HP Mini-Note vs. Eee PC vs 2Go PC: WPM Fight!
“Based on the average words per minute among our contestants, the HP Mini-Note easily conquered the Eee PC and the 2Go PC. Our typists produced an average of 53.25 wpm on the Mini-Note, despite concerns about its lack of tactile feedback. The 92% full size keyboard certainly provided the advantage over the child-sized keys on the Eee PC and the 2Go PC. Our traditional touch typists, ESC Artist and Key Crusher, found the extra real estate on the Mini-Note to be vital to their success.”
I’m in the market for a small, cheap laptop; picking between the nine-inch Eee and the HP is going to be a tough one.
Charlie,
That’s probably true for most people. I’m actually more a fan of subnotebooks for their size rather than their weight: I’m annoyed by bulky laptop bags, but my XO fits easily into my 10″-wide satchel.
I haven’t put it to a huge amount of use yet, but I picked up the folding keyboard from Matias for use with my XO. Why use tiny keys when a full-size can fit into the space of two paperbacks?
Ok, this was lame. There’s something to be said for getting familiar with the keyboard before you start running timed tests on it. Seriously, those numbers would have been a lot closer together if people had looked to find the punctuation beforehand. How much time was lost to “Where’s the apostrophe?”
At any rate, I’d really like to get a good state-of-the-union on the ultra-portables.
The 8.9″-screen Eee should be out in a couple weeks, and I’m really considering buying one. I can live with the small keys. It’s not like I’m going to be writing my great american novel on it.
It’s really down to the physical key size.
Some of these subnotebooks (the Eee 701 and Eee 901, the Kohjinsha machines, and so on) use an 80% size keyboard. The HP mini-Note, like a lot of other notebooks (the Sony Vaio TX series, IIRC) use a 92% size keyboard.
I’ve got adult male medium-to-large fingers, and they’re just too fat for the 80% keyboards — if I hit one key dead-centre, my finger will be touching the edge of a neighbouring keycap, and if I’m off by a millimetre it’ll trigger a spurious keypress. I can type on such a keyboard, but it’s fatiguing and slow because I’ve got to be more accurate.
In contrast, I’m generally okay on 92%-scale keyboards (I haven’t tried the mini-Note, but I’ve used others over the years). It’s small but the keys are large enough that as long as I’m reasonably careful I don’t accidentally press two at once.
So: if you’ve got small hands the Eee will probably work fine for you. But if you’ve got big hands (and especially if you’ve got high-calibre fingertips) you will probably want the HP mini-Note.
PS: Cnoocy, the whole point of a subnotebook is that it doesn’t weigh as much as a normal laptop. By the time you add the 800-gram weight of the Matias keyboard to an Eee, you’re pushing close to 2Kg. Add a travel mouse as well (you’ll need it, to go with the keyboard) and you’ve just blown the weight budget — might as well buy an entry-level Dell.
Speaking of entry-level Dells (thanks, SAM) I’ve actually started carrying my old B130 more in the hopes that something will befall it and I’ll be forced to look at one of these machines as a replacement.