HP joined the netbook craze after it saw the market potential for the tiny devices (something Acer has used to propel itself toward the number 2 spot amongst computer OEMs). This one carries less of a netbook-y feel and more of a business-y feel than other typical netbooks, which might help HP reach an audience slightly more concerned about aesthetics than the typical netbook buyer. Things to note:

• It runs Vista, which is great. Thing is, I’m unsure as to whether it runs Windows Vista smoothly enough under load thanks to the chipset being used. This is one of those netbooks which might be a better grab once it’s loaded with Windows 7 thanks to 7’s performance and power usage optimizations.
• The keyboard is spill-resistant (there’s a difference between this and spill-proof), which means that it can likely withstand an accidental coffee or coke spill without problems. Your best bet would be to dry it off quickly.
• Build quality is excellent, and the tool-less design (with switching ram, anyway) is definitely a plus. The only catch is that I can’t think of too many instances where a user would want to upgrade ram on a netbook.

There are two separate add-ons which I also take a look at in this video; one of which is a USB expander that adds extra USB ports, dedicated headphone/mic jacks, as well as a NIC. It’s not a complete docking solution, but it should serve perfectly fine for people who just want to plug one USB cable into their netbook at work as opposed to setting it on a dock. The other is just an external optical drive, which might (again) only really be a necessity in the office.

As with the last video, you can catch this hands-on video after the jump in both vanilla YouTube and YouTube HD.

Read More »