”, which is basically a compressed USB port into which only branded HP USB drives can fit. This is a kind of drawback in this netbook. HP provides a dock connector that can be used to connect to VGA, RJ-45, analogue audio in/out, and power.

The appearance of HP Mini 1000 is very much identical to that of the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC. Netbooks are usually designed keeping price and portability in mind. So, they usually aren’t very visually appealing. The use of plastic in HP Mini 1000 instead of aluminum chassis makes the netbook cheaper as well as lighter. HP Mini 1000 has an efficient and attractive layout. There’s hardly any space on the keyboard tray!

HP Mini 1000 houses a keyboard that is 92 percent of the size of a full-size laptop keyboard. This is the biggest bonus and selling point for HP Mini 1000. All other small laptops or netbooks that are available in the market have extremely cramped keyboards. HP was able to give a comfortable typing experience by expanding the keyboard right to the edges of the system.