HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam

According to HP, the Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition is invitingly designed, its inspiration coming from a mix of Asian and Western cultures, antiquity and modernity, fashion and technology. Decorated by the celebrated Chinese designer, this original development to the Mini 1000 is designed above all for female users. One thing is sure, it won't go unnoticed!

Handling, design and build

The machine's casing bears peony motifs,mixing pinks, reds and mauve. The inside is entirely red and the characters on the keys are golden. Reactions will be extreme either way. Question of taste. However this Vivienne Tam edition rarely excites indifference. This design seems rather daring as there are no other versions currently available in Europe.
It has a very plasticky look and all the surfaces are shiny. There is no feel of quality.

The keyboard takes up the whole width of the netbook, something that is now common with 10 inch models. The keys are wide and supple. After getting used to the fact that they aren't well-spaced, you'll find typing quite agreeable.
The biggest problem with this keyboard is in fact directly linked to the way the Mini 1000 has been restyled. Indeed the characters on the keys are quite hard to read, in particular when it is a bit dark or overcast. You mght find yourself looking for the right key, especially as some are quite small.

The touchpad is all width to correspond to the 16:9 screen. A particularity with HP models: the clicks are to be found on the left and right of the touch zone, while they are usually at the bottom. This is original but not very practical. We prefer Dell's solution for its Mini 10.
The surface is entirely smooth and shiny, which makes sliding the finger difficult. Your finger tends to stick, except when the touchpad gets oily. This isn't good. Good point: there's a key that allows you to disactivate the touchpad so as to avoid false manipulations when using the keyboard and /or a USB mouse.

The webcam is quite simply bad and functions very poorly if the room is at all dark. The display is relatively fluid but the image is very noisy and lacks precision.

The fan is on almost all the time and is audible, accelerating when a lot is asked of the machine, all of which makes it fairly noisy in comparison to other models.

Connectivity is placed on three sides of the netbook: 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 RJ45 (hidden by a piece of rubber, 1 headphones out, 1 2-in-1 memory card reader and a proprietary extension port. This is poor and insufficient, even for a netbook.
The start-up button is on the side of the machine. It is accompanied by a switch that controls the Wi-Fi

Under the PC, you have access to the battery and a panel that allows you to get to the single space for RAM. It is already occupied by a Samsung module.

On/Off switch	Power supply, USB
Proprietary port, headphones, RJ45	USB

Processor Power

Equipped with an Intel Atom N270, this model has decent processor performance. It obtains an index of 20. To recap, the index of 100 was set at the level of our reference laptop, the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi3650.

A shame then that its hard drive slows performance down somewhat. Indeed it turns at only 4200 rpm, which increases load time. Without an antivirus, but with all the Windows updates, the PC starts up in a little under a minute (to get to the Windows XP desktop display). You then have to wait another 15 to 20 seconds for your system to be fully useable. This is long.

The chipset that comes with N series processors (N270 and N280) doesn't allow you to decode HD video. In any case this would have been useless with the Mini 1000 as its screen is only 576 lines high (like on a DVD), and it doesn't have a video out.

Gaming

Generally speaking, gaming on netbooks is only for real enthusiasts who don't mind wrestling with very compromised quality.

Audio

The sound on this netbook didn't convince us, with bass sounds missing as is often the case on netbooks. The headphones out does not suffer from interference and is therefore of ok quality.

Battery life and portability

With its 3-cell battery, we weren't expecting any miracles when it came to battery life. Indeed, the Mini 1000 scored a modest 1h54.

In spite of the fact that it only weighs 1.05 Kg, this is insufficient battery time for a netbook.