HP Mini 5102 Examine
A good option for road warriors and students, the HP Mini 5102 (starting at $399; $424 as configured) is more durable and secure as opposed to typical netbook, and won’t need to see power until the end of your work or school day. Like its predecessor, this 2.8-pound sequel sports an all-metal case and also a comfortable keyboard, but HP has added new color options, facial recognition, with an optional capacitive multitouch display. However the most important addition is Intel’s ultra-efficient Atom N450 processor, which enables the 5102 to last over 10 hours over a charge. You’ll pay more for your Mini 5102’s sturdy design, also it doesn’t really outperform competitors.
Design
The HP Mini 5102 looks like any small update to last year’s Mini 5101, essentially a netbook version of HP’s “ProBook” distinct laptops suitable for smaller than average medium businesses. In reality, the Mini 5102 seems like that which you would anticipate to determine if someone shrunk down the HP ProBook 4510s to something sufficiently small to adjust to in the purse. The Mini 5102 is roughly 1 inch thick and weighs less than 3 pounds despite a very durable chassis that is like it can handle many years of abuse within your briefcase or backpack. The nearly full-size keyboard makes typing quick emails or editing documents a breeze … although you may have to focus on the tray table in coach class within a business flight. The standard clamshell-like design provides Mini 5102 an incredibly clean look and also the all-metal chassis means serious business. The brushed metal lid incorporates a durable black finish in support of has hook volume of flex under heavy pressure.
Keyboard
I was concerned when HP ditched its previous wide, flat keys for any redesigned pebble-style keyboard inside the 5101. The 5102 keeps this new design, and the years have shown that it is a great one (although we have a soft position for the older design). Important keys, like Shift, are nice and large, and the top row of function keys are reversed–which means the actually useful tasks of controlling volume and screen brightness, and so forth, include the primary functions of the keys, even though the somewhat more obscure F-key functions need you to hold down the Fn key. It’s a swap we have seen on the few laptops recently, and might appear to be a generally good plan. The Mini 5101′s touch pad can be a traditional type, while using mouse buttons located under it–rather as opposed to side mouse buttons and elongated known as situated on older HP Netbooks. We prefer this style, but concurrently, the known as is small , its slick surface attracts fingerprints like literally nothing we’ve ever seen before–therefore would seem impossible to looks dingy.
Display
There’s certainly no lack of multitouch if you opt to go with the touchscreen configuration. Our review unit was included with a 1024 x 600-resolution, 10.1-inch capacitive screen – there’s no 1366×768 option should you spring for your touch layer. While the matte screen kicks back virtually no reflection, and we much prefer it to the tons of glossy screens we have seen, the touch layer causes the screen to be fairly pale. Colors were muted once we watched an episode of Family Guy on Hulu, and in many cases the black text with this review doesn’t appear as dark because it should for the 10-inch display. That’s the sacrifice you appear to have to make to get a rather decent touch experience, however. While our unit ran Microsoft windows Professional — as opposed to the more multitouch friendly Windows 7 — light taps on shortcuts around the desktop opened applications, and lightly dragging two fingers along the screen allowed for smooth scrolling. Pinching to zoom also did wonders within the browser plus in Picture Viewer. Since it doesn’t operate a tablet OS, there’s no on-screen keyboard or handwriting recognition tools.
Performance
Like virtually all other netbooks available today, the 5102 is powered by Intel’s latest 1.6GHz Atom N450 processor. Our unit was configured with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB 7,200rpm hard disk that booted Microsoft windows Professional, rather than the now standard Windows 7 Starter or Professional. There have been no performance curve balls — the machine managed to get caught up with us in the end simultaneously wrote this review in Corel Write, surfed the world wide web in Firefox, and IM’d with friends through Digsby. When we first booted the system, we did notice Ie going for a painfully while to load sites, but after disabling the 3 toolbars HP had occurring, things did actually increase. Stay away from surprises around the graphics front – streaming Hulu at full screen was slightly laggy, and wanting to watch any high quality content was obviously a complete bust. Though, HP has the 5102 with Broadcom’s Crystal HD accelerator that ought to push HD content along quite smoothly, comparable to we were treated to with all the Dell Mini 10 and also the HP Mini 210 1199DX.