HP Mini 1010NR 8.9-Inch Netbook Review
October 13th, 2009
HP Mini 1010NR 8.9-Inch Netbook Review from Trip Like I Do. Total Solid State Excellence, What it does well:
*Powers up from sleep immediately, runs XP SP3, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Microsoft Office 93, Adobe PDF Pro, easily, and the little Atom processor has hyperthreading – it can run about three major apps with antivirus in the background at once without a significant performance hit – runs streaming video well. Haven’t tried conferencing with this, though.
*Eats very little power – if you set the power options appropriately, this unit can run up to 3.5 hours without affecting performance – once again, the Atom processor generates little heat, eats little power – the SSD drive doesn’t make a sound – the smaller screen I would think uses less power than the larger screens – puts itself into sleep or hibernation quickly according to the parameters you set.
*Extremely bright LCD – this unit has a screen brighter than my Nokia 810 and is visible even in direct sunlight. The brightness gradations are the widest of any mobile device I’ve used.
*Tolerates abuse – like the Nokia internet tablets, you don’t have to worry about bumps and thumps damaging the hard disc drive because there isn’t one – and because the unit weighs very little and isn’t big, it doesn’t “deflect” when you carry it like some of the larger notebooks will.
*Convenient – because it doesn’t weigh much, and isn’t sensitive to vibration, doesn’t generate much heat, and doesn’t have that disconcerting disc drive “hum”, you’re liable to carry this thing around, read with it in bed holding it up above you, or standing it up on its side, or putting it in a baggie and reading it in the tub – its also easy to lose in the backpack because it doesn’t have much inertia and is smaller than most textbooks.
*Versatile – if you like to read Adobe PDFs, the form factor of the screen is such that you can tip the device on its side like a book, and flip the screen rotation, then use the mouse to turn pages (sorry, Kindle), and this works for some streaming video as well.
*Other stuff – excellent wifi reception, convenient trackpad on/off switch just above the trackpad, two usb ports in okay locations, has two flash drive ports, keyboard is quite excellent, shape of the shell is minimalistic and attractive and easy to stow; download HP’s Youcam for the webcam after you “fix” it (see below) — makes the webcam fully functional; matches perfectly with the Nano V550 mouse using SetPoint.
Drawbacks:
*The webcam has this “dark film” over it – google how to remove it if you’re inclined – improves brightness by 100% – could use a kickstand – sound card is okay but not great – screen could tilt back an extra 15 degrees – or – doesn’t have a touchscreen or tablet-screen flip option (okay, I’m dreaming now).
But for 300 bucks, I think I’ll buy another one for someone else in my family because they keep using mine. This device has supplanted my Nokia.
You may also want to read HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier (CB656A) Review from printer23.com site.
