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HP has just formally announced the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and we are already seeing quite a few hands on reviews coming in. Judging from what is being written the Mini-Note is going to be a solid force in the UMPC market. As we mentioned earlier today, the Mini-Note PC will be priced (starting) at $499 and be available later in the month.

Lets get on with the reviews…

Notebooks.com:
Aside from a few minor issues the review was overall very positive. The few cons that were noted were in regards to the heat and fan noise, and that the display did not tilt back far enough. As someone considering the Mini-Note as a replacement for an upgrade to the Eee or Cloudbook that may be an issue depending on your style of use, for those who want an ultra-portable to sit back on the couch and surf, the display could become an issue, or more accurately a pain in the neck.

“The HP 2133 blew away my expectations and I’d be comfortable relying on the HP 2133 while on short business trips or on vacation.”

“The HP 2133 Mini-Note is not the cheapest compact notebook you can buy, but it is the best value hands down. While other notebooks in this category look and feel like they should be sold at Toys R Us, the 2133 comes across as a serious business computer at a price that’s unbelievable.”

jkOnTheRun:
Once again it seems to be an overall positive review, something to note is that they mentioned Vista Business ran well without any performance issues but pointed out they had a notebook with 2GB of RAM and would not feel as confident with only 1GB. Otherwise the keyboard had “good travel depth” while the keyboard and trackpad were “delightful.”

“I think HP has a real winner on their hands with the Mini.  I find it to be a capable notebook computer that is highly portable and the build quality is outstanding.  I also find it impressive that the total price swing from entry level (with Linux) to fully loaded is only $250 and there is no question in my mind that the Mini is the best built UMPC at this price level.”

PCMag.com:
In what seems to be a pattern forming, PC Mag also gave the Mini-Note and overall positive review, giving it a 4-out-of-5 or Very Good rating. They pointed out the HP 2133 offers an “Apple-like design” which comes (at least in my oninion) as a compliment. They also had similar comments as the other reviews, noting that the keyboard was comfortable and that the 7,200 RPM hard drive was very hot. They concluded with a unique take as their Bottom Line:

“The HP Mini-Note is not quite an Eee PC killer, but it’s a super-sleek ultra-mobile PC that will sell out as quickly as the Eee PC did.”

NotebookReview.com:
In keeping with the patterns we have seen so far NotebookReview had some similar likes and dislikes about the Mini-Note PC. They noted the keyboard quality, build quality, multiple configuration options and mentioned that it was the “most attractive 8.9-inch notebook we’ve ever seen.” Their cons once again focused on the Via processor and the fact that Vista may require a little too much power, however they also disliked the placement of the touchpad buttons and felt the screen was a little too reflective.

“The HP 2133 Mini-Note is one of the most impressive subnotebooks we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the amazing design and solid range of features are diminished by a sub-par processor and a price tag that places this notebook dangerously close to far superior 12-inch notebooks such as the HP tx2000.

HP managed to create the single most impressive ultraportable notebook on the market … and then decided to put a lackluster processor inside.

Despite the poor processor performance, the HP 2133 Mini-Note is a remarkably solid machine that could be a perfect fit for students, teachers, or mobile business professionals. If HP decides to replace the VIA processors with the new Intel Atom processors or alternative processors from Intel, the Mini-Note would become the undisputed champion of the subnotebook market.”

And finally a nice video walkthrough, and possibly what convinced my to seriously consider picking up a Mini-Note of my own, courtesy of Notebooks.com:

Product [HP]

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Good news to owners of the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive! No, it’s not a reversal of fortune. That’d just be silly. As a way of adding insult to injury, Major Nelson has announced that the attachable drive is due for one final update. The bonuses include:

• Secret Blu-ray compatibility
• Compatibility improvements with certain titles
• Additional support for network features

Wal-Mart shoppers who got their hd dvd drives as early as November 1st get a little more of a reprieve. The retailer announced today that it’s honoring returns on the discontinued players — no packaging necessary!

Love your hip-hop? Then you gotta get this limited edition Def Jam W910i Walkman mobile phone from Sony Ericsson. The very exclusive and the very limited edition phone brings to you all that is so good and treasured about the music label including some customized bling on the phone’s sleek body and some bootilicous babes and dude strutting their stuff in the hot pre-loaded music vids. The phone comes in white and gold handsets with MPS 75 speakers in black providing you with the thump. Also featuring a media player, high-speed web browsing, an FM radio, 2MP camera apart from other dedicated W910i applications, the phone comes fully laced with exclusive Def Jam content including music videos and audio play lists including numbers from artists like Rick Ross, Ne-Yo, Mariah, Rihanna and Janet Jackson. The price and availability of this exclusive set is as yet not available, but with the purchase of each one of these you also get a chance to win a one-off customized handset designed by Def Jam!
[ Source ]

Not interested in the Asus Eee PC or the HP 2133 Mini-Note, but still looking for a low-cost sub-notebook from a major manufacturer? It looks like if you can hold out for a bit longer, then a Dell might be an option.

Mercury News is reporting that Dell will produce a sub-notebook, along the lines of the HP 2133. In a short quote to the paper Dell stated, “We do see opportunities for very interesting products that are smaller and lighter and address the more mobile users in a very cost-effective way.” He went on to note that we should see something within the next two quarters.

This report confirms earlier rumors about Dell coming out with an ultra low-cost PC (ULCPC), which was thought-provoking news at the time. The announcement and the April 15th release of the HP 2133 was certainly a major factor in Dell’s decision, but the success of Asus in this newly emerged category as well as the entrance of companies like Everex, MSI, and even Intel (with the Classmate) into the category means competition will be intense.

No word on the price, date, or specs yet, but they should be quite competitive. Aside from the price, the biggest factor is if Dell will opt for Intel’s Atom processor line, but this will depend heavily on just how soon they begin manufacturing the systems.

via Daily Tech

We here in the Gadget Lab are pleased as punch that the Webby Awards have bestowed upon us the title of "Honoree" for the 2008 Webbies. Awesome! Our fellow Wired blog Epicenter is also a Webby Honoree for business blogs.

Not only that, but three other Wired blogs have scooped up nominations. Compiler is a Webby Award nominee, which means it’s in the running for the big prize — that cool spiral sculpture thingy. Danger Room and Game|Life are also in the running.

Compiler editor Michael Calore is already trying to figure out what his five-word speech will be if he wins, so help him out: Vote for Compiler in the People’s Voice Webby Awards. (Free registration required, and you can only vote once.)

Other Wired nominations in the Webbies include:

Copywriting:
Wired.com

Home / Welcome Page:
Wired.com

News:
Wired.com

Pinnacle Systems has launched two new PC TV Tuners – the PCTV HD Stick and the PCTV HD Stick Pro. Both TV Tuners provide free digital HD and SD TV over-the-air plus unencrypted digital cable through ClearQAM channels.

For $69.99, the PCTV HD Stick will give you up to 1080i resolution digital HD TV goodness as well as an analog and digital TV tuner. The PCTV HD Stick also includes the TV Pro software bundle for PVR capabilities to easily watch, time shift or record SD and HD TV programs, full-screen and scalable viewing modes and a guide for locating programs and scheduling recordings.

While for $99.99 the PCTV HD Stick Pro will give you all these features plus stereo sound for digital and analog TV, stereo FM radio reception, capture video signal from cable/satellite set-top box or camcorder, support for DivX format and trial version of MPEG-4 support for viewing your recorded video on a PSP or ipod. Both TV tuners are about the same size as your ordinary flash drive and both are plug-and-play compatible, so you just have to plug them in and begin to enjoy.

The PCTV HD Stick and PCTV HD Stick Pro are currently available and retail for $69.99 and $99.99 respectively. Certainly not too much of a price for the HD TV viewing pleasure that you’re going to get if you buy any of the two products.

Product [Pinnacle PCTV HD Stick] Read [CNN Money]

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HP has officially launched their UMPC offering, the 2133 Mini-Note PC. Overall the Mini-Note seems to be a solid offering that should offer some competition to the lately crowded UMPC market, however HP is offering the 2133 with a push towards the education market.

The Mini-Note PC will feature an 8.9-inch display with a 1280 x 768 resolution and will have a few options for configuration depending on your needs. The Mini-Note PC is powered by your choice of a 1.0GHz, 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz Via C7-M processor with RAM ranging from 512MB on the low-end to 2GB on the high-end. Storage options include a 4GB SSD, 120GB 7,200RPM hard drive or a 160GB 5,400 RPM hard drive. And just like the power and performance options the Mini-Note PC also offers a few options for an operating system which include Windows Vista Home, Windows Vista Business or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.

Even with configuration options aside, the ultra-portable will include HP DuraKeys which offers protection for the keyboard, HP 3D DriveGuard which helps to protect against sudden movements or being dropped, a scratch-resistant display and an anodized aluminum shell.

The Mini-Note PC will be available later this month and will be priced from $499 and up depending on configuration.

Read [Business Wire]

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It can write, it can play music–it’s a dual purpose pen ensuring you have a pen with your music player in case you need it; and vice versa.

The MOQ MP3 pen is, as implied by its name, is an mp3 player and ballpen in one. It even offers 1GB storage for songs, an FM tuner, and more impressively, a voice recorder so you can spy on anyone anytime you like. You can scribble while playing music–just make sure you don’t do that inside a classroom or it might get confiscated and your teacher gets all the fun. It cimes with an earphone jack, a built-in mic, rubber grip, and USB 2.0 connection. Encased in metal with a rubber grip, this MP3 pen features a four-button control to make your life a lot easier. It’s now available in Chinavasion for approximately ₤13.

HTC Shift

Ultra-mobile PCs are the awkward middle children of gadgets. They’re constantly trying to assume the notable attributes of their older and younger siblings, but almost always come up short. On one hand, these little dudes aspire to have a laptop’s computational power and ease of use, yet they also endeavor to be diminutive and highly portable, like a smartphone. Unfortunately, the end result is more often than not some ungodly mishmash of half-measures and workarounds, none of which comes close to matching the experience on either end of the spectrum. And, yes, like middle children, they also tend to get ignored and neglected.

HTC’s latest UMPC, the Shift, is no exception. It comes bound in an annoying leather case that smacks of smarmy corporate importance. Strangely, you’re unable to remove this case, making the Shift awkward to use, when you’re, you know, mobile. Speaking of mobility, the Shift weights a little more than 2 pounds — a tad heavier than most UMPCs out there — and sports a slide-out, 7-inch touchscreen. This screen can also be tilted upward, if you want to look (and feel) like a ridiculous giant typing on a teeny, tiny laptop.

Like a number of other UMPCs, the Shift also hides a painfully inadequate QWERTY keyboard below its screen, one that almost seems like it was purposefully engineered to be utterly useless. It’s too large for thumb typing and too small to use like a normal keyboard. In the end, you’re left idiotically pecking away at individual keys and pining for a laptop’s bountiful keyboard real estate. Sure, the Shift also happens to be a touchscreen device, and thankfully you can do a good deal of navigating using just your finger or the included stylus. But for a device that purports to be some sort of all-in-one answer to your busy mobile lifestyle, this keyboard is not even close to acceptable.

If you feel like paying the $1,500 that HTC is demanding for the Shift, you’ll get a copy of Vista Business, as well as Microsoft’s Origami Experience software. Surprisingly, this — along with the device’s built-in CDMA radio (which lets you hop on Sprint’s data network when there’s no WiFi available) — was really one of the only useful features on the Shift. Origami basically functions like a touchscreen-enabled version of Windows Media Center and you can quickly call up your browser, videos, music, pictures and RSS feeds with relative ease.

Where battery life is concerned, we managed to squeeze a little more than two hours doing our normal web-browsing and video-gazing routine. The tablet comes with 1GB of memory, a 40GB hard drive and Intel’s A110 800-MHz processor. While this is the same chip other UMPCs like Samsung’s Q1 Ultra use, the Shift’s overall performance skews a bit to the pokey end of the spectrum.

Why companies continue to invest millions to develop these things is beyond us — especially when you can now get something like the Asus Eee PC for a fraction of the cost. Indeed, as smartphones get smarter and more powerful, and ultra-mobile laptops become more gaunt and nimble, UMPC makers should realize they need a way to iron out these issues and stop throwing money away. — Bryan Gardiner

WIRED Built-in CDMA WWAN radio, which lets you access Sprint’s data network when out of WiFi range.  Microsoft Origami software offers a decent touchscreen experience.

TIRED Truly horrendous keyboard makes typing anything but short burst messages out of the question. Performance slower than a tortoise full of rigor mortis. No ethernet jack. One USB port. Wrapped in tacky leather. Way overpriced.

$1500 (as tested), htc.com

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

  The Twitter Bird                                                    The Shuttle KPC Bird                   

We were poking around the Internet looking for a cool new mini computer when we ran into KPC’s Shuttle PC, and were pleased to find an affordable Foresight Linux kit with some style.

But almost immediately, we noticed something weird about it. What the heck is a Twitter graphic doing on a Shuttle case? If you look at them closely, you can see that the curliques are *identical* and the rest of it screams ’simple, sparse bird design with colorful patterns eliciting gentle feelings.’

We’re not crazy right? Perhaps it’s just a secret tribute. Concise micro blogging and simple Linux machines do come from the same family tree.

But you know what they say: Birds of a feather fly together, unless one of them mimics the other, who is then forced to start suing for its copyrights. Wings will be viciously flapped, blood will be spilled, and one of them will die. Or not. As long as they don’t drag Linux Tux into it, it’ll all turn out ok.

Apart from the design of the case, the PC seems like a good deal, with the aforementioned Linux (and there’s a Vista option, yes!), an 80GB Hard Drive (with a free upgrade to 160GB for the $300 SLK-4500), full 5.1 Channel HD Audio, all over an Intel Core 2 Duo.