By request, I am posting the full specifications of the HP Mini 110. While I was putting this up, I realised there were a few specs that we forgot about, such as the fact that the display is LED-backlit. The HP Mini 110 has several options, and it’s base model is probably the one that costs US$299 (During the executive interviews, we were told that the US$299 is for both the Mobile Internet Edition as well as the Windows XP model).

I’m also adding the HD version of the HP Mini 110 video for your viewing pleasure.

Specifications are as follows :

This specs sheet was taken and modified slightly from Nicholas Aaron Khoo’s blog, whom I attended the HP Touch The Future Now event in Beijing with.

Part 1

Part 2

A second more detailed first look with more information on the HP Mini 110, taken live at BeiJing at the HP Touch The Future Now event.

I did a comparison with the HP Mini 1000 too, so check it out.

Here’s a video where I took a quick look at the HP Mini 110’s design changes verses the HP Mini 1000. More updates coming as the day passes. Or follow the Singaporean bloggers and journalists there:

• http://www.twitter.com/geekonomics
• http://www.twitter.com/cnetasia
• http://www.twitter.com/danieltsou
• http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/geekonomics

We finally got our hands on the Vaio P for a week and a half to play with and we loved it. But is it enough to justify its hefty price tag? If you’ve already read my first impressions article, nothing much has changed, though performance did seem to be better, perhaps due to a fresh reformat. But do read my conclusion for the Vaio P at the end of the review.

The Vaio P we played with is powered by a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM and is running on Windows Vista Home Premium.

Related Content: Gear65 #14 video, Vaio P unboxing video, Vaio P launch impressions

The Good
I loved how Sony mentioned during their official release of the Vaio P in Singapore that their primary focus wasn’t in making a cheap machine, but in making an ultra portable device. In many ways, the Vaio P is certainly not your average netbook, and they have easily justified their higher-than-average-netbooks price tag.

Design
The Vaio P is probably one of the most wonderfully designed machines I’ve ever had the opportunity to us on a daily basis. It’s small enough for you to hold it with one hand while typing with the other, and when you have it in your bag, it’s so light that it’s almost as if it was never there. The quality of the materials used in this device are also very high. They used anodized magnesium as well as carbon fibre (?!) for its body to reduce the weight and increase the durability. I think we’ve already said enough about the design on episode 14 of Gear65, which I highly recommend you go watch.

The USB ports are also well placed. Even though the Vaio P only has 2 USB ports, the ports are well placed with one on each side. I especially like the fact that the USB port on the right is near the end of the machine. Most computers these days seem to like to place the USB port that’s on the right side towards the front of the machine. If you’re right handed and you use a mouse, having the port close to the front makes the cable from the mouse obstructive, which, thankfully, the Vaio P does not do.

Despite the size of the computer, the Vaio P’s keyboard has been quite comfortable for me. I haven’t had any major typing errors due to the keyboard, which I still tend to have on some other netbooks on the market. I do, however, tend to mistake the right function key as the shift key. Of course, your mileage may vary, so do go try it for yourself before you make a decision. Like we mentioned on Gear65, we were surprised that Sony, not Lenovo, was the first company to produce a netbook an ultraportable with a trackpoint instead of a touch pad. Getting rid of the touchpad allowed Sony to drastically reduce the size of the computer. Ironically, the lack of a palm-rest does cause your hands to feel tired easily if you’re typing with one hand while holding it with the other. This trackpoint also allows you to tap on it to click, just like you would on a touchpad. Some people love the trackpoint, while others hate it. It’s really up to you to decide if it’s for you.

Windows Vista
Yes, I’m actually putting this under the “Good” section. When I first played with the Vaio P during its launch a few months ago, I said that Windows Vista would be its downfall. After using it for several days, I realised that I was wrong. Not because the Vaio P ran as smooth as butter with Vista on it, but given the tasks you would carry out with Windows Vista, which is to do simple stuff and perhaps surf the net with it on the go, you wouldn’t strain the machine enough to cause it to be unusable.

With that aside, you can actually take advantage of its strengths (yes, there ARE strengths). One of them is the mobility software features Vista comes with. An example is how easy it is to pair and use a 3G enabled mobile phone to connect your Vaio P to the internet. I never tried it with Vista before the Vaio P, and now that I had a chance, I thought it was really awesome. You don’t need to know your username, password or number to dial (they’re usually preset in your phone. Until today I still don’t know what they are), Vista knows them already. Of course, a video speaks a thousand words 30 times per second:

Instant Boot
This is another great feature in the Vaio P that I think all netbooks should have. If you push the “Cross Media Bar” button while the Vaio P is off, it boots up to this special software in 17 seconds. This software basically lets you access all your music, photos and videos using the familiar Cross Media Bar user interface made famous on the Sony Playstation Portable. It also has Firefox and Pidgin built in for web-browsing as well as instant messaging and voice-over-IP capabilities. Unfortunately, you can only use WiFi to connect to the internet, so you’re stuck to having to find a hotspot if you want to surf the net in an instant.

The advantage of having this Instant-boot software? Really fast boot up plus drastically longer battery life.

Software
Here’s another part where Sony certainly didn’t save on. Unlike most netbooks, the Vaio P is filled with applications. While some may consider them as “crapware”, I actually think they are pretty useful.

Let me start with the Vaio Control Center. It’s basically Windows Vista’s Mobility Centre on steroids. You can change almost every setting from screen resolution to power management settings. Then there’s the Vaio Updater. How would you like if Sony helps you keep your Vaio P’s drivers and software up to date? And how can you have a Sony entertainment device without its cross media bar? Oh, and it also comes with some fun web cam applications to make your video conferences alot more entertaining.

Of all the applications it comes with, I especially love the Recovery Centre and the Restore Centre. The Recovery Centre is basically a backup application, none too different from Lenovo’s recovery application in its S10 netbook. The Restore Centre on the other hand allows you to restore the machine to the same state it was when you first got it. It’s especially useful since the Vaio P doesn’t come with any optical disk drive, like every other netbook. You can also choose to just restore drive C (if you partitioned the drive) or just restore the extra Vaio applications should you “accidentally” removed them. And if you do have a DVD writer, you can also create restore disks should you really mess the Vaio up.

Another good thing (I’m thinking from the perspective of Sony’s target audience here) they packaged into the Vaio P is the free Mcafee Anti Virus and a 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007. Basically, out of the box you would already have everything from hardware to software that you would need on this machine.

Accessories
Sony is obviously trying very hard to please. Even their accessories are amazing. Their ultra-portable power adapter with the snap-on VGA + Ethernet adapter is just tiny and light, making it super easy to carry around. Oh, I should mention that the VGA+Ethernet adapter (or break out box) was a brilliant idea. If you’re going to complain about it, think about this: which are the two thickest ports you would find on a notebook? If Sony left the VGA and ethernet port on the Vaio P, I can guarantee  you that it would be twice as thick. Plus they let you combine it with the power adapter so that you only have to carry around one extra item!

The Vaio P I recieved also comes with noise-cancelling earphones. You read that right: Noise Cancelling, not Noise Isolation! These earphones come with microphones that allow the Vaio P to do some computer magic to cancel out ambiant noise. Since all the processing happens on the Vaio P itself, it also means that you can’t just plug these earphones into any other audio source. The cancellation is so effective that it even works when the Vaio P isn’t playing any audio. All it needs is to be on. Oh, and you can adjust the microphone’s sensitivity using software in the Vaio P itself.

Battery Life
The battery life on this machine is quite similar to what you would find on most netbooks today. When connected to the internet via bluetooth on my mobile phone, I was able to squeeze out 2 hours of battery life on medium brightness. That’s impressive considering the size of the battery combined with the heavy use of bluetooth.

The Bad
With so much good things said about the Vaio P, it’s going to be hard to not want one, right? Following are the reasons why you wouldn’t want one, in order of severity. You’ll also notice that these are things that Sony tried too hard.

Performance
As I have mentioned during the Vaio P’s launch, I thought Sony made a bad decision to combine Windows Vista with an Intel Atom processor. Now that I’ve used it for more than a week, I realised it’s not that bad even with all that extra background applications running thanks to its bundled software. It still can’t do too much at the same time, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Boot up time, however, is still really slow. To counter that, I would either put the machine to hibernate or sleep.

However, don’t expect to do too many things on this machine at once. Despite the fact that Sony claims to have built a hardware encoder for HD video, playing HD videos on the Vaio P was still really choppy.

That said, if you’re only going to use it to connect you to the internet on the go, it shouldn’t frustrate you too much.

One more thing to note though: Windows has a tendency to get slower as you use it more. Well, good thing you can reformat it easily, right?

Display
If you haven’t already noticed, I have yet to mention the display. That’s because I don’t really like it. I’m fine with the width of the display. More screen real-estate is always better for me. It’s the resolution that kills me. It’s way too high!! In my opinion, the optimal resolution for an 8 inch display is to have a width of 1024 pixels. This display squeezes 1600 pixels into the width!! How bad is it? One of the iconic features of Windows Vista is its giant start button. On the Vaio P, that start button is just a tiny circle! The font on that machine is even smaller, and I have seen small fonts! The worse part is that you can’t reduce the resolution of the display without causing the image to distort because all its other settings are designed for normal non-wide display, and using that on an ULTRA wide display is just a mess. I tried boosting the DPI on Windows Vista to 150% percent, but that caused problems because the text in applications would force the buttons at the bottom to get pushed beyond the window’s border, causing them to disappear completely. Even with my perfect eye sight I actually had headaches after reading text on that display for too long, and I certainly didn’t enjoy that.

Sure, you get an ultra-sharp display, but at the cost of usability, I would rather not have it. Besides, it can’t play HD videos properly anyway.

Cost
All the above mentioned flaws on the device all have work arounds. Don’t run too many applications at once, and boost the DPI setting as well as the Zoom setting in your browsers as much as possible without breaking the application or webpage design.

However, there is one flaw that I believe is a killer feature for the Vaio P. Killer as in kill the Vaio P’s chance of selling units!

To enjoy all the features I mentioned, including the noise cancelling earphones, in-box VGA+Ethernet adapter, 1.66Ghz Intel Atom chip (the other model is only 1.33 Ghz), Windows Vista Home Premium (instead of Home Basic on the other model) etc, you have to shell out close to S$1700!! Even if you’re willing to forfeit the faster Intel Atom chip and the VGA+Ethernet adapter, it would still cost you S$1300+. In todays “thriving” economy, that’s really not a smart thing to do.

In Conclusion (Should you get the Vaio P?)
The Vaio P is one of the most amazing devices I’ve ever used as a second computer. However, it doesn’t make any practical sense to buy it! At less than half the price, I can get an Asus EeePC 1000H with better performance (thanks to Windows XP)! To me, the extra value that the Vaio P gives me (The amazing earphones, the functional extra software, the drastically smaller size, the high quality materials used) does not justify me having to shell out 100% more than machines on the market today that have the same or even better power. I’m willing to pay 50% more (S$1200 for the 1.66Ghz model is actually justifiable), but not 100%.

Besides, the flaws I mentioned above are flaws that you have to bear with every time you use them! The extra features, as good and as cool as they are, are just that: extra features. They don’t improve the way I use a computer drastically. And the expensive materials? My colleague says is best: “It doesn’t matter what it’s made of. Once you drop it, it breaks the same as any other machine.” Besides, some of the netbooks in the market today such as the HP Mini 1000 and the Acer Aspire One don’t look all that bad anymore.

Sony has to either convince me with more substantial features on why I should shell out S$900 more for their machine by putting better hardware and maybe even Windows 7 on it, or they have to reduce the price, even if it means getting rid of some the the features and expensive material. You don’t need magnesium and carbon fiber to make a computer ultraportable.

To me what defines a netbook is its performance and power, and the Vaio P is just a netbook in an ultra-portable’s clothing, no matter what Sony says. And not many people are going to buy a netbook in an ultraportable’s price range.

So who should buy this? People who have too much money to spare. Don’t get me wrong, this really is an amazing machine. It’s just not worth the amount it costs.

It didn’t help but oozes charm and class when you touch the edges of the HP MINI 1000… The sexy curves all around makes it really a charmer… boy, its a joy to carry it too… because it weighs in around 1 kg plus… making it light and easy to carry around.

This is how the back looks like.

The plus point is that it fits into my bags very well, and boots up, hooks to the wireless network in about 3 mins (cold-boot). It is simply great for doing work on the fly, and there is no need to worry about spending time to start the machine.

One thing that impresses me is the keyboard. At 92% of the standard keyboard, it makes typing a breeze, and it has a very lovely feel to these keys. I enjoyed typing some of my blog entries and email on it.

This is how the keyboard looks like.

A huge portion of the hinge houses the speakers. Built into that area, not only did it save space, but builds an element of class and elegance into the HP Mini 1000. The sound quality is great, and does not distort even when I am listening to tunes at its maximum volume.

Its a pity that the 3g slot feature is not activated for use in Singapore. But I do hope to see it, and this will be the mobile warrior complete solution.

This picture summarizes the features of the HP Mini 1000 best…

Oh, did I mention that I still find the switch and the wireless button LED lights rather bright, and is quite a distraction when I use it in the dark

The memory card slot reader was another bugbear for me, because I extensively utilized the card reader to transfer my shots to the netbook. Because of the curves, its harder to feel for the slot, and one need to tilt the netbook to slot in the card, and vice versa to remove the SD card.

Despite those dislikes as mentioned above, overall, I find this HP Mini 1000 a perfect eye-candy netbook, that functions as good, or if not better than the rest of the netbooks available in the market.

Many thanks to Melvin, Waggener Edstrom, to review this lovely HP Mini 1000.

Nicole

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Daniel’s video review of the HP Mini 1000!

Size

There’s no doubt that the Vaio P is a really beautiful device. They made the width of the device just long enough for you to hold with one hand, and fit in your jeans pocket (not that anyone will ever do that). That makes the device really small, and I’m sure will be a joy to carry around too (I’m not certain about this, since they won’t let me bring it even more than a few meters away from the display ). Small size means you have to sacrifice the display and the keyboard size though.

Sony made up for the keyboard by maintaining the size, and just removing the palm rest of the device. The keyboard is actually quite comfortable to use at my first attempt due to the size of the keys and the gap between the keys, just like it was for the HP Mini 1000, but the lack of a palm rest made it quite akward to use. Of course, since the device is pretty slim too, you could use a table top to make up for the lack of a palm rest. It will certainly take a while to get used it. As for the track point, it’s using the traditional fabric-like trackpoint, rather than the flat-rubber-topped trackpoint found on the newer Lenovo Thinkpads and HP Elitebooks. It was actually quite stiff to use in the beginning, but after DK maxed the speed of the pointer in the Control Panel, it actually become slightly better. Oh, and did I mention that you can click by pressing the trackpoint in?

While the keyboard and track point were fine, I found the display too small for me. Moreover, the fact that they made the display super high-resolution didn’t help things at all. Sure, your images would be extra sharp, and HD video (assuming it could play them in the first place) would really pop out, but that made everything from the start button to the words on the screen super tiny. I’m sure there’s a way to up the font size and icon size in Windows, but I didn’t really get why they insisted on putting in such a high-resolution display (1600 by 768, for those geeks who care about numbers) into such a small display (only 8 inches). I personally felt that even with a 1024 wide resolution would be more than sufficient and sharp enough for an 8 inches display, and would certainly help lower costs.

Design

The design of this Vaio is certainly well done. Lots of metal and gloss where they should be. I always complained that netbooks these days look like they came out of a Fisher Price factory because of all that plastic. HP countered that succesful by using their imprint technology to make the device subtly feel expensive, and Sony, well, they DID make it expensive. According to what I was told, they used magnesium for the body, and painted over the top cover with multiple layers, before adding a layer of gloss, while on the bottom they made it completely flat like the HP Mini 1000, and even covered all the screws. They even said the bottom was made with carbon fibre! I mean, with all that going on, how can this device not stand out?

Specs

This is where I think they completely messed up. Okay, maybe not completely, but just one tiny problem. Sony did say they weren’t making a budget computer, but that doesn’t give them an excuse to come up with such a decision: They paired an Intel Atom processor with Windows Vista!!?! How is it that no one at Sony thought that was a bad idea?? Sure, in the high-end model, they popped in a 64GB solid state drive, and for both models there’s 2GB of DDR2 RAM, but that’s not going to help the fact that it’s being powered by a low-powered Intel Atom chip along with a weak Intel GMA 500 graphics chip!! Did I mention that for the high-end model, it’s running Vista Home Premium?? We took the device for a spin, and it really slowed down after you ran more than 2 apps. In fact, when we first tried the device, we hit the power button, posed with it for a few minutes for pictures, and by the time we were done, the machine still hasn’t finished booting up!! If they put XP in this machine, I’m sure it will sell really well!! Okay, I’m done with my Vista rant.

The rest of the specs are pretty standard for netbooks (yes, I still see it as a netbook!), there’s Wifi A/B/G/Draft N, a Memory Stick Duo and an SD card slot. There’s only 2 USB slots, and like the HP Mini, they took out the 2 biggest ports and replaced it with a port replicator, requiring a special adapter: LAN and VGA. That’s right, unlike the HP Mini, this device is so thin, they couldn’t even hide a LAN port in it. Oh, and did I mention there’s only a headphone jack? They omitted the mic-in jack. Unlike the HP Mini 1000, this jack won’t switch between in and out. It’s just in and nothing else. The high end model supports a special noise cancelling headphone set though. I thought that was cool. There’s a supposed hardware decoder for AVCHD video files in the device too, but I’m guessing only for the industry standard AVCHD you find in some HD cameras. I put in my SD card from my Sanyo HD cam, and it wouldn’t even play 720p properly.

Software, the other place Sony value added this device

Apart from Vista, the rest of the software on this device are pretty packed. They bundled a whole bunch of Vaio software you’d find on most Vaio machines, along with a trial version of Office 2007 Professional, WinDVD (I wonder where you put the DVD in?), Roxio Easy Media Creator etc. They also have this cool cross media bar application that lets you access your media as if you were using a PSP, PS3 or bravia TV. They added an extra button on the device too that when pressed, it will organise all your windows automatically from left to right. I really like that feature.

How they made up for Vista: Instant on mode

If you turn off the device and press the CrossMediaBar button, the device boots into Instant On mode quite quickly, and you get a PSP-like interface to access your music, photos and videos. There’s a web browser (Firefox, I might add) and an IM app (Pidgin) too. The instant on mode is obviously powered by Linux, and to be honest, I’d end up using this mode most often. I mean, between this and Vista on an Intel Atom machine?? In my opinion, this was one of the smartest thing they did with the Vaio P.

Overall

No matter how much Sony keeps trying to say this isn’t a netbook, I still think it is, thanks to the Intel Atom chip. It’s a really expensive netbook (S$1299 for a 1.33Ghz Intel Atom computer?!??), but it’s still a netbook. To put it nicely, it’s a premium netbook, just like the Macbook Air is a premium notebook. I feel that Sony should have gone in either two directions with this device. Add in more power, say an Intel Centrino Solo even, along with an Nvidia 9400 (the one found in the new Macbook) graphics chip, or even the more powerful Intel GMA X3100, and make it more expensive. S$2000 for a powerhouse is value for money. Or they could have gone the other way. Take out Vista and put in XP, use a cheaper 1024pixelled wide display, maybe even a 16G SSD, then charge S$1000. I’m willing to pay S$200 more than other netbooks for that amazing casing, keyboard, form factor and that awesome instant on feature. That would certainly sell better than other netbooks out there.

Most important take away for you, my friend

I haven’t played with the device for an extended time yet, and for all you know, things might change by the time the device hits the market in February. Until then, just keep the good stuff of this machine in mind:

1. Awesome tiny form factor
2. Awesome head-turning design and amazing quality for a netbook
3. Great keyboard
4. Super useful instant-on

As for the Vista and slow performance part, we’re willing to give Sony a second chance to prove us wrong when the device goes on sale in late February 2009.

When Apple launched MacBook Air, little did we expect that Lenovo was also about to launch its very own super thin and lightweight laptop, the Lenovo Thinkpad X300. The X300 is the PC’s equivalent of MacBook Air, except it packs more punch.

The Lenovo X300’s thickest point is 2.34cm. Compared to the MacBook Air’s 1.94cm thickest point, there is barely much difference. Weight wise, X300 is 1.42kg (With DVD burner) while Macbook Air is 1.36kg (Without DVD burner). The X300 is so light that I have to open the bag to confirm that I packed the laptop inside. Do try to get your hands on a unit if you can. You will be amazed by it’s lightness.

Compared to the MacBook Air, the Lenovo X300’s spec sheet seems pretty impressive. For that extra 60 grams and 0.4cm, you get a lot more features. For a start, there is a built in DVD burner. It’s amazing that they managed to squeeze a DVD burner into such small package. There are also 3 USB ports. (NB: My existing T43 notebook only has 2 USB Ports and is meant to be a full sized laptop) There is a fingerprint scanner for better security and faster login. Good for people like me who are just too lazy to type my password to login. The X300 also comes with a user removable battery, a Ethernet port and VGA port. These are essential to business users which the Macbook Air would’ve missed.

But processor speed wise, the X300’s Intel Core 2 Duo 1.2GHz loses out the the MacBook Air’s Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz. The Macbook Air also comes with a bigger Solid State Drive (SSD) Harddrive (depending on how you spec it out). I sure hope that Lenovo will refresh the specs on the X300 soon. Speaking of the SSD, the 64gb SSD Harddrive that comes with the X300 is great. Personally, I feel that SSD is on its way to replace our standard Harddisks. SSD provides a faster startup, fast read/write speeds and low power consumption. It’s great that the brains behind the X300 decided to adopt this “Harddisk for the future”.

The X300, like most Thinkpads, also comes with Roll Cage technologies. In fact, this is the first time Lenovo included Roll Cage in its X series. The Roll Cage makes the X300 durable and at the same time keeping the laptop light. I was told that they have used a very light and strong carbon and glass fibre construction for the Roll Cage, the same material used in Formula One race cars and the Airbus A380 super jumbo. Which makes me wonder…. is the X300 bulletproof too?

I’ve been using the Lenovo X300 for 2 weeks and the experience has been great. The X300 is very light and portable. The keyboard, as with on all Thinkpads, is very comfortable to type with. I love the fact that it has an SSD. This makes the X300 bootup faster despite it’s slower processor, and having a SSD also means that I can shake the laptop during operation without fear of any harddisk malfunctions. You must be wondering, why would anyone shake their laptop during operation? One such situation would be trying to use your laptop on a bumpy taxi ride. Most laptop will have some lag issues because the harddisk cannot operate when on the move. The X300 doesn’t have this problem since it is using a SSD.

Lenovo is generous to provide 3 USB port on this machine. The video port is useful too although I didn’t get to use it. But I do know that a video port will come in handy when doing presentations. I’m also glad that it comes with a trackpoint. Yes, I’m a huge fan of the trackpoint. The battery life is good. The review set that I received came with an extended battery (6 cell) which provides around 4.9hr battery life. OK, I know that’s cheating. But even with standard 3 cell battery, it can also deliver 3.3 hr battery life.

There is a 3G SIM card slot in my review unit. But from what I understand, the review unit doesn’t comes with the mobile broadband module. In fact, the sets being sold in Singapore will not provide such an option. Which is kinda disappointing actually. 3G mobile broadband is very useful for mobile warrior. The Lenovo X300 is positioned as a ultimate tool for the mobile warrior, yet it lacks the 3G mobile broadband.

One thing to note, the Trackpad for X300 is rather small compared to most laptops in the market. For me, it doesn’t really matter since I prefer using the trackpoint, but this is something you should note if you intend to use the touchpad.

The X300 is currently selling at $4,171. It’s very expensive but worth every single cent. The question is, do you need such a high end laptop. If you are always on the move and can afford the price tag, then X300 is the notebook for you.

In Short:
The Lenovo Thinkpad X300 is light on weight, heavy on features. Definitely a mobile warrior’s best friend.

Likes:
Slim and light weight
Durable
Feature packed

Dislike:
Price tag
Small trackpad
No 3G broadband built in (For Singapore)

For more pictures, check out my first look at Lenovo Thinkpad X300.

Many thanks to Derrick from Lenovo for making this review possible. It was hard to return such a wonderful unit to you.