Well, digital film anyway. While HP sent me a bunch of info and press shots of the new HP Mini 311, the folks at Engadget, Laptop Magazine, and Notebooks.com all got to spend some hands-on time with the first NVIDIA ION powered laptop from the big H.

The laptop features an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics for handling HD video and graphics. It’s got your usual netbook specs of 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and comes with Windows XP Home at launch, with Windows 7 to follow. It’s not exactly a powerhouse, but at $399, it’s the cheapest ION powered notebook around.

Notebooks.com shot a few photos of the HP Mini 311 hanging out with a Mini 110 10 inch netbook. The 311 is noticably larger, but its battery sits flush with the unit, so it takes up less vertical space. The keyboards seem to be about the same size, but the touchpad buttons are placed below the trackpad, not to the left and right sides. You can also find a short hands-on video with the Mini 311 from Notebooks.com after the break.

Laptop Magazine also has a video, although I can’t embed it so you’ll have to visit the Laptop Mag blog to se it. They seemed to like the keyboard and display.

Engadget also has a series of close-up shots of the laptop.

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After taking a few moments to rip my new Asus Eee PC 1000H out of its packaging, I did a quick photo shoot with the 1000H and my HP Mini-Note.

As you can see, the Eee PC 1000H is consdirably larger than the Mini-Note, and it is a tiny bit heavier. This is partially due to the larger battery. That’s the price you pay for extended battery life. The keyboard is a huge improvement over the Eee PC 701 keyboard, but not quite as touch-typable as the Mini-Note keyboard.

The display is matte style, while the Mini-Note is glossy. Conversely, the rest of the 1000H case is glossier than the Mini-Note case.