Well I ended up ordering a Dell mini 12 anyways, despite what was discussed in my previous thread. Subsequently my brother just so happened to buy an HP 1030NR from a friend of his today so Ill give a review of both. Pictures at the bottom.
Dell Mini 12
Picked this up from the Dell outlet for $390 with the following specs;
-1.6ghz Atom Z530 CPU
-1gb ram (not upgradeable)
-80gb PATA HD
-6 cell battery
-ubuntu OS
-and all the other standard features.
I also had an AT&T rebate card laying around so it really only cost me $340.
Overall Im pretty pleased with the design and quality. It is VERY thin, I inspected all the netbooks at BB and Frys and this seems to be the thinnest, followed closely by the HP. It also feels like it is about the same weight as the HP and it is considerably larger. Having the 6 cell battery actually makings typing a little bit easier. Dells website claims that you can get 6 or more hours with the 6 cell battery, I was able to get about 5 and a half hours and that includes web browsing, installing all my updates and watching about 15-20 minutes of a movie. The battery sticks out the back rather than straight down and only gives it a slight tilt upwards. Anyways, this is all the same stuff you can read in most other reviews, the main thing I have not found mentioned in reviews is its performance running linux. I really like linux on this netbook, with one problem which I will address in a moment. It boots up to the login screen in 45 seconds and gets into linux with everything loaded at 70 seconds. It has a slight delay when opening certain applications, as does any other netbook but overall it is fairly quick. It is limited to 1gb of ram and can not be upgradeable but it really doesnt seem to need it. The built in word processing program has the ability to save files in .doc format which is nice. It loads web pages and streams from youtube with no problems. It also plays .avi or other video files off a thumb drive without any stutter. If it ended right there this would be the perfect netbook, but I have two problems;
1. The speaker is HORRIBLE! I can hear it alright when I am in my room with no other ambient noises. Anywhere else, the speaker would be completely useless. Good thing it has headphone jacks, otherwise you might as well leave it muted all the time.
2. This is really my biggest issue; I have been having some problems getting Firefox to run properly. The base web browser that is installed with the netbook is I think Firefox 3.0.8 or some kind of mix between firefox and something else. I installed Firefox 3.0.10, the latest version, and it is almost completely unstable. Every time I open Firefox I better have everything else on the netbook saved because it is guaranteed to lock up. On occasion it will lock up right when I open firefox but usually its after about 5 minutes of use. It also seems that the more tabs I have open the faster the netbook will lock up. I am in the process of looking into a fix for the problem. As I require certain firefox only plugins, this is a rather large problem for me. I am also going to install XP Pro on it in the next couple of days and see how that runs, Ill report back with my opinion on that.
*EDIT*: Well it turns out that it was not entirely firefox causing the lockups, it was a firefox plugin called greasemonkey that I had installed. When greasemonkey was installed the netbook would lockup, then it was not installed everything ran just fine. If you dont use greasemonkey with firefox or dont even use firefox than you will not have any problems.
Conclusion:
All in all, I think its a great netbook; thin, lite, large screen (large for a netbook) and pretty quick. If you can get by with the stock web browser and dont need the most up to date version of firefox than you wont have any problems, if not, you may want to try XP.
HP 1030NR
My brother picked this up from a friend at school for $200, which is a damn good deal considering it still looks brand new (even has the protective film over the lid). Its got pretty much the exact same specs as the Dell except it has a 1.6 Atom N270 CPU instead, a 3 cell battery, XP w/ SP3 and a 10" screen. Boot up time is actually faster than the Dell; about 50 seconds to get into Windows with everything loaded. Design and quality is very nice. Small, thin, very nice keyboard, the track pad is short and wide with the buttons on either side as apposed to beneath it. It takes some getting use to but its not a problem. Performance in Windows is very good in some cases better than linux on the Dell. It can be sluggish opening some applications but it doesnt seem to hang up as much as the Dell does, this actually really makes me want to install XP on the Dell to see if it performs better. Most online reviews of this netbook rate the battery life at about 2 and a half hours, I have yet to test this but I will.
Conclusion;
If this battery didnt have such a crappy battery life it would probably be my favorite. I love the design and I love the look of it. But, the battery life is not good and that big screen on the Dell is hard to ignore.
Dell Mini 12
Dell and HP 1030NR
Dell side view
Dell side view 2
Dell opend
Dell Mini 12
Picked this up from the Dell outlet for $390 with the following specs;
-1.6ghz Atom Z530 CPU
-1gb ram (not upgradeable)
-80gb PATA HD
-6 cell battery
-ubuntu OS
-and all the other standard features.
I also had an AT&T rebate card laying around so it really only cost me $340.
Overall Im pretty pleased with the design and quality. It is VERY thin, I inspected all the netbooks at BB and Frys and this seems to be the thinnest, followed closely by the HP. It also feels like it is about the same weight as the HP and it is considerably larger. Having the 6 cell battery actually makings typing a little bit easier. Dells website claims that you can get 6 or more hours with the 6 cell battery, I was able to get about 5 and a half hours and that includes web browsing, installing all my updates and watching about 15-20 minutes of a movie. The battery sticks out the back rather than straight down and only gives it a slight tilt upwards. Anyways, this is all the same stuff you can read in most other reviews, the main thing I have not found mentioned in reviews is its performance running linux. I really like linux on this netbook, with one problem which I will address in a moment. It boots up to the login screen in 45 seconds and gets into linux with everything loaded at 70 seconds. It has a slight delay when opening certain applications, as does any other netbook but overall it is fairly quick. It is limited to 1gb of ram and can not be upgradeable but it really doesnt seem to need it. The built in word processing program has the ability to save files in .doc format which is nice. It loads web pages and streams from youtube with no problems. It also plays .avi or other video files off a thumb drive without any stutter. If it ended right there this would be the perfect netbook, but I have two problems;
1. The speaker is HORRIBLE! I can hear it alright when I am in my room with no other ambient noises. Anywhere else, the speaker would be completely useless. Good thing it has headphone jacks, otherwise you might as well leave it muted all the time.
2. This is really my biggest issue; I have been having some problems getting Firefox to run properly. The base web browser that is installed with the netbook is I think Firefox 3.0.8 or some kind of mix between firefox and something else. I installed Firefox 3.0.10, the latest version, and it is almost completely unstable. Every time I open Firefox I better have everything else on the netbook saved because it is guaranteed to lock up. On occasion it will lock up right when I open firefox but usually its after about 5 minutes of use. It also seems that the more tabs I have open the faster the netbook will lock up. I am in the process of looking into a fix for the problem. As I require certain firefox only plugins, this is a rather large problem for me. I am also going to install XP Pro on it in the next couple of days and see how that runs, Ill report back with my opinion on that.
*EDIT*: Well it turns out that it was not entirely firefox causing the lockups, it was a firefox plugin called greasemonkey that I had installed. When greasemonkey was installed the netbook would lockup, then it was not installed everything ran just fine. If you dont use greasemonkey with firefox or dont even use firefox than you will not have any problems.
Conclusion:
All in all, I think its a great netbook; thin, lite, large screen (large for a netbook) and pretty quick. If you can get by with the stock web browser and dont need the most up to date version of firefox than you wont have any problems, if not, you may want to try XP.
HP 1030NR
My brother picked this up from a friend at school for $200, which is a damn good deal considering it still looks brand new (even has the protective film over the lid). Its got pretty much the exact same specs as the Dell except it has a 1.6 Atom N270 CPU instead, a 3 cell battery, XP w/ SP3 and a 10" screen. Boot up time is actually faster than the Dell; about 50 seconds to get into Windows with everything loaded. Design and quality is very nice. Small, thin, very nice keyboard, the track pad is short and wide with the buttons on either side as apposed to beneath it. It takes some getting use to but its not a problem. Performance in Windows is very good in some cases better than linux on the Dell. It can be sluggish opening some applications but it doesnt seem to hang up as much as the Dell does, this actually really makes me want to install XP on the Dell to see if it performs better. Most online reviews of this netbook rate the battery life at about 2 and a half hours, I have yet to test this but I will.
Conclusion;
If this battery didnt have such a crappy battery life it would probably be my favorite. I love the design and I love the look of it. But, the battery life is not good and that big screen on the Dell is hard to ignore.
Dell Mini 12
Dell and HP 1030NR
Dell side view
Dell side view 2
Dell opend
Facebook
Twitter