| Average Customer Rating: |  5.0 |
| Brand: | Hewlett Packard |
| Model: | 2133 Mini-Note |
| Display size: | 8.9 inches |
| Weight: | 6 pounds |
| Dimensions: | 10 inches x 1.1 inches
[Width x Height] |
Product Categories
Product description
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It might be small in size but it's big on usability, durability, and attractiveness. Packed with an impressive combination of features, the HP 2133 offers you a full-function PC with the utmost mobility. Plus, its simple, refined design and all-aluminum case make it sleek and sturdy yet super lightweight.Weighing in at just 1.27 kg, with a large 8.9-inch WSVGA display, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC features a durable design with a robust suite of wireless, multimedia and security capabilities to allow users to stay productive.
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FeaturesWeight : 6
6.00
Customer reviews
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Best of the Mini-note class
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I took delivery of the HP 2133 on Wednesday the 20th of August. I can't tell you how many times I feel I have been burned by bad laptops which include those from Apple, a MacBook, and from Asus, the EEE PC. By burned I mean that there is ultimately some flaw that is noted right away, and I try to look past it, but ultimately it becomes a much larger problem.
Oddly in both cases the flaw is keyboard related. The MacBook has odd keys that sometimes do not register when you type them. It is a known problem, and many believe it to be solved with a firmware update.
Unfortunately that firmware update didn't resolve my issue at all.
With the Asus EEE PC, there is a half sized shift key and a cursor-up key sharing the space under the Enter key. And as you type, you tend to assume the whole space under the Enter key is shift, but it's not. So as you type, you cursor up rather than shift and start inserting text right in the middle of whatever sentence you mistakenly used the cursor up into. It's quite frustrating. It is perhaps even more frustrating than typing on keys that sometimes don't actually register the key-press.
So when I went looking for a new small notebook to use on the road, I wanted it to be small, light-weight, and have good screen real-estate. But if that mean sacrificing the keyboard then the answer would have been, no.
When I found the HP 2133 I was happy to find images of the keyboard layout. The Shift key under the Enter key is larger than the Enter key itself. Perfect. HP got it right. HP also got it right when they made the keys as large as they did. Believe me when I write that the images do not do this justice. When you see the keys in contrast to the rest of the foot-print of the laptop the first thing that comes to mind are those funny phones you see in catalogs with huge keys so that elderly people with less dexterity than the rest of us can press the buttons without making errors and calling 411 when they mean to call 911.
Typing on this mini-note had me actually saying, out-loud and to myself, YES for finally having found perfection.
But it doesn't end there. There is more to laptop nirvana than just perfect keyboards. Mini notebooks are notorious for lousy screen real-estate. The HP 2133 has an 8.9" screen with a tight and crisp 1280x768 resolution. That's pretty close to the standard 1280x800 most 15.4" laptops have today, including my MacBook from Apple. And it's a lot higher than my 7" Asus EEEPC's 800 x 480. It means you can see the web page. They are getting wider and wider, what with the ads all around the text we wish to read. No one enjoys scrolling left and right in addition to up and down. It's simply not acceptable and obviously HP agrees because they got the screen right.
My HP 2133 also featured 2GB of RAM and a 120 GB hard drive. I bought a Seagate 250 and replaced the stock 120 with that. There are two reasons for that. The first is that HP provided, and still recommends Vista for this laptop. But even the best 1.6 GHz VIA processor will feel sluggish and unresponsive trying to run the next generation operating system from Microsoft. Though XP is far older, it's still the best choice. It ran on much slower hardware as well, because it was designed 5 or 6 years ago before every PC had these fancy dual core processors. XP Professional feels quite nice on this machine. The other reason for swapping the hard drive is simple. The 120 is the largest offered. Or perhaps there is a 160. But I want 250 GBs as a starting point. And since I am downgrading the operating system anyway, I may as well replace the hard drive. That also allows me to keep the stock drive, well... stock. I can always put it back later for whatever reason.
So truly the about the only thing you might not like about this mini-note is this. 1280x768 in an 8.9 is very small. If you're one of those people that buys 20" LCD panels and then lowers the resolution because you love big text, then this is perhaps not for you. For about the same money you can get a 15.4". But if you are like me, and want a mini-note, less than three pounds that can sit on a tray in the coach section of whatever airline you fly, then this is it. And if not, there is always eBay. That's actually what I was thinking when I bought it. If I hate it, I'll just sell it. But I believe I finally found a great mini-note. I guess the saying, third time's a charm holds true after all.
Other things of note are that I was looking for lighter applications that wouldn't stress the system. I was considering iTunes but then decided on $19.99 pro version of WinAmp. The pro version has a library and is much leaner than iTunes. And because Amazon sells MP3 based music which is compatible with anything I find that music is can be played while working on this little gem.
I regularly use Office 2007 Standard Edition as well. Google's Picasa 2 is an excellent light-weight and free photo album for this machine. I also wanted to do some photo editing, but I feared that Adobe Photoshop would be a little too much bloat for this so I turned to Corel PaintShop Pro X2. It's almost 1/10th the price of Photoshop and loads very quickly. Among other gems I found was a free PDF print driver from SourceForge. A simple Creative Zen V plus works well for syncing and cost very little.
There is much you can do in consideration of buying a Mini note. My advice is to try to stay away from heavy media software, like iTunes, and think of light-weight software that does much the same thing but that won't tax the machine too much. If you do that I think you'll find as I have that this machine is pretty much the best for the money. You can actually type fast on it, and unlike most out there, you can multitask with it. You don't have to sacrifice either. Just be smart about. For virus checking I use NOD32 as my experience with it is that it takes almost no resources from the machine it runs on.
Alex Alexzander
Rating:
(5
out of 5) @ 2008-09-01
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| List Price: | $749.00 |
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