HP Mini 1000 now official, joined by HP Compaq Mini 700

Posted by Al Warmington on Wed 29 Oct 2008

The Compaq Mini 700 seems like the wiser choice

After accidentally blowing its own whistle, HP has rolled out its new Mini 1000 netbook across the pond. UK versions are expected to arrive early next year.

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As with every netbook scrounging for a slice of Eee PC pie, the specs are fairly familiar. What's interesting is that HP has now decided to drop the VIA C-7 M CPU in favour of the standard Intel Atom N270 processor.

Alongside that, you've got your 10.2" widescreen display, a choice of 8GB or 16GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth and integrated webscam. You get a choice of RAM too, which goes up to 2GB if you choose the new MIE Linux operating system rather than Windows XP. The whole thing weighs a decent 1.1kg too.

MIE stands for Mobile Internet Experience, which is a fancy new dashboard interface that gives you immediate access to your basic browsing and email tools as well as your various media playback options, without requiring you to fanny about waiting for a full blown OS to boot up. It's backed up by Ubuntu Linux.

If you're looking for a more aesthetically inspiring system, then you may want to gun for the flowery pink, Vivienne Tam designer version. No idea why you'd want to do that other than for the fact the garish floral unit will be available a month earlier. It also includes a 60GB HDD and optional 3G connectivity.

The standard HP Mini 100 will be on sale in the UK from February, priced £399. The Vivienne Tam edition is due out in January for the same price.

If you want to save a few quid, you might want to consider the Compaq Mini 700, at £299. It shares nearly all the same specs, screen size, processor, etc, and with optional 3G internet. This one must have some weaknesses over the costlier Mini 1000 counterpart, but we're still awaiting the official explanation as to what they are. The Compaq Mini 700 will be out in December too, so at the moment this seems like the by far the better deal. More deets as we get them.

Link: HP

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