An SD memory slot is present, and it also has a D-Sub port, and a built-in webcam. There are only two USB 2.0 ports (one either side of the unit), but business users might appreciate the ExpressCard slot, which can be used to conveniently house a mobile data card, for example. Getting online is easy thanks to the integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless networking module the Mini-Note even has a Gigabit Ethernet port. We do appreciate the on/off button for the touchpad, which comes in handy when typing. Vertical movements are limited and the placement of the left- and right-click buttons either side of the pad is unnatural. Navigation is by way of a Synaptics touchpad, which is wide and also takes some getting used to. Its keys are full-sized (apart from the arrow and function keys), so typing won't get tiring, and you won't be able to attribute spelling mistakes to a cramped keyboard! However, the implementation of big keys means that palm-rest space has been sacrificed this may take some getting used to. With a weight of only 1.2kg, you'll want to take this unit on the road with you often it's very easy to use, despite being only 26cm wide and 17cm deep. So while working on the road you'll have to employ a smart power-saving strategy. This is almost exactly half the time of the Windows XP-based Eee PC, which has a battery rating of 4400mAh. In our worst-case scenario battery test (in which we loop a video and disabled power management), the unit lasted only 1hr 12min. Its three-cell battery has a rating of just 2700mAh (milliamp hours). The speakers on either side of the screen are loud and relatively clear for listening to music and watching videos, so there's no need to plug in a set of headphones (unless you don't want to disturb other people!).Īway from an outlet, the Mini-Note isn't overly impressive. It has very good contrast, which makes colours look vivid, and it's also quite bright however, its vertical viewing angle suffers from colour shift. The Mini-Note will even play movies without any tearing or stuttering, and they'll look pretty good on the 8.9in screen. Nevertheless, you can still load 10-megapixel photos easily and perform basic tasks on them, such as cropping and contrast adjustment. It's not an ideal unit for multitasking, although you can work on documents or browse the Web while listening to music - you might find scrolling long documents to be a little slower while the music is playing. In particular, it took 1900sec to finish the Photoshop test (most Core 2 Duo notebooks can do this in about 500sec), but it is impressive that it ran the test at all. In our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite, which runs Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Firefox, Windows Media Encoder, WinZip and multitasking tests, the Mini-Note garnered a score of 29, which is very slow. With 2GB of DDR2 RAM installed (256MB of this is dedicated to the integrated graphics), it runs Windows Vista relatively swiftly, but don't rely on it for taxing tasks. When it comes to processing power, the Mini-Note shuns Intel technology and instead favours a VIA C7-M 1.6GHz CPU, a VIA chipset and integrated graphics. In fact, this Mini-Note trumps the Eee PC in almost all areas and it should, as it costs $999, whereas the Windows XP version of the Eee PC costs $599. Only the lack of a solid-state drive can be seen as a weakness - the hard drive's moving parts mean it can be damaged if you drop the Mini-Note - but this is off-set by the drive's comparably huge capacity of 160GB (the Eee PC 900 (Windows XP version) has only 12GB of space).
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