The HP Mini 210-1199DX might be one of the cooler-looking Netbooks on the retail store shelve, but when it comes to practicality, the Mini 210-1199DX only has a coupe of useful component upgrades over the basic entry level Netbook. This is what makes the $379 price of a system a tad pricey than some the other Netbooks. The most striking aspect of this version of HP's Mini 210 is its distinctive pink design. HP decorates the back of the lid with a pink-and-white tartan pattern that it carries over to the touch pad and bottom panel, while the actual keyboard and keyboard tray are solid pink.
One area of Netbook design that HP seems to be leading in at the moment is the keyboard and touch pad. HP's current island-style keyboard has flat, widely spaced keys that are easy to use, and smartly includes full-size Shift keys. The only keys that get the short end of the stick are the arrow keys, as the up and down arrows are very undersized. The HP's touch pad is about the biggest we've seen on a 10-inch Netbook and it closely emulates the expanded touch pad found on HP's high-end Envy series. That means there are no distinct left and right mouse buttons instead the mouse buttons are built into the corners of an oversized touch pad.
The display of the system is 1024 x 600 pixels of native resolution, which is rather standard for the 10-inch netbooks, though some high-end premium Netbooks comes with 1366 x 768 pixels of native resolution displays. The ports and connections on Mini 210-1199DX are rather identical to what we’d seen in most of the Netbooks, though, it continues HP’s trend of replacing the headphone/mic jacks with a single audio common audio connection. The Power button for HP Mini 210 can be a tad hard to locate as it’s the slider switch of the HP and is nestled between the USB ports on the right edge and the SD card slot.
The Mini 210's 7,200rpm hard drive runs faster most Netbooks or even midsize laptops, which use 5,400rpm drives. However, its speed did not help it perform better in our benchmark tests compared with the other Netbooks in our retail roundup, all of which have Intel's N450 Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. The Mini 210's performance was comparable to pretty much any similarly configured Netbook from 2010, which means it's fine for basic Web surfing and e-mail, and even light multimedia playback, but if you get too ambitious, you'll be staring at the spinning Windows wait icon most of the time.
With six-cell battery and Intel's power-saving Atom CPU, the system ran for 5 hours and 6 minutes on our video playback battery drain test. That's an excellent score, but it is well within what we'd expect from a current Netbook and at least an hour or so less the category leaders. It's more than enough for a full day of on-the-go computing, but keep in mind that the large battery sticks out from the rear of the body.
The HP Mini 210-1199DX has one of the finest touchpad and keyboard combination we’ve seen till date, on a It has one of the best keyboard and touch pad combos we’ve seen on a 10 inch Netbook, but HP’s pink-hued Mini 210 is still a tad pricey for what it offers.
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