HP Mini 210 goodness!
01-09-2011 @ 7:42AM EST
I'm running Fedora 14 XFCE as my primary OS with the option to dual boot into Windows 7 Professional (I could not get XP Pro to install for the life of me so I setup a Windows XP Pro VM in VMWare Player). Both OSes run perfectly with no issues at all.
The size is awesome, it's a 10.1" @ 1366x768 LCD which is a step up from my 8.9" @ 1280x768 on my HP Mini-Note 2133. The display is perfect and extremely bright. Video playback is beautiful with the Broadcom Accelerator except that I've found 1080p YouTube clips to be choppy. 720p YouTube clips are ok except that the download speed is slow so I have to let some of them buffer before playing them back. Playback of 1080p files can be choppy at times while playback of 720p is always smooth and flawless.
The speakers are decent but their max volume is less than that of my HP 2133's but that might be because of the location (under the front instead of on the monitor). I mostly use headphones anyways so in that sense the volume is great.
The CPU is a dual-core Intel Atom @ 1.5GHz as apposed to the single core VIA C7 @ 1.6GHz and I notice the performance difference. I still only have 1GB of RAM but I am holding off on picking up the 2GB stick for now because the DDR3 prices are still a bit high for laptop memory. I am able to run VMWare Player without any issues although with only 256MB of RAM, Windows XP is a bit slugish. Fedora 12, CentOS, Arch Linux, Puppy, and other Linux distros work fine with minimal RAM.
Starcraft II does not work due to some graphic issues on the menu making the text unreadable. I have read of workarounds but have not attempted any.
My main game is OpenArena which is an open source game based on the Quake3 engine I believe. With ultra graphics at 1366x768 there are no performance issues but the screen is really dark, I play all of my FPS games with low graphics to best performance and this fixes the brightness issue. I am slightly addicted.
There's no Adobe Photoshop for Linux and WINE doesn't work so I use GIMP and Krita, no issues with photo editing at all.
I use Chrome for browsing and Midori for testing, both work perfect although I do use FlashBlock because flash based ads are annoying so of course I don't have any performance issues. I enable flash for YouTube and Hulu without any issues (as mentioned about 720p playback is smooth and clean). Netflix does not work on Linux but that is one of the reason I dual boot to Windows 7. Netflix playback is also good.
Network speeds are amazing with Wireless N but I am sad that the ethernet port is only 100Mbps. I also dislike the cover for the ethernet port due to it always being loose. It look great but I'm afraid of it breaking off because of how it's always opening up.
The touchpad is probably the worst thing about it. The multitouch is great except that the buttons are part of the touchpad surface so trying to click and drag or similar tasks cause the mouse cursor to jump all over. Also, the "hardware" button to disable the touchpad doesn't work for me (it worked once but that was the last time it did). I have a script on Fedora that will disable the touchpad if it detects a USB mouse which I always carry around since the touchpad is pretty useless. Likewise the touchpad program in Windows 7 can always detect a USB mouse and disable the touchpad which is awesome. The scrolling is nice but again it's part of the touchpad surface so it might interpret the scroll as a click or be impacted by the multitouch feature.
I don't really like the island keys but they are easier to clean that the other keys so I will life. There is no Home or End buttons but with a BIOS upgrade you can use Fn + Left for Home and Fn + Right for End. Don't forget to upgrade the BIOS first thing in Windows 7 Starter because upgrading with Linux is near impossible.
The fan is nice quiet, the netbook stays very cool even after 6+ hours of usage.
The battery is great, I don't know the exact length one charge will get me because the sensors either don't show a time or make one up but I've used it for 6+ hours without being plugged in and do some gaming and movie watching without getting to 30%. I am surprised how much juice comes in such a little thing because in my experience the extended batteries usually stick out, not the case here.
Speaking of the case, I love how there is only 1 slide to remove the back panel and expose all of the hardware for extremely easy upgrading. Also great for spot cleaning with a compressed air can.
The VGA port works nicely. I was able to setup dual screen in Linux with a single command and it worked perfect.
All 3 USB ports work and it's really nice having 3 available, 2 is so restricting.
The headset/microphone jack is combined, not an issue but still interesting enough to note.
The built-in camera and microphone work as expected, I did a Skype chat with classmates a few weaks ago and it worked like a charm. No complaints here. I also like how the camera has a LED for when it's active. Quality is as expected, not much better than my phone's camera.
Can't think of much else to add right now. I'm just happy at how well everything works (knock on wood). :D
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