Digital Home Thoughts: UMPC Portal's Long-Term Impressions of the HP Mini Mi

"It has definitely been an interesting testing experience with the Mini 1000 MIE. The netbook, as you have probably read, runs a custom Ubuntu interface designed by HP. They call it the Mobile Internet Edition of the Mini 1000. I am anything but a Linux pro, so I approached this as a newcomer to Linux. Luckily, HP is marketing the Mini 1000 MIE to less experienced computer users and not Linux pros. I gave you my initial software impressions not too long ago, but I'm ready to give you some more detailed information."

I've been using the Mini Mi for a couple of weeks now, and I have mixed feelings about it, some of which are echoed in this article. It's definitely a slick interface, but underneath it's still Linux, which isn't the most usable operating system in the world. I'm continuing my tests, and will probably do a video review of what HP has done with the Mobile Internet Edition software. One of the issues I've seen, mentioned in this article, is performance. The "common wisdom" is that Windows is bloated and slow, while Linux is lean and fast. You'd never know that using the HP Mini Mi - there are screen redraw issues galore, and a general feeling of sluggish performance - and this is with 2 GB of RAM installed. Now it may be that the target market for the Mini Mi - general consumers who want an Internet-focused device - might not notice these issues, but I can't shake the feeling that the software wasn't designed for the hardware.