Verizon Wireless’ has made a remarkable boost by bringing out their first netbook offering – the HP Mini 1151NR – is currently in the process of releasing it to the open houses. O folks, May 17 is the final launching day, so circle the date in your diary or calendar and wait ahead, until it is made public.
Surely, some people will start saying this isn’t a good commercial deal. It’s true—you’ll finish up spending between $960 and $1,440 over your 2-year contract period for data access.
To those people, we suggest buying a comparable netbook with an integrated data card ($450ish) or a comparable data-less netbook ($300ish) and a USB modem/data card off contract ($250 ish). Then pay $40 or $60 every month for data anyway.
Of course 1151NR is a stylish, capable netbook with a couple of standard features yet one problem with it is, trackpad buttons are poorly fixed. The Mini 1151NR has a keyboard that is nearly full-sized, with large keys and an extra wide layout that extends nearly to the ends of the device. That makes a big different on a small computer.
The trackpad is slightly troublesome, and the screen was a little short for our taste, but otherwise it’s a solid, well-designed machine. Verizon Wireless was also smart to add a Qualcomm Gobi chipset, which lets the netbook work on Verizon’s fast EV-DO Rev, a network at home or fast 3G HSDPA networks abroad.
Unluckily, linking to the network was a cause for pain, with some buggy, frustrating application needed to make the interlinking. Overall, Windows XP on a netbook kind of takes the fun out of it.
The HP Mini 1151NR was capable of performing any web-based task we could through at it, from streaming TV to Skype video calls to basic Web browsing, but the aging, working class OS didn’t add any excitement to this finer product category.
We would also like to see a larger HDD and maybe an extra 6 battery added in it. Finally, commercial users should take care and supervise data usage on the road, because Verizon Wireless’ limits are shallow. Price tag is USD 200.