Last year when HP introduced the original Mini 210 we praised its design and keyboard/touchpad combo, but the battery life left something to be desired. Today the company announced a refresh for the netbook that includes an improved keyboard and touchpad, Intel’s dual-core Atom CPU, easier upgradability, and a wide range of beautiful colors.
The HP Mini 210-2061NR is definitely a good-looking machine. Though the 10.1-inch system weighs a little over 3 pounds, it’s less than an inch thick and feels really good in the hand. The 360 degree design gives it an all-over smooth and seamless look. Plus, whichever color you choose – charcoal, crimson red, luminous rose, lavender frost, or ocean drive – extends from the lid to the bottom of the netbook. I also like that the lid and bottom have a matte finish, so fingerprints shouldn’t be an issue.
Though this isn’t one of the runway-ready HP models, style is clearly an important factor. The netbook comes with a matching sleeve and users can also opt for a matching wireless mini mouse with micro receiver.
The bottom panel removes easily, as you’ll see in our hands-on video below, and allows easy access for users who want to upgrade the hardware themselves. Sadly, the max RAM this system can take is 1GB, but perhaps it will be enough for the 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N455 dual-core processor. The The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data. Learn Morehard drive is a speedy 7,200 rpm with 250GB of space. And wireless N for fast Internet access.
Even though the Mini 210 will come with Intel’s Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer?s display. Learn Moreintegrated graphics standard, the dual-core CPU is supposed to power this baby enough for smooth full screen 720p video and streaming media. With great power comes great battery drain, so users might want to opt for the 6-cell battery over the 3-cell. Configurations start at $329.
We’re looking forward to putting this to the test when the netbook comes out. Until then, check out our hands-on video and gallery or read about more of HP’s fall 2010 announcements below.
Netbook, notebook, who cares what the heck you call it? The Asus Eee PC 1215N is the best 12-inch laptop we’ve tested under 500 bucks. It combines a dual-core Atom processor (although it’s a desktop CPU) with more than 5.5 hours of battery life, thanks to Nvidia’s Optimus technology. For those who don’t know, Optimus switches between Ion graphics–good enough to play maintstream titles like World of Warcraft well above 30 fps–and Intel’s Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer?s display. Learn Moreintegrated graphics to squeeze out more endurance. Other highlights of this sequel to the 1201PN include a larger touchpad and improved webcam. Add it all up and you have a great ultraportable bargain.
It looks like the new Dual Core Atom N550 will be in more systems than just the manufacturers Intel mentioned previously on Monday.
Gigabyte’s newly refreshed convertible netbook, the T1005M, sports the 1.5GHz with 512KB of L2 cache, 2GB of DDR3 Ram, a USB 3.0 port, and optional HSDPA. Bits that have not changed are the usual 320GB The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data. Learn Morehard drive, WiFi 80211b/g/n, Bluetooth, 2x USB 2.0, Windows 7 Home Premium and a 10.1-inch capacitive multi-touch display running at 1366 x 768 pixels resolution.
The Gigabyte T1005M is already available in Australia. When it will hit European and US shores is still unknown.
When we reviewed the original Sony VAIO P last year, we were seriously impressed by its ultraportable design and vibrant high resolution screen. However, it was also one of the most expensive netbooks on the market and suffered from poor battery life, both of which put it at a bit of a disadvantage. Now that over 18 months have passed, we gave the new VAIO P a shot to see if Sony had made any major improvements. While this device certainly has a lot going for it, it’s a shame that the price and battery life hold it back from being a major contender in its notebook category.
The stand-out feature of the VAIO P is definitely its design, available in a variety of striking colors like lime green or neon pink and weighing only 1.4 pounds. The 8.9 inch screen can reach resolutions as high as 1600×768, and video playback worked well. We were also surprised that the normally mediocre Intel Atom Z530 processor delivered solid performance.
However, we were still disappointed by the sub-par battery life, lasting only a little over three hours on a charge. And at a base price of $899.99, we’re not quite sure if this machine is worth the premium for the average consumer.
Coby’s not exactly known for being on the cutting edge when it comes to product releases, but if their release lineup is any indication, the company’s product slate might get slightly more interesting.
An intrepid Liliputing reader found a page on Coby’s website that lists seven different netbooks. All of the netbooks sport fairly midrange specs, with screens ranging from eight to 12 inches and Intel Atom and AMD Sempron processors powering the internals. Included memory looks to range from 1GB to 2GB of DDR2 RAM and specification pages for several of the netbooks show 160GB 5400RPM hard drives.
If you’re planning on buying one, though, you might want to hold off for a second—none of the product pages have vendor availability or pricing listed just yet.
In finger-pointing news today, ASUS has noticed a decline in their netbook sales and  lowered their shipment goals accordingly for later this year. According to president and CEO  Jerry Chen, Apple is to blame. “The company saw sales of its netbooks in the second quarter fall short of expectations mainly due to competition from Apple’s iPad, and has downward adjusted its target shipments for the third quarter, the traditional peak sales period, to 1.4 million units,” Chen said to investors in a conference call last week.
The company isn’t just sitting around with folded arms though. In light of this news Chen also mentioned ASUS entering the tablet PC market with Eee Note and Eee Pad series of tablets, while still continuing to offer their netbooks. The question is how quickly the company can make this transition, and how well it can execute.
We’ve been fans of Toshiba’s netbooks in the past—every Toshiba netbook that’s been reviewed here has gotten at least 3.5 stars. While the price tag on most of these netbooks has always been a bit of a downside, it helps to make the Toshiba mini NB255 especially appealing by comparison.
The 10.1-inch mini NB255 costs only $299, but features an Atom N455 1.67-GHz CPU, 1GB DDR3 RAM and a six-cell battery. We are fans of the netbook’s slick, fingerprint-proof exterior and performance. Despite the low price, the mini NB255 earned solid marks in many of our benchmark tests.
However, some concessions in design hindered usability. The keyboard layout is overly tight and the battery was equally unimpressive—the battery design has it jutting from the mini NB255′s backside and endurance was poor compared to other similarly built netbooks.
So far, the Samsung X125 hasn’t hit U.S. shores yet—the slim 11.6-inch notebook is only available in the U.K. and parts of Europe. However, that hasn’t stopped Netherlands-based fashion blog Modeblog.nl from posting a review of the netbook on YouTube.
The X125 sports an Athlon II Neo K125 1.7-GHz processor, 2GB to 3GB DDR3 RAM and ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics. While the improved Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer?s display. Learn Moregraphics chip adds some extra horsepower to the netbook, the site says that construction issues and poor battery life hurt the X125′s overall performance. Check out the full video review below.
CVS: it’s a great place to pick up everything from photos to Cheetos at any time of day. But this fall, you’ll be able to add (of all things) netbooks and eReaders to that list, since the drugstore chain plans on selling both devices in all of its stores.
Per Engadget, the Sylvania-branded netbook doesn’t have much in the way of details—the box sports, among other details, a Windows CE logo and a YouTube logo. As for the eReader, the Look Book Wireless Reader features a seven-inch color screen, Wi-Fi, 512MB of internal memory, an SD card slot, a full keyboard and access to Kobo’s book store.
The iPad is selling really, really well right now. And it’s not a complete surprise. It’s one of the cheapest, easiest to use tablet computers ever to hit the market. It won’t be the last, and there’s a chance that by this time next year a dozen Android, WebOS, or Windows 7 tablets could be fighting with the iPad for dominance in this space.
But does that mean that the iPad is crushing other product categories, such as netbooks? Maybe, maybe not. There’s certainly some overlap in audience. Netbooks are cheap computers, often with long battery life, which many people purchase primarily for surfing the web on the go or on the couch. The Apple iPad is pretty good at those things too.
But netbooks have keyboards, run Windows apps, and are generally just small PCs. And iPad isn’t.
So when Digitimes reported this morning that Asus is adjusting its third quarter netbook shipment targets, in response to the iPad… I got a little skeptical. I think the reason the targets are changing is simple: Asus is shipping fewer netbooks. But is it because of the iPad?
If we lived in a vacuum and the only two products you could choose from were Asus netbooks and the Apple iPad, then it might not be that hard to find an answer. But even if that were the case, there’s another factor to consider. Asus has been selling netbooks since 2007, while the iPad has only been available for a few months. It’s possible that one of the reasons netbook sales are slowing is because many of the people who want one have already bought one. Until it breaks or something truly revolutionary comes along to convince them to purchase a new netbook, they’ll probably hang onto the computer they spent a few hundred bucks on last year.
But we don’t live in a vacuum, and it’s not just the iPad and Asus netbooks. There are 10 inch notebooks from Acer, HP, Dell, and a dozen other companies competing with Asus on the netbook front. What’s more, there are a growing number of 11.6 inch and 12.1 inch notebooks which are bigger, more powerful, and have higher resolution displays than netbooks — but which don’t weight much more, get similar battery life, and are still selling for around $500. I think it’s just as likely that these notebooks are eating into netbook sales as it is that the iPad is.
Of course, Asus and other companies are hedging their bets. Pretty much every major PC makers is expected to launch some form of tablet computer in the next year. And there’s a decent chance that some of them will actually sell pretty well. But it’s too early to say whether that means the netbook category is going to disappear altogether. It may shrink, due to a wider range of budget portable computers to choose from. But that’s a far cry from saying that the iPad killed the netbook star.
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