Hay I’m thinking of buying one .If i go backward and put xp on it doesn’t that mean i cant get vista back on with me going and buying it.Also i would i need a external ROM drive to install xp will i not.
Cheer’s Matt

Hi James,

I saw a link today and it mentioned the possibility that upcoming new HP Mini MAYBE will show up in months.

http://www.dailytech.com/Intels+Atom+Will+Face+Shortages+Through+Q3/article11658.htm

The interesting part is:

“A VIA engineer has already stated that Isaiah processors will show up in HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC within the next few months and Everex’s CloudBook Max is another likely candidate for the new 65nm processor.”

I don’t know you guys but…I am preparing to buy another Level-up Mini!

This is just like Kendrick. All of you think he does these posts for your benefit. It’s his endless plot to drive me into an insane frenzy of envy and jealousy. Next he’ll do *another* post about OS X on the Mini.

Oh wait …

Could you please make a youtube video watching something on hulu and perhaps making a video call with skype? I would really appreciate this. Thank you.

Vista innovations like advanced prefetching, advanced boot time routines, advanced indexing, etc.

yet when compared to XP, Vista loads apps slower, boots slower, runs slower overall.

can you imagine how slow Vista would be if it didnt have all these little “tricks” up it’s sleeve? i can’t believe how badly designed & resource heavy Vista is essentially for just a prettier GUI. yes there are alot of backend changes but nothing really noticeable to the user or more stable (completely redid IP stack & it still seems the same). the primary difference to the user are small things like Mobility Center, new firewall, etc.

along with heavy CPU & GPU utilization, this is another reason Vista devices get less battery life.

there is a HUGE difference in HDD power consumption between idle & active states (usually about 2watts, which is alot on 10watt machines)

I heard the same thing… it’s apparently using an old version of SuSE that doesn’t even support the power saving features of the via chips, and the 3d “drivers” have to be downloaded from Via’s site and installed.

I mean, it doesn’t sound too bad for someone used to Linux — you can upgrade SuSE to the latest version by adding the OpenSuSE repositories and hitting “update” and the drivers is the same kind of fiddling you have to do with Nvidia and ATI — but… I can’t help but think that HP and/or Novell really dropped the ball with this one.

@gork

Everything I’ve read about the SUSE Mini-Note is not good. It sounds like it was, sort of, slapped together.

Thank you for the updated comments using Win XP on the Mini-Note. I know that downgrading the OS helps. With my Fujitsu U810 Vista was eating it alive, even with everything dumbed down. With XP on it it runs so much better and it can deal with Skype better as well. The more I read your reviews of the HP Mini Note, the more I want to buy one.

I just watched some clips in Hulu and it was OK. Some minor choppiness at full screen but overall quite passable. I haven’t tried sling on it yet.

JK, how does hulu look on it? does it have trouble playing the high-res flash files? and have you tried sling on it?

Yes, I had Vista SP1 running on the Mini. I did not notice any speed increase with SP1 but then I haven’t noticed that on any device yet.

I am currently running XP SP3 on the Mini.

I was wondering if when you had Vista on this if you tried it with SP1? I have found on all the systems that I manage (about 10 that currently dual boot Vista and XP) and I have seen a speed increase where Vista’s speed equals or exceeds XP SP2 speed.

Also did you try XP with SP3?

Thanks for the great blog.

You need to try Ubuntu or SuSE on the Mini-Note. Have heard little about how Linux runs on this beast except it may be a while before Compiz Fusion works. The Chrome 9 graphics card doesn’t have good support on Linux yet but it’s coming thanks to VIA’s Open Source contribution.

James,

This reminds me of the ‘upgrade to XP tablet’ operation that I did to my Fujitsu U810 as soon as I got it….

After experiencing Vista on several on mini-puters the past year, I knew what to do after I pulled that lil’ guy outa ‘da box…. ;-)

It’s a shame really, as Vista has some things about it other than speed and performance…so, if MS could get their act together and fix Vista to not have all the performance hiccups, I’d use it….

And to echo what you’ve said before, don’t get why MS hasn’t come out with a ‘Vista Lite’ for smaller mobile devices…

So it goes….

Thanks for the update, JK. It’s amazing how consistently XP provides a better user experience on these low-powered ultraportables than Vista does. It’s almost like Microsoft never even considered this class of device when designing its newest OS. I hope at least this will be a lesson for them for Windows 7.