HP must have set out to conquer the market for professional-featured netbooks when it planned this model, because it certainly is King of the Hill as far as business-centric netbooks go. With a full-sized keyboard with HP "Smart Keys" which are sort of like the durable, semi-flexible keys of a Tough-Book, but classier, with pronounced letters and numerals ingrained into the key surfaces, it starts out straight away as a really different sort of little mini-computer. Your first impressions of its piano-black/gray matted surfaces are like, "Wow, it's both classy, beautifully finished, and durable all in one fell swoop...now THAT is different, something not seen in any other netbook."
With hardware like it's got, no wonder it performs so good, if you all are wondering what a 7200RPM 320GB HD, fast 667Mhz FSB (533Mhz RAM, PC 6400-800Mhz variety), GMA 950 graphics and the Intel Atom N280 1.67Ghz CPU is like: it's GREAT, that's what it's like! This is no ordinary netbook, I'll tell you that right now...too much good stuff has gone into it for it to be anything like "normal", so don't think that your $600 is going to waste, ie you get what you pay for this time, and that's a LOT of nice stuff!!
Part and parcel of the nice stuff is the electronics themselves, which no other netbook has in a configuration with a 7200RPM HD, (energy efficient, according to the Seagate specs on the HD in my Mini, to yield only .05% higher watts at peak write/read sustained cycles compared to a 5400RPM HD) and the 1024 x 600 Pixels widescreen display, but let's not forget about the materials it's made of either. The Mini is ALL METAL construction, with aluminum alloy for the LED display casing, and the body is magnesium for durability and ultra light weight, so there's paltry little plastic of *any kind*--strike another blow to the pretenders and their ABS plastic cases...the Mini has nothing like that, it's all high-strength, lightweight metals of one type of another that it's built of.
The OS is *not* Windows XP Home, but XP Professional, with its business features and emphasis on speed and multimedia, but I had a little something to do to my Mini which I go into a little further into the review...and it literally transformed the netbook into a much bigger acting system. Read on and see what you *can* do with respect to the operating system, but of course XP Professional SP3 is an OS to have much respect for in a netbook, and this is the only netbook that comes with it, along with companion DVD's for the OS and Drivers to boot. In addition, there's Vista Business Edition SP 2 on DVD with Drivers on separate DVD should you wish to install it, so the Mini comes fully armed with twin OS's, and discs, with licenses for everything.
It seems that HP tried to think of everything for the business user possible when spec'ing out the Mini 5101 FM976UT#ABA. This is truly a unique netbook from the OS to the way it's built with ultra-lightweight metals, and the electronic package leaves nothing to be desired: fast 7200RPM HD, BlueTooth 2.1 EDR, A, B, G, and N-spec WLAN from Broadcom on the PCI-Express mini-bus, it's all there, all notable, and no other netbook has it all in one package like this Mini does.
(Addendum: I wanted to add something specific about the graphic interface of the Mini 5101 FM976#ABA, because there's always the suspicion that a netbook can't handle movies or games, and the Mini *can* do that with finesse, and excellent execution. I have a rather unique situation in that I have a HUGE assortment of feature length movies made for my iPhone 3G on the Mac, and those movies are especially *delicious* on the Mini. I have a choice of using the PC version of iTunes or QuickTime Player v7.x to view the movies (full screen), and last night I watched a couple KUHL science-fiction movies with lots of *special effects, heavy action, and blazing FPS needs*, and the Mini displayed everything perfectly. The sound (through a pair of high-end Audio Technica ATH AD700 headphones) was also perfect, in Dolby 5.1 stereo no less, with no stuttering or anomalies of any kind during the shows...which were "Zoom" and "Ultra Violet", movies that many of you may be familiar with.
Another good test I gave the Mini was to that "Powered" USB 2.0 Port during movie playback. I had the movies on a USB 16GB A-Data Flash Drive (they ranged from 750MB to 950MB in size...just less than 1GB vs. a full length movie's normal size of 4-7GB), which I simply inserted into the powered USB port, opened up either iTunes or QuickTime Movie Player (I tried both ways of viewing, and both were XLNT!), navigated to the USB device via the File Menu in each player, opened up the movies and hit "PLAY" and BAM! The movies played 100% PURRRFECT! No stuttering, lost frames, no problems at all using the USB port with a Flash Drive. In addition, you can use the Mini's SD/SDHC/MMC Card Slot for a source for the movies if you want by putting movie on one of those devices and inserting it into the slot, which I haven't tried yet, but it should be just as seamless as using the USB port.
I didn't have a chance to play a game, but I will, and I anticipate that the Mini will play games just great, but the movie factor is especially critical for business users, as there's nothing like watching your own movie on your netbook/notebook on the plane or train, vs watching the "canned", or boring, badly shown in-house movies (which also cost $$$ most of the time). As for battery use during playback, I watched BOTH movies on the same charge, and there was 37% left for a 3rd movie if I'd have wanted to view another one, so how about that!
It is my opinion that viewers can do the same thing I did with PC-centric movies also, because the movies I make for my iPhone with MTR, DVD2OneX 2.4.x, and El Gato Turbo .264 or HandBrake v.0.9.1 are all done with 30FPS speed, in H.264 M4V format, which is demanding on the playback mechanism vs. 24FPS AVI for example. So the Mini's graphics and processing power from the Atom N280 CPU (which was pegged @ about 60% of its use factor by the Windows Gadget for CPU's during playback) is very adequate for viewing full-screen movies, the display is great with NO BLACK BARS showing in Full Screen Mode! I rate the Mini's movie viewing power @ "10" or 5-Stars, your pick... after seeing it for myself last night.--Added on 12-18-2009, WD)
The battery must be made of some special Li-Ion stuff also, because I am on the 1st discharge right now, and have been going since 4:45PM and it's just after 1AM and there's still 25% left in the tank! WOW! That is some battery life...HP advertised "9 hours+" battery life, and here I've been working away at various WP projects, using FireFox to do a bunch of shopping for Xmas, haven't put the HP 5101 down since the afternoon, and it's still going strong...incredible! That means I have achieved 9 hours already, and there's another hour+ to go, so HP was NOT kidding about battery life!
Now don't let anybody tell you that you're married to XP Professional either, with this model, even though that's a great OS, the best Windows OS arguably for this type of computer, but guess what? I gutted it 1st thing, flat-lined the HD (clean formatted it), downloaded all new drivers and specialty software and burned them all into a CD ROM, from the HP Support Web Site. I then blasted a clean, mean copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit into the 5101 (easy to do using an external DVD+/-RW drive), and BAM!! I am stylin' like the mutherfletchers on this baby right about now...maybe THAT explains some of the big battery life...it has been rumoured that Windows 7 in the right circumstance would yield big battery life, so there you go!
The features like Fast Boot for Mail and www are nice also (where you can quickly check for mail or do some web surfing without a full boot), not that I've used them yet...been too busy all evening typing and using Word, Excel, and the nice Corel suite that comes stock OEM from HP with this netbook to really notice, but there are two LED-lit buttons up in the left, top part of the facing surface near the power button, ready for action. The hinges are notably all metal, so it looks like they are gonna last a long, long time too. The keyboard is just a pleasure to use, it being 95% full sized, so for all intents and purposes it IS full sized, and it is very, very comfortable to be typing on for hours and hours, as I've been doing tonight. The special HP key treatment makes each stroke easy on the fingers, and wrist, so it all adds up here as the features, the ergonomics, and the construction+ electronic feature set begins to strike home the more you use the netbook.
The port arrangement is logical with two USB's on the left along with the VGA port, power port, and on the right side a notably POWERED USB 2.0 port resides, along with stereo microphone, stereo headphone ports, SD/SDHC/MMC Card Slot, and the RJ-45 Ethernet port is there too. I've been trading off between a Logitech V470 BT Mouse and the netbook's touch pad all night also, and the pad has a nice feel to its glossy, glass surface with double buttons at the rear, where they should be for a change! The BT works without any hint of weakness or glitchiness, it's great with the Logitech mouse I've been using, so score more points for the little things that make this netbook better than the rest, a cut above "normal" netbooks. The WiFi is pulling "N" strength from my N-Router, @ just less than 300kbp/s-- no problems there either as it hooked up with the HP Connection Manager after simply entering my WPA-PSK 22-digit code, so another great feature of the Mini shines: WiFi is strong and steady, no weakness there at all.
All-in-all, at some 2.9 pounds (6-cell battery=4-5 extra ounces of weight), this is one pistol-packing 'book! It's got speed, power, longevity, great HD and BT WiFi-system, fast FSB and RAM, the best graphics and motherboard layout that is possible to have in this sized computer, so it all adds up to a winning combination, a knock-out punch if there is one in this market segment, ie the high end of netbooks!
I cannot fault the price either...that is what it costs for something this nice, with an LED backlit display @ 1024 x 600 pixels, a mini-HD display, the great battery life, the near "organic" nature of the materials used in making this netbook with fully recyclable materials to the tune of 96% of the capacity of parts, no less! HP really did a job with the Mini 5101 with all the special features of this model, no doubt about it.
HP, you've got my vote this time...no doubt I could have bought an Acer, or a Samsung or ASUS for less, but it wouldn't be like THIS one, not even close to it...the sum of its parts equals the best netbook choice available, so hold on, batten down the hatches, write the check or cull the credit card honeys, the HP 5101 FM976UT netbook with the "#ABA" thrown on the end for good measure is The Kind, the best there is in this class, and there is no substitute...This is King of the Hill.
Wavey Davey - 12-15-2009Get more detail about HP Mini 5101 - Atom N280 / 1.66 GHz - RAM 2 GB - HDD 320 GB - GMA 950 - Gigabit Ethernet - WLAN : 802.11 a/b/g/n (draft 2.0), Bluetooth 2.1 EDR - Vista Business / XP Pro downgrade - 10.1" Widescreen TFT 1024 x 600 ( WSVGA ) - camera - Smart Buy.
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