HP Mini 5102

Monday, January 11, 2010, 4:13
Laptops
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HP announced its new netbook HP Mini 5102 at CES 2010. It is HP’s first touch enabled netbook. With all recent inventions in smartbooks, smartphones and tablet computers it is very appreciable that HP is still looking to evolve the humble netbook category. It is a very good option for road warriors and students as it is more durable and secure than all other previous netbooks.

Like all its predecessors the new Mini 5102 2.8- pound sequel sports an all metal case and a comfortable keyboard. In addition to it includes facial recognition and optional capacitive multitouch display. The most important change in 5102 is Intel’s ultra-efficient N450 processor which makes it run for over 10 hours. The case of 5102 is made up of anodized aluminum on top and magnesium alloy on bottom which has given it good strength.

The 95% island-sized full keyboard enables to write fast without any trouble as all the keys are perfectly differentiable. There is a row of keys for functions like adjustment of brightness or volume which can be operated without pressing function key. The touchpad is a bit small as compared to mini netbooks of Toshiba. The standard 10.1 inch backlit display with resolution 1024 x 600 offers a bright display. Netbook includes a 2.0 Mega Pixel web cam which offers good picture especially in low light.

There are power jack, VGA port and 2 USB ports on the left hand side. On right hand side there is Ethernet port, another USB port and mic and headphone jacks, SD/MMC card slots and Kensington lock slot. It is equipped with the latest 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and 1GB RAM providing satisfactory performance. It runs Windows 7 starter edition. The 5102 comes with a 7,200 rpm 160 GB hard drive which would provide radical performance. As it was expected Intel’s GMA 3150 graphics gives average performance.

Six-cell battery consumes around 2 hours to charge completely. Battery efficiency rating is 11. Many tools like HP QuickSync, QuickWeb, QuickLook 3 and also the CoralHomeOffice to make the netbook more user friendly. The product comes with one year limited warranty. It is available at $399 with basic features and costs $424 if you select optional six-cell battery. You would pay $649 if a six-cell battery with 2 GB RAM is selected. Overall HP has created a gem and the price and performance are unlike other netbooks in the market.