Thoughts on the HP Mini-Note under WinXP

Hp_miniI’ve been running XP on the HP Mini-Note for a few days now and it’s time to share some of my thoughts on the system.  Fast.  Everything is instantly responsive under XP and it still surprises me how quickly some things run.  My old faithful resource hogs, Outlook 2007 and OneNote 2007, open quickly and perform faster on the Mini-Note running XP than they do on my Dual Core 2 equipped Tablet PCs, both of them.  Hit an icon and boom something happens.  Surfing the web is quick and easy and the high-res screen makes it very pleasant.  Some other users have taken steps to make things appear bigger on the 8.9" screen for easier viewing but I haven’t had to do that.  That’s probably because I am already used to the 1280×768 running on the 8.9" screen on the Fujitsu P1620.  It’s great having everything fit on the screen at once.

Standby and resume takes a maximum of 2 seconds.  That’s faster thanany device I use running Vista and a bit faster than the Mini-Noteunder Vista.  If you watch the HDD activity light under XP it doesn’tdo anything while the device is just sitting there, something you neversee under Vista.  If Vista is running so is the HDD it seems and I findthat adds delays to the standby and resume process.  No such issueunder XP.  Hibernation and resume takes about 1:15, probably due to theMini having 2 GB of memory.  It’s writing and reading that entirememory image to disk every time and that’s just slower than you mightexpect.  I just use standby myself so it’s not a problem for me.

All of the internal hardware components are properly installed under XPand everything is working with the exception of the on-screenindicators for volume and screen brightness.  The buttons providingthose functions work fine but there is no on-screen indicator showingthe levels.  Not a big deal for me but some might not like that. 

Skype video calls were not usable under Vista but happily they are OK under XP.  I didn’t have to do any tweaking, just installed Skype under XP and they work OK.  The video quality is not going to win any Academy Awards but it is quite passable which is a big improvement over Vista.

All in all I am pleased with the Mini-Note running Windows XP.  Bear in mind that I didn’t really have any problems with it running Vista Business (other than the Skype problem).  I just wanted to give XP a try since HP is going to offer it as an option for consumers and report here.  It is very good and if it was my choice I would order the Mini with XP instead of Vista.  Might as well get the fastest system possible for the money.

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