First Day With The HP Mini 1109

8:07 Jun 15th, 2009 | 0 notes

If you’ve read my twitter recently, you’ll know I got an HP Mini 1109 on saturday!

Check my Flickr for random badly composed photos!

Well, after hours figuring out how to install Windows 7 (and then finding it was actually super simple) and finding the case I bought was too large, I finally got a chance to take it for a test drive!

I didn’t have much of a school day today, considering that my school orchestra was in an competition and we were away for four periods. But I can tell you that having the Mini with me for math, english and music (well maybe not math) was very promising!

First off, it’s by far the best looking netbook on the market at the moment. To me it’s very Apple-esque and goes great with my iPhone.

I forgot that I didn’t have a copy of Office before I walked off to school, which was somewhat annoying. I had to use the new WordPad in it’s place which was actually fine. I could do all the typing that I needed to do, considering I only needed to type out bullet points. I would seriously consider not buying Office and just downloading Star or Open Office as an alternative, because I’d rather not pay for software that is worth half the value of the entire computer.

I put it into hibernation when I wasn’t using it. With Windows 7, the days of waiting for three minutes for hibernation to set in are over! It takes just as long to hibernate as it does to sleep the machine, making it perfect for putting away for one or two periods before quickly booting it out of hibernation when you need it.

The Mini 1109 is very zippy. I didn’t ever find myself feeling like I was waiting for any lengthy amount of time for it to respond, something I was surprised about considering the slow Atom processor. The screen is great, everything fits well and I never felt in need of more space. Windows Aero UI works wonderfully, all the animations are smooth and fast. The small trackpad is calibrated to make it efficient enough for normal use. I’m still getting used to the track pad buttons being on the side, but that won’t take long. The keyboard is fantastic as well, I’m quickly getting used to it being 8% smaller that full size.

What does it need? I can say it needs to be a bit more energy efficient. The fan runs constantly after a while and I can’t imagine that being good for battery life. The speaker is also quite tinny, but that’s to be expected considering how tiny it is. On the sound devices front, Windows 7 doesn’t seem to recognize the inbuilt microphone. Again, just another little annoyance, but one I can live with. Other than that it work perfectly!

There you go, my brief review of the HP Mini 1109!

Next up, installing a Netbook OS! I’m thinking Moblin at the moment, at least until I can get my hands on Jolicloud.

10:36 May 1st, 2009 | 0 notes

New Microsoft Laptop Hunters ad. I just spat all over my screen as I laughed at this ad.

Let’s begin shall we?

So we have Sheila, a film maker, going to buy a computer. She is ‘open to any brand’ but that will not include Apple of course, because it’s a Microsoft ad. When she goes to the Macs, she shoots down the 15” MacBook Pro because it only has 2GB of RAM. Well, the base configuration of the HP she bought, the HP HDX 16t, also only comes with 2GB. And have you heard of upgrading? Honestly, buy some more yourself! It’s not that big of a deal!

Once again, the “I need it to be fast” point is brought up again. Here is where the second problem lies. At the moment, there is no GPU accelerated video editing software available for the PC which is widely known. So the fact that the HP and the MacBook Pro have the same video card is irrelevant. This brings down the decision of power down to the CPU. The base model of the HP HDX 16t only has a 2.0Ghz processor. The MacBook Pro on the other hand has a minimum processor speed available of 2.4Ghz. Just count the numbers! The Pro’s is higher, therefore better!

I also love when she lists all of the features of the HP: Firewire, webcam, USB. Nice work, you just listed the exact same features found on the MacBook Pro. You even managed to mention firewire, the interface actually created by Apple in 1995! Don’t you just sound absolutely silly right now?

In all the only problem with a Mac this ad raises is the low amount of RAM. Oh no! It’s not like you can get more. No wait! Yes you can! Well I’ll be damned! But what about that slow HP processor huh? Now that’s something you can’t fix. You’re stuck with it forever, no way to upgrade.

Oh, did you notice? The ad has another HP in it. That makes three ads where the subject buys an HP now. Beginning to see a trend?

That’s a wrap Microsoft.