HP mini 311 Questions

Hello,

I am a student looking to buy a new laptop. I've done some research and stumbled on to the hp mini 311. Ive come here to ask whether you guys know how it preforms. I was wondering if anyone that has it can tell me how it handles some of these tasks that i will be using it for:
Write some code/and compile
take notes
surf the internet(flash)
watch some movies(i hear it can do hd movies)

Also do you guys know how it handles win7 home premium?

-thank you
vladi

 

Hi Vladi, in my opinion its the best notebook below 12" screensize.

It has a a very good graphics chipset in the ION (basically an Nvidea 9400) onboard which will handle your HD movies easily.

The basic model i bought had 1 gig ram and winxp. I upgraded the ram to 3 gig and bought a slimline blu ray drive and it runs blu ray better than my dedicated BR player. You didnt mention gaming in your list but this is a real gaming netbook. It will do your other tasks mentioned no problem but I would suggest thinkning about what you want from the machine.

If you are doing college work it may be worth considering battery life. The 311 avg battery is 4-5 hours depending on usage. Other netbooks out there can get you 7-9 hours with lighter use.

The 311 in my opinion is a multimedia netbook for games and hd films. For straight up work and netsurfing I would recommend a Samsung NC model.

 

how does it handle windows xp? like surfing the internet, listening to music and multi tasking. Im not going to be running any crazy calculations on it. Ill mostly use it for making webpages and coding. The battery life is more then enough for me. What happens when you have like a bunch of programs open switching back and forth. Such as playing music and surfing the internet?

 

It handles XP very well in my opinion. Nice quick boot up (once you remove the bloatware thats preinstalled) and great for browsing and music at the same time. No issues there. I have noticed it struggles with other heavier applications at the same time. It can take a while to install a game for instance. Once installed it runs them fine though.
To be honest if I were going for a netbook right now it would be either the 311 or the new Acer Ferrari netbook. I think the 311 has better gaming performance than the Acer but that Ferrari looks like a very nice machine. May be worth comparing specs with that one and posting over in the Acer forum if anyone has any first hand experience with it.
One thing to note is in the UK the Acer is a clear £100 more than the HP. Not sure how it stacks up in the US

 

I have a 311 coming with XP (I have several programs that will only run XP and want to work with those for a while) and wonder how to get rid of that bloatware? I know how to do a clean install with Vista from an update CD (thanks to guides here!) but how would I do it with XP?

 

Im not gonna play any games on there. Im mostly gonna be using it for programing at work. Nothing crazy.

 

Good to hear it runs everything well!
I've been looking around for a small yet powerful netbook with good gaming ability as a secondary laptop to take on the road.
I have a few questions that I hope you might be able to help with.
1.On HP's website It says it has a ION LE is there any difference than a regular ION?
2.Interested in getting the the 280 ATOM is it worth it over the 270 ATOM when it comes to gaming?
3. Would it be a better gamer with XP or W7?
4.Can you list some of the games you have been able to play with this system?(just wondering if it can handle some of the newer games released)
Thanks

 

1 - Ion LE means it's only DX9 not DX10 capable - no real hardware differences as far as I'm aware
2 - I read that the n270 was better for overclocking - but remember it's still an Atom CPU - so games that are more CPU intensive may still be gimped on this system
3 - W7 home premium takes up ~1.1gb of memory running from my experience, so if RAM affected your game performance upgrading from XP might only be good if you had 2-3gb ram. But drivers for Win7 are getting better and better so I can't see why not get 2-3gb ram version with Win7 for games (light DX9 games only though)
4. Don't have this, but it should run WoW / most Source games ok and if tweaked settings you might even get things like CoD4 ok - but it's still an Atom CPU with it and it's limited to only DX9 (prob not enough power for dx10+ games anyway).

 

Ion LE can be upgraded to Ion:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/nvidia-ion-le-hack-adds-directx-10-support-raises-interesting-q/

Ion LE supported DX10 all along, it was just disabled.

 

I would go for XP for gaming purposes. There are some comments on MY HP Mini Forum where someone did some testing same games on XP and W7 and looks like 5-8 fps better on XP.
As far as games I have tested I have only really played some older games. I have run Half Life 2, Prey, Battlestations Midway, Battle For Middle Earth, Medievel 2 and they all run great. I installed Battlestations Pacific which was released this year and has pretty high specs and that runs ok on low settings and 3gb ram. Its a great little gaming machine. Great for on the go and also sat of sofa.
If you head to this thread there are lots of comments on other games and their performance:
http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=2280

 

Great thanks for the link, this is looking more and more like my next laptop purchase.
Only thing holding me back is the ASUS 1201N ION with dual core ATOM N330.
It's slightly bigger but offers dual core ATOM which is very sweet, only problem is that it's not for sale yet and I am looking to buy a ION based netbook soon.

 

Yeah when I came on here before the 311 was released there were plenty of comments about dual core atom and ION2 but to be honest I wanted the best machine right now, and the 311 fitted that bill. I did get swayed slightly by the Acer Ferrari One but I dont think it outpaces the 311 on GFX. Hope you decide on your machine and it suits your purpose. I installed Guild Wars on mine, high graphics 720p and it runs 60fps easy. The smaller screen really makes it shine