HP Mini 2140 Netbook
Written by Lee
Last spring Hewlett-Packard gave the ultimate corporate netbook, the HP Mini- Note 2133 which was much appreciated by its fans. This year, the company offers an even better version of the netbook; the HP Mini 2140. Heavier but still the finer version of HP Mini 1000, HP Mini 2140 is upgraded in performance and features if not just the price.
The Chassis
With the conventional aluminum and magnesium carcass, spill resistant and larger keyboard, the netbook is a brilliant laptop that may be a few pounds overweight but a metal chassis and a solid appearance makes it an appropriate companion on road trips as well as at work place. Including the AC adaptor, the system weighs around 3.8lbs and measures 10.3x 6.5x 1.1 inches.
Screen and Display
The LED screen display is 10.1 inch wide and is a few pixels short of resolution usually available in most netbooks offering a resolution of 1024×576 but doesn’t really affect the quality of the image and goes unnoticed if not otherwise reminded by the Window XP pop up that the program is not running at the customary resolution. The screen is glossy and adds to the image quality through the 16:9 aspect ratio especially when watching movies like wise you can have a full screen image excluding the annoying black areas above and below the video. But for web browsing, people may want to shift to the higher resolution displays. Not only this, the keyboard is also ‘spill- resistant’ to a certain extent so the metal casing is very much protected.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Extending the key-area to the edges of the laptop, HP Mini 2140 has made typing an easier and pleasurable job. Where other netbooks like to keep their keys dainty, HP has a more practical approach. Reducing the errors in typing, the larger keys with a flat surface and the keyboard owning 92% of the size of a normal keyboard are very well built.
The keys are very closely placed but you get used to the slight alteration of the one found in HP Mini 1000 and 2133. Shift keys on the right and left, two Alt buttons and one Fn key are present with HP’s DuraKeys clear coating that keeps the keys all new and prevents their wearing out.
Making use of the bigger size of the frame, the Touchpad is stretched as a long and tapered rectangular area that has the left and right buttons of the mouse on its left and right side rather than below the touchpad, which is kind of tricky if doing a one hand job.
Giving more wrist- resting space, it gets a little annoying for those who scroll vertically or are ‘right- clickers’ However, something different and nice that wasn’t found in the HP Mini 1000 is the indicating button between the keyboard and touchpad. The button used to remain lit weather the touchpad was enabled or disabled but in HP Mini 2140, it lights up when disabled and stays dark when active.
Another selling point found in its profile is the full ExpressCard/54 slot (Lenvo S10 offers only a half sized Express Card/34 slot) which comes handy for cellular phone broadband modems, memory-card readers or TV tuners. And unlike the Viao series by Sony, HP Mini 2140 has better performance since it supports Windows XP rather than Vista. Intel’s single-core 1.6GHz Atom CPU is efficient enough to perform fundamental tasks demanded from a netbook like Web surfing, documentation, and multimedia playback, etc.
Softwares
Incorporated in the HP Mini 2140 are a host of softwares that enable a more efficient use of the laptop. The Microsoft Office (provided on 2 months trial basis) and McAfee Total Protection are already there for the primary working and security of the system respectively. However, there is no restriction if you want to install other antivirus and office programs of your own choice e.g. AVG Free, OpenOffice.org or other free apps. A special feature is a program pre installed that permits easy access to the volume control, external display, and power options with only a click of the mouse. At a 1366 x 768 pixels high resolution of the display, the Desktop Zoom feature can be applied to adjust the icon sizes, title and menu fonts.
The Webcam provided allows you to take snaps, make videos and have video chats and record audios with par excellence while being able to adjust the resolution , zoom effect, backlight option of the display, and the output format in Windows Media, BMP, and JPG, and uncompressed AVI videos.
The Drive Guard software may affect the computer’s performance but is highly recommended to prevent any data loss. There is an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 wireless option also available.
Battery Life
A 3 cell, 28WHr battery or a 6 cell, 55WHr battery (providing double run time) can be used to charge up the netbook. With 100% screen brightness and Wi-Fi in operation, the battery life is around 2hours 12minutes but with 70% brightness which is the normal range, the life extends to 2 hours 22 minutes, approximately, 26 minutes more than the HP Mini 1000.
Verdict
Cheap to buy but equally functional as the previous HP Mini Note books, HP Mini 2140 is the supreme choice for those with a class looking for a well built and well equipped laptop.
HP Mini 2140 Netbook Specifications
Manufacturer: HP
Model name: Mini 2140
CPU type: Intel Atom (Diamondville)
CPU speed: 1600 Mhz
Graphics: Intel GMA 950
OS: Comes with XP, and Vista
Display Size: 10″ 1024 X 576
RAM: 1 GB
Hard Disk: 160 GB
Keyboard: YES
Mouse Pointer: YES
Battery capacity: 28 (Wh)
Weight: 42.3 oz. / 1200g
Size: (w/h/d inches) 10.3/6.5/1.3
Size: (w/h/d mm) 261/166/33 mm
Others:
Ethernet 10/100/1000
Line-out / Headphone (3.5mm)
SD card slot
MIC-in
Wireless Interfaces,802.11b/g,802.11n,802.11a
WebCam 0.3mp
