Cheap Mini Laptops – Are they useful for everyone?

In the recent months you must have noticed a great hype about small inexpensive laptops. These small laptops are extremely good looking machines being sold on rock bottom prices are tempting a great number of people to get their hands on these beautiful little machines.

In this post I would like to draw your attention to the basics of these notebooks and let you decide for yourself if they offer any real value to your goal of owning a mini laptop.

HP Mini Note

As you might wonder why these laptops are now being sold for prices under £500 and previously the ultra portable laptops were being sold on premium prices; well above £800. I would like to tell you that those ultra portable laptops are still available and still being sold on hefty price tags to the rich and business users. So basically we are talking about two entirely different breeds of laptops which offer different benefits and features that we simply can not compare.

Packard bell Easynote

What are mini laptops then?

The entire concept of mini laptops emerged when processor manufacturers started producing a new cheap breed of processors such as the Intel Atom processor use much less power than conventional laptop processors. One of the first models that really made everyone talking about mini laptops was the Asus’s Eee PC. The original Asus’s Eee PC 701 was a major success for Asus and was sold under £220. Most of the mini laptop manufacturers are using Intel Atom processors due to it’s low power consumption and capability to provide enough processing to carry out every day tasks.

Asus Eee PC

Below are some of the leading names trying to position themselves in this niche sector:

HP Mini Note – Comes with Windows Vista
Packard Bell Easynote – Comes with Windows XP
Acer Aspire One – Comes with Linux Ubuntu & Windows XP
Asus Eee PC – Comes with Linux Ubuntu & Windows Xp

Limitations

So regardless of the brand you choose for your mini laptop you can expect almost the same processing power. The good thing about mini laptops is their capacity to get you through your daily computing needs such as surfing the net, checking emails, and creating documents.

The recent versions of mini laptops now run on 1024X600 pixels compared to the old models which were only capable of delivering a 800X480. You simply can not expect a mini laptop to run on a higher screen resolution due to the low processing power.

In order to keep the weight low without using sophisticated technology as the expensive ultra portable laptops, the mini laptops have a very limited hard disk storage. Most mini laptops use ordinary hard drives with smaller storage capacity and the cheaper models such as the Acer Aspire One uses a hard disk similar to USB memory stick.

If you like installing un-installing softwares, burn your own music CDs then you just can’t do that anymore on the mini laptops as these don’t have a DVD or CD drive.

Conclusion

Mini laptops are a perfect solution for people looking to get themselves a basic light weight laptop which can allow them to perform everyday tasks. But if you require a laptop to replace your desktop then you should consider buying yourself a normal laptop rather than a mini laptop.