Author Bio

Steve Jones Editor at SQLServerCentral.com You can follow Steve on Twitter as way0utwest (www.twitter.com/way0utwest)

HP Mini Netbook – Day 2

By Steve Jones in SQL Musings | 07-02-2009 10:52 AM | Categories: Filed under: netbooks, computers

Rating: |

Discuss | 2,733 Reads | 194 Reads in Last 30 Days |13 comment(s)

I arrived in Richmond, VA this morning earlier than expected. I was meeting a few people and things were pushed back, so I had the chance to go by Best Buy and find a USB->VGA adapter. Apparently they don’t have the HP VGA cable, so I got this adapter instead.

I opened the box to find the device, and a CD. That’s interesting because the netbook doesn’t have a CD drive. I’d debated about grabbing an external DVD drive when I was in the store, but my bag is heavy enough. With my laptop, power adapter, extra USB disk drive, and now the netbook it feels like I’m carrying quite a load.

So how to get this working? Luckily I had an idea. I hit the local Starbucks and then connected to the web, downloading drivers from Tritton Technologies. One annoying thing was once I’d gotten to the site, they list a number of models, all of which look alike. I had the device with me, but not the box, and there as no model number printed on the device. A serial number, but that didn’t help. Grrrrr.

I had to go back to the car, look at the box, and then download the driver. I suspected that there was one driver for all models, but I hate trying to uninstall drivers. I’m still a little gunshy after all these years working with Windows.

Once that was done, I wrote a couple blogs, including this blog on the device. Some impressions:

It’s small. Carrying it one handed is nice and easy. It’s much, much smaller than the laptop, and weighs only slightly more than the Kindle. That is nice.
It doesn’t work great in the car. I had the box with me and tried to prop it on my lap to download drivers, but it was too small. Had to come back inside to a slightly bigger space to easily use it.
One the flip side, you can pretty easily hold it up with one hand and use the other to work the mouse.
I use page up/down, home, and end keys extensively. These require the Function key to work (they are on the arrow keys), so that takes a little getting used to.
The keyboard works well for me. I type pretty quickly, and it works well for me.
The CPU is slow. There are times you click something and it seems to take a minute to switch over. Something to be aware of as you install things.
I have Firefox, Twirl, LiveWriter running, seems to work OK, other than some slowness to switch apps.

I’ll have more impressions over the next few weeks as I use this and compare it with my laptop.

Comments

Tim Mitchell said:

Thanks for documenting your experience. I'm in the market for a netbook, and would be interested to hear what you think of yours in a month or two.

July 2, 2009 3:05 PM

Steve Jones said:

More coming! Look for a few blogs over the next few weeks as I try out new things, including Win 7 next week.

July 3, 2009 6:16 AM

Andrew Peterson said:

The netbooks are great - but really only for light usage. Anyone who wants one should really check it out, to see if the keyboard and touch pad work for them. And list out what you plan to do with it. do you need bluetooth, vga port, etc.

I'd recommend the Asus Eee PC 1008HA.

July 3, 2009 7:54 AM

Tim Mitchell said:

I'd agree with Andrew. Even though I'm not a netbook owner yet, I would only consider it an addition to my portable computer ensemble rather than the only one. For technical presentations and "real" work, I'd still want to have my big laptop.

July 3, 2009 3:23 PM

Steve Jones said:

It's definitely slow, and I'm concerned about loading SQL on it. Likely I'll try a VM and an external drive to see how that works.

July 6, 2009 9:05 AM

Richard Hill said:

Samsung NC10 is all you need.

Any heavy weight work it will handle, plus you can always RDP into a server. Its light, has a great battery life and a good size keyboard. Don't choose anything else

July 10, 2009 2:59 AM

Jason Irwin said:

Due to a number of interesting twists, I've had to use a netbook as my full-time computer for almost a year and, aside from the occasional slowness when using Excel 2003 (oddly enough), it's been pretty good. I regularly use an Acer AspireOne for PowerPoint presentations, developing in VS2005, writing PHP, doing lots of XML work, and managing SQL servers among other day-to-day tasks. I'd love to go back to a full-sized notebook with a decent Core2Duo and 15" WSXGA+ resolution but, considering how many neck and back problems I received from carrying the previous beast from place to place around southern Japan, I'll trade the lightning quick Alt-Tabbing for the portability of a netbook.

That said, I would strongly advise formatting the machine and starting fresh when you get one. Like any other computer right from the factory, it's going to be slow as molasses with lots of unnecessary software and questionable configuration choices. Despite the lack of muscle, my HDD-based AspireOne can boot WinXP and be ready to use in just under 30 seconds.

July 10, 2009 3:08 AM

macrocharlie said:

I agree with Andrew. I just got the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE. It has bluetooth, 9.5 hr battery, wireless b/g/n, a built-in camera and the latest Adam processor. I never shut it down, I just use hibernate and it boots back up extremelly fast. The keyboard is the best I've seen and the touch pad is very good. Running Office 2007 with no problems.

July 10, 2009 5:49 AM

Jason Miller said:

My coworker has a tiny little Lenovo. She complained that our normal laptops were far too heavy for her. After all, she only weighs 82 pounds (literally, we checked). So I guess the weight / comfort idea is a factor of percentage of weight.. In which case, give me that old Compaq "Luggable"...

I bought an Asus 1000 for my brother, he not quite my size, but he finds the keyboard a bit small. He's a very quick typist (60+ wpm). He moved that machine to his wife, and I got him a MSI Wind. That has a slightly larger keyboard. He's happy.. Minor challenge getting it to connect to net work. Overall, quite happy.

I'm rebuild his desktop (that his kids trashed) for the heavy lifting/computing.

July 10, 2009 6:46 AM

roger.plowman said:

I have an HP mini that I use purely for Terminal Server. For that it's hard to beat, but I wouldn't want to use it as a daily machine on its own--it's too slow.

To those considering a netbook I have two words--hand size. All the netbooks are pretty similar except for keyboard. The HP mini has a 92% keyboard, the biggest netbook keyboard I've ever seen. If you have large hands this will be a critical factor.

Asus netbooks have much smaller keys... :)

July 10, 2009 7:27 AM

Andrew Peterson said:

If you need a full size, light weight laptop, take a look at the Lenovo 200X. It only weights 3 lbs., while my Asus 1008 HA weights 2.5 lbs. for the netbook, I wanted a small format for personal travel, where I could have it with me all the time. I like the idea of RDT with the netbook. Never really gave it any thought, but I like the idea.

July 10, 2009 7:31 AM

Chris Harshman said:

Netbooks are OK I guess, but if you're just looking for something cheap, you might do better with something like the Acer Aspire AS5516-5474:

www.dealsvista.com/.../32720

This has a 15 inch screen, better keyboard than netbooks, and is easy to find under $350

July 10, 2009 9:26 AM

swastra said:

I have been eyeing this machine myself. I would like to know what you think of the battery life.

July 14, 2009 1:25 PM

SQL Musings

HP Mini Netbook – Day 2

Tim Mitchell said:

Steve Jones said:

Andrew Peterson said:

Tim Mitchell said:

Steve Jones said:

Richard Hill said:

Jason Irwin said:

macrocharlie said:

Jason Miller said:

roger.plowman said:

Andrew Peterson said:

Chris Harshman said:

swastra said:

Blog Roll

Rockstart Blogger