HP MINI 110-312TU

Another netbook, but this time by HP. No problem, since HP is the better choice when it comes to Customer Service, at least locally. They have a cozy and elegant Customer Service Office, with very fast response. So I guess, having a troublesome HP netbook would be okay. The HP Mini 110-3012TU is about 1” thick and weighing at around 1kg. It has a boring black design which is quite old according to the current trend of anti-fingerprints outer casing. The netbook is also pre-installed with Windows 7 Starter, which is good enough for light duties.

I hate the power button. It is a toggle which needs to be pull backward to turn the darn thing on. It may take you some time to adjust yourself with this kind of button, plus, I do not think you would like to spend most of your computing time with this kind of tool; long enough that would make you comfortable with it. Do you get what I mean? It’s that kind of thing, which after a few moments with it, you’ve started a calculation in your head about selling it off. The toggle button is hard to pull backward. Umm, maybe I had a soft finger tips. It is oddly placed at the right side of the palm rest. Having a cute palm rest is just burdensome enough and having a power switch like this, makes thing worse. It just that I hate you darn toggle-power-button!

The netbook-with-the-darn-toggle-power-button is equipped with a faster version of Intel Atom N455, which manages 1.66GHz. It also comes with 160GB of storage, WIFi, Webcam and Card Reader. The factory pre-installed Memory is hardly sufficient for current date task and duties. My experience, the netbook suffers frequent pauses and hangs when performing light multitasking, and even surfing the web, particularly when I am visiting those sites with heavy and intense flash graphic. Things like this is happening with Acer Netbook too, so I guess, it’s normal on 1GB base level netbook…accept on the Lenovo S10. The HP Mini 110-3012TU comes with 3 USB 2.0 ports, and also a nicely covered RJ45 connector. The VGA output is located on the left side of the netbook just a few centimeters away from the LCD.

After a few minutes of using it, the netbook has already shown signs of slow-motion’ness! Maybe it was the 1GB RAM. But how on earth can the Lenovo S10-3S not going through this kind of ‘slow’. Furthermore the HP Mini 110-3012TU comes with a better processor compared to the Lenovo, Intel Atom N450. Maybe the difference is unnoticeable, since the processors code difference is just 5 (LOL)! Pity for HP. The keyboard is pretty okay and wide for a netbook. This is much helpful to relive the stress of mistyped keys and generations of excuse upon typos and misspellings. The non-glare 10.1” WXGA screen is marvelous and sharp, and therefore no complains here. But I hate the design. I simply hate the design. HP should replace their designers. Makita and Ryobi designers are cool. Their new cordless power tools are awesome and splendid in design, that if it fitted with wings and tails, it could fly… with a little throw of course. I don’t know, maybe HP had spent too much on the Customer Service part, so that they are forgetting this design department. Yes, to be serious, I think I can design better than them.

Enough of the complaining… I want to sell this darn thing off.