Review: HP Mini 1010NR

About a month ago I picked up an HP Mini 1010NR.  This netbook has been serving me pretty well over the last month.

The Specs:

1.6 Ghz N270 Intel Atom
512MB of Ram
8gb SSD drive

This is a pretty standard setup and I’ll get more into some of the other hardware in a second.

The laptop is pretty powerful, the only thing lacking in my case is the RAM but that’s fairly easy to upgrade.

It’s keyboard is a little cramped but not nearly as bad as some that I’ve played with at the local Buy More

As soon as I got it I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it and that was a really good decision. The 1010NR runs it fast even with only 512MB of RAM and it detected all the hardware flawlessly. The webcam worked out of the box, the sound, even my USB headset was detected correctly by the Pulse audio server.

There is a strange button by the tack pad that disabled it when you press the button. I think this is because HP assumed the the Mini’s layout is so cramped that you might accidentally hit the mouse when you’re typing but I leave the track pad enabled all the time and I haven’t run into this issue yet.

Ubuntu Remix also seems to work ok with the sleep and hibernate functions but sometimes when you open the lid from a suspend it will shut off or resuspend for some reason. Not a huge deal, as you just resume it with the power button and things are normal again. This happens about 20% of the time.

My biggest gripe at the moment is the wifi card.  The card is a Broadcom BCM4312b/g now most people won’t care about this but this card does not seem to support monitor mode. So if you expect to use the HP Mini 1010NR for wifi network diagnostics or war driving you’re probably out of luck for a little bit.

Some people might be able to get it working. I’ve read that it might be possible. I believe there are two versions of the BCM4312, one that is a/b/g and one that is b/g. My HP Mini 1010NR came with the b/g version so I think it has limited support for some features. If you can get Monitor mode working with this card let me know how you did it!

The battery life is par with other laptops and netbooks. I get about 2-3 hours depending on usage.  The screen can be very bright which is nice to look at but it drains the battery fast if it’s all the way up.

Over all this is a pretty decent netbook if you can get it for super cheap. There are some things I would like to see like an illuminated keyboard and bluetooth(option mine doesn’t have).