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The plastic covering over the screen is also ugly and makes the mininote appear to be cheap.One more thing I utterly detest about this laptop is the ugly bright green-blue leds on the left and the bright blue led on the right which both face forward. Also let's say you lost your power cord, so you have to wait for this till you buy or can borrow one. I tried the HP mininote and it is awful compared to the acer aspire. I bought didn't see the external drive I bought. Another annoyance is that it wouldn't upgrade to SP3 if it wasn't connected to a power source (why)., I suppose this was to prevent bad installs, but the update feature has an automatic pause and recontinue feature so why doesn't it do this for the SP3 update. I bought a sticker for it to cover up the ugly shell but the sides and keyboard are still ugly. The mininote's screen is ugly no matter what resolution it's at, it has this flickering-like grainy look that reminds me of CRT's.
The lights are even on when the laptop is closed unless you turn the LT off completely. Seriously.
The mininote is also ugly, it's a ugly silver-gold color. Anyways those things make watching movies and just using the laptop a horrible nauseating experience as besides being ugly and a distraction, they remind me of nasty jelly-bellies and other jelly candies of the same color, EWWWWWWWW.
I got the mininote hoping the expresscard would save me time with data transfer but the first e.c. They are always on except the blue one if your wi-fi is off I think and if the laptop is off of course they are off.
Absurd.Pros: Great camera, great mic, decent speakers for the price. The mininote's keyboard is horrid compared to the a.o.'s as they are like tiles and to hard to press down, not that they can't be pressed down but too hard for what a keyboard should be.
If you want more speed just wait for USB 3.0 or expresscard 2.0 to come out, I keep finding that expresscards are buggy and finnicky and can possibly ruin your internal and external drives if they are disconnected when in use.
I haven't found anything it won't do (yet). Nothing missing & works fine.I drop a star because it does run quite hot on the bottom, and I had to do a fair amount of optimizing of the Vista OS before I was satisfied with the performance. This "Open Box" Netbook works great (for a mini).
Oh, and the 6 cell battery pack lasted 5 hours before I gave up waiting for it to die. Turning off a handful of Vista's features, and tweaking some settings, really help to turn this Netbook into a nice usable tool. I got mine 100 bucks cheaper at Tiger Direct dot com (open box).
If you do a fair amount of research on this little Netbook, you'll notice a lot of trash talk about the 1.6GHz Via processor not being up to the task, especially when used with the also trash talked Vista Business OS.After receiving my little HP 2133, 1.6GHz, 2MB Ram, & Vista, I can say that most of that bad press is from snotty people who want to nit pic everything to death. Email, YouTube, music, word processing, & it even runs Quake3 pretty good (just testing it). Four stars.
Granted I spent several hours optimizing it (web sites like hp2133guide dot com help a lot), but for the large majority of us out here, the 1.6GHz Mini-Note with Vista (and with a few tweaks) runs fast enough.It does run hot on the bottom, but I don't sit with it on my lap very much. It talks nicely to my Linksys wireless G home network, and thanks to the under appreciated Express Card slot (which was a "must have" for me), I can even connect to the internet anywhere (Verizon KPC680 Express Card) - No "hot spot" needed.
He tried using it just for internet purposes,then it wouldn't allow him to log on at all because there was not enough memory. He was very helpful and we finally have high hopes that although we won't get our purchase price back on this virtually unused machine, we'll at least recoup something. Finally someone called from TechForward and explained that we had been given incorrect information and we'd only be receiving 50%. We contacted HP, who in the past have been very helpful with other products, and could not get a satisfactory resolution. More money down the drain.We continued having lengthy phone calls to try to work out some sort of satisfactory resolution. The computer's memory is completely used up by the operating system.
This has been a thoroughly infuriating and time consuming experience. We purchased this for a Christmas gift to help our high school age son with school. Immediately there was a problem because the Linux based software was not compatible to either our home computer or his school's computers. The chips arrived and we found that the machine isn't even capable of having additional chips added.
Tiger Direct told us to purchase some additional memory chips which we did. We went back and forth between HP and Tiger Direct for the next several weeks. After another lengthy and frustrating call, Tiger Direct finally offered us a buyback program through another company called TechForward where for a fee they would give us 75% of our purchase price. I would not recommend this computer to anyone.
No one seemed to have records of our purchase into the program. Six different tech support people gave six different answers on what to do. After purchasing the program (yes at additional cost), we ran into further problems when we had difficulty shipping the computer off to TechForward. We thought we could work around that.
On the last call, we conferenced between HP, Tiger Direct, and us. It seemed the Linux operating system was unfamiliar to most of the staff. At this point, it was probably the end of January.Per Amazon instructions, we contacted Tiger Direct who told us it was too late for any exchange. One included buying additional products to the tune of another $300 dollars.
The HP 2133 is small and lightweight, so I'm able to take it anywhere without a hassle. If I'm going to be doing a lot of mousework, I bring along a Microsoft notebook bluetooth mouse, which works exceptionally well. That covers the "cons." I'm impressed with the build--in typical HP fashion, it's very well constructed and sturdy--yet light. I bought this for my book tours--when small and lightweight are not just helpful, but necessary. In sum, this is a well-built, tiny and very functional PC. In addition, the touchpad layout was a bit different, but I got used to it. I'd buy another without hesitation.
I have no difficulty multitasking--I have Office Word, Outlook, Windows Media Player all open simultaneously. My preference would've been to have an Intel Atom, but it came with a VIA chip. It's not a big deal if it's on a table, but if it's on your lap and it's summer, it might be uncomfortable. It runs Vista Business without any issues or sluggishness. Also, the unit can get hot.
I ended up falling in love with the netbook and hardly ever use my ThinkPad anymore, even around town. (The netbook has built-in Bluetooth). I use both.The only drawbacks--and this is being critical--is that it takes a long time to boot up; whether it's in standby, hibernate, or off it seems to take about 4 minutes until it's ready to go. Its near-full size keyboard is comfortable--and I don't have small fingers.The screen is crisp and vibrant, and the speakers are unusually good. I wouldn't do video editing on it, but that's not where the value of a tiny netbook lies.It has two expansion ports--an SD card reader and a Express card slot for CF cards.
Instead of this model i purchased an LG X110 with 10 inch screen and the LCD is non-reflective and does not give me any headaches. Many people actually reported headaches with this screen.Without much wating I packed the entire PC and returned it. The 1280 x 768 resolution is very crisp and clear HOWEVER HP laid a protective layer of plastic or other material on the screen making it very reflective and difficult at times to focus.I tried to increase the font size of webpages without any luck and i was still getting a headache after 30 minutes or so. I am very happy with this model. This also did not help.Then after realizing that may problem with this PC was the headaches i was getting I actually searched google and WOW. I will start from the end and tell you I returned this PC after only 2 days of working with it.
The real issue came after working more than 30 minutes on the PC, i started getting headaches. Yes this is the first time in my life i return a PC after only 2 days of working. I consider myself above the average computer person with more than 20 years of working with PCs.I purchased this model as a second laptop mainly for travel, weekends and just to have a very ultraportable PC always with me. I found quiet a few reviews and blogs where people where getting headaches with this type of screen.I wasnt crazy. In fact i am writing this review with my new LG and my eyes and head are perfect.Therefore, PLEASE before you purchase this PC try to work on it in the store or at a friends home with this model more than 30 minutes, see if you get any headaches or problems focusing and then decide to purchase it. The other one i leave in the office.The model i got was running Windows XP Home Edition with 1GB of Ram.I wasnt sure if to get a 8.9" inch screen or go for the Acer or LG models with 10" screen.After installed everything including Office 2007 and Outlook, skype and other small application, the problems came.
I also changed the entire screen resolution changing the full system to 120 DPI in advanced mode of Display resolution for those you who know where it is.
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