Lightning in a Bottle

I’ve been trying out a loaner of the new ultra-mobile device from HP, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC. It’s slightly larger larger than an EeePC or 2Go laptop - in the image, the HP is on the left, the EeePC is on the right, and a standard 15-inch Macbook is in the middle. The slightly larger size offers some distinct advantages - nearly a full-size keyboard (much easier to type on), and an 8.9 inch WXGA (1366 x 768) resolution screen, which allows you to see much more than the 800 x 480 resolution on the smaller devices. It has a 12o gb hard drive and up to two gigabytes of RAM. It’s really a very small, full-featured computer.

There are a few issues, though. It doesn’t feel quite as rugged as its slightly smaller brethren (particularly the 2Go), and the screen resolution may be too tiny for some of us older folks. The model I have came with Vista Business installed, which really strains the computer at times. I’m sure it would run much snappier with XP or Linux. It also (at least running Vista) gets very, very hot. Lastly, that added functionality comes at a price - it costs between $200 and $300 more than the EeePC class of devices.

Still in all, I’ve really enjoyed working with it. It is a very polished, well-designed device, and one that I would be willing to use on a daily basis instead of my much larger, older laptops. Just with an OS other than Vista Business.

While I was at the ACPE conference last week I had a chance to work for a few minutes with a CTL 2Go PC (the same device I mentioned a few weeks ago).  It feels much more rugged than the EeePC, and to underscore the point, the company representative repeatedly demonstrated dropping the device from about five feet in the air.  The trade-off is that it is a little larger and heavier than the EeePC, but that also gives you a larger screen and longer battery life.  As the previously-linked review noted, the keyboard is still pretty cramped, and the screen resolution is still only 800×480, despite the larger display.  My major frustration with the keyboard is that the right Shift key is very small, and the Enter key is where I expect the quote/apostrophe key to be,  which causes me to regularly break sentences (or IM messages) when  I try to type I’m or similar words. They’re still pretty amazing, though!