HP-Mini: Expensive Paper Weight?

I know there's Mac lovers and haters on here, I myself am a MacBook Pro owner but would generally say I'm indifferent towards PCs. Back in September I purchased the HP-Mini Netbook / Intel® Atom™ Processor / 10.1" Display / 1GB Memory for $200 from Best Buy, for the sole purpose of being my companion on travels. I booted it up after I purchased it, and everything seemed to be A-OK.

It recently made its full-time debut on my 2-week jaunt to South America. While it was nice having the thing in hostel dorms instead of using the shared computer, it almost wasn't worth the hassle. It locked up very frequently, firefox almost always crashed, and Wifi was so spotty in Rio it took me the better part of 20 minutes just to try to check my e-mail (between losing the signal and the browser crashing - and yes, I tried using multiple browsers). Importing pictures was slow-going as the computer would often get hung up and "Not Respond" for 2-3 minutes at a time. More than once I wanted to punt it out the window since it was taking me 5 times longer than my Mac to do the simple tasks I'd brought it along for.

Sure, it's a cheap little computer, I wouldn't have cried if someone had stolen it, I loved the size and portability, but the thing was barely usable. I'm going to chalk it up to the measly 1GB of memory, which I plan on upgrading before I attempt to take the little guy back on the road.

My friend had a Samsung netbook, which seemed to work quite a bit better. So, if you're looking at netbooks, I'd give the HP Mini a pass - or, at least, increase the memory beforehand.

though the HP mini is by no means perfect, I had a lot better experience with it.

It does need more memory, true, but all computers that use an atom processor will be about as useful.

The problem is that if you don't have a virus blocker, if you use the internet, viruses will make your computer useless in weeks.

It has one of the best keyboards on a mini notebook, and seemed to work fine for me until it got stolen. Now I use a Spanish speaking Acer because it was on sale and available, and I'm not really crippled by the Spanish keyboard at all.

Thank goodness it isn't the incredibly useless French keyboard, designed to make fast touch typing impossible, even in French, probably.

It seems about the same, really.

But then again, if you're used to a macintosh, you've been spoiled......

Definitely, upgrade to 2GB before passing judgement. (I blame Windows) Unfortunately, that's another $30-$40 before you know whether you'll be happy or not. I love my Aspire One netbook, small size is just perfect for traveling.

BTW: On mine, I uninstalled a lot of the junk that came with it.

My old ACER with XP died a week before my May trip so I picked up a new one when I reached the US (ripoff prices in CA), it came with windows7 + a lot of useless junk that I uninstalled. Not impressed with windows7, why mess with something that works like XP, but still like the ACER & would NEVER trade for the newest toy, the iPad.