HP mini notebook rumours
A Cheaper HP Mininote on the way.
With the advent of UMPC offerings from Acer, Asus, MSI and Dell the HP Mininote seems to have faded into the shadows. Rather a sad situation considering the overall design of the HP offering was rather nice - a lot more attractive than many of the other contenders for the throne.
The original target market for the HP Mininote was the education sector which was reflected in the build specifications - toughened chassis and splashproof keyboard. Unfortunately, HP didn’t go the whole hog and offer the Mininote at a price that reflected it’s target market (too expensive).
HP have now announced a cheaper variant of the Mininote will be made available. Currently, there’s no specific info on how the device will be changed in order to make it less expensive although there have been some snippets coming from Jerel Chong, HP Australia’s Market Development Manager for Notebook PCs, suggesting it will be “a similar device (to the 2133) but at a lower cost … It won’t be as durable but it will be cheaper”. This means the revamped Mininote should be considerably lighter once the ruggedised components have been removed.
Does this mean the next HP Mininote will get a better CPU? Logically, yes.There are currently two contenders: Intels Atom and VIA Nano. The only problem here is that the Nano isn’t quite ready yet which means Intel could sneak in the back door and knock VIA out of the game. Now I’m not denying that the Atom has performed well running Vista but would it really be wise to put all your eggs in the Intel basket? I suppose that, at the end of the day, cost is a big factor and the success of the Atom puts them in a good position when it comes to offering discounted CPU’s.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens next. At the end of the day, the consumer isn’t really bothered what’s inside as long as the thing works. Well, regardless of which CPU the Mininote carries I’m still looking forward to the next offering although I don’t think I can actually justify buying yet another UMPC/netbook just because it ‘looks good’!
For those of you that are interested, here’s the original Mininote specs.
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