Heavy price-cutting and a $100 rebate could be signs that a new (and possibly Atom-powered) version of the 2133 Mini-Note is close at hand.
Is HP looking to clear the decks of its first-gen 2133 mini-note?
The company’s debutante netbook, lauded for its design and professional-grade features but suffering from an underpowered CPU, woeful battery life and overheating now qualifies for a $100 rebate as part of HP’s ‘Cash Back Blizzard’ promotion (which runs until October 31 and also covers a range of conventional notebooks and desktops).
That might not mean much in itself, however we’re seeing some welcome sticker-slashing activity at the retail level. Harris Technology last week ran a ‘blink and you miss it’ two-day sale which saw the 2GB version of the 2133 offered for $799 instead of the $899 rrp.
Also quite appealing, and still available, is the $645 deal from Sydney-based etailer
OnLine Computer. Admittedly this is for the down-spec model with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive, but toss in HP’s own $100 rebate and you’re looking at $545 for what’s a pretty impressive package. Of course, you'd rally want to boost the RAM to 2GB and scrubbed the preinstalled Vista Busines Edition for a pared-down install of Windows XP, especially one trimmed for a minimum active memory footprint with the like of
nLite.
Lurking behind the scenes of this discounting, and just over the horizon in HP’s Palo Alto skunkworks, may be a successor to the 2133 which is tipped to adopt Intel’s Atom netbook powerplant instead of the current VIA C7-M processor.
The Atom was still in development at the time HP designed the 2133, making VIA’s C7-M the only option. In the months followed, however, the Atom was not only released but has become the chip of choice for every netbook manufacturer due to its combination of surprisingly peppy performance, low power drain and subsequently low thermals.
HP has already admitted it’s cooking up a
second mini-note model to slide into the low-cost segment of the netbook market for release later this year, while the 2133 (or its successor) retains the high ground of the premium business-minded market.