Seven Days with the HP Mini Note: Day 3

Author: J. Angelo Category: Uncategorized

Monday
Jul 28, 2008

More observations today. I’ve updated Windows Vista with the latest online updates (which include updated drivers for the graphics chipset) and it still seems to boot up slowly. It takes about 2 minutes from power-on to usable state. One minute from cold boot to login screen, and then another minute or so for startup settings and programs to load. I don’t think it’s Vista per se, because my Presario b1200 loads up Vista in under a minute.

On a plus side, though, the Mini note seems to consume very little power when in standby mode. And resume from standby state is also quick–quicker than on my other laptops even. So this could compensate for the long cold boot time. You can just put it to standby, and slip it into your bag (or sleeve, or whatever) and wake it up, for on the go computing.

Still, the system feels sluggish overall. I usually hand the Mini Note over to my wife when she needs to do some quick browsing, and she complains about the speed!

Next task: I’ll be installing a copy of Windows XP, to see if that helps in the speed department. I’ve been reading reports that the Mini Note does very well on XP in terms of bootup time and responsiveness.

I’ll report on the results as soon as I finish the install process.

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