HP Mini-Note gets unboxed, causes extreme jealousy
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Apr 17th 2008 9:02AM
posted Apr 17th 2008 9:02AM
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You're right, it does cause jealousy.........so shiny........
make it sub 1 lb and im sold!!!
i love the oqo laptops form factor but not loving their price tags.
Its also made of magnesium alloy I hear, which is a very nice thing to be jealous of. Pretend it has an atom CPU instead of a VIA and all is good. I like the large keyboard :-)
Either has giant hands, or that's one very miniature notebook.
Why not both?
those were mega-hands
...spend some money on hand lotion.
I can't wait to get my sausages on one of these....
Thank you for that very disturbing image.
And plural???
"sausages"? you sir are either one real lucky man or one real sad one!
I believe he was meaning 'fingers'.
Goes to show you who the perverts are. ^_^
oh come on, he was misleading
When was the last time you used the term "sausages" for your fingers?
Oh real sensitive you guys! Don't you know that Chris Anderson is poor Edward Sausagefingers writing alias?
Would that make him Hands Chris Anderson?
handsy mchanderson
Turn it on!
no no no, this notebook doesnt actually turn on it's just for looks..
much like paris hilton
what are you talking about? Paris hilton gets turned on by everything.
That's Hot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8kziSayoqM
Finally showing up on the Canadian HP site... will be an early adopter as usual... can't wait for them to open it up for orders.
ever notice early adopters ALWAYS get burnt?
i like to buy stuff when its fresh too.. xbox 360.. yeah, i'm on my 2nd.. about to be on my 3rd
hang on..
well anyone who 'adopts' an xbox 360 is going to get burnt
( get it, heat reference )
@AutoTom
yeah, im on my 4th xbox. this one is getting cd read errors =\
but this laptop looks pretty smexy
Ummm sorry to burst engadgets bubble but these are available to buy on hp's usa website and have for a few weeks now..... this isnt a miracle or someone with a extreme amount cash.... :)
Yea, but people's delivery dates are for Friday. Unless you have some HP-to-you teleporter that I don't know about.
and they reported yesterday that HP missed the ship date for pre-orders (which was supposed to be yesterday) due to some sort of delay that wasn't specified
I'm thinking of getting this or the eeepc... idk which is better yet
black eee 900 man
Wait till the summer and the eee'll be getting itself an Atom processor and finally a decent battery life.
Wonder if eeectl will still work!
What the hell is eeectl?
that trackpad looks majorly wonky!!!
yeah, he hacked it to be lop sided, best mini-note hack to date.
Soon as the intel version comes out, HP's getting a little piece of my Paycheck. Love the form factor... Not as taken by the Via chip.
is this really as excellent as it looks?
will it run leopard? (kidding)
looks like a sweet ubuntu rig...
Nice pics. Good looking machine. Best wishes with it.
That trackpad looks goofy. Why is it off-center?
So that when your hands are in their natural typing position, they trackpad is under your thumbs, rather than your palm, meaning you don't have to move you hands to use it. A lot of laptops have trackpads like this, function over form and all that
@ Phil - you ARE joking right?! I see so many laptops now [if not all!] with off centered trackpads. It irritates the crap out of me that their designers are so lazy that they cant figure out how to center the thing. There's NO reason to have this off centered - especially for this little guy. If I were to put my left hand on this in a "natural typing position" it would lay smack on the left clicker. My assumption is that all these trackpads are located off center to make room for optical and hard drives. Please don't tell me Phil is right and they do this for "FUNCTION".
@anthony
dude, are YOU joking? home typing position: index fingers on F and J, thumbs on the space bar. The track pad is center aligned with those keys.
don't be such a moran!
now the mouse buttons-- i think they sacrificed usability for form factor there, but that's another story...
Very cool! Thomas Capriola
I ordered mine a few days ago and it has still not arrived :<
http://www.hpmini.com
Looks very nice indeed. For the price however, I would like to see a little bit better battery life or a slight price drop. Is an Atom version planned? For this sort of device I am going to want at least 6 horus of battery with wifi on to justify the cost.
Could Engaget join this century and make it so we don't have to click to an entirely new page with nothing else on it to view the gallery? Since you guys are redesigning things, how about addressing how the gallery usability is teh suck.
tru dat.
i believe "teh suck" is my meme, thank you very much!
Looks like the track pad is off-center to line up with the space bar. Makes sense logistically, but aesthetically it could use some work.
Are you blind, what more aesthetic work could they do on this, compare this to the eee
Can we have the option of switching to a black layout? This website is too white.
White is the new black.
what and remove all the appleness from the site?
i think not!
Lovely. It's the same size as my HP omnibook 600c which is a great computer !.
Am I the only one whose inner tree hugger came out and gawked at the excessive amount of packing material? All I can think about is how un-needed some of that stuff is for such a small laptop.
Well it's mostly just cardboard, which degrades fairly quickly. And you can just burn that styrofoam :P
They should totally have a 'tree-hugger' option, so you don't have to have your conscience burdened with so much packing material. They should even charge you extra for it, just so you can really feel like you're doing something to save the planet.
So, your laptop might arrive in several pieces, but that's a small price to pay for being proactive in saving the planet from evil packing materials.
Get over yourself.
Would you rather they just slap a stamp on the case and throw it in the mailbox?
Ayumin wrote: "Am I the only one whose inner tree hugger came out and gawked at the excessive amount of packing material?"
I did the green thing and purchased it as a digital download.
so inside of you......theres a person....hugging trees?
I don't know why everyone's so excited for this laptop. HP sent my work one to test over a month ago and initially I like it, but like the EeePC, I soon began to hate it. It's really not that great.
Am I the only one who has to smile by seeing the user manual on a CD ? ;)
LOL! I hadn't even noticed that! nice catch!
Haha that is irony for you!
Woah! That keyboard only slightly resembles the 12" G4 Powerbooks of yesteryear! That's crazy! They were good keyboards though!
I was just thinking that - I still use my PB 12". For form factor alone, however, I'd give this HP a serious look. I wonder how comfy it is to type on?
i want it badly!
Want what badly???????
.
.
.
Oops sorry, went off topic for a second there....
well.. I'm free after work. My place or yours?
Let me rephrase that: I would like one of those HP Mini-note pcs very much.
Come on you guys!
Sorry! i was just joking around =)
Aren't you the one from "Pulp Fiction"
Your a man!
best thread of the day.
voce e brasileira!
que linda =)
Look pretty good....
But we'll find out about the functionality in a month or so.
It is a nice looking unit. I must point out though that Fujitsu had their Lifebook out around year 2000 and it was smaller than this new HP device.
One thing I always want in a mobile device is the biggest possible screen in the smallest possible package. That huge bezel is a waste of space. Make the whole thing smaller or make the screen bigger.
USOD
WOW: Mac keyboard. The keyboard looks exactly like a mac ... botton case very much like a 12" Powerbook.
Got thing that finally some companys at least start to think.
From the photos there seem to be huge gaps around the keyboard and mouse buttons?... Is it possible this is American made!
Females:
Oh come on my dear, your posting on a geeksite and using a rather tempting picture. your gonna get at least two replies per post where they wanna get in your pants.
Remember, Keyboard + anonymity + Geek = drooling perv.
If you did not like the attention then you would have changed your pic!
Blokes:
As mentioned above plus.....
I'll have tea and croisants for breakfast, an while your at it, make me a sandwich!.
Females:
Oh come on my dear, your posting on a geeksite and using a rather tempting picture. your gonna get at least two replies per post where they wanna get in your pants.
Remember, Keyboard + anonymity + Geek = drooling perv.
If you did not like the attention then you would have changed your pic!
Blokes:
As mentioned above plus.....
I'll have tea and croisants for breakfast, an while your at it, make me a sandwich!.
Reply
Dude!!! How could you not give these people a correct and complete address when you ordered this thing? If you look on 2nd pic you will see a green sticker. That is a FedEx address correction label. I got a box like that last month when the my son forgot to put my apartment number on the label. For something that valuable I would make sure I got everything right. Good thing it was shipped via FedEx cause I've had stuff get lost by those other guys. Anyway, I'm just ranting cause I don't have one.:-{(
Funny you should mention the green sticker on the box. H-P put labels on both ends of the box. Both of the labels had my name, the name of my company, and the city and Zip code. But only one of the labels had my (correct) street address. The other label had no street address at all. Someone at FedEx looked at the label with no street address Wednesday morning and pulled the package out (it was listed on their web site as a delivery exception or something like that). They didn't bother looking at the label that had my correct street address (and I can't say I find a whole lot of fault in that). That exception kept my precious Mini-Note from being delivered in the morning. But it got to me in the afternoon so all was good with the world.
I've had a chance to use the Mini-Note a little bit this evening. With the SSD drive and Linux it takes about 55 or 56 seconds to get to the log-in screen, then another 30 seconds or so to get to the desktop so I can do any work. Shutdown takes about 33 seconds. I'm a Linux newbie, so perhaps I'm using incorrect terminology. The Linux install is at the default settings because I wouldn't know what to change.
The keyboard seems very good and easy to work with, the screen is big enough for me to see what I'm typing, and the overall build quality seems very good too. I haven't seen anybody say how long it takes to boot the Mini-Note into Vista, but I can't imagine it's any quicker than booting into Linux with the SSD drive. The Linux default settings are easy enough to work with for anybody familiar with Windows or Mac OS X (we have both Windows XP and Mac OS X in our house, so now we're a three-OS home). My Linux books should be arriving any day now, so I am one happy camper.
I'm wondering if a RAM upgrade might make the boot time a bit faster. And when H-P starts selling replacement batteries I'll probably spring for a 6-cell. I'll probably be prowling the coffeehouses this weekend, trolling for envious glances.
im sure its not possible to get this powered-by-linux sub-note without the windows key
why when you go to HP's website and look at pricing is the faster (1.6 v 1.2) (7200 vs. 5400) (2 gb vs. 1 gb) cheaper>??????? the slightly smaller hard drive?
I dunno about you but ill take 40 less gigs at 7200 rpm any day
I don't usually like HP, but this little number sure is cute.
Dell is going to smack this thing around like a pimp's main hoe trying to go awol. It's pretty though.
Think there's a reason for the big VIA C-7 sticker on the box? Like, perhaps so they can tell the inventory apart when they start sticking Intel Atoms in them?
Replying to Matt and Mark:
I suspect the VIA C-7 sticker is on there because Via is doing something similar to Intel's "Intel Inside" marketing program. Perhaps H-P gets a rebate or some marketing funds in exchange for putting the sticker on the box. But I'm just guessing.
As to why people are getting so excited about this laptop, I can only speak for myself. It's highly portable, fully functional (other than the lack of an optical drive), and it doesn't cost $2,500 to $3,000 to buy. That combination of features makes it very attractive to me. Give me a laptop that weighs less than three pounds and I'm more likely to take it with me without having to mull over whether I really want to lug around 7 or 8 pounds of stuff just so I can check my e-mail or do some writing. The small size and light weight should make it a lot more convenient.
By the way - that's my Mini-Note and my aging, withering hand in the unboxing photos. My first impression is that I really like the Mini-Note. I haven't booted it up yet because I had to go to bed before it got fully charged last night and I've been busy at work today. I'll be putting it through its paces at home this evening. I chose the stripped-down $499 Linux version because I don't absolutely need Windows functionality for what I'll be using it for, and I'm guessing that the combination of the SSD and Linux ought to give me a quick boot-up time when I'm out and about. I'm hoping I don't live to regret that decision.
I wish the power brick was a tiny bit smaller but that's not a huge drawback. I've seen people say they'd like to see the screen be larger, and I understand what they're saying. But I also recognize that making the screen bigger would likely increase the weight and the cost (and perhaps the overall size). All in all I think H-P did a pretty good job of balancing functionality, design, weight, and cost. I'm not usually an early adopter, but I am very excited to be one of the first to have the Mini-Note. I can't wait to show it off at my local coffee shop.
Really? You got the Linux version? Awesome! Please let us (or at least me) know your thoughts on it. All the reviews I've been able to find so far are for the Windows Vista with massive HD versions.
I'm thinking about getting that version, too, if I get one, just for the theoretical SSD battery-life savings. I need Bluetooth, though, and it isn't an option on low end yet. :(
If that giant screen bezel won't get you laid, nothing will.
I guess you're out of luck.
Nice! Looks much nicer than the eee, less vents and clunky shape. The trackpad looks comfortable, the keyboard looks similar to the one on my powerbook 12" (if it types the same way great!)
I want!
Via must be feeling a nice boost from the rise of these cheap sub-laptop things :)
These things just give me second thoughts on what i want to end up buying as my rig. My last laptop was around 1,500 when i bought it and within a month the screen was smashed. I'm sticking with my current build no matter how bad it is. =]
nevermind. saw the hands picture. wanting it. getting it.
For $50 more than that base unit price, I'm tempted to order the slightly faster processor, 2x RAM and upgraded a/b/g wireless (unless that's just a misprint), but I prefer a SSD over the HD for lower weight, less power drain and improved boot time. Does anyone know how easily the SATA HD could be replaced with a 4GB (hopefully larger) SSD? I'm assuming I could sell the 120GB HD and recoup some of the cost. Am I crazy?
i really like some of the designs that HP are coming out with lately. keep it up HP
Here's my unboxing: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/unboxing-the-hp-2133-mini-note/