The good: Solid metal construction; full ExpressCard/54 slot; big keyboard.

The bad: Odd resolution loses a few pixels; no mobile broadband options (yet); awkward mouse button placement.

The bottom line: HP offers a premium version of its plastic Mini 1000 while keeping the price down, making the Mini 2140 the Netbook to beat.

Read full review of the HP Mini 2140 »

By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com , CNET Asia
Feb 6, 2009

Even though the HP Mini 1000 is only a few months old, Hewlett-Packard was actually an early player in the Netbook field. The company's business system side came up with the Mini-Note 2133 in spring 2008, with a solid, brushed-metal chassis and a nearly full-size keyboard. Unfortunately, this predated Intel's Atom CPU, and rather than use the Celeron processor that came with the very first Netbooks, HP went with an underpowered Via C7-M, which pretty much killed any chance it had of becoming a mainstream product.

Now that the plastic-clad, Atom-powered consumer version has become a hit, HP's business side is taking another crack at the Netbook market with a radically updated version, the HP Mini 2140.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

It keeps the aluminum construction and big keyboard, but updates the components to an Intel Atom CPU, and adds an accelerometer for the hard drive, and a full ExpressCard/54 slot--a Netbook first (Lenovo's S10 has a smaller Express Card/34 slot). Thanks to those added features--and some concerns about the added weight aside--the 2140 is currently our favorite Netbook less than S$1,000 (US$721.29).

The HP Mini 2140 shares the same basic silhouette as the earlier Mini 1000 and Mini-Note 2133 systems. Because it has an aluminum case, like the 2133, it's a little heavier than the plastic Mini 1000; it's a tradeoff that may be worth it, however, as the metallic Mini 2140 feels as if it'll stand up to the rigors of the road better than a plastic Netbook.

Features

The biggest selling point for HP's Netbooks has always been the fantastic keyboard, which HP claims is 92 percent of the size of a full-size laptop keyboard. Other Netbooks have been plagued by tiny chiclet-like keys which make typing a pain and typos plentiful. By expanding the keyboard right to the edges of the system, HP is able to fit bigger keys into the tray than other Netbooks (and even ultraportable laptops). The result is a comfortable typing experience that takes a tiny bit of adjustment (as the keys are very close together), but one that is, thus far, our favorite on a sub-12-inch notebook. The touchpad has an unusual shape, stretched into a letterbox-like wide rectangle, and the mouse buttons have been moved to the left and right sides of the touchpad. This permits the system to have a minimal amount of wasted wrist rest space, but it's a somewhat awkward compromise, especially if you do a lot of vertical scrolling or right-clicking. The 10.1-inch widescreen LED display has an unusual 1,024 x576 native resolution, which is a few pixels shy of the 1,024 x 600 we typically see in Netbooks. The end result is largely unnoticeable, but a Windows XP pop-up window expressed concern that we weren't running at a standard resolution.



Besides its big keyboard, the Mini 2140 has one major selling point that no other Netbook currently offers: A full ExpressCard/54 slot. Lenovo's S10 has a half-size ExpressCard/34 slot, but there are fewer options for add-on peripherals in that size. We rarely find that we actually need an ExpressCard slot for anything, but some rely on them for mobile broadband modems, memory-card readers, or even TV tuners.

Tags: Netbook, Expresscard, Hewlett-Packard Co., Keyboard, Intel Corp.

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