Prime Notebook Computer Review » Operating system

8 Guides to Buy PDA

tito — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 03:18:54 +0000

PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is smaller than a tiny laptop but bigger than cell phone. It has chargeable battery, QWERTY keyboard and a plastic pen, which is used for operating PDA’s touch screen. In fact, there is bulk of PDA brand that offered in the market that make you confuse on choosing which PDA you should buy. The following are 8 guides to help.

Here are 8 guides to buy PDA:

The first important factor before you purchase PDA is to know about the operating system (OS). There are two types of operating system, which are: Palm OS and Pocket PC. Palm OS has long life battery and wider selection of software are offered. Meanwhile, Pocket PC has a good integrated multimedia support and bigger screen dimension than Palm OS. The ability to identification handwriting and data entry is well performed and has more alternatives.
Prepare your budget. As we know, technology is progressing in every period, for example maybe the technology of PDA in this year will not be up to date any longer in three years later. There fore, you should prepare how much the budget you will spend to have this PDA in this certain period of time, because on the next period you might want to buy for a new PDA that has latest technology.
Prepare you cost. In order to store and operate certain application, you might want to add more memory, or you want to put more software in this PDA. It all need extra cost. There are other elements that you can add into this PDA according to your need, such as multimedia competences. Ask your self what other application or factors do you need to be available in this PDA, and calculate the cost.
Consider about the memory. The Palm OS has minimum 32 MB internal memory and can be added with 64 MB memory card. Pocket PC has 64 MB internal memory and 64 MB memory card.
Each operating system has different software programs. Look and understand which operating systems that have best software according to your need.
For different utility of PDA will spend different amount of battery. Different operating system has different battery life time. For an intensive utility, the battery would last just four hours. But for normal utility the battery can live for 4 days. Ask for more detail about the battery lifetime for each device.
Commonly to work with PDA, consumers must consider about the display. Today’s PDA has high resolution and more bright colors. You should check both OS, and define which one is better for you.
Consider about the size, form and weight of both OS. It will depend on your taste and style that you have. Test is before you buy.

Those are numbers of guidance for you to buy PDA. Before you see the products in market, you should read from several reviews about detail specs of both OS, therefore at the time you shop and see the product you will be better informed and able to choose the best PDA for you.

Viliv N5

tito — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:35:33 +0000

At first blush, the Viliv N5 would seem the perfect device for those who feel that smart phones like the Droid X and tablets like the iPad don’t offer the full PC experience of running a desktop OS with all your favorite applications, but for whom netbooks are too cumbersome to tote around. This 5-inch, 1-pound system is powerful enough to run Windows 7 with all the trimmings and even includes a Webcam and optional 3G broadband. However, with a starting price of $649, the N5 doesn’t come cheap and it’s battery life is relatively short. So is this pocket-size Windows machine more than just a novelty?

Design

The N5′s elongated form factor and incredibly rounded corners certainly have a pocketbook-look, but it’s also very clean and stylish. But you’ll forget about how it looks the moment you discover how it feels. The entire outer casing of the N5 has the softest, smoothest rubber-like finish of any device I’ve ever come across. It’s a texture that you can’t help but stroke/pet; if you let someone else hold it, good luck getting it back! Even when I hold the N5 in both hands to thumb type, I still find myself rubbing the back with my fingers. I hate to use the expression “softer than a baby’s bottom,” but it really is that silky and smooth (my 7-month-old baby girl will be thrilled by this public reference when she gets older, I’m sure).

Complementing the device’s amazing finish is its superb build quality. Viliv products are solid. Period. Everything is sturdy and strong; no creaks, warping, or flexing. It’s very nicely put together. One of the design elements that makes the N5 more unique than other handheld clamshells is that it has the kind of hinge that lets the bottom edge of the screen appear as though it’s underneath the lower half of the unit. The hinges themselves are strong and tight; the device literally snaps shut.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Despite its diminuitive size, the N5 sports a full QWERTY keyboard with fairly large keys (for its size) that provide tactile feedback that reminded us of our favorite ThinkPad keyboards. Don’t expect to do a lot of touch typing, though, because the entire device is just too narrow for an adult (or even a large child) to place one’s hands on the home row.

However, with the N5 sitting on our desktop, we were able to achieve a score of 32 words per minute on the Ten Thumbs Typing test, which is a far cry from our typical 80 word-per-minute rate, but much better than we’d do on most smart phones. Because the keys were so responsive, we had little difficulty typing when holding the N5 aloft, though our words-per-minute were in the mid-twenties when we tried the typing test in that position.

For the most part, keys appear in their typical positions, but to make them this large on a device this small, Viliv had to make a couple of compromises. The most awkward of these involve the placement of the colon/semicolon key, the bracket/braces keys, the hyphen key, the +/= key, and the question mark/slash key. The colon/semicolon characters, which normally sit to the right of the L key, share a button with the single/double quote characters. That means you have to hit the Fn key + quote to get the semicolon and Shift+Fn + quote to get the colon character. The brackets and braces characters, which normally have their own keys to the right of the P key, are available by hitting the Fn key + V, B, N, or M. The hyphen character, the +/= characters, and question mark/slash characters all have their own dedicated keys, but these are located to the right of the space bar, rather than in their typical QWERTY positions.

Display

Like the Viliv S5 Premium, the N5 is outfitted with a 4.8-inch WSVGA display. It isn’t remarkably bright, but it’s a great screen with crisp text, excellent clarity, and accurate colors. We’ve seen this screen size and resolution combination on many MIDs/UMPCs in the past, so there’s nothing new or unusual to report here. If icons and text are too small for your comfort, you can boost the size of them through Control Panel -> Appearance -> Display -> “Make it easier to read what’s on your screen.” You can also adjust the DPI through the “Set custom text size” option in the Display sidebar in the Control Panel.

Ports and Webcam

On a chassis this small, one can’t reasonably expect a lot of ports, and the N5 is notably sparse, offering only a single USB port, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. If the N5 had a way to output VGA or HDMI, it would make a great mobile presentation device, but as it stands the lack of video-out options is a huge missed opportunity. The N5 has a 1.3-megapixel webcam, but we were unable to produce an image larger than 320 x 240 either when shooting stills or videos. Worse still, the camera had real trouble handling florescent and low lighting. The low-light image we took at our cubicle looked really washed out, but when we moved next to a window with the sun shining through it, the picture quality improved a great deal.

Performance

The 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU + 1GB RAM duo housed inside the Viliv N5 isn’t new. We’ve seen it used for the past two years, since Menlow-based UMPCs were first released, with varying degrees of success depending on the operating system that went along with it. Windows 7 isn’t as trim as XP, but I think it’s a good choice for a mobile computer. Windows XP is almost 9 years old . . . and it looks it. Vista, on the other hand, looks incredibly dolled up in comparison . . . but it’s too slow. Windows 7 is the best of both words and it performs well on the N5. It’s obviously not well suited for heavy video editing or extensive multi-tasking, but for the kinds of things that most people do (web, email, Skype, video/music, casual games), it performs well. Faster processor options would certainly have been welcomed, especially since last year’s Viliv S5 shares most of the same specs, but the Z520 has a good power:battery life ratio and doesn’t cause the unit to overheat.

Viliv S10 Blade

tito — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:23:03 +0000

The Viliv S10 Blade is the largest and latest model in Viliv’s growing arsenal. It’s essentially an S7 with a larger screen, with the same convertible touchscreen design and 3G modem. However the S10 adds a 7-point multitouch to the mix along with Windows 7. These two main additions make for a much more pleasing user experience.

Computer power-wise, the S10 is technically faster than the S7 with a 1.66GHz Atom rather than a 1.33GHz. But it doesn’t seem faster because it also uses Windows 7 instead of XP. Even with all of Windows 7’s fancy user enhancements turn off, there’s still some noticeable lag opening and closing programs. Things tend to stutter. But that’s a small price to pay for the goodies that come with Windows 7 Touch Pack.


Design

Though we’re not fans of the S10’s glossy fingerprint-prone lid, we do appreciate the gray matte deck, keyboard, and bezel surrounding the 10.1 inch display. Rounded corners and tapered edges also contribute to the Blade’s slim look. A stylus is discreetly stowed in the chassis on the left near the front of the unit, and an antenna for better 3G reception extends out of the lower right corner of the display. The screen’s swivel hinge feels sturdy enough to withstand repeated flipping between tablet and netbook modes. When the lid is closed—either with the screen face up or down—we noticed that the display noticeably wiggled back and forth, making us less confident about the design’s longevity. The 10.2 x 7.3 x 1-inch S10 Blade lives up to Viliv’s promise of a slim, sleek netbook. The system felt good in our hands, and while at 2.8 pounds it weighs as much as most other netbooks, our arms didn’t tire too quickly while holding it.
Keyboard

The keyboard is mushy and while the trackpad is fine, the mouse buttons are the single bar-type that rock between right and left click that require you to click on a small sweet spot rather than anywhere on the bar. The speakers are horrible, which is actually a bit of a surprise. The two previous Viliv’s I’ve reviewed, the X70 tablet and S7 netbook, both had speakers that were both loud and clear. Not the S10, though.
Performance

While we couldn’t get some of our benchmarks to run on the S10 Blade, we found that its 1.6-GHz Intel Atom Z530 CPU and 1GB of RAM weren’t the fastest. Its Geekbench score of 803 is 60 points below the netbook average (863), and more than 150 points below the Lenovo Ideapad S10-3t (961), but well above the Viliv S7 Premium (714) and the Archos 9 PCTablet (537).
In our experience, the Blade performed well when working with one or two programs open at a time. Once we started to multitask, the tablet’s sluggishness became more apparent. Playing music with Windows Media Center in the background upped the amount of time we spent watching spinning circles whenever we tried to switch programs, navigate menus, or load websites.
Though the Blade forgoes the traditional hard drive for an SSD, it uses a PATA—rather than a SATA—interface, which made it very slow. The drive took 9 minutes and 2 seconds to complete our LAPTOP Transfer Test for a low rate of 9.4 MBps. That’s almost 7 MBps below the netbook average, which is mostly made up of scores from spinning, 5,400-rpm drives. The IdeaPad S10-3t leaves the Blade completely in the dust (22.1 MBps) as does the Gigabyte Touch Note T1028X (17.1 MBps). But the S10 Blade does better than the Archos 9 (6.7 MBps), Viliv S7 (2.8 MBps), and ASUS Eee PC T91 (3.9 MBps). Still, the S10 Blade booted into Windows 7 Home Premium in 64 seconds, just 4 seconds longer than the netbook average.
When we transcoded a 114MB video clip from MPEG-4 to AVI using Oxelon, the system took 6 minutes and 42 seconds, almost 30 seconds slower than average (6:06).
We couldn’t get 3DMark06 to run, but the S10 Blade performed as expected for a netbook when we attempted graphics-heavy tasks. Standard definition video from the hard drive played smoothly at full screen, though the system struggled with a 720p trailer of The Discoverers. The S10 vilivs10_sh_battery.jpgBlade also couldn’t handle full screen Hulu clips, but the default size showed no hitches or stuttering.
While playing with Microsoft Surface Globe, a touch-enhanced map program similar to Google Earth, the S10 Blade struggled to handle the intense graphic demands. The program crashed several times and sometimes couldn’t fully render the 3D Earth on the screen.



Flip The Monitor Display
anti — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:58:48 +0000
You’re sitting at your desk at work with very little to do and time crawling by. So you decide to have a little fun with your coworkers and flip their monitor displays.
1. Pick an unsuspecting victim. Make sure this person’s desktop computer is already turned on and logged in, unless you know his login.
2. Make sure the coast is clear and then sit at the person’s desk. Quickly press and hold the “Ctrl” and “Alt” keys together.
3. Depending on which way you want the screen to flip, press one of the arrow keys while still holding the “Ctrl” and “Alt” keys. Up = right side up, Right = 90 degrees, Down = 180 degrees and Left = 270 degrees.
4. Once you have the screen flipped, let go of the keys and quickly make your getaway. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the fun to begin. Be prepared for some freaking out if the person thinks the computer has contracted a virus.
5. Step in and reveal the joke before the situation goes too far. After all, if you do this at work you don’t want PC Support coming to the rescue over a practical joke since that could mean trouble for you.
Tips & Warnings
1. To fix the screen, follow Step 3 until the screen is returned to normal.

2. This normally only works with Windows XP operating system, but you can try it with Vista.

3. If you try this at work, make sure you will not get in trouble for pulling a prank.



Notebook Multi/DualView Tips
tito — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:36:22 +0000
Dualview has made my life much easier, but I still find myself without enough desktop space. It seems like I’m constantly juggling windows, but I can’t add a third display because my laptop only supports a single external monitor. So I investigated higher-resolution monitors that would allow me to fit more windows on a single screen. Unfortunately, the 20″ LCD displays that I like cost more than $1000, which is far more than I can justify for saving a few mouse clicks.
If money is not much of an object, check out the DigitalTigers product called SideCar that lets you run as many as four external monitors from your laptop. You end up with a huge desktop display and still have the mobility of a laptop.
However, I have an old laptop with a perfectly good display going to waste in my basement. The laptop itself is almost useless—the keyboard is flaky, the mouse buttons don’t work, and the hard drive is barely large enough to install Windows XP. I found a way to turn that laptop into a second external monitor though, and it didn’t require any extra hardware.
As a laptop user, you probably know that you can connect an external monitor to the video connector on your laptop and switch the display from the laptop’s small LCD to the larger external monitor. In this situation, you see the same image on both the laptop’s LCD and the external monitor. However, if you’re running Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home on your laptop and have a supported video adapter and a recent video adapter driver installed, when you connect an external monitor to your laptop, you can configure a multiple monitor environment using the DualView feature. You can then extend your desktop across two monitors, so that you can surf the Internet on one monitor while you take notes in Word on the other monitor.
Activating the DualView feature

If you have a video adapter with built-in DualView functionality and a video adapter driver that can access the feature, activating Windows XP’s DualView feature is a snap. To begin, you should shut down your laptop and make sure the external monitor is turned off. Then connect the monitor to the video connector on your laptop.
Once you have Windows XP up and running again, turn on the external monitor. If your laptop is like most, you’ll have a special hotkey keystroke combination that will allow you to switch between the individual monitors as well as activate both monitors at the same time. You should switch the setting such that only the laptop monitor is activated. Doing so will ensure that the second monitor is properly configured.
Then, access the Display Properties dialog box by right-clicking the desktop and selecting the Properties command. Next, select the Settings tab. When you do, your dialog box should look similar to the one shown in Figure A.


To continue, select the second monitor icon in the graphic. When you see that the Extend My Windows Desktop Onto This Monitor check box is enabled, select it, as shown in Figure B. At this point, if you hover your mouse over the monitor graphics, you’ll see that number 1 is listed as the Primary Display and number 2 is listed as the Secondary Display with a set of numbers in parentheses.

For example, with a screen resolution of 800 by 600, the coordinates would be (800,0). This set of coordinates indicates at what location the second monitor icon starts. If you wish, you can click and drag either monitor icon to any position. When you’re finished, click Apply. As soon as you do, your second monitor will come to life.
Depending on how you positioned the monitor icons, you may want to make sure that they correctly represent your actual monitor’s physical positions. To investigate, click the Identify button at the bottom of the dialog box. You’ll then see large number appear on each monitor icon showing which monitor corresponds with each icon.
To complete the DualView configuration, just click OK to close the Display Properties dialog box. You can then begin using the two monitors to spread out your work.



ASUS Eee PC 900 black Linux NetBook
anti — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:42:58 +0000
The new Eee PC 900 offers you more options for your mobile computing needs. Incorporating a shockproof design and weighing less than 1kg, you will find it “Easy to learn, work and play” – making it your best outdoor companion anywhere, anytime. What´s more, it features a 8.9 inch widescreen, a 1.3M pixels webcam, and 12GB and 20GB storage capacities for Windows® and GNU Linux operating systems 
The Asus Eee PC 900 is the updated version of the Asus Netbook, Eee PC 701. It has an 8.9 in LCD screen with a resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels, with more storage, more memory, a multi-touch touchpad, 1.3 megapixel webcam and wireless capabilities. It has built-in stereo speakers. This netbook is said to perform faster than its predecessor. It is in the size of a hard book with dimensions of Width 8.9 in, Depth 6.7 in, Height 1.3 in and weighing at 999g. The Eee PC 900 can last approximately three hours on its standard battery.
Features

The 8.9-inch display has a native resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels which is significantly higher than the 800×480-pixel screen on the old 7-inch model. The Eee 900’s screen and high resolution allow most web pages to fit on the display, with no need for horizontal scrolling. The vertical viewing angle and the horizontal tilt need to be adjusted to get a perfect picture. However, the horizontal viewing angle is wide enough to allow two users to watch a DivX movie side by side. The speakers are at the bottom of the system, below the wrist rest. The mouse track pad has a wide aspect ratio to match that of the screen. The left and right selector buttons sport a silver finish making it easier to press. The track pad allows you to scroll horizontally and vertically through documents by swiping two fingers up or down across the surface of the track pad. You can also zoom in or zoom out of pictures by making pinching or stretching movement with your fingers. The Asus Eee PC 900 uses the same Intel Celeron 900MHz CPU as the old 701, but with the backing of 1GB of DDR 400 RAM, which is twice as much as its predecessor. The amount of storage on the Eee PC 900 depends on whether it is a Linux version or Windows XP as an operating system. The Linux model comes with a 20GB of storage whereas the Windows XP model has just 12GB. However, the SD card reader accepts SDHC cards which allows up to 32GB of additional storage. The Asus Eee PC 900 supports flash memory cards, such as Multimedia Card, SDHC Memory Card and SD Memory Card. Both versions of the Eee PC 900 use Samsung flash memory chips rather than an actual off-the-shelf hard disk drive. 
Specifications 

Manufacturer 	    : ASUS

Model name 	    : Eee PC 901

Model id 	            : Linux, 20G

CPU type 	            : Intel Atom (Diamondville)

CPU speed 	            : 1600 Mhz

Graphics 	            : Intel GMA 950

OS 		            : Linux

Display Size	            : 8.9″ 1024 X 600

RAM 		            : 1024 MB

Flash 		            : 19.5 GB

Keyboard 	            : YES

Mouse Pointer 	    : YES

Battery capacity      : 49 (Wh)

Weight 		    : 1140gm / 40.2 oz.

Size (w/h/d mm)      : 226/175/39 mm

Size (w/h/d inches)  : 8.9/6.9/1.5



Hp Mini 210 : Improved Keyboard
tito — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:46:32 +0000

If you asked us in the past if we like HP’s netbooks, we’d tell you, “It depends.” We love the business-focused Mini 5102, for example, because of its great keyboard, sturdy design, and over 10 hours of endurance with its 6-cell battery. But the company’s consumer 10-inch netbooks haven’t measured up to the competition from ASUS, Acer, and Toshiba. HP has put its best foot forward with the Mini 210 ($384 as configured), which takes Intel’s Atom N450 processor and wraps it in a sleek new design with an improved keyboard. This configuration also pairs a high-def screen with Broadcom’s Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator for HD playback. However, this netbook doesn’t last as long on a charge as other Pine Trail netbooks. The bottom also runs warm, and its touchpad requires a bit of a learning curve. Should you make this Mini yours?

Design

The HP Mini 210 is a netbook with better than usual styling and design. It feels almost futuristic with its textured lid and base, edge-to-edge glossy screen and concealed touchpad buttons. Furthermore it has no annoyingly visible and extremly bright status lights – it’s almost stealth-like in this regard. The power, hard drive and battery indicator lights can be found on the sides. The Wi-Fi, caps lock, mute and ‘touchpad disabled’ lights are visible on the top of the system, but only when these features are enabled. Even the panel on the base of the HP Mini 210 netbook seems futuristic: you don’t have to use any tools to remove it in order to get to the single memory slot and 2.5in hard drive bay. Simply remove the battery, press the release buttons and pop off the cover with your fingernails. Admittedly it can be a little difficult to remove and at times it feels like the plastic clips that hold the panel in place might snap, but if you’re slow and careful they won’t. The bottom panel of the HP Mini 210 doesn’t have any vents and it is one single piece of plastic. To keep cool, the internal components rely on an air intake vent on the right side and an exhaust vent on the left through which the small system fan pushes out the accumulated warm air. When you use it on your lap – even after a short amount of time – the vents can get blocked and it gets noticeably warm around the hard drive and CPU areas. This becomes uncomfortable after a short while and it’s not a good thing for a notebook that’s designed to be highly mobile and used on a lap.
Features

The exterior of the Mini 210 is so nice that it’s rather disappointing to discover that underneath the exterior lies a rather plain netbook recipe. Windows 7 Starter edition sits on top of an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz, 1GB of RAM and an Intel GMA 3150 graphics solution. The display screen is a 10.1-inch 1024×600 LCD panel, same as pretty much every other vendor. Wireless is supported, but it’s only 802.11b/g. Officially HP sells five variants on the Mini 210. There’s the entry-level AU$449 1015TU model, and then five models at an AU$599 price point; the 1016TU, 1017TU, 1018TU and 1020TU. The difference between the top tier models is only in the colour of the lid (Black, White, Red and Blue respectively), but the difference between the sole AU$449 model and the AU$599 models lies in storage, power and integrated Bluetooth. The AU$449 model comes with a 160GB hard drive, no Bluetooth and a three-cell battery. The AU$599 models bump that up to a 250GB hard drive, integrated Bluetooth and a six-cell battery. We tested with the 1020TU, which is the model with the blue casing. Aside from Windows 7 Starter, HP also offers up a quick launch operating system based on Splashtop Linux OS. Being HP, it’s subtly re-branded as “HP QuickWeb” and offers a near instantaneous boot for simple web browsing, music playback, photo browsing, Skype and chat applications. If you don’t like Splashtop it’s easily disabled from within either QuickWeb or Windows 7.
Keyboard and Touchpad

Here’s an instance where we’re glad a notebook maker borrowed design elements from the business side of the house. Like the Mini 5102, the island-style keys of the Mini 210 have a rubber-like matte coating that offered a pleasant tactile feel. Due to its nearly edge-to-edge footprint, the keyboard felt nice and roomy, and we were able to reach our normal typing speed and error rate right away. We appreciated the snappy return, proper placement, and sizing of the keys, even along the edges. As with other HP systems, the Function keys along the top row are reversed so that users have one-touch access to multimedia controls, volume, brightness, the wireless toggle, and more. Generally speaking, we’re not fans of touchpads with integrated touch buttons, but the Mini 210 is one of the better implementations we’ve used on a netbook. The 3.1 x 1.8-inch clickpad fills up as much vertical space as possible, jutting right up against the keyboard above it. We encountered a little more resistance than we’d like when navigating the desktop, but the integrated buttons worked well, offering solid feedback. Nevertheless, we continue to prefer the discrete touchpad and buttons on the Toshiba mini NB305. Multitouch gestures were smooth, though there aren’t many beyond two-finger scroll and pinch-to-zoom. When typing, we didn’t find ourselves accidentally brushing the touchpad (even though it’s so close to the keys), but users prone to this issue can adjust the sensitivity in the mouse properties or double tap the dot on the upper left corner to disable the touchpad altogether.
Display

The screen has a native resolution of 1024×600 and it’s bright enough to use outdoors and indoors with the lights on. It has a glossy plastic pane that extends from edge to edge. This will reflect light, which will possibly infuriate you while you try to view photos and videos. It has a webcam at the top as well as a microphone and two concealed Wi-Fi antennea. The netbook’s lid is strong and the hinges hold it perfectly in place.
Ports & Webcam

The Mini 210 has a typical spread of ports for a netbook: VGA, USB and headphone/mic combo ports on the left; Ethernet, 5-in-1 memory card reader, Kensington lock slot, and the remaining two USB ports on the right. We like that the right USB ports sit closer to the back of the system, keeping connected devices out of our way. HP bundled the Mini 210 with ArcSoft’s WebCam Companion 3, which not only allows users to record video and take pictures, but also to edit and upload them to YouTube or Snapfish directly from the program. The webcam delivered acceptable image quality when chatting over Skype, though the output was somewhat grainy. A quick adjustment of the hue setting resulted in truer colors, and upping the contrast produced richer images. Unfortunately, each time we moved our Skype companion we noticed blur, regardless of how fast or slow we were. It wasn’t distracting, but it was
Performance

The Mini 210′s physical build ensures a pleasant computing experience for the most part. Like most thinner netbooks, heat build-up can be an issue. Likewise, in common with other six-cell models, the bulky battery juts out of the back at an angle that can be a little uncomfortable on the lap, but these are minor quibbles. The keyboard response is excellent with well spaced keys and a responsive clickable touch-pad. Atom processors and PCMark05 haven’t always behaved well together in previous tests, and this was exactly the case with the Mini 210 which crashed the test suite repeatedly. Based on simple application testing and the fact that the Mini 210′s innards are quite standard, you can expect a slow performance out of the 210. 3DMark06 did complete, but its score of 155 puts it solidly in the Solitaire-only camp. We ran the Mini 210 through our standard battery testing regime. This involves switching screen brightness to maximum, disabling all power-saving features entirely and setting a looping XviD file to run to the point of battery exhaustion. It’s a test that’s designed to be brutal and give a “worst-case” battery life scenario. In actual usage — especially with a dimmed screen, less intensive processing and judicious use of Wi-Fi only when needed — you can expect a lot more than we get with this test, which only gives us a base line. The Mini 210′s base line was highly impressive, however, lasting four hours and 45 minutes before conking out. HP has historically placed something of a premium on its netbook designs, so the fact that the RRP of the Mini 210 is in line with the current netbook norm is highly pleasing. Combine that with a great keyboard, instant-on Linux capability and very good battery life and you’ve got an excellent netbook.