HP Mini: A Review

This is the second laptop that will be given away at ZCL on September 8th, along with the HP DV6 and a ZCL customized Timbuk2 backpack.  Details for the giveaway will come soon, but for now you’ll have to stick with seeing what we are offering.

HP Mini Review
I must admit that I’m no techie, so this review is for the layman. Ibrahim, my wonderful fiancé and creator of ZCL, will have to receive questions about things like RAM and how good the processor is—particularly because even as I type these words I don’t know for sure if those terms are still used. But what I can discuss is the usability of the HP Mini for the average college student.

The Touchpad and Touchpad Buttons
The first thing that I noticed about the HP Mini is the location of the touchpad buttons. The left and right click buttons are on the left and right side of the touchpad, which isn’t necessarily a problem, it just feels strange to me.
The touchpad itself, due to the nature of things referred to as “mini”, is uncomfortably small. For those who are choosing between buying a normal sized laptop and a mini as their sole computer, I would personally prefer the normal sized laptop (HP sent Ibrahim one, which he has already [intlink id="1808" type="post"]reviewed[/intlink]). While internet browsing, I’m unable to move the cursor with one swoop—to get from the bottom to the top of the screen I have to either move diagonally across the pad or make multiple swipes along it. I’m not a computer gamer, but I would assume that unless you had a mouse plugged in gaming on the HP Mini is out of the question.

The Keyboard
The keyboard is probably my favorite part of the HP Mini. The keys are a glossy pearl color, which makes the Mini the most attractive looking mini laptop I’ve ever seen. The keys are easy to use and though the peripheral keys (tab, caps lock, shift, etc.) are slightly smaller than on a normal laptop, there isn’t any loss of functionality.

The Web Camera
The web cam that’s built in above the screen didn’t impress me. It’s choppy and doesn’t pick up sound very well. Simply speaking, it sucks.

Internet Browsing
Aside from the previously mentioned difficulty with the touchpad, I really liked internet browsing on the HP Mini. Though the screen is small when the search bar is showing, you can hit F11 and it lets you view the page with the whole screen.

Really, this is where the HP Mini makes its mark. For all those classes where your professor just lectures from his PowerPoint slides, now you don’t have to wake up early to waste a bunch of paper printing them out before class so you can make notes as he/she goes along. Just pull up the slides on the HP Mini and take notes on here. This simple convenience makes it worth it for college kids like me who go to a monstrously large university with monstrously large lecture halls with PowerPoint after PowerPoint of class notes. The last thing I’d need is a monstrously large laptop to lug around from class to class.

The Final Verdict
Overall, I enjoy the convenience of the easy portability of the HP Mini. Yes, it’s an attractive mini laptop, and yes, the web cam sucks, but most of all it does what it sets out to do—give you the convenience of the internet, a full keyboard, and the ability to carry it around with you without carrying a heavy laptop bag around campus. As someone who has a ten minute walk to campus and then the 40 acres of the University of Texas to trek through, this is the greatest benefit of all. Can you get this with other mini-laptops? Sure, but the HP Mini is definitely not a bad buy.