HP Mini 110 Review

[zzzxxx6565]

The netbook looks much like HP's full-sized notebooks in the Pavilion line, just smaller. It's attractive and doesn't s***** "cheesy netbook", thanks to curved lines, very good fit and finish and attractive gloss finishes. The lid sports HP's usual Imprint Finish; this one has small swirls and a few dots. It's available in black and white (white costs $20 more-- why we can't tell you). The lid is high gloss but somehow not super-slippery and it shows fingerprints aplenty. The keyboard deck is gloss silver plastic and the large trackpad is also glossy though it's not slick and finger movement isn't accentuated (in fact, it's a little slow). Happily, HP has more room on the 11.6" model and they've dropped the hideous side mouse buttons for a standard bottom of the trackpad location. There is no trackpad on/off switch, so be mindful of your palms when typing.
Since these ION machines support HD video, we probably won't see it on 10" netbooks in the short term. They're more ideally mated with higher resolution displays, and thus the HP Mini 311 is an 11.6" netbook running at 1366 x 768 resolution (adequate for 720p playback direct to the LCD and full 1080i to a TV or monitor via HDMI or VGA). What's the difference between the ION and ION LE? The ION LE costs less but it supports only DirectX 9, not 10. Gamers, take note. Though honestly, I'm not betting that any Atom netbook is really up to full DirectX 10 gaming. NVIDIA states that all other specs and streaming video playback, including HD video, are the same on the ION LE as the ION.

Now that we've covered what ION offers, let's take a look at the Mini 311 itself. The standard $399 configuration comes with an LED backlit 1366 x 768 display, the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, NVIDIA ION LE graphics, a 160 gig hard drive, 1 gig of DDR3 RAM, WiFi 802.11b/g, a 6 cell battery and a 5-in-1 card reader (SD size). If you build to order on HP's web site you can upgrade to the Atom N280 ($25), WiFi 802.11n ($25) and add Bluetooth ($25). It seems everything you might want or miss can be added $25 at a time. If the specs seem just like every other netbook on the market, it's because Microsoft and Intel put limits on what the Atom and Windows XP can run on. Look for these limits to raise a bit with Windows 7 (at least RAM and hard drive capacity). Unlike prior netbooks, the Mini 311 maxes out at 3 gigs of RAM rather than 1 or 2.Since these ION machines support HD video, we probably won't see it on 10" netbooks in the short term. They're more ideally mated with higher resolution displays, and thus the HP ProBook 4420S NoteBook Intel Core i3 370M(2.40GHz) 14" 4GB Memory DDR3 1066 320GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi Intel HD Graphics" netbook running at 1366 x 768 resolution (adequate for 720p playback direct to the LCD and full 1080i to a TV or monitor via HDMI or VGA). What's the difference between the ION and ION LE? The ION LE costs less but it supports only DirectX 9, not 10. Gamers, take note. Though honestly, I'm not betting that any Atom netbook is really up to full DirectX 10 gaming. NVIDIA states that all other specs and streaming video playback, including HD video, are the same on the ION LE as the ION.

Now that we've covered what ION offers, let's take a look at the Mini 311 itself. The standard $399 configuration comes with an LED backlit 1366 x 768 display, the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, NVIDIA ION LE graphics, a 160 gig hard drive, 1 gig of DDR3 RAM, WiFi 802.11b/g, a 6 cell battery and a 5-in-1 card reader (SD size). If you build to order on HP's web site you can upgrade to the Atom N280 ($25), WiFi 802.11n ($25) and add Bluetooth ($25). It seems everything you might want or miss can be added $25 at a time. If the specs seem just like every other netbook on the market, it's because Microsoft and Intel put limits on what the Atom and Windows XP can run on. Look for these limits to raise a bit with Windows 7 (at least RAM and hard drive capacity). Unlike prior netbook, the Mini 311 maxes out at 3 gigs of RAM rather than 1 or 2.

[zzzxxx6565]

We've been waiting a year for the first NVIDIA ION netbook to hit the streets, and HP's the first in the US. They decided to ship the newHP Mini 311 several weeks ahead of other brands, and not wait for the Windows 7 rollout. HP will offer 311 models with your choice of Windows XP or Windows 7 after October 22, 2009 when Win7 goes on sale. If you want Windows 7 we suggest you wait since the XP model doesn't offer the same video playback performance under Windows 7 as it does under XP (this issue may be ameliorated by future driver and BIOS releases, but no promises there). Thanks to ION, video and gaming performance are miraculous by netbook standards under XP and the upcoming Windows 7 version of the Mini 311 is just as good.

What's so special about ION? It's basically the HP ProBook 4320s(XT939UT) NoteBook Intel Core i3 370M(2.40GHz) 13.3" 2GB Memory DDR3 1066 320GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi Intel HD Graphics for the Intel Atom netbook CPU and chipset. While Atom netbooks with Intel integrated graphics (that's every netbook shipped with the exception of the HP Mini 311 as of this writing) do a poor job of video playback, an ION-equipped netbook is something of an idiot savant-- it doesn't have the CPU to do heavy computational tasks but it can play video like a champ. It does a better job than full-sized notebooks with Intel integrated graphics, in fact. That's because the ION is derived from the 9400M, a mid-level graphics solution for notebooks that's found on the MacBook and several other HP Pavilion dv6-3240us NoteBook AMD Phenom II Triple-Core P860(2.0GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 640GB HDD 5400rpm BD Combo ATI Radeon HD 4250 that want to give you more video and gaming love than standard Intel fare. So we can finally say "hello mobile multimedia machine" to a lowly netbook. This is the first significant performance innovation we've seen since the netbook craze started with the grand-daddy ASUS Eee PC 4G a few years back. There's finally a reason to upgrade, and we expect to see several brands and models sporting the ION in the coming months (Lenovo has announced their 12" S12 with Ion and Samsung has released the N510 overseas). If we gave Editor's Choice awards to technologies rather than products, we'd give one to NVIDIA for their ION platform. It will shift the netbook from web surfing and email machine to a movie and gaming portable.