Asus, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo continue to hog the headlines, but HP has been quietly selling its Mini-Note series since April. And it turns out the little computer is selling quite well. In fact, HP tells Chinese language Apple Daily that sales have been growing 50% every month. Demand is reportedly highest in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

The news isn’t a total surprise. The Mini-Note is certainly one of the most attractive low cost subnotebooks on the market. And HP took some extra steps to make the computer shine. It has a crisp 1280 x 768 pixel 8.9 inch display, which is much sharper than the screens most competitors are puting in their netbooks. And it has an acceleration detector which can shut down the hard drive if it detects swift motion, helping protect your hardware in the event of a fall.

On the other hand, the Mini-Note is one of the more expensive liliputers on the market. Prices start at $499, with some models running as much as $800 or more. And the computer is hampered by a sluggish VIA C7-M CPU.

[via Brighthand and DigiTimes]

The HP 2133 Mini-Note is probably the most professional looking low-cost mini-laptop on the market today. It’s got an attractive aluminum case, a shockingly high resolution 1280 x 768 pixel, 8.9 inch display, and a nearly full sized keyboard. But HP has stretched the definition of low-cost to some degree, with some versions of the HP 2133 costing upwards of $800.

And then there’s the VIA C7-M CPU. While other companies have flocked to the new Intel Atom processor, HP’s machine uses the low power, and relatively low performance VIA chip. To be fair, the Mini-Note was released before the Atom was available, but even the 900MHz Intel Celeron chip in the Eee PC 701 seems to offer better performance than a 1.2GHz VIA C7-M chip.

There’s been much speculation regarding the future of the Mini-Note line. Will HP eventually make the switch to the Intel Atom processor? Or will the company hold out for the next generation chip from VIA, the Nano? HP is doing nothing to clear up that question, but an HP rep has told Australia’s APC Magazine that the company does have plans for a second generation Mini-Note.

In a nutshell, HP will continue producing the business-class HP 2133 Mini-Note. But the company will also be releasing a cheaper model that has a better shot of competing in a market crowded with sub-$500 laptops. The new model will share some features with the HP 2133, but it’s described as being both cheaper and less durable.

In other words, HP had better have a higher performance processor up their sleeves. Because the main advantage the current generation of Mini-Notes has is decent build quality. Take that away, and there won’t be much left to make HP’s offering stand out from the crowd.

HP is now selling 6-cell batteries for the HP Mini-Note. And while I reported a few days ago that HP would be charging $191 for a 6-cell and $207.10 for a 3-cell battery, it looks like you can pick up a 6-cell battery today for the low, low price of $129. Yeah, that still seems like a lot of money for a battery for a $499+ computer. But laptop batteries have always had unreasonably high price tags.

Want a spare battery for your HP Mini-Note? You’d better have $200 or so to spare, because HP is charging $191 for a spare/replacement 6-cell 55Wh battery. Yep, a single battery will cost you almost 2/5ths the price of the cheapest Mini-Note laptop.

A few days ago HP started posting Windows XP drivers and software for the Mini-Note on the company’s web site. But there were a few things missing, most notably the audio driver. Sure, you could configure Windows XP to use the Windows Vista driver with a little tweaking, but it’s not a perfect fit.

HP has finally gotten around to posting Windows XP drivers and support software on its web site. I know I wasn’t the only person to install XP within hours of unboxing the Mini-Note. But now you don’t have to rummage around to find drivers that work properly.

Honestly, the only problem I’ve noticed is that I get an error sound when booting Windows which I’m pretty sure is just my computer’s way of letting me know that I’m using an audio driver that was designed for Windows Vista, not XP (I already turned off the visual notification box that popped up to tell me this every time my computer booted).

There doesn’t appear to be a Windows XP audio driver on the web site, but I’m wondering if it might be bundled with the VIA chipset drivers of the HP software update tool. I plant to install both of these packages and see what happens, but since I don’t intend to do a clean install of Windows XP right now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell for certain what each package does.

Update: As of 10:26pm on 5/5, HP appears to have pulled the XP drivers down again. But I suspect they’ll be back online soon, perhaps with a working audio driver.

Update 2: And Tuesday morning the XP drivers are back online. I still don’t see anything that says sound, but since I already have a working Vista sound driver installed, I can’t tell if any of the new drivers would have enabled audio. If you’re doing a fresh install of XP, let us know if and when sound starts working when you start installing these applications and drivers.

[via HP 2133 Guide]

Installing Windows XP or any other operating system is easy if you have a USB optical disc drive. But if all you’ve got is a USB flash drive and another computer with a DVD burner, you can still install Windows XP (or many Linux distributions for that matter) on a disc drive-less ultraportable like the HP Mini-Note or the Asus Eee PC. After spending most of Saturday installing Windows XP on my HP Mini-Note I thought I’d share my results with you. Remember, your results may very, so while these are the steps that worked for me, they may not work for you. For example, depending on the version of Windows XP you are using, you may need a different hotfix to install the audio drivers.

There were two resources that were extraordinarily helpful. Bsumpter at MiniNoteUser wrote up an excellent tutorial for installing XP on a Mini-Note, and EeeGuides has a great walkthrough for installing XP on an Eee PC using a flash drive. By combining these methods and a few other, I was able to setup my Mini-Note with a Windows partition, a spare partition for installing Linux, and a large data partition for shared files.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. 1 USB flash drive, 1GB or larger
2. 1 Windows XP installation disc
3. Assorted files that I’ll describe as we go along (Please note that DivShare has a bandwidth limit which we may exceed if enough people read this post and follow these directions. If anyone wants to offer mirrors for the downloads, let me know and I’ll post the links).

Preparing the flash drive

First up, we need to prepare the flash drive.

1. Download and unzip this file, which should contain 2 folders: 1 titled Bootsect, and the other USB_prep8.
2. Navigate to the USB_prep8 folder and click on usb_prep8.cmd. This will bring up a Windows console window.
3. Press any key to continue and a PeToUSB window will open.
4. Make sure your flash drive is selected, and click start to format your flash drive.
5. When the format is complete, click OK, but do not close the PeToUSB window or the Windows Console.
6. Open a new console window by typing “cmd” into the run box in the Windows Start Menu.
7. Find your Bootsect folder (if you’re not used to DOS commands, you can type “dir” to list directories and files, type “cd foldername” to navigate to a folder name - called foldername in this example, and if there’s a long folder name you can save time by typing the “cd” and just the first few letters and then hitting the Tab key to fill in the rest of the name).
8. Once you’re in the Bootsect folder, type “bootsect.exe /nt52 g:” if “g” is the letter assigned to your flash drive. If it’s E, then change the letter to e. If it’s Z, make it z. Get it?
9. When this is done, you should see a message letting you know that the bootcode was updated, and you can close this console window (but not the other console window).
10. Close the PeToUSb Window, but make sure not to close the remaining console window yet
11. You should now see a list of 8 options in the console.
12. Select one and find the drive with your Windows installation disc.
13. Select 2 and pick a random drive letter (but not one that’s already on your PC, since this will be a virtual drive used for copying your files).
14. Select 3 and enter the drive letter for your USB flash drive.
15. Select 4 and follow the rest of the on-screen directions and you should be all set.

The process should take about 15-20 minutes. When it’s done, you should have a bootable USB stick that you can use to install Windows XP the same way you would if you had a CD/DVD drive.

A few notes here. First of all, there’s a chance you may get down to step 15 and the program will tell you that it can’t create the virtual drive. This may happen if you’ve already gone through the whole process and are trying to do it again to fix problems. The solution seems to be rebooting your computer and trying again. Or at least that’s what worked for me.

Second, if you use NLite to shrink/slipstream/otherwise modify your Windows XP installation file, make sure you do not remove “manual installation files,” or your USB stick will be pretty much useless.

Installing XP on the Mini-Note

Now it’s time to load Windows XP onto your Mini-Note. If you have a USB CD/DVD drive, you probably skipped all the stuff above, and that’s fine. Most of the following steps should work as well. These instructions should work whether you’re installing Windows XP on a system that came preloaded with SUSE or Windows Vista.

1. Insert your USB flash drive in one of the USB ports on your Mini-Note.
2. Power on your computer and hit F9 to bring up a boot device selection window.
3. Choose your flash drive, or if you’re using a USB optical disc drive, select that instead.
4. Select 2 for a text-based installation.
5. Make sure to delete all of the partitions on the hard drive. While you may have some success creating separate partitions on your hard drive using this method, I did not. If you find yourself with a Hal.dll or bootloader missing error when you’re finished, there’s a good chance it’s because you did not delete all of the partitions. Note that I will be providing instructions in the next section for partitioning your hard drive after installing Windows XP, so you can still create a Linux partition later.
6. Create one large NTFS partition (using the quick option will save you a lot of time)
7. Follow the on-screen directions.
8. At least once during the install process, you will be prompted to reboot your computer. If you try to let it boot from the hard drive, you’ll get an error message. What you need to do is hit F9 again when it reboots and this time select option 1 for a GUI setup.
9. Once you’re done installing XP, you may notice that you are unable to boot into Windows from the hard drive. If you have the USB disk installed, again hit F9, and select the GUI option again. Windows should start. You’ll need to edit the boot.ini file:
1. Type “msconfig” into the run box in the start menu
2. Select the BOOT.INI tab
3. First, try the “Check All Boot Paths,” option. This may solve your problem by finding and removing the incorrect boot settings.
4. You may also need to edit the boot.ini file manually if it doesn’t read something like ‘multi(o)disk(0)rdisk(o)partition(1)\Windows=”Windows XP Pro” /fastdetect’
5. The most likely problem is that wrong partition is selected. It may say (0) or (2) or something like that. The steps below will show you how to backup and edit it.
6. Open your System Properties by right-clicking on My Computer and choosing Properties. Alternately, you could type “sysdm.cpl” into the run box in the start menu
7. Select the Advanced Tab
8. Click the Settings option under Star
   tup and Recovery
9. Click the button that says Edit to open up your boot.ini file in Notepad. It’s a good idea to save a backup now by selecting Save As, and saving the file to a place where you won’t forget it.
10. Now you can (somewhat) safely edit the boot.ini file, changing the partition number or other settings to more closely resemble the one I listed above. Save your file, and hopefully you’ll be able to reboot without your USB stick.

Configuring Windows XP

Update: HP has added Windows XP drivers to its support page for the Mini-Note. You should try these official drivers before using the drivers listed below.

Now you should have a working Windows XP desktop, but you’ll find that you can’t connect to the internet via Ethernet or WLAN, you have no sound, and no support for the Fn keys. In order to fix these issues you’re going to need a few files. I’ve wrapped them all up into a ZIP file which you can download. Again, if someone wants to mirror this file, please let me know the link and I’ll post the mirrors as well.

Once you’ve downloaded this file using another computer, you can copy it to your Mini-Note using a flash drive or SD card. Or if you’d rather just install the Ethernet drive so you can download the full 20MB ZIP file on your Mini-Note, you can find the Broadcom Ethernet Driver here. Once you unzip the files into a folder, you should have everything you need to get Windows XP up and running.

To install the Broadcom driver:

1. Open the device manager by right-clicking on the My Computer dialog, selecting Hardware, and then Device Manager
2. You should notice a bunch of little yellow alert icons. One will say something like Gigabit Ethernet. Honestly I forget exactly what I said, but it was pretty obvious.
3. Right click on the Ethernet icon and select Update Driver.
4. Select the Have Disk option, and navigate to the subfolder labeled win_xp_2k3_32 and choose the b57win32.inf file.

Now you should be able to connect to the internet, activate windows, and download most of the rest of the drivers you need from windows update. You’ll need to select the Custom option in order to get some of these updates. This should provide the drivers for your WLAN, touchpad, and other hardware.

Note that Windows Update didn’t automatically suggest the webcam driver for me. In order to install it, I had to find the webcam in the Device Manager (once all the other drivers, including the audio driver — see below — were installed, it was the only devices with a yellow flag next to it), and select the Install software automatically option. That did the trick.

Next, let’s enable sound. There does not appear to be a working audio driver for XP yet, but I’m holding out hope that HP will post one on its website when the company begins offering Mini-Note computers preloaded with Windows XP. I’m not going to hold my breath though. HP currently sells Mini-Notes preloaded with SUSE Enterprise, but there are no drivers or other support files on the HP web site for this configuration yet. Anyway, what you need to do is install a hotfix that will let you run the Windows Vista audio driver.

1. Run the KB888111.exe patch. If you have Windows XP SP1, you can run the kb888111xpsp1.exe file instead. Note that you should do this before upgrading to Windows XP SP2 or SP3. In fact, when I tried to update my system from SP1 to SP2, I wound up with an unbootable system, so if you have a Windows XP Sp1 install disc, I’d recommend skipping SP2 altogether and jumping straight ahead to SP2. You can either grab a release candidate of SP3, wait a few days for Microsoft to release it officially, or if you look around I’m sure you can find it today.
2. The file called sp38873.exe is the audio driver. Go ahead and click it and it will start to install the Vista audio drivers. Installation will fail because you’re not running Windows Vista, but the installer will create a folder that contains the driver.
3. Find your sound device in the Device Manager. It should still be an unknown device with a big ole yellow flag next to it. Select update driver, choose the have disk option, and navigate to the folder where you unzipped your Vista audio drivers.

Keep in mind that this audio driver is not designed to run on Windows. And every time you boot your computer, a pop up window will alert you to this fact. Here’s how to disable this pop up:

1. Type “msconfig” into the run box in the start menu.
2. Select the startup tab.
3. Uncheck the box next to smax4pnp.
4. Click OK and reboot your computer.

Finally, you can install the HP QuickLuanch buttons to add support for the Fn keys. All you have to do here is click the file called HP buttons SP32280.exe and ignore any messages that pop up during this installation.

Now everything should work properly. You’ll probably want to adjust your display settings to use large or extra large fonts and large icons. The HP QuickLaunch utility also includes a Desktop Zoom utility which may help make your Mini-Note display a bit easier to see. But this computer has got a super-sharp display, so you may find that you need to tweak the default font sizes in other applications including Firefox if you want to be able to read your screen without squinting.

Using Parted Magic to create new partitions for Linux or other operating systems

While I tend to use Windows XP on a day to day basis, I wanted to make this a dual boot system so I can install Linux on a separate partition. Most Linux distributions aren’t very particular about where they’re installed. You can put them on a second or third partition, or even on an SD card in your card reader. But Windows likes to have the first partition all to itself. So while you may be able to use the Windows installer to set up partitions on the hard drive, I had more success installing Windows XP first, and then using Parted Magic to resize the Windows partition and create additional partitions.

The best time to do this is right after you install Windows. Your main partition will be fairly clean which will make the resizing operation go much more quickly. We’re talking about the difference between a minute or two and a half hour or more. You’ll also save yourself a lot of pain and heartache if something goes wrong and you wind up wiping your Windows partition, because you won’t have spent days loading and configuring all of your favorite programs yet.

I’m going to assume you’re still using a USB flash drive, but you can also use Parted Magic from a CD-ROM. Detailed instructions for setting up either a flash drive or a CD-ROM are available from the Parted Magic homepage. The main difference is that if you’re using a flash drive, you need to use SYSLINUX to make it bootable.

Once you’ve got your installation media:

1. Reboot your Mini-Note with the flash drive or CD-ROM plugged into a USB port.
2. Hit F9 and choose the device you want to boot from.
3. From the boot menu, make sure to selection option 4: Failsafe Settings
4. W
   ait a few minutes until you’re presented with a command prompt that says “root@PartedMagic:~#”
5. Type “menu”
6. Choose Xvesa (if you had tried almost anything other than option 4 in step 3, the system would try to boot using Xorg and your display would look all funny/unusable)
7. You should now see a graphical user interface that looks a bit like this:
8. Click the little blue icon on the bottom of the screen that says “VisParted.” This will bring up a partition manager
9. Your primary hard drive should be listed as /dev/sda. But if it’s not, it shouldn’t be too hard to find since you probably only have one 120GB hard drive connected to your PC. Note that VisParted will say your hard drive is actually closer to 112GB.
10. There should be one large partition labeled as /dev/sda1. You can right click on this and choose the resize/move option and then resize the partition either by dragging the edges or entering a value into the “new size” box.
11. Once your Windows partition is shrunk, you an either leave the rest of your hard drive unpartitioned for future use, create an ext2, ext3 or other partition for Linux, or do something else altogether.
12. Click the Apply button to execute.
13. When Parted Magic is done working its magic, you can reboot your system by clicking on the shutdown menu at the bottom right side of your screen. If everything went properly, you should still be able to boot into Windows, but you’ll find that your Windows partition is smaller.

Personally, I decided to make a 25GB Windows XP partition for files and settings, a 15GB ext2 partition for installing Ubuntu or other operating systems, and I made a third NTFS partition for storing data that will be accesible no matter which OS I use.

I’m still working on setting up Windows XP on my Mini-Note, but I wanted to share something. Not only does XP boot faster than Windows Vista, as you’d expect, but it boots faster than SuSE. Like 60 seconds or less fast. Check out this video where I hit the power button on an Eee PC (”overclocked” to run at 900MHz) and the Mini-Note.

Both computers are running Windows XP SP3 RC2.

After using SUSE on the HP Mini-Note for much of the afternoon, I’m convinced that the operating system provides pretty much everything most people will need in a laptop experience. I was able to configure and setup my system in about 15 minutes, and get online in just a few more. The computer does a pretty good job of finding and connecting to available internet connections. And it has a full suite of productivity software including Firefox, Evolution, and OpenOffice.org.

In the video above, I try to give an overview of the software included with the SUSE version of the Mini-Note, and how the computer performs. I apologize for the poor video quality. I was using my Eee PC webcam to record the video, since my digital camera can only record about 180 seconds of video at a time.

A few other quick notes.

1. The battery charges quickly. Within about an hour of plugging the computer in, the battery was fully charged, even though it was running for most of that time. Compare that to an Eee PC battery which takes a few hours to charge fully — when the computer is turned off.
2. I’m a bit disappointed to see that the AC adapter has 3 prongs. This makes the Mini-Note slightly less portable, since it’s often difficult to find a 3 prong power strip at coffee shops and libraries. I might have to spring for an extended battery since the Mini-Note reportedly only gets 2 to 2.5 hours of battery life from a standard battery.

For my next trick, I plan to install Windows XP. Personally I’m just more comfortable with the operating system, and since I write about Windows and Linux software for a living what I really want is a dual boot system, and that usually means wiping any existing operating systems and installing Windows XP first and then another OS. I’ll probably try to get Ubuntu up and running, since that’s one of the most popular distros these days, and it’s the one I have the most experience with. But I’m relatively impressed with SUSE and I may return to it.

Update: As several people have pointed out, the Mini-Note comes with SUSE Enterprise Linux, not OpenSUSE. So just ignore me when I say OpenSUSE in the video, and I’ve changed the text of this article a bit. Thanks for keeping me on my toes!

My HP 2133 Mini-Note has arrived. The battery is charging up and I’m getting ready to put it through the paces. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share this little unboxing video with y’all.

Sorry, no cat interruptions this time. But she did discover the box that fell onto the floor and has been having a jolly time playing with it for the last few minutes.

Update: I forgot to mention, not only is there no driver/restore DVD in the box. There’s no slip cover. I wasn’t really expecting a case, as HP and a number of other companies make a pretty penny selling cases. But a slip cover like the one that comes with the Eee PC would have been nice, since it would protect the notebook from scuffs when you throw it in a bag.

Right now you can pick up an HP Mini-Note in one of 5 configurations. But pretty soon the company will let you mix and match components. Want a 4GB SSD and 2GB of RAM, or a 120GB hard drive and 512MB of RAM? Well, then you’re probably a bit crazy, but you’ll be able to do have your way.

Laptop Magazine interviewed HP Mini-Note product manager Kyle Thornton and asked him about the customization options, and some of the decisions that went into the Mini-Note. Here are a few of the interesting bits:

• HP chose OpenSUSE over Ubuntu because HP has a strong relationship with Novel, and could get a product out the door quickly.
• HP hasn’t decided whether future versions of the HP will use the Intel Atom or VIA Isaiah processor, but the company will offer one or the other, not both.
• The Mini-Note was designed with educational markets in mind, but like the Asus Eee PC, HP expects the tiny laptop to do well with mainstream consumers.

You can read more of Thornton’s thoughts over at the Laptop Magazine blog.

You’ve read the HP Mini-Note reviews, and most have been positive. But what about the real-world experiences of actual HP 2133 Mini-Note users? Sometimes the best place to look for tips, tricks, and everyday reviews are dedicated user forums. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have created a Mini-Note forum yet. I was kind of hoping the folks behind EeeUser and Cloudbooker might rise to the task, but that hasn’t happened yet. However, the next best thing has — there’s now a Mini-Note section at the Cloudbooker forums.

Like the Cloudbook, the Mini-Note uses a VIA C7 processor, which means that much of the information already available at the Cloudbooker site will be useful for Mini-Note users. Want to know how Ubuntu handles the VIA processor? You’ll probably find a better answer there than you will from the EeeUser forums. But having a dedicated section should help new Mini-Note users to find and share information. I know I’ll be bookmarking the site.

Good news for anyone who was planning on buying a Linux version of the HP 2133 Mini-Note and installing their own operating system instead of paying a few extra bucks to get a Windows Vista version. Notebook Review forum member jckaylis says he was able to install Windows XP and almost everything worked right away. Jckaylis is the same forum member who first reported that his Mini-Note running OpenSUSE was locking up and that he was having problems installing software.

Apparently he had to download a Broadcom Ethernet driver, but Windows Update found almost everything else he needed — except for a good sound driver. So far he’s been unable to get sound working.

This all comes as excellent news. I ordered an OpenSUSE model thinking I would partition the hard drive and install Windows XP on one partition and OpenSUSE or Ubuntu on another. I was expecting to get my HP Mini-Note this weekend, but I got an email from HP on Saturday morning letting me know that my order has been delayed. I was starting to think that this presented me with a good opportunity to call HP and ask if I could spend the extra $50 to get Windows Vista installed, but now that I know XP will work I think I’ll let my order stand and wait for my notebook to arrive.

There’s still no sign of any XP or Linux drivers or other support software or information on the HP web site. Once HP begins to officially offer XP as an option, I expect/hope that we’ll be able to find drivers online. In the meantime, it looks like you can install Windows XP without waiting for HP. If you don’t care about sound drivers. Which I kind of do, but I’m holding out hope that I’ll be able to find a driver that works.

Update: It looks like you can install a Windows hotfix to enable support for an audio driver. I won’t be able to confirm this until my Mini-Note arrives, but it looks like a promising solution.

Asus has finally announced the US release date and pricing for the Eee PC 900. It should be available in the US on May 12th, and the computer will cost $549, which is almost $100 cheaper than the European version, as expected, but a bit more pricier than the version available in Hong Kong.

At $549, the Eee PC 900 is exactly the same price as an HP 2133 Mini-Note with a 120GB hard drive and a 1.2GHz VIA processor running OpenSUSE Linux and a 1280 x 600 pixel display. The Eee PC 900, on the other hand will have a 12GB or 20GB solid state flash memory disk, a 900MHz Celeron processor, a 1024 x 600 pixel display, and will be available with Windows XP or Linux. In other words, the companies aren’t making this choice easy for anyone.

[via Notebook Review]

The HP 2133 is shipping and while I’m still waiting for a UPS guy to drop mine off, Tom over at CLUMPC got his today. And he promptly did a photo shoot comparing the HP 2133 and his Eee PC 701. You can check out more pictures and his thoughts over at his blog.

But probably the most encouraging piece of news is that the HP 2133 battery can be fully charged in about an hour. This might not sound that exciting to most laptop owners, but if you’ve used an Eee PC you know that the battery wears down quickly and charges slowly, making the computer a little less portable than I’d really like.

The most discouraging piece of news is that HP felt the need to let users who ordered Windows Vista models setup the operating system themselves. Tom says it took him over an hour to copy the system files from one partition to another and install/setup Windows Vista.