HP2133 Mini-Note PC

I purchased the HP Mini notebook shortly after it came out, summer of 2008, with 2GB RAM, 120GB HD and Window Vista Business. As an independent software developer/consultant I needed this mini as my “portable” computer when traveling or on client sites.

Out of the box, Vista was terribly slow. The processor on this system isn’t the fastest and it showed with Vista. But after letting it run and install all of the Vista updates, the performance began to improve, most significantly after Vista SP1.

I then made some serious adjustments to turn off the Vista bling such as changing the display appearance to Vista Basic, rather than Aero, which turns off all of the window shadows, transparent windows, etc. Then I turned off the sidebar… nope, don’t need to watch the weather or stocks on my desktop. That act alone releases resources like you can’t believe.

Then I invested in a 4GB high-speed SD card, plugged it into the SD slot and let Vista make it a 3-GB Memory Boost (Cache). I just leave that plugged in all of the time. I also changed the size of the swap file to 3 GB, instead of the just-under 2GB default size. That’s an old Windows 3.1 trick for those of you born after 1985!

What did all of this do? Well, I’m running Windows Office 2003 Pro, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, which is my development environment and my main activity on the system, and also Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Is it as fast as my dual-core XP machine on my desk? No, but for mobility, very acceptable. And remarkably stable.

The 92%-size keyboard is top shelf and the screen is amazingly clear. I highly recommend this mini-notebook to anyone who’s on the road or just wants a machine with a small footprint.

Good review, I´ve tested this mini-notebook as well. Because of its relatively big keys, the keyboard is pleasurable to write. The only thing I dislike is the display. It could be a little bigger.