Coffee break- ordering an HP Mini in the coffee shop

I'm sitting in Starbucks and one of my buddies is on the phone right now ordering an HP Mini from HP.  He's been enamored of them since seeing the one I have been using here and today he is pushing the button.  Interestingly, he wants HP to preinstall Microsoft Office which they are going to do and since he's buying Office with the Mini he gets a free GB of memory.  The rep told him that there are two memory slots on the Mini and that he gets an extra GB of memory to augment the 2 GB in the unit he's ordering.  I don't know if that sounds right to me, is there even room in there for two slots?  In any event he's stoked to be buying a Mini and admits the relatively low price is why he's "impulse buying" one.

Comments

[Matthew Miller (aka palmsolo)]

James,

So this is at least 2 of these units that people have purchased because of your recommendations. Man, HP needs to give you some kind of affiliate/sponsor payment for this :)

I just called HP to ask about options for XP and if I was going to get an XP recovery CD or something and the customer service rep said No so I am not sure how one can get XP on it without buying a license to XP.

I was also told that even though my delivery date on my order is stated as 17 April, they are selling like hotcakes and mine won't be here until sometime in MAY. They expect a shipment there on 28 April in which mine is slated to come out of. I may not keep my order if it will be another 3-4 weeks (reminds me a bit of the Kindle) because I am taking a harder look at my Fuji and may just decide to wait and see what Asus comes out with instead.

Making enthusiasts like me with twitchy credit card fingers is a way to kill sells because the luster of "new and shiny" wears off when we have more time to sit back and take a look at whether or not it is a smart buy :)

[James Kendrick]

I've heard from at least 20 people who say they've ordered one. I agree, waiting is murder.

[Nate]

I'm seriously considering doing the same. I'm very conflicted on this one, though. I like the hard drive, keyboard, and LCD. Heck, I don't even mind Vista. Of course, there always has to be a catch.

If HP had slapped an Intel processor in that thing, I'd already have one ordered. As it stands, I'm having a very hard time pulling the trigger.

[Nate]

Ouch. Three to four weeks, huh?

That makes me feel a little better about my indecisiveness.

[Pam T.]

Matt, I ordered mine online and there are at least three different delivery dates listed depending on what page you look on in the order status area.

I admit I'm confused, James. The online specs claim there's only one memory slot, so unless they're upgrading your coffee shop friend from 1G to 2G...

But you know those customer service reps. They're only as good as the last rumor that was passed around the cube this morning. I actually would be shocked if they shipped on time, but I hope they aren't outrageously delayed. Otherwise I may as well sit back and wait for the Isaiah chip reviews.

Except I need it for traveling in June.

[jkkmobile]

only one RAM slot on pix of it's internals...

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/hp-2133-mini-note-pc.html

[Ricky B.]

I'm so horribly, horribly tempted to do the same. (With SuSE, of course.) That higher resolution in such a small package...

But so many great things are just around the corner! And how can I rationalize the purchase?

[Mike Cane]

@RickyB: The new Asus EeePC I believe will have the same size screen and res. Of course, the kb will probably be smaller!

I agree with Warner Crocker in his GottaBeMobile vid. It should be in stores.

hp is going to lose sales because the Mini isn't going to be in big box stores. People will see the upcoming Asus with larger screen and go for that, not knowing the hp even exists.

I wonder if hp's margins on this are soooo thin that the *only* way they can sell it and make some money is direct sales only.

[Sebastian]

@ Mike Cane:
I think the eee 900 will only have a resolution of 1024x600.

[nomo]

Mike Cane: The Mini-Note will be sold through amazon. If amazon's prices aren't much lower than MSRP, then margins are probably pretty tight.

[Patrick Perez]

I watched Warner Crocker's video with his wife Thomasin and was impressed with what HP has accomplished. I recently placed an order for a Thinkpad refurb at Lenovo's site but cancelled it because frankly, the X41 I am using is still pretty damn useful. I have three batteries for it and can run longer than I'll ever *need* to. I figure the X41 has better performance except HD than the top-line HP Mini (poky 40GB drive).

Don't get me wrong. I'm damn interested in the follow-on HP in 6 months with better CPU, whether it is Isaiah or some Intel chip. I was disappointed with the EEE 8GB I had because the Intel Celeron only was running at 630MHz (despite being a 900 MHz chip) and the inconsistent performance of the flash drive (reads seemed reasonable, but writes, e.g hibernating took forever). If the next rev of the Mininote comes in at the same price but with better CPU (specifically *some* more performance but more importantly much better power/heat envelope) I'll be there. It is exciting thinking of the competition in this sector and how it is heating up.

BTW, I also bought a Fujitsu u810 and while for what it attempts it is brilliant, not least because of the most impressive battery life. But being the north side of 40, I just can't get by with the 5.6" 1024x600 screen, which is the bare minimum that XP is manageable with, windowsize-wise IMO. The EEE's 800x480 was impractical. In fact the two devices both would have been much improved by swapping size/resolutions. The EEE would become the best-ever media player, and the U810 would be functional for those of us who need reading glasses.

Patrick

[Richard C.]

I contemplated getting one to augment my X61 (Vista/XP dualboot, 2.0 GHz Santa Rosa with 4GB Ram, 250GB HDD).

I've been looking for a laptop I could take with me anywhere... meaning the criteria was it had to be small, cheap so I wouldn't fret too much if I were to lose it, long battery life and it had to have a fast boot up time.

The Mininote is just as wide as my X61, it is about 1.5 inch less in depth but with the extended battery... it's close. Configuring the Mininote to my specs would bring it to about $1,000.00. (XP, 2GB stick...) Also, the Mininote's battery life is fairly minimal and it's boot up time is way too long.

So after carefully thinking, I think I'm going to wait for the 8.9 inch EeePC which was truly designed to be a Companion PC rather than a Cheaper Portable PC.

[Ben]

Does anyone know if you could run ubuntu on this thing?

[Kasper - from Denmark]

Anybody whoy knows of a European (EU) reseller or a reseller that will ship to EU/Denmark?

[Eddie W.]

Wow! Deja vu with these little machines!

Back in 2002 when I started school for my bachelor's, I picked up the Sony Vaio PCG-SRX87. It's a 10.4" 1024x768 screen, 2.6 pound laptop that I bought at CompUSA for about $1200. It runs XP Home, MS Office 2003 (and other stuff I threw at it like MS Project and Management Scientist), but it only has a 20G hard drive and only runs at 850MHz. (That's sounds puny, but interestingly enough, it seems to me to run as fast as my Samsung Q1.) I finished my program and graduated, and was still using the Sony.

Last year I started my master's, and picked up an IBM X60 Tablet, so I relegated the Sony to ripping my CDs and DVDs, and loaded TiVo Desktop to support moving TiVo shows to my HTC Advantage. It all still works perfectly. Though they never really took off as some people have mentioned, based on my experiences with this laptop, I think people will really like the form factor and capability to get work done while still being portable.

Enjoy!

[Brandon]

Thanks for the great reviews James. I went back and forth with ordering the HP Mini, based on what I already have, but when something this size with an almost regular size keyboard came out, I couldn't resist. I agree that having to wait until next week for the device takes some of the excitement away, but I'm sure it will return once I know its getting close to the "estimated" ship date. Thanks for the great shows too.

B

[Abigail]

I have one of these too! Being the curious type, I took a peek at Amazon to see if it's still listed. Yep, it's still there. But they say there's an internal DVD -- nope, DVD is external using Firewire. And the memory listed is wrong -- it actually has 512M RAM. Abi