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Despite the connotations that the title of this article undoubtedly bring, I absolutely love the HP Mini 1000 netbook I purchased around this time last year. Quite frankly, it is probably the single most used piece of technology I've bought in quite some time. For the entire time of ownership, I honestly don't recall a single day that she hasn't been fired up at least once with the typical scenario being much more often. Whether it was for 10 minutes to check e-mail real quick before work, or an hour catching up with my best buddy on IM. Sometimes I'd waste away several hours surfing websites or playing the games that would actually run on it. Despite the quad-core, 4GB RAM, 9800GT "monster" sitting in the other room, my lowly little netbook with its paltry Atom processor and laughable GMA 950 graphics chip received nearly all of my recreational PC time.
As with most relationships though, they say that if you love something you eventually have to let it go. Sadly, this is the point I've come to in my little ultra-portable computing journey.
Which brings me to my daughter who (yes, at four years old) is on the brink of getting her first PC. Call us crazy for considering the matter so early, but if you see her and how she handles our PC's, you too would realize that she is more than ready. She has favorite videos on Youtube that with very little help from us, she knows how to navigate to and find (typing URL's and spelling often included!). A good deal of her music is in digital format most easily accessible via PC. She has favorite websites that she looks at daily. She's up on PC maintenance... how to clean the screen, track pad, even "internal" stuff like Windows Update, Disk Cleanup and Defrag. She even plays the occasional flash game (stuff like Bejeweled, etc.) or an old arcade title on Gametap.
We were so sold on the idea that we actually considered getting her a netbook this past Christmas. Toys R Us was advertising a Disney themed one that sounded absolutely perfect. Specs were similar to my Mini with a very "kid friendly" interface and recognizable characters. The one flaw of course was the price. $350 was a little too much to spend, even for a Christmas present that I'm sure would get a ton of use. We then made the decision that we were going to skip this as a present and maybe do something a little later. I would "upgrade" eventually (ie; in a year or twos time) and my daughter would get my old netbook.
In reality, that's not exactly what happened. Much like Quebus himself has talked about on this site, it wasn't more than about a year into my purchase of the Mini netbook that I found myself constantly wanting more. It was such a strange twist of events, the whole thing happened in only about a weeks worth of time. Suddenly the screen started looking small-ish. I was constantly playing around with options in IE to get more screen real-estate, even going so far as to run in Full-Screen mode with no immediately visible navigation controls. It still wasn't enough.
The audio that I complained about in my review of the machine started sounding worse and worse by the day. No, nothing physical happened to the speakers, sound card, or drivers. I just began listening with a bit more critical ear. The mere 16GB of hard drive space was filling up kind of fast especially since I had put Windows 7 on the box, and was keeping me from installing some programs that I had wanted to. Finally, I began finding a greater desire to play games on this thing. Not just casual and old titles from circa 2003, but stuff like Bioshock 2, Aliens Vs. Predator, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and other recently purchased games. Even older stuff that I was sure would run ended up failing or performing terribly for one reason or another.
Fast forward to last night and a new machine is currently on order. I originally looked into the Asus 1201n that Quebus reviewed here and initially thought it was the best choice. It was much like my current netbook, but had a lot more power/gaming friendly enhancements to it. Much like my Mini did a year ago... it seemed "perfect."
Not to put the product down at all (as it still is a nice piece of hardware), but as I pondered the purchase further... it still seemed too much like my Mini to fill those requirements that made me want something different in the first place. Though a dual-core, the system still contained an Atom processor and all the limitations/restraints that go along with it. Though it sported an NVIDIA graphics card, it was still a lower end solution that couldn't handle some current games and ran others at only the lowest image quality settings. If I was going so far as to replace something I truly loved and used, it had to be a significant upgrade, not merely an update.
So in the end I went with the Alienware m11x, a pretty incredible little machine to be sure. The specs and features read more like a gaming grade laptop rather than netbook, but the ultra-portableness of the machine is what won me over. On the short list, the system sports an 11.6" screen size and weighs in around 4.5 pounds. A bit over a pound more than my Mini to be sure, but still on the small side of things. The hardware underneath is where things really get interesting though... Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, mid-range NVIDIA Geforce GT 335m graphics with 1GB dedicated GDDR3 video memory, 4GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1066Mhz, and a 250GB SATA hard drive spinning at 7200RPM. Though I ordered directly off of the Dell website, I had a chance to play with one in person beforehand. Needless to say I was sold the moment I touched it.
So now everybody wins. My daughter will be getting her first computer a week or two after I get the Alienware. I get a new system that better addresses the more that I wanted out of my netbook. As a nice concession, the HP Mini continues to stay under my watchful eye and will find a "new home" with someone who will use it as much (maybe more) than I do/did.
See... break ups don't have to be so bad after all. Although in my situation, it would probably be more appropriate to call the new relationship friends with benefits rather than a complete severing of ties.
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