As the budget-friendly version of one of the most popular netbooks in the US, the HP Mini 110 takes the same feature set from the Mini 1000 and slots it into a slightly larger package. At a $110 discount compared to its predecessor, it offers a compelling option for those who found the sexy and snazzy Mini 1000 a little too expensive for an Atom-powered computer.
Thicker and heavier, the Mini 110 gives up the compact styling in place of a cheaper package. Whether that works for you is something you’ll have to figure out for yourself. Personally, a slight reduction in portability is never that big of a deal-breaker, especially considering that this new iteration measures much like other netbooks in the market. General look and feel remains true to the 1000, so the pleasing visual cues remain, despite the more bloated body.
Netbooks don’t really offer that much variety in internal components and the Mini 110 is the same way. Inside, you get a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD. With the price reduction, HP actually gets a competitively-priced machine into the netbook mix, with features that are on par with the rest of the generic entry-level players in the market.
Overall operation is pretty good, with processing speed and connectivity that’s pretty much on part with other machines in its price range. Both the display and keyboard offer excellent performance, clearly in line with HP’s previous machine. If you hate screen glare, in particular, you’ll love the matte style of the glass on its 10-inch display, making viewing a little easier on the eyes. Do note that the screen on the Mini 110 offers a little lower resolution than the industry standard 1024×600 at 1024×576. While that may sound like a nominal difference, almost every little bit of difference matters in such an already-limited display panel.
It comes with a third-party software app called Syncables that’s supposed to make connecting to different machines on your network (regardless of what OS they’re running) an easier proposition. While it did work, allowing us to share media and files over Wi-Fi, the process is hardly that easy with the software’s pretty unintuitive design. Battery offered pretty standard performance with just around 3 hours of use on the default three-cell.
Because of its larger frame, the Mini 110 allowed HP to add one more extra USB slot and a VGA port compared to the 1000. Depending on how you use your netbooks, that could be a huge deal for you, as it was for me. Given the choice between the Mini 1000 and the Mini 110, I’d gladly recommend the cheaper package in a hearbeat.
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