HP Mini-Note 2133 jumps on the Eee PC Bandwagon, aims at students
With the Asus Eee PC shredding up laptop charts (yes, apparently there are laptop charts now) and shooting to near overnight success thanks to its light weight and low price tag, other laptop manufacturers are practically falling over themselves to join in.
So it’s not really a huge surprise that HP, one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world, would want a piece of that market. This is the Mini-note 2133 (which we first wrote about here) – it weighs in at just 1.18kg, has an 8.9″, 1280 x 768 screen, runs on a VIA processor and offers either a 64GB solid state drive running SUSE Linux or Windows XP / Vista on a 160GB HDD. It is set to cost $500 for the Linux model or $600 for the Windows one.
At this price it is not directly challenging Asus for its Eee PC niche, and as CNET points out, it’s not like HP couldn’t have done this if it had really wanted. Instead the Mini-note is aimed more at students and has been designed with input from educators. Though ASUS’s diminutive machines may be popular in the mainstream tech world, it is still Dell and Apple that are ruling the student market and HP hopes that a cheaper, lightweight offering will help its cause.
Cheap is certainly a good start. Might I also suggest a ‘free beer’ campaign to go with it.
HP (via CNN Money)
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