The HP2133 Mini-Notebook
I just came back home to Sweden after the stint in Peru for which I originally bought the HP 2133 Mini-Note. It's a model with 2GB of RAM, a 120GB 5400rpm drive and Windows Vista Home of all things. The part number on the box for this machine was FU346EA#AK8 where I believe the #AK8 is merely some batch number or even the local region of Sweden.
The machine has good sides and bad sides.
The display is amazing, with extreme brightness, color richness, sharpness and most impressive of all, the extreme observation angles. The keyboard too, very large keys for such a small machine, and with only a few exceptions, the keys are all the same size, which helps a lot with typing. Keys that are slightly smaller than full size include the keys 1, pause, scrill, insert, delete and the arrow keys. Also the key to the left of Z is somewhat smaller than usual, but not disturbingly so. I am also impressed by the machines graphical capabilities. Don't laugh - this is a superportable mini-notebook after all, it's not SUPPOSED to have ANY 3D capabilities, but it does. All simple games work without issue, including some with 3D components - I've played Ultra Assault, Star Monkey and Hurrican with no slowdowns. It's not much, but I'm surprised it was even possible. Mostly I just play Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics and run X-Com games in DOSBox emulation.
So the bad sides. I think number one would be the software package. This is a machine without an optical drive, yet there are two or three optical drive and burning utilities on the drive when you get the machine. There's a six or seven gigabyte large application folder, out of which two or three gigabytes is a folder with twenty-something different language versions of norton internet security or somesuch. If you use that, and you speak 25 languages, I suppose that's good. Otherwise, no. Even stranger is that many of the HP-specific tools on the hard drive REQUIRE a desktop resolution of 1024x768 in order to display all text on screen (such as the OK button, or the agreement you have to check). Now, the laptop CAN display that resolution, but if you didn't already change it, you will miss it. Just switching resolutions is easy though, the S3 tool does the job without issues.
And speaking of a software package, why HP decided to include Vista home basic on a mininotebook is beyond me, but as I understand it, it might not be as silly as it sounds. Sure Vista uses lots of RAM and sure the drive indexing feature makes your hard drive tick along all the time, but Vista also has more power saving options than XP does.
Another bad part: I've had freezing, where the machine stops responding. Sometimes several of them in a row. It could be because of heat - I was using the machine in Lima, the capital of Peru, a city built in a desert, and I had the machine on soft surfaces such as my hot and dusty bed, and it crashed. I'm not going to say for sure that the issue is with overheating though, there have been some software updates to the machine recently so it needs more testing before I can say for sure.
Overall impression: Best, cheapest notebook I ever bought.
(Also my first notebook, so salt lightly before consuming opinion).
/ Per
The machine has good sides and bad sides.
The display is amazing, with extreme brightness, color richness, sharpness and most impressive of all, the extreme observation angles. The keyboard too, very large keys for such a small machine, and with only a few exceptions, the keys are all the same size, which helps a lot with typing. Keys that are slightly smaller than full size include the keys 1, pause, scrill, insert, delete and the arrow keys. Also the key to the left of Z is somewhat smaller than usual, but not disturbingly so. I am also impressed by the machines graphical capabilities. Don't laugh - this is a superportable mini-notebook after all, it's not SUPPOSED to have ANY 3D capabilities, but it does. All simple games work without issue, including some with 3D components - I've played Ultra Assault, Star Monkey and Hurrican with no slowdowns. It's not much, but I'm surprised it was even possible. Mostly I just play Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics and run X-Com games in DOSBox emulation.
So the bad sides. I think number one would be the software package. This is a machine without an optical drive, yet there are two or three optical drive and burning utilities on the drive when you get the machine. There's a six or seven gigabyte large application folder, out of which two or three gigabytes is a folder with twenty-something different language versions of norton internet security or somesuch. If you use that, and you speak 25 languages, I suppose that's good. Otherwise, no. Even stranger is that many of the HP-specific tools on the hard drive REQUIRE a desktop resolution of 1024x768 in order to display all text on screen (such as the OK button, or the agreement you have to check). Now, the laptop CAN display that resolution, but if you didn't already change it, you will miss it. Just switching resolutions is easy though, the S3 tool does the job without issues.
And speaking of a software package, why HP decided to include Vista home basic on a mininotebook is beyond me, but as I understand it, it might not be as silly as it sounds. Sure Vista uses lots of RAM and sure the drive indexing feature makes your hard drive tick along all the time, but Vista also has more power saving options than XP does.
Another bad part: I've had freezing, where the machine stops responding. Sometimes several of them in a row. It could be because of heat - I was using the machine in Lima, the capital of Peru, a city built in a desert, and I had the machine on soft surfaces such as my hot and dusty bed, and it crashed. I'm not going to say for sure that the issue is with overheating though, there have been some software updates to the machine recently so it needs more testing before I can say for sure.
Overall impression: Best, cheapest notebook I ever bought.
(Also my first notebook, so salt lightly before consuming opinion).
/ Per
posted by Per Edman | 19:29
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