It’s one thing to see the Mini-Note on a website or magazine.  It’s another thing to hold it in your hand, fondle the rounded edges, tap on the excellently designed keyboard, and think of how this seems to be the machine that I could really bring with me all over the place.  The model I”m eying is the one with the Linux preload.  It’s not available in Singapore yet, but even if it were, I plan to wait a little so that I can get a 128G solid state drive into the HDD bay.  By the time these drives are available, they should be offering better performance (battery drain and speed) than the current crop of 64G drives and likely for not much more $$.  The HP Linux model ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise desktop 10.  The good thing about going with the preload is that the wireless LAN drivers should be nicely setup and working.  The bad thing is that I won’t be needing some of what Novell has put into the OS – Active Directory support, for example.  I’d rather have Ubuntu on the system – it’s a lot more familiar, and I like how the updates are regular and reliable.

So my dream configuration will be easy to carry around and power efficient.  I’ll stay with the standard battery for size and weight reasons and have no fear of head smack and HDD media damage thanks to the solid state drive.  I feel safe enough to run Ubuntu without Antivirus software.  The machine would follow me everywhere, and I’d use it to keep notes and write whenever inspiration strikes.  Suspect I’ll be making good use of Google Docs and Gears.  Gears will allow me to write offline.  Docs will allow me to access the articles from any other PC or Mac with network access. 

Linux Journal has a rather eager video review of the Mini-Note by Shawn Powers: