HP isn't short of ultra-portable PCs at CES 2010, and in addition to a prototype smartbook and a premium touchscreen netbook, it's also showing off the logical successor to its popular Mini 110 in the form of the familiar-looking Mini 220.
The 10.1in system, pictured below and available in Black Crystal, Silver Crystal, Pacific Blue or Sonoma Red Imprint finishes, utilises a familiar formula and throws in a touch of HP quality.
Our brief hands-on found build quality to be excellent, and the keyboard is in our opinion well spaced and better than most of the competition in the netbook form factor.
Inside, HP has refreshed the Mini with Intel's 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, integrated Intel graphics and up to 320GB of storage. A Broadcom HD media accelerator is available as an optional extra, as is GPS, but HP has thrown in a couple of nice touches as standard - including a gesture-based trackpad with integrated buttons, and HP's instant-on QuickWeb operating system which features in addition to Windows 7 Starter.
So far so good for the $329 system, but our one major qualm would be the unit's optional six-cell battery - which protrudes horribly from the rear of the system. We appreciate the "more than nine hours of battery life" on offer, but we'd liked to have seen HP squeeze the six-cell battery into the body itself, ala Dell's revamped Inspiron Mini 10.
