The HP Mini 5102 is a very nice netbook, and it’s available from $399 from HP. One interesting option that they have is to add on a capacitive touchscreen display, but it ends up costing $633. So is it worth an extra $233 for a capacitive touchscreen on the 5102?
The HP Mini 5102 has been available for awhile now, but just recently is available with the faster N470 processor. The N470 at 1.83GHz is only slightly faster than the N450 at 1.66GHz, but faster is faster. Checkout our full post on the 5102 here, but with this new option the 5102 is starting to shape up as one of the best available netbooks.
It has options for a 1366 x 768 HD 10.1″ screen, matte display, optional Broadcom HD card,
CONTINUED »
As you know from our earlier article Flash player 10.1 beta was released today and laptopmag.com has already put it through a few performance tests. As you’ll see in the chart below, what was a slideshow now becomes watchable. Sure it’s not perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better.
Frame Rates Compared: Flash 10.1 vs. Flash 10 on HP Mini 311
An episode of “Heroes” (”Once Upon a Time in Texas”) streamed with an average framerate of 23 fps. When we played the same clip on a Mini 311 with the older Flash player, we saw just 12 fps.
We also saw marked improvement when we tried Flash 10.1 on the Acer Aspire 1810T, a CULV system with integrated graphics. This 11.6-inch notebook features a 1.3-GHz Intel Pentium SU7300 CPU, and Intel GMA4500MHD graphics, so while it started out at a higher spot than the Mini 311, the two ended up with roughly the same frame rates. Below is a chart showing the 1810T’s framerates before and after installing Flash 10.1.
Frame Rates Compared: Flash 10.1 vs. Flash 10 on Acer 1810t
So if you are in the market for a new netbook and want smooth HD flash video you might want to checkout ones with either Ion or Intel 4500HD graphics. A good example of each is the HP mini 311 with Ion graphics, and the Acer 1410 with Intel.
Want to see what the inside of your new HP Mini 311 looks like? Well if your like teknokracy over at myhpmini forums then you got one with an unconditional 90 day return warranty which means you can completely destroy dissect it and get a new one.
Basically he found that everything is crammed in there really tight, so adding extra mods (gps, esata, etc) might pose a challenge. He did find that the audio connectors and multi card reader modules are both easily removeable and might free up some space. The rest of the thread is here.
Asus Eee PC 1005PE 14hr batt $377.89 Asus Eee PC 1005HA $269.99
Asus Eee PC 1005HA blue $339.97
Toshiba Mini 305 blue $339.95 Asus Eee PC 1005PE blue $353.39
HP Mini 210 $304.98
Asus Eee PC 1005PE white $326.87 Asus Eee PC 1005PE 14hr batt $372.12 Asus Eee PC 1001P $289.99
Dell Mini 10 w/ tv tuner $372.78
