Dell, HP go head to head with 10 in net/notebooks

Stephen Withers
Friday, 20 February 2009 08:54

IT Industry - Market

The Mini 10 also sports 10/100 Ethernet, a SD/SDHC/MMC/MS card reader, an HDMI connector and a multi-touch trackpad, while the Mini 2140 provides a VGA connector, an SD slot for memory cards and an Express Card/54 slot for peripherals.

If battery life is important to you, HP's option of a six-cell battery may be attractive, as it is said to offer up to 8.5 hours operation (or 10 hours with the SSD). Dell's Mini 10 comes with a three-cell battery which wouldn't last so long.

As for operating systems, the Mini 10 ships with Windows XP Home, while HP offers XP Home, Vista Home Basic, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 or FreeDOS.

Other promising features provided by HP include a clear coating applied to the keys to protect the legends (whatever happened to two-shot moulded keys?), a scratch-resistant screen cover, an accelerometer to help protect the hard drive in the event of sudden movement or shock, and a range of peripherals designed for the Mini 2140 including an external DVD burner.

Dell says an external DVD drive, an internal TV tuner, internal GPS, and a wireless broadband card will be offered as options later in the year.

Given that both models have a 10.1 in screen, you'd expect the overall dimensions to be quite similar.

The HP Mini 2140 measures 26.1 x 16.6 x 2.7 cm, while the Dell Mini 10 is slightly wider and thicker at 26.1 x 18.3 x 3.2 cm (tapering to 2.9cm at the front).

The HP is also slightly lighter with a starting weight of 1.2kg compared with 1.3kg for the Dell, but the all-up weight will depend on the options selected.

If the Mini 2140 sounds like your thing, it's available immediately, but the Mini 10 won't go on sale in Australia until sometime in the first half of March.