Hewlett-Packard Enters the UMPC World with the Mini-Note

In the Mini-Note's case, it's base model comes with a lot of low-end, but perfectly reasonable features. The display on all of the models is 8.9 inches. The base comes with a 1 Ghz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive and all of your basic ports, in and out (in: USBx2, microphone, power; out: headphones, VGA monitor; both: RJ-45/Ethernet). It comes with Wifi and Bluetooth, both nice, but typical features, too. It's dimensions are perfectly reasonable, coming in at 10x6.5 with a thickness of 1 inch. Not bad. The display can do WXGA (1366x768) and brings the VIA Chrome 9 for graphics.

The one shock from the basic model? No webcam.

Yeah, every laptop worth its salt has a webcam, these days--including Asus' eeepc.

So, as you can tell, the specs were hit by that shrink ray, too. Of course, you can always pay more and get more, which would be a good idea if you want to hook yourself up with that optional 4GB SSD (solid state drive), a full-gig of RAM, or, you know, a webcam.

That SSD, by the way, will help with power consumption a lot. The idea is that the SSD has no moving parts and will therefore be less of a draw on battery. Which you'll also need to pay more for if you want a 6-cell versus a 3-cell. Sadly, there's no mention of a battery life on the Mini-Note's specs page.

The OS is also something you might want to pay more for if FreeDOS or Linux aren't your cuppa java.

So as far as entries into the UMPC universe go, this one probably isn't going to blow your mind. The HP name might be worth springing for if Asus worries you at all.