The Display

Most of the other subnotebooks that are in the same category as the Mini-Note (under $1000 range) just don't have the same quality display. Contrast is outstanding, backlighting is even across the surface without any bleeding around the edges, colors are saturated and crisp, and viewing angles are adequate enough.

The 1280 x 768 resolution is likewise exceptional taking into account the small notebook. Text is a little smaller than what most buyers would be used too, but this is a small inconvenience bearing in mind the fact that you can display a complete webpage on the LCD exactly as it was meant to be displayed.

The single issue that caused concern with the screen on the Mini-Note was the employment of a extra shielding layer of glossy plastic on top of the screen. While this added layer of plastic helps guard the display, the adverse side effect is sizeable reflection. We're not talking about a typical glossy screen. We're talking about a screen with a completely separate glossy layer placed on top of it.

When viewing the display your eyes easily move focus between what is being displayed on the screen and what is being reflected on the glossy surface of the second layer on top of the screen. Since these images are on a slightly different focal level you can with no trouble develop eye strain and headaches from looking at this screen.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the 2133 Mini-Note is great. To put it plainly, this is the greatest keyboard we've seen on a notebook this small. The keys hold a silver texture and are smooth to the touch. There isn't a textured feel to the keyboard. The best thing though is how large it is. I mean, it almost is a full-sized keyboard, so composing documents on this machine is a easy. No spelling errors due to hitting the wrong keys. I didn't notice any signs of bend and really liked that a large amount of the keys were full sized excluding a few. The tilde key and the number one key are smaller than the rest of the numbers, which was quite peculiar. The space bar was relatively small too.

The touchpad was difficult to maneuver. Response time was a little lengthy occasionally, but it is easy to navigate with. The right and left click buttons are what get you. The buttons are located on the sides of the touchpad, which take some time to get used too. I forgot what I am clicking on occasionally. I would have liked the palm rest space to be a little larger, so the buttons could have been relocated below the touchpad like on standard notebooks or the Eee PC. The button higher than the touchpad is a well-situated feature that turns the touchpad off and makes it dormant whilst you are typing.

 

Of course, one minor compromise you have to make with the ultra-mobile form factor of the Mini-Note is that the laptop cannot accommodate the standard variety of ports you'll come across on other notebooks. HP did manage to include a reasonable quantity of ports. The complete catalog of ports includes:

• 1x ExpressCard/54 slot
• Secure Digital (SD) card reader
• 2x USB 2.0 ports
• VGA out
• Power connector
• RJ-45/Ethernet
• Stereo headphone/line out
• Stereo microphone/line in
  

Performance and Benchmarks

After the impressive build and design of the HP 2133 Mini-Note we projected to see a likewise impressive level of performance coming out of this tiny titan. Unfortunately, performance is one area where the Mini-Note falls short.

On paper the 1.6GHz VIA C7-M CPU should provide excellent speed for common computing tasks. In reality, web pages rendered slower than projected, multi-tasking was painfully lengthy, and mainly processor-hungry applications like Photoshop or video encoding software just didn't like the VIA CPU.

The benchmark numbers for the Mini-Note certainly aren't "bad" it's hard to get excited about these figures when you factor in that this configuration of the HP Mini-Note costs more than $750.

A further factor to keep in mind while judging the overall system performance is the operating system being used. Our pre-production review piece was using Windows Vista Business and, like the majority of notebooks using Windows Vista, performance suffers

While you could argue our explanation for comparing a notebook with Vista versus a notebook with XP, this is a suitable comparison since it demonstrates what consumers will experience "out of the box" with two notebooks targeted at alike customers.