HP 2133 Mini-Note

Now this is the ultimate in laziness: The below is my take on the Gizmodo Lightning Review of the HP 2133 Mini-Note as posted as a comment to that review:

"It's a remarkable little laptop if you can stand the extra weight and price over the Eee PC 4G."

Nahh, I can't really: I'm sure that it's a nice and desirable machine. Mind you I'm sure that an Atom dual-core will beat the Via in terms of performance -- and possibly battery consumption. But once the price starts edging up into the twice-as-much-as-an-Eee category, it begins to make less economic sense:

You know that apocryphal $400 laptop that everyone posts about as soon as there is any mention of the Eee? You know, the one with the 15" mid-resolution screen, 120GB+ hard drive and built-in optical drive that you can get for the same price as an Eee? Well when you can have the best of both worlds and get both that AND an Eee for the same price as the HP, why bother with the HP?

The Eee is 1/2 the weight? That makes it more likely that you have it with you more often, when you can just throw it into a bag and forget about it (fugeddaboudit -- a translation for American readers). The really useful computer is the one that you have when you need one. On the other hand, the larger computer would give you the non-cramped screen, keyboard and storage; for more stationary and limited mobile computing. For when you actually need to type for more than an occasional 20 minutes here or there.

You would actually have to compromise less if you gave yourself those two highly divergent choices at once, rather than starting with the already compromised HP -- bigger and heavier than the Eee so not as portable, but more cramped and less capable than a cheap 15" "standard" laptop. And expensive enough that you can get both of them for pretty much the same price, as the HP. As an alternative choice, I'd have to say that getting two discrete devices for the same price would be the better choice, delivering more flexibility.

When they can make a really powerful computer in that form factor that IS powerful enough to be your main computer -- and it will cost much more than this, and may not be that long in coming -- then it will be worth considering the single and expensive over the multiple and cheap.