First Look: HP’s Mini 5101 ‘business class’ netbook

Few manufacturers have got the netbook religion as much as HP. While Asus created the category and continues to churn out Eee PC netbooks of every size and style, it was HP that first segmented the market into clear consumer and business lines.

Indeed, HP’s very first netbook – the sweet-looking but rather sour-tasting 2133 – took clear aim at business buyers. Its successor, the Mini 2140 remains one of our favourite netbooks, and spawned the Mini 1000 and Mini 110 consumer spin-offs.

Now HP has hit the third generation of its business-class netbooks with the Mini 5101, which goes on sale here later next month.

So what’s different this time around? Firstly, HP has stacked the menu with more options than a gourmet hamburger joint.

The $799 starter model comes with a 160GB hard drive spinning at a rapid 7,200rpm and protected by HP’s DriveGuard system (a three-axis digital accelerometer chip that shuts down the drive following a bump, shock or drop).

That drive is preloaded with Windows XP Home and equipped with 1GB of RAM, which can be lifted to the 2GB ceiling by adding an extra memory module through the no-screws-required door on the netbook’s underbelly.

$1,099 gets you a 320GB drive with Windows XP Professional or Vista Business and 2GB of RAM. An extra $190 lets you swap out the hard drive for an 80GB solid state drive, while a somewhat gulp-inducing $320 boosts this to a 128GB SSD.

Want more than 802.11n Wi-Fi? Drop another $200 onto the $1,099 model and you’ll get an inbuilt 3G 7.2Mbps HSDPA modem that runs on both the 2100MHz and 850MHz band, making it ready for any of Australia’s four 3G carriers. There’s no support for 3G at 900MHz, however, which rules out using the Mini 5101 on the regional network extensions of Optus and Vodafone.

Standard resolution for the 10.1 inch screen is 1024 x 600, but an extra $40 gets you a high-res 1366 x 768 HD panel. Likewise, $30 at order will see the four-cell battery replaced by a six-cell 55Wh slab. Given the price, those two upgrades may well fall into the ‘no-brainer’ category.

The powerplant is, as expected, Intel’s Atom N280 processor and integrated graphics. There’s also a 2.0 megapixel Webcam, although Bluetooth 2.0 is missing from the base build – a bugger if you want to use your Mini 5101 for VoIP with a wireless Bluetooth headset.


Most noticeable from the outside, however, is the MacBook-style ‘chiclet’ keyboard. It’d be hard to beat the superb 92% keyboard of the Mini 1000 and Mini 2140, but this one might do just that. HP has upsized it to 95% of the dimensions of a conventional laptop keyboard, a feat achieved by ever so slightly stretching the 5101’s footprint.

One by-product of this is that the 10.1 inch screen is now surrounded by a rather fat bezel rather than the slicker edge-to-edge glass treatment that’s been in vogue of late.

The bezel is beefiest at the top because the Mini 5101 is 1.5cm deeper than the Mini 2140 and co. This permits the Mini 5101 to adopt a more standard trackpad layout where the buttons are below the touchpad rather than either side, which has been a key trait – and a common point of criticism – for all of the Mini 5101’s predecessors.
The look of the Mini 5101 moves closer to that of HP’s ‘Probook’ family of business notebooks, with its metallic shell finished in a no-nonsense ‘boardroom black’, a matte black keyboard and a more squared-off design replacing the brushed silver and gentle curves of the Mini 2140.

Something else which HP dropped in the move from the 2140 was the ExpressCard slot, although there are still three USB 2.0 ports for plugging in an external 3G mobile broadband modem.

HP has also created a few matching accessories for the Mini 5101, including a natty cylindrical port replicator which can be mounted vertically or sit flat on your desk, with a rotating top section to orient two of the five USB 2.0 ports towards the netbook or the user, whichever is most convenient.