LGR retrospective on the HP Mini 1000, one of the more popular PCs from the short-lived era of the netbook! If you could even call it an era. In hindsight, it was all a bit silly, even though the 45nm processors making it possible were quite exciting at that point in time. So join me in reviewing the Mini 1000 that I had back in 2009 (or close to it) and putting it through its paces 16 years later!
Really wish netbooks would make a return.
Man, I had one of those. And I hated every minute with it.
It was, by far, the slowest “modern” computer I ever used, and I legit do not miss the whole netbook thing with slow-ass atom CPUs and the world’s slowest hard drives.
(They probably would have been far less awful with a more modern SSD option, but well, that wasn’t a thing soooo…)
Oh yeah? When I were a lad we didn’t have netbooks with them fancy Atom chips with their la-de-da x86 ISAs.
We made do with the psion netbook.
(I didn’t have one)
I still have one!
It’s broken because it was designed by crazy people.
(The battery is required, the battery failed in such a way that it leaked and ate everything on the battery charger/temperature board, so uh, I have to find a replacement controller board and then put a new battery on it and I have to admit I just haven’t been motivated enough to try to find a non-destroyed board from a tiny production run that’s like 30 years old now.)
I still have one, too! Found for $3 at a flea market because the HDD is going bad… and I can’t find a ZIF adapter that recognizes anything I plug into it. HP = custom pinout on the ZIF ribbon?
Hah! I didn’t expect anyone to know the psion one!
I really, really wanted one as a kid, but they were quite expensive. Like, actual-real-computer expensive, if I recall correctly.
The good news is the tech pretty much ended up in the S60 Nokia phones, of which I had uh, a lot. And some of them even had normal keypads, and not one from whatever meth-induced fever dream some guy in Finland had.
I used one of these throughout uni. Was great for fitting on small “tables” in lecture halls and you could throw it in your bag without worrying about it. Speed was not its strength…
i looooved the netbooks. they were perfect for my use case
Same, shame really, had tablets not decimated that market segment they probably would have been fantastic with modern hardware lol
