HP recently sent us an HP Mini 1000 MIE (Mobile Internet Edition) [Portal page] netbook to take for a test drive. As the device is running a custom Ubuntu interface which I am tackling from a Linux noob’s point of view, I’m going to try to make my review of this device a rolling one. What does that mean you ask? Well, instead of using the unit for a few weeks and hitting you with a large review, I’m going to break the review down into a few sections and post them over the course of my testing. As readers you have the opportunity to ask questions in the comments section which I can read before writing a particular section, and see if I can answer them. Here is a little road map of sections that I will try to stick to:

• Unboxing
• Software Initial Impressions
• Hardware Initial Impressions
• Performance
• Software Long Term Impressions
• Hardware Long Term Impressions
• Summary Post (which will link all the sections together and be placed on our Reviews page)

I will retroactively link these sections in to this post as I write them so that anyone who wants to follow along has easy access to all of the sections that have been written so far from this very page (bookmark!).

Our friends over at Liliputing are giving away a ton of PC kit. 6 grands worth to be precise. I know you only want the HP Mini 1000 so hop on over, drop an entry in their forum and when you win, send the unwanted stuff over here!

Liliputing HP Magic Giveaway: Enter to win $6000 worth of stuff!

The podcast video we did live on Friday evening has been available on Ustream for a few days now but the MP3 has just been posted and is available in the normal feed. We had another fun time talking about netbooks, UMPCs and MIDs and managed to chalk-up 90 minutes of info and thought including talk about on the Netbook World Summit, the Snapdragon netbook concept, the HP Mini 1000, optimum speeds for SSD’s, the Amtek T10L and the Lluon Mobbit MID.

Download here, stream now via the player below or pick the podcast up via the RSS feed.

Subscribe to the Ultra Mobile Podcast RSS Feed

All podcasts are available and hosted at Mevio

The netbook with ‘the Keyboard’ is getting some press today. JKK has been unboxing a fresh one and Dan of Gear Diary has bought one. The HP MiniNote 1000 that is.

Both give positive comments about the keyboard with Dan going as far as to say that its the best keyboard, on any device, ever – "I’m not just talking about a netbook keyboard but I mean ANY keyboard." JKK likes the design – "Its looking pretty nice and thin. Good for eyes. Nice design" and then precedes to take the device fully apart to check the SSD and connectors for other components.

The small battery only returns about 2.5hr life according to other reports so while it’s a very stylish device, without the 3G capability it’s more suited to portable typing duties than anything mobile. A 3G-enabled version could be nice for mobile bloggers though so we’ll keep an eye out for it.

Gear Diary on the HP Mini 1000

JKKMobile on the HP Mini 1000

Mini Note 1000 specs and links

It looks like HP might have moved some Mini 1000 [Portal page] units that actually have 3G radios integrated into them, but were sold without mentioning that little gem. Probably wanting to get the product out the door before having to close deals with carriers, some Mini 1000’s have a 3G SIM card slot that can be revealed by removing the battery. The radios in these devices were sold to consumers without the proper software to operate them, but luckily someone over at the Pocketables.net forum managed to acquire the software and get their 3G radio working. The software has been linked on the forum so that others can download it and make the 3G radio in their Mini 1000 work (if it is there, that is). Please do yourself a favor and make sure your have the right data plan before testing out the 3G in your Mini 1000, it would be easy to rack up a large monthly bill if you have no data plan.

[Liliputing]

Chances are: this is a highly targeted ad designed for tech shoppers like myself, but it is cool to see the biggest online retailer getting serious about netbooks. The ad is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s famous "speak softly and carry a large stick". Amazon has obviously been taking notice since they saw netbooks topping their laptop sales charts recently.

The ad is nice and all but can anyone spot what is wrong? If you said "That’s the old HP Mini-Note 2133!" you’d be correct (give yourself a pat on the back). I guess I really can’t expect an e-retailer giant like Amazon to stay up to date on everything that happens in the market but I would have been more impressed if they had the new Mini 1000 [Portal page] featured in the ad.

Mininoteuser.com has some nice HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] dissection images as well as several different benchmarks of the new netbook up on the site. All of these shots and benchmarks appear to be from a Cnet Taiwan article that compares the Asus Eee S101 [Portal page] to the HP Mini 1000 which you can feel free to read if you like deciphering automatically translated text. Take a look at some of the images below then jump through the bracketed link for additional pictures.

[Mininoteuser.com]

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.