Skype the most popular VOIP (Voice over IP) service used by millions of people on their home PC’s has just released two new versions for Windows Mobile users. One for Windows Mobile Professional and one for Windows Mobile Standard devices, in other words one for touch screens and one for non touch screen devices. Download links and details after the break.
INTRODUCTION
The HP 2133 Mini-Note joins a crowded marketplace, which a year ago didn’t exist at all. HP have a lot of catching up to do, but of the “big 2”, HP is the first to market with its own ultra portable laptop. Clove Technology have given us a rather rare review device, so lets see how it compares with its older rivals.
What’s in the box?
I’m not 100% sure we’ve got a full retail set up here, but the box contents we received looks like this:
HP 2133 Mini-Note Hardware
Battery
AC Power brick
Boring warranty stuff
User guide on CD – hmm
That’s all folks!
Have a look at our HP 2133 Mini-Note unboxing video for more.
HP 2133 Mini-Note Specification:
GENERAL
Immediately upon opening the box I was impressed by the aesthetics and build quality. It looks and feels expensive. I understand people like the EEE’s basic look, but give me the polished brushed metal of the Mini-Note any day! There’s no argument here – this is a pretty machine.
Opening the lid is perhaps a little more difficult than it should be. There is no clasp, but it closes tightly, and without some nails, it takes far too much effort to prize the lid open. Having said that, I could just be lazy.
Rather like the Eee pc from Asus, the screen does not use the full area available to it. Stereo speakers are positioned either side of it, and there is a large space to the top of the LCD panel, where only the VGA webcam resides. This is a bit disappointing personally, because laptop speakers are never ever going to sound very good – so stick them in the lower portion of the laptop, below the keyboard, and give us a bigger screen!
Despite all that – the screen is possibly one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen on a laptop – more on that later.
On the left hand side, we have a VGA port, to add an extra monitor, or to replicate the laptop screen, a large grill (which pumps out a LOT of heat), a single USB port, and audio ports for speakers and a microphone. The USB plug has a weird hole next to it, and I still haven’t figured out what it is for!
Swapping to the right hand side and we find another more normal looking USB port, the Ethernet port and the AC power socket. Talking of the AC power, unfortunately the Mini-Note does have a smallish power brick – a step back from the first Eee PC with its phone-charge style setup. We’ve also got an express card port sitting above a SD card slot. SD Card’s click in nicely, but are not flush with the laptop chassis. I guess there just wasn’t enough room.
As with most laptops this size, the back panel is free of ports and connectors, and just features the battery pack.
The keyboard itself is a lot larger than the Eee PC and is infinitely more usable – both for quick net surfing, and lengthy documents. I can type fairly quickly 50-60 WPM on my desktop, and managed a similar speed on the Mini-Note – something I found impossible on the Eee’s tiny keyboard. My only slight niggle was a possibly one-off issue – the spacebar only seemed to press successfully on the left hand side of the key, and often missed when pressing the right hand side.
The trackpad works nicely, and is accurate. I don’t like the left-right click buttons though – because of space limitations, these are placed either side of the trackpad, rather than above as found on most laptops.
A nice feature that deserves a mention is the trackpad switch. This is found on nearly every HP laptop, and has made it to the first sub-notebook from the company.
Finally the front panel contains power and WLAN buttons, complete with indicator lamps, and a hard disk activity lamp too. I have to admit, it looks me a few minutes to work out how to turn the thing on as the switches look a bit like latch controls, but are just actually just momentary slide buttons.
Inside we have a slightly-lacklustre Via processor, and a massive 120GB laptop hard disk – no SD Cards required here!
Highlights
Lowlights
REVIEW
In preparing this review, I had a read through of Matt’s previous reviews of the Asus 701 and 900 laptops. One paragraph that stood out was this:
“It has to said that the keyboard, trackpad and mouse button does feel distinctly cheap, but that said the device IS cheap so you get what you pay for and given what you get on the inside it’s hard to grumble.”
Luckily the 2133 Mini-Note is completely the opposite in every way. The keyboard and trackpad looks well built and feels anything but cheap. It definitely looks more businessy, and if you turned up to a lunch meeting with the Mini-Note, the Eee PC users may feel a little put out!
Now to the screen. Its a classic vicious circle – people say the screen is too small, but then say the battery life isn’t good enough when the size is increased. HP have found a nice middle ground I reckon, with a smallish 8.9inch screen, with a huge WXGA resolution of 1280×768. It is a amazing sight to behold – possibly the sharpest, highest quality screen I’ve seen. The size IS still an issue, but websites are no much easier to navigation with a proper – desktop size – resolution. Every time I turn the thing on, I am amazed by the quality of the LCD panel. It is truly exceptional.
Its impossible to compare with other sub-notebooks – they don’t even get near the quality of this. Think expensive large LCD panel, for TV or your desktop computer – this is that level of quality. The contract, colours and bleed levels are excellent, and viewing photos or videos on it, nearly make anything look HD!
Our review device comes with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop – and it is aimed at business types. Novell clients are installed, and a lot of freeware linux software is included.
I wonder how many percentage points Firefox have been given in the browser wars purely due to everyone and their uncle sticking it on their Linux ultra portable laptops! It’s included here – albeit version 2, and it works swiftly, and renders pages extremely well on the beautiful screen. The vast majority of extensions will work on Linux, so you can make your browsing experience as close to your desktop machine as you like.
Open Office is also pre-installed, Evolution – a email client is included too. Other software includes a music player, photo browser, cross-network instant messenger client, RealPlayer, FTP software, and RSS reader and plenty more besides.
Linux works well, but the Mini-Note lacks the simplicity of the Eee PC’s custom Linux shell. Even for young kids, the Eee PC was easy to use. The Mini-Note is certainly aimed more towards businesses. Any concerns about the Linux install can be fixed fairly simply – By installing XP! An edition also comes with vista anyway, and for me, that would be the ideal ultra portable laptop for me.
The Linux wireless (And for that matter Ethernet) connection software is easy to use, and I had no problems connecting to the wireless networks at home, at work, or on the incredibly flaky National Express WiFi! Although I hate to admit it, the WiFi software implementation is better than Windows.
The Mini-Note doesn’t use latest “ever ever” processor – the Atom, but instead a Via processor. It does OK in Linux, but I have concerned about the Vista edition, even taking into account the faster processor. Unfortunately I can’t tell you how well it performs with Vista or XP – if you can, let us know in the comments!
Unlike the Eee PC, I could see myself using this device a lot more – mainly due to the larger keyboard, and impressive resolution on the LCD. While the device is heavy, its slightly thinner than its rivals, and isn’t much trouble to carry around. The battery life is acceptable, if not amazing, and I managed to get about 2 and a half hours of casual use before it had had enough.
Its a shame HP didn’t make a home/student/kids style Linux install as well as the Novell friendly business version we find here. Asus got away with running Linux, because the interface made it easy to use. The SUSE enterprise edition is powerful, but will lose a lot of the audience I mentioned above, unless they install XP – which shouldn’t be any more difficult than the older ultra portable’s. It’s easy to get lost in Linux, unless you have a nice UI to guide you.
Although I love the laptop itself, in struggling to see who this Linux version will be sold to. Business users will probably pay the extra for the windows version, and home uses are possibly going to end up disappointed by the OS.
Having said that, as a hardware device, its outstanding – and trumps both the Eee PC and the newer MSI Wind. The jewel is definitely the screen – truly breathtaking, but the large keyboard also adds value to the product.
Its more expensive than the lesser models, and perhaps should do more for the price. But that’s only a minor point – the HP 2133 Mini-Note does what it does, and it does it extremely well indeed. It’s just about worth the premium.
CONCLUSION
The HP 2133 Mini-Note has taken ultra mobile laptops to the next level. No longer a toy computer – this is a serious laptop, fit for business and personal users alike. The screen and keyboard combination means this CAN be a laptop replacement.
The Mini-Note only falls short in the area of performance – and its not such a big deal. Its more disappointing because the rest of the device is so beyond anything else we’ve seen before.
For $499 in the states, and even taking into account Rip-Off-Britain prices, this is a cheap yet expensive looking laptop.
One final point for HP: Put a decent processor in this (anyone for Atom?) – and this will be the best sub-notebook on the planet. End of argument. Oh and if you fancy sending me an XP version feel free – preferably one I can “lose”!
Review by: Mark
O2 today became the first established broadband player to offer customers high speed internet access inside the home and on the move with a combined home and mobile broadband package. It is also revolutionising the way people buy home broadband with the launch of O2 Home Broadband Takeaway. Whether customers are looking for convenient web access on the move or a high quality experience in the home, the combination of O2’s home and mobile broadband offerings creates a complementary service which will provide high quality, fast, convenient and value-for-money internet access regardless of location.
Nokia’s rather attractive slide phone has been reviewed rather favourably by the folks over at Crunchgear. In keeping with the style of the Nokia E71 the E66 looks to be a nice little phone to slip in your pocket at the weekend. Some of the specs are after the break:
Here is a look at a beautiful piece of kit. It’s easily more powerful than some folk’s home computer within the confines of a mobile device.
VITO Technology have just been in touch to tell us about their new online task management software, Task2Gather. Task2Gather allows you to manage tasks online through any web browser as well as having client software for Windows Mobile and iPhone.
Looks like a pretty neat idea if you have a lot of tasks to manage and it’s currently a free service. However it will become subscription based at a later date.
Check out the full info below:
VITO Technology is proud to present Task2Gather – a brand-new free service for online task management. Task2Gather is one place for all your tasks and projects: family, social, business, and private. Task2Gather lets you put your tasks online and invite family members, colleagues, or clients to participate and achieve common goals.
Our guiding criteria for developing Task2Gather were simplicity, high performance, sharing, flexibility and mobility. As a result there has been developed a completely unique service applicable for successful collaboration practically in any sphere of life.
Sign up for Task2Gather at www.task2gather.com. Task2Gather is a completely free service available on any computer with Internet access. It will be later available via paid subscription with more advanced features.
Posted by: Matt
Following a bit of a false start last week Orange have at last released their official Windows Mobile 6.1 update for the HTC TyTN II.
If you head over to this page on the Orange Website then select "HTC" as the brand, then "TyTN P4550 II" from the model section. You should then see the screen above where you can click on "Download the latest HTC P4550 software update" to get the ROM update.
A few people have commented that the download link doesn’t work for them so you can bypass the selection screens and simply download the update from HERE.
As with all ROM updates, everything will be wiped from your phone memory so make sure you copy or backup your important data before you start!
Posted by: Matt
Tracy and Matt have managed to get the Orange upgrade working for the Tytn II. This taking the phone up to Windows Mobile 6.1 brings a host of updates to the flaky and buggy 6.0 variant. The update is very much worth it and I am very interested to see what Orange have packaged with it.
Update: Just to update you on this, I have been using it for the last 24 hours and I have to say it is a big improvement.
Continuing their unparalleled coverage of the HTC Touch Pro, The Unwired has posted a video demonstrating the working phone. It seems rather snappy and even takes a quick look at the Touchflo 3D interface in landscape mode. It all looks rather swish and will hopefully not suffer from any of the Diamond’s initial problems.
Here is a useful resource over at Gizmodo. A load of standard cables explained in a small and un-confusing amount of depth. Mini and Micro USB always get me and to be honest, I don’t think I have seen a micro USB in use before.
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