I purchased a new HP Mini 210 netbook from Sam’s Club. I have a limited need for a windows system and think this might work. Its been awhile since I set up a new PC and I forgot the pain. This system came with Windows 7 Starter. So my first action was to upgrade to Professional. Next was virus protection, and ESET’s nod32 is my choice. Cleaning all the unwanted junk took some time. Then installing Office 2007. Finally, I created a set of restore disks, backed up HD to an external drive and created an emergency recover disk. I am so spoiled… non of this is required with the Apple Mac.
The HP Mini 210 is definitely an improvement over my previous HP netbook. Centering the touch pad makes an improved typing experience. Windows 7 is a big improvement over XP. The keyboard is improved and the system seems much lighter. Its still underpowered with only a 1.66 GHz Atom processor. Perhaps upping memory to 2 GB will help. The system has only a three cell battery with 5 hr life. In spite of its shortcomings I like the system for light work and portability. I may need to invest in a 6 cell battery for a longer life.
This post is via Windows Live Writer… its great. Puts the fun back into blogging.
Ramblings of an old computer engineer/developer 