Commuting to work this morning I was with Left 4 Dead on the HP Mini 311-1000NR – that’s right, on a netbook. Netbooks are a few up to this task, and HP is first to market with a NVIDIA ION-based portable. The 3.22-pound, 11.4-by-8-by-1 .0 .2-inch Mini 311 has 1000NR ask a reasonable level of performance and a $ 399 price.
What’s Jon? If you somehow lots of stories I’ve written before about the Ion-platform’ve missed, here is the short version: netbook and nettop, she marries an Intel Atom CPU (in this case, the 1.66 GHz N280) to a ION LE NVIDIA GPU, producing more-powerful, can afford to spend machinery HD video and even allow you to play some games.
Also fueling this machine, 1 GB RAM and a 160GB 5400-rpm hard drive – standard theme are netbook courage. What we had in our standard 3D gaming tests are not quite as exciting as originally hoped for: 16 frames per second in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to 1024 x 768 pixels (normal settings).
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Gaming on a netbook is one of the great promises of the ball-point ion-platform – but do not expect to run Crysis Warhead. I tried: After a long loading time, it was a start and stop of experience at 800 x 600 pixels with everything but the monitor is turned off. Although I can say that I “played” the game, but it’s not really “playable.” I had much better luck with Left 4 Dead, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. switched to the same resolution – with visual effects on low setting – both were slightly jerky (frame rate crashed together in the 20s), but playable. For laughs, I tried running the ridiculous Resident Evil 5 benchmark, the Core i7, made at 1280 x 720 pixels, the 311-Mini 1000NR manages 7.7 frames per second in question. (A $ 4000 desktop replacement laptop gets ten times the power – not a huge surprise.)
AMD’s Tweener class CPU Neo, who came on board the category HP Pavilion dv2 (defying a model, that a score of 45 on WorldBench 6) purchased. And now replace the HP Pavilion dm3 due dv2 is just around the corner … This would be the more expensive alternatives. HP spokesman said that they expect the 311 Mini-1000NR provide approximately 5 hours of battery life. Make that 6 hours, 5 minutes – according to our tests. Yep, it’s always nice to see if companies and overdeliver under promise.
Like the Acer Aspire One 751h, the Mini has to go 311-1000NR a relatively large 11.6-inch screen as netbooks. The LED BrightView display at 1366 by 768 (with an aspect ratio of 16:9), looks pretty sharp, despite some problems with the glare outside in direct sunlight. As soon as I settled into a shady spot, though, I threw all kinds of tests 720p content on a netbook, and it was clean, with perhaps a stutter step, moment of all the video, which I installed on the machine on the disk. The mini runs at 311-1000NR Hulu full screen as well. Just do not hold your breath for HD streaming video (unless you can wait maybe a little longer supported for a flash update to GPU acceleration). A rapid carrier rocket from the tool tray provides access to a series of video calibration options – from color and brightness, color depth and resolution – with minimal digging on-screen.
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HP is taking on the platform rather stylish – not surprising considering that the Mini (and the pavilion, curved for that matter) sports lines and interesting patterns on a high-gloss finish. In this case, the Mini comes with a 311-1000NR white or black lid swirled that will hypnotize you.
The keyboard reminds me of the dv2′s, just shrunk down a little. HP spokesman said that the 311-1000NR mini keyboard is 92 percent full size. I have seen the dips in the keys do as a “key baked”, and the small lips, they make a bit of simple design. However, if we had HP distributes the keys closer to the sides of the machine, the company might be able to zoom in on the buttons to 93 or even 94 percent of full size to have. And I would not have complained.
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The touchpad and buttons placed along the bottom of the netbook toe the line – and it is a world better than previous models, Mini, which was stupid enough to touch the left and right buttons in flanking positions on both sides of the surface. The left and right keys on the Mini 311-1000NR feel solid if a little plasticky. One thing that I miss was the little kill switch to turn off the touchpad. In their absence I had often accidentally grazing the touch pad and buttons or accidentally moved my cursor.
The I O ports are lining the box with the line of what to expect on a Netbook: three USB ports, a 10/100 Ethernet jack, VGA-out, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, and a webcam. Upgrade options include 802.11n, Bluetooth, 3G WWAN and broadband.
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be used among the small improvements that I support a headphone microphone combo jack (compatible with the four-wire headset in some mobile phones), HDMI-out (using the GPU, of course), and a five-in-one flash Card Reader SD MMC, Memory Stick Pro, and XD Picture Cards (can handle most netbooks only handle SD MMC cards).
So at this point I see a pretty good deal in a machine that looks like a pretty good deal jammed. In the meantime, where the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with the ion is under the hood? Lenovo was the first company to announce support for the chipset, but we are still waiting for its first product. If you have resisted the urge to buy a netbook, came up with something a little more oomph, this could be your machine.
