This one is a bit late, but the Mini 1000 [Portal page] has been (pretty obviously) piquing my interest lately, and jkOnTheRun got a really early hands on with the Mini 1000 that is very comprehensive. If you have a few minutes, head over to their site to check out a post that is full of good images, impressions, and comparisons to the original Mini-Note 2133.

HP’s new Mini 1000 [Portal page] is currently the third most popular device here in the Portal, and for all of you out there who are interested in it, take a look at these two images that compare HP’s first netbook, the 2133 [Portal Page], with their new Mini 1000:

You can see in the image above that the Mini 1000 makes more efficient use of the lid, employing a 10" screen in the same space where the 2133 fit an 8.9" screen. The keyboard on both devices looks really nice, but I think the Mini 1000 looks more stylish than the original (probably due to the uniform color). Head to the source to get nice high res versions of these same images.

[MiniNoteUser] via [Electric Vagabond]

Have a look at this quick and clean unboxing of the Mini 1000 [Portal page] from Notebooks.com. The short video shows a simple box and packaging that seems nice enough (after all it is just packaging…). I’m was very impressed when I saw the unit itself out of the box toward the end of the video. The keyboard looks gorgeous and the screen seems to take advantage of the space given to it.

[Liliputing]

I’ve already posted about this, twice. Samsung have some great engineers.

I had the chance to look at an NC10 (#1 device on the portal right now) at the netbook meeting in Cologne on Saturday and the first thing I did was to measure the minimum drain of the device. Within minutes, I was seeing a fantastic sub-5W minimum drain.

This is lower than on most UMPCs and is a good indication that the electronics on the motherboard, the power components and the screen are well engineered. There’s no point putting in a low-power CPU if you’re going to lose the advantage it with crappy engineering. Take the Kohjinsha SC3. It uses the latest, lower clock, lower power CPU and chipset and yet even after hours of optimising, the base drain on it is no less than 7.5W. That’s 50% more than the, much bigger NC10 that doesn’t even use the low power CPU and chipset.

Battery life outweighs most requirements for me so considering that everything else on the device is up to scratch, I’m seriously thinking of getting a black NC10 as my only laptop and selling the M912 and Medion Akoya. They’re both excelent devices but neither of them are as well engineered as the NC10

Samsung NC10 links and specs in the product pages.

Smaller memory footprint, faster boot, better UI and longer battery life. Windows 7 is not only going to be interesting for the laptop and desktop, it’s shaping up well for Netbooks and UMPCs too. Vista always offered better touch and natural input mechanisms but it was a struggle to run it on Ghz-class devices. The reports coming back from Windows 7 pre-beta testers point towards a much more usable system on these devices.

I’ve put a few links to some early reports below but the one I wanted to concentrate on and the one that raised my eyebrows even higher than last weekends ‘TWiT podcast was a post from Ian Dixon at TheDigitalLifeStyle.com. Ian’s website focuses on media centre and related topics but he’s had a Q1P for a while and when he got hold of Windows 7, he went ahead and installed Windows 7 on the Q1P with some really positive results…

[Audio recording below…]

Read the full story

…and thats just the ones I caught on video. There are at least 25 devices here.

There’s a live video and chat (Mostly German) going on at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/netbook-news

Thanks to eee-pc.de and eeepcnews.de for organising the event.

The oxymoron-ical "luxury netbook" that is the Eee S101 [Portal page] has now touched down in the US. The S101 can be bought for $699, though people new to the netbook space should be aware that there are other netbooks that easily compare in performance to the S101, but cost a few hundred dollars less. The S101 manages to be so expensive because of its high styling and thin physique. It looks like all of the initial US models have a 16GB SSD, and are available in graphite and brown colors.

S101 purchase page links:

• Newegg.com
• Amazon.com
• Zipzoomfly.com 

[Liliputing]

In the last two years we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of mobile computing choices. From high-end pro-mobile mini-laptops to tiny, pocketable devices that you can take anywhere. Even the smartphone segment has developed to the point where it crosses-over and now offers real mobile computing possibilities. The number of variants has grown to the point where there is a device for everyone but the downside is that choosing and buying process becomes more and more difficult . The UMPCPortal Ultra-Mobile Computing buyers guide is here to help you make your choice.

This guide, now in its third edition, will introduce you to the concepts and the options, go into detail about the technology and ultimately, help you decide if you need a mobile computing device and if so, which type of device you should be looking for. The 2008 guide has been updated with information about MIDs and Netbooks, information on the latest CPUs and technology and includes even more hints and tips about buying an Ultra Mobile Computer. It’s a very long report so we’ve split it up into four parts that will be posted each day this week. In a final post next week, we’ll pull all the pieces together into a PDF or E-book so that you can download it and keep it as a reference.

Part One: ‘What is an Ultra Mobile PC.’ We give you a history of Ultra Mobile computing, show you how the devices break down into segments and show you what each segment is capable of.

Part Two: ‘Details and Choices.’  It covers the form factors, the keyboard, storage, the screen and connectivity elements of an Ultra Mobile PC. You’ll find a good overview and a lot of tips that will help you refine your choice.

Part Three ‘Details and Choices continued‘ continues the details about the components and covers CPU (including a detailed overview of the currently available solutions) GPU, memory, battery, weight and cost.

Part Four: ‘Additional Information and further reading.‘ In this section we cover some of the less commonly found features on Ultra Mobile computers and give you information and links to further reading resources.

We hope you enjoy the guide and that it helps you make informed choices. It will be published under Creative Commons license so feel free to share and reproduce it for non-commercial use.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Germany License.