#1: HP Mini 110-1036NR 10.1-Inch White Netbook - Up to 6.75 Hours of Battery Life Reviews!
I bought this for travel purposes. I used to have an HP Omnibook 800 (it's still around in the closet somewhere), which is sort of an ancestor of this idea, but with a much higher battery burn rate, due to the technology of the day. I ran Linux on it, and wrote my Ph.D. thesis on the thing. The form factor is great.
Today I find that technology and marketing have finally caught up with the idea of small form factor laptops, and they work better too. The Intel atom is a fairly powerful chip; it runs my software (which is all mathematical in nature, and more or less a direct test of CPU speed) at speeds comparable to a core duo Macbook at a slightly higher clock rate. I'm impressed. Even more impressive is the battery life, which, compared to the macbook, seems virtually infinite. It also loaded Ubuntu 9.10 fairly painlessly: much easier than upgrading OS-X on a macbook, and it seems to work better with limited memory. No reason to use the pre-loaded WinXP, though I kept it around just in case. Over all it seems very sturdy; I'm not worried about dropping this one. This particular model also has an excellent matte screen; glossy screens annoy the bejeepers out of me. Speaking of gloss, the dumb swirlie patterns on the case do help disguise finger markings a bit, however, making the case out of matte plastic (like the Omnibook was) would have worked better.
Downsides: the battery does stick out annoyingly. It's a clever engineering compromise, but it is a pain when you try to stash the thing in anything resembling a standard netbook case. I haven't gotten used to the weird trackpad yet: I don't see why they didn't stick the buttons underneath like everyone else does. Maybe a trackpad that much closer to the keyboard would have been inconvenient in a different way, so I'll live with it.
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HP Mini 110-1036NR 10.1-Inch White Netbook - Up to 6.75 Hours of Battery Life Features
- 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor
- 1 GB DDR2 RAM (1 Dimm) (1 GB Maximum)
- 160GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
- 10.1" Diagonal SD LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024x576), Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
- Genuine Windows XP Home (SP3), *Up to 6.75 Hours of Battery Life
Customer Reviews
Be smart! Buy external optical drive & get software backup discs - Wayne P. Schulman - Los Angeles
I bought this for my son in high school and paid for the upgrade download of MS Office for students. He used this everyday and found it to be durable and functional. Then...one day about 6 months into use it just stopped working.
So what's the deal? After the trial period of Norton ran out and the download renewal fee to activate a full version was 50% more than the same thing available in a retail store we opted to remove the dead version of Norton because it was hanging up very nearly every application (part of Norton's secret plan with Microsoft to rule the world!)
Nevertheless . . . this was a mistake because it left the computer exposed to viruses and in they came in great abundance. The result is a disabled operating system which cannot be fixed without additional expense because there is no optical drive and no included disc copies of the software (all pre-loaded or downloaded). Ok..so that's all our fault, right..sure, then why the 2 star rating?
As I mentioned, this was 6 months into the ownership so I expected some sort of assistance from Amazon.com or HP. We went online and find out that you need to buy an external drive to load the recovery disk and/or pay for disc copies of the installation software. What!!! You mean we bought a computer with software pre-loaded and no way to replace it unless we pay for it!! PLUS, we need to repurchase the download of MS Office for 9.00! Why..because when you purchase the OS software and run an install, it wipes out your existing files including documents, purchased software downloads and all records of such purchases (remember we can't access those because of the OS failure!)
Bottom line, we own four Apple iMacs for the rest of our computing needs and NEVER have OS problems or viruses. So buyer beware.. when you venture into the nefarious territory of Microsfot/Norton/HP-PC based computing, get ready to pony up for lots of aggravation, continual upgrades and ongoing investments.
What was I thinking?!! Beware...only use your PC with some sort for virus protection and scan (yes I know everyone knows that!!) Only purchase this netbook if you plan to also purchase an external optical drive and backup discs of all software purchases (because the OS will fail, even without the viruses..just look at the other reviews of this netbook)
