We saw it this weekend for a fleeting moment, but thankfully one handy reader sent us copies of the product page for HP's Photosmart eStation C510, which we can now confirm is the Zeus / Zeen printer and detachable tablet combination we caught wind of back in early August -- and we've got some more details. Bad news first: as of a month ago, the Gmail app was missing and there was no support for Android Market, meaning the Zeen might not be an official "with Google" Android tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab. (The product page conspicuously lacks any mention of the OS, so we're thinking Android might simply be the hidden-away base layer for the TouchSmart UI, making this thing super boring.) It does have the default Android browser and at least some custom apps for printing pictures from Facebook, Yahoo, and Snapfish preloaded, but we don't know about anything else. Major bummer, but we're told it shouldn't be too hard for the community at large to root the sucker. Beta testing begins this month, so that all might change before the projected September 20th release. Here's what else we know so far:
The Zeen is a capacitive tablet running HP's TouchSmart skin on top of Android 2.1 -- it won't get shifted to webOS, and it's not clear if it'll get upped to Froyo before launch given the development time required. It has capacitive touch buttons, an SD card slot, video support, and at least some prototypes have cameras with a special webcam app installed.
We're told TouchSmart will be locked in, but we don't know how deep that'll go -- right now the standard Android homescreen is still accessible. That's supposedly going away, so don't get your hopes up for any native Gmail / Angry Birds use.
E-reading is a major focus, and the Zeen has "significant" integration with the Barnes & Noble Nook bookstore and ecosystem. Makes sense, as the Nook itself is based on Android, and being able to print e-books from the Zeen would be a huge differentiator -- and a great way for HP to sell more ink.
The touchscreen is apparently not very accurate at all, and we're told the overall experience is far less satisfying than a competent Android phone. Don't expect this to replace your Droid Incredible for all at-home use.
The Zeen will come in two configurations: a $399 bundle with a new printer called Zeus and as a standalone unit for an unknown price. The Zeus has its own "basic" control setup, but when the Zeen is docked it provides a rich interface to the printing functions -- presumably a web-connected interface like the one HP's been moving towards with other printers. (Note: the product page listed $399.99 but provided no indication what price the Zeen might go for solo.)
Ship date is an estimated September 20th but due to some testing issues this may be pushed back.
Until HP comes clean and inks out the details for all the world to see, check out the product page in pictorial format below.
It doesn't take much for a photovoltaic cell to not work quite as well as it used to. Sure, a big hail storm or the like will do a number on your megabucks rooftop installation, but the sun itself, the very thing those cells are designed to capture, gradually damages their internals, reducing efficiency. The fix, according to a team at MIT, is self-assembling (and therefore self-repairing) solar cells made up of a synthetic molecular soup containing phospholipids that, when mixed with a solution, attach themselves to a series of carbon nanotubes for alignment. Other molecules that react with light then attach to the phospholipids and, with a little illumination, start firing out electrons like mad. After a few hours of solar pummeling the whole thing can be broken down and automatically re-created, returning efficiency to maximum. Overall efficiency of the system is extremely low currently, thanks to a low concentration of those photon-catching structures, but individually they capture about 40 percent of the light's energy, meaning a higher concentration could make for very hearty soup indeed.
There are plenty of QWERTY remotes out there, trying to be all fancy and make operating your TV more like operating a computer. They think they're so clever, but they've all overlooked one important point: you're dead sexy. Do they really expect you to rock a remote that any old ugly person could buy at Sears and point at their more-than-an-inch-thick LCD? Philips understands, and its Home Control division is launching the Dual remote just for you. It's a pretty simple execution, with a minimal remote on one side and the full QWERTY on the flip. It's a little hard to tell from the presser, but it sounds like there's an optical track pad hidden somewhere on here as well. We also don't have any mention of release date or price, but do details like that really matter? No, they don't. Because this remote's sexy. And you're sexy. Problem = solved.
As you're probably well aware, the Wintermute-like intelligence known as Google has designs on your television. Not only is Samsung contemplating Android for its sets, but Eric Schmidt has stated that its Google TV service is on track for launch this autumn (as a beta, undoubtedly). Finally, Maps on your plasma! Unfortunately Samsung's plans are far less certain, with company President Yoon Boo Keun offering little more than a "[w]e will have to see, but we are reviewing," when asked whether the OS will make a suitable platform for couch potatoes the world o'er. According to Yoon, about half of the company's 3-D TVs rock web browsers, a figure that will only increase over the next couple years. We only hope that if they do go with Android, the implementation is better than that of some of their handsets.
Oh, sure -- we've seen an Xbox 360 enclosure stuffed with x86 innards, but we can't say we've ever seen anything quite like this. Gaming upstart Origin PC has just shattered every preconceived notion about its potential with the Big O, an appropriately titled luxury machine that combines a liquid-cooled gaming PC with a liquid-cooled Xbox 360 Slim. In one box. A pair of configurations are available, with both of 'em rigged up to run the PC and Xbox concurrently. In other words, these bad boys can actually crunch SETI@home data while you explore the vastness of Halo: Reach. The $7,669 build includes an overclocked 4.0GHz Core i7-930 CPU, Rampage III Extreme mobo, twin NVIDIA GTX480 graphics cards, 6GB of Corsair memory, a 1,500 watt power support, 12x Pioneer Blu-ray burner, two 50GB OCZ SSDs wired up as a boot drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, a liquid-cooled Xbox 360 and bragging rights the size of Texas Alaska. For those still unsatisfied, there's a $16,999 version that's frankly too lust-worthy to spell out here (but is in the gallery below). Hit the source link if you're feeling ambitious, but don't blame us for blowing your kid's college fund in one fell swoop.
The HP Mini 5103 is the latest business-class netbook from Hewlett Packard. Physically it looks almost exactly like the HP Mini 5101 and 5102 which precede it. The primary difference is that in the US the netbook is only available in a new dark brown “espresso” color. Under the hood, the HP Mini 5103 has all the things that made those earlier models special — plus a number of new options.
First up, the netbook comes standard with a 7200RPM hard drive, a hard drive sensor which stops the drive from spinning in the event of a fall to prevent damage, a battery with a built-in LED to let you know how much power you have left, and an all-metal case made of aluminum and magnesium alloy.
The HP Mini 5103 is also the first HP netbook available with a dual core Atom N550 processor, although it will also be available with single core Atom N455 or N475 CPU options. The model HP sent me to review also has a number of other premium options, including a 1366 x 768 pixel HD display, a capacitive touchscreen, a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, 2GB of memory, and Windows 7 Professional. While the base model of the HP Mini 5103 runs $399, those options all add to the price, and I suspect the unit featured in this review would likely run $599 or more.
Design
For the most part, the HP Mini 5103 is physically identical to the HP Mini 5102 I reviewed a few months ago, so portions of the design section of this review may seem familiar. Physically, the only difference is that the new model ships in the US in a new “espresso” brown color, which is dark enough to be mistaken for black from some angles. The sides of the computer and area around the screen are black, but the rest is dark brown.
There’s a brushed aluminum finish on the lid, while the magnesium alloy chassis including the palm rest area has a matte, smudge-resistant finish.
Even though the laptop has an all-metal case, it’s just as light as most 10 inch netbooks which are covered in plastic. It just feels sturdier. It also looks a bit bulkier, thanks to its boxy design. While the corners of the netbook feature a rounded design, the edges are a bit sharp.
There’s a single access panel on the bottom of the netbook which you can use to replace or upgrade memory. HP has devised a nifty system for letting you do this without a screwdriver. You simply push the two switches holding the battery in place to remove the battery. Push them again and the RAM access panel door opens up.
You might not actually need to access the memory slot all that often, but this feature should make it much easier for schools or businesses that buy the mini-laptop in bulk to upgrade the memory of multiple laptops at once without dealing with tiny screws that are easy to lose.
Around the sides of the computer you’ll find 3 USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet jack, mic and headphone jacks, and an SDHC card slot.
At the front of the computer there’s a switch that you can slide to toggle the netbooks wireless modules on and off.
And above the keyboard there’s a power button and two dedicated shortcut keys for launching the default web browser and email applications. You can also use these buttons to launch HP’s quick start software that lets you load a web browser or email app without first waiting for Windows to boot. There’s also a new app that lets you view your Outlook calendar from the quick boot screen.
Some of the design elements that make the HP Mini 5102 stand out from the netbook crowd aren’t visible. For instance, there’s the 7200rpm hard drive, which is significantly faster than the 5400rpm hard drives found in most netbooks. HP also offers a high performance solid state disk option for the HP Mini 5102, although that configuration option drives up the price dramatically.
Display
The HP Mini 5103 is available with a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display which is virtually indistinguishable from those on any number of other netbooks. The demo unit HP sent me, though, has two premium options: a 1366 x 768 pixel HD display and a capacitive touchscreen.
The touchscreen makes the screen a little thicker, so if you purchase this netbook with a standard display, the laptop will be a tiny bit thinner.
The HD display is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it’s nice to have enough room to view virtually any PC program without scrolling, or even to open two web sites side by side. On the other hand, at the default settings, text on web pages looks very tiny and if, like me, you don’t have perfect vision you may find yourself squinting or leaning close to the screen to see.
Of course, you can adjust the DPI settings in Windows, or zoom in and out of web pages or other applications. But honestly, I prefer my 1366 x 768 pixel displays on 11.6 inch or larger screens.
The touchscreen isn’t so much a mixed blessing, as kind of useless as far as I’m concerned. Don’t get me wrong, the capacitive touchscreen is fairly responsive, and multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom work as expected. The on-screen keyboard works reasonably well for entering text — although it seems a little silly to reach up to the on-screen keyboard when there’s a perfectly good physical keyboard just below it. But I encountered two problems that pretty much keep me from using the touchscreen.
The first, and most obvious is that the display doesn’t fold down over the keyboard for use in tablet mode — so you actually have to physically lift your hand and move it toward to touch the screen. It takes less time and effort to move my fingers down to the touchpad below the keyboard.
The second issue is that the capacitive touchscreen recognizes the electronic impulses of your fingertip instead of more precise input from a fingernail or stylus. While that works pretty well when you’re pressing large icons on the desktop or taskbar, it’s a bit trickier to hit smaller targets such a the close or minimize box in a program toolbar.
It gets even tougher when a program is maximized so that you have to press very close to the edge of the screen. I suspect that, like the tiny text, you could partially address this issue by changing the Windows DPI settings, and I did get a little better at using the touchscreen the more time I spent with it. But I still found it to be an awkward input method. You can see what I mean in the video near the end of this review.
I’m personally not convinced it makes sense to put a touchscreen on any notebook if you can’t rotate it for use in tablet mode. But if you do see a use for this kind of design, I suppose it’s nice to have the extra option. My understanding is that HP won’t be offering the touchscreen in any “smart buy” configurations, which means you’ll probably have to pay a pretty hefty premium to configure the netbook with a touchscreen.
Keyboard and Touchpad
HP has outfitted the Mini 5103 with an island-style keyboard which has flat keys with a bit of space in between each key. Honestly, it looks like HP might have put a little more space between the keys than was strictly necessary. There’s probably enough space for the netbook to have slightly larger keys.
That said, I was able to tap out about 100 words per minute using this keyboard, so there’s really not much to complain about. One quirk is that HP sets up the top row of buttons to control hardware functions by default, such as adjusting the volume or screen brightness. If you actually want to hit F5 or F11, you’ll have to hold down the Fn button plus the appropriate key simultaneously.
The touchpad features two distinct buttons for left and right clicking, and a scroll area on the right side which you can use to scroll through images, web pages, and documents. There’s no support for multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom or two-finger scrolling.
Performance
The HP Mini 5103 will be available with a choice of processors, including single core and dual core Atom chips. The demo unit I received has a dual core 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 CPU. As you’d expect, the computer performed much faster on some CPU-intensive tasks — but not always twice as fast. To get the full benefit of a dual core processor you need to run software that can fully take advantage of multiple cores, which not every application does.
On the other hand, the HP mini 5103 definitely felt quite zippy and responsive. Subjectively, it feels like one of the fastest 10 inch netbooks I’ve used. But it’s not as powerful as a machine with an Intel CULV or AMD Nile processor. Not by a long shot.
For instance, in a series of tests, I found that the HP Mini 5103 scored higher marks at transcoding video files and creating ZIP archives from larger folders of files than laptops with single Core Intel Atom processors such as the HP Mini 5102 and HP Mini 311, which have 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 and 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processors, respectively. The HP Mini 5103 even bested the Asus Eee PC 1201N in one test, which shipped with a dual core 1.66GHz Atom 330 desktop-class processor.
On the other hand, the HP Mini 5103 wasn’t much faster than other Atom-powered notebooks using the WinLAME audio transcoding tool. While I noticed a slight difference in the amount of time it took to launch resource-intensive software applications, the difference wasn’t huge. It still took 20 seconds to load GIMP and 15 seconds to launch OpenOffice.org.
While the HP Mini 5103 may be fast for an Atom-powered netbook, it’s still pretty slow for a notebook — even a low power one.
The chart above shows what happens when you pit the HP Mini 5103 against the Acer Aspire One 521 and Asus UL20A. The Acer laptop has a 1.7GHz single core AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processor and the Asus model has an 1.3GHz dual core Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CULV chip. Whereas the HP Mini 5103 came out at the head of the pack when competing with other Atom-based laptops, it loses every test against these computers.
You might not think that’s a fair comparison to make, but like the HP Mini 5103, the Acer Aspire One 521 is a 10 inch mini-laptop, and it sells for $349, which makes is significantly cheaper than the HP model. It doesn’t get the same kind of battery life as the HP netbook, but it will run for over 5 hours on a charge.
The HP Mini 5103 did score a little higher in the Cinebench 2D graphics rendering test than the Asus Eee PC 1201N, an older dual core Atom powered notebooks. But the Eee PC 1210N and HP Mini 311 trounced the HP Mini 5103 in the OpenGL 3D graphics rendering test. While the Atom N550 is certainly faster than older Atom chips, it’s still bundled with relatively low performance Intel integrated graphics while those older notebooks have NIVDIA ION graphics.
The Asus UL20A, by the way, scored 2-3 times as high as the HP Mini 5103 in the 2D graphics rendering test, and more than twice as high in the OpenGL test.
Finally, I ran the 3DMark06 benchmark to see how the HP Mini 5103 with a dual core processor would fare. While it definitely came out ahead of of the HP Mini 311 in the CPU portion of the test thanks to its dual core processor, the integrated graphics were just no match for NVIDIA ION or ATI Radeon graphics, bringing down the overall 3DMark06 score. In a nutshell, this is not a gaming machine, although you can probably get some older or less resource-intensive games to run on it.
As far as Microsoft Windows is concerned, the Atom N550 dual core processor makes a pretty sizable difference in performance. Computers with single core Intel Atom N450 chips typically get processor scores of about 2.3 in the Windows Experience Index. The HP Mini 5103 with a dual core Atom N550 chip gets a 3.1 in that test.
Another feature setting this netbook apart from many others is the optional Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, which helps decode high definition video without taxing the CPU. So while Intel says that the Atom 550 CPU should be powerful enough to handle 720p HD video playback, the demo unit I reviewed had no problem with 720p or 1080p video playback.
The HP Mini 5103 with the Broadcom accelerator can also handle 1080p Adobe Flash video quite well — provided there are no text overlays. When I tried watching YouTube videos with overlay ads, the playback was choppy, but when I watched ad-free HD videos they looked choppy.
There’s no doubt that the HP Mini 5103 is a little more powerful than a typical netbook. Whether you’ll notice that extra power, though, depends on what you’re using the netbook to do. If you’re running multiple applications at once, the dual core processor and support for hyperthreading (which is why Windows shows 4 different CPUs instead of two) will help quite a bit. Or if you’re running CPU-intensive tasks such as transcoding media files using a utility that supports multiple threads, the Atom N550 CPU should help. The Broadcom card also helps with 1080p HD video playback. But you’re not going to want to use this netbook for serious gaming and you shouldn’t expect it to perform as well or as quickly as a larger, more expensive laptop at day to day tasks.
I did notice that the HP Mini 5103 seems to be a bit noisier than many other netbooks I’ve tested, since the fan was running much of the time I was using the netbook. This was also the case with the HP Mini 5102, so I wouldn’t necessarily blame the new Atom N550 processor. On the bright side, the laptop didn’t get unusually warm during use.
Battery
You might expect the extra power from the Atom N550 to come at the expense of battery life. Indeed, HP suggests that the laptop takes a bit of a hit in their tests, while offering a 20 percent performance boost in CPU only tests. But you know what? I got about 6 hours of run time from the HP Mini 5103. That’s just about exactly the same amount of run time I got from the HP Mini 5102 with a single core Atom N450 processor.
On the one hand, that’s much lower than the 10 hours of battery life HP promises from the 6 cell, 5700mAh, 66Whr battery, but it’s really not that bad for a dual core mini-laptop. More importantly, it looks like the Atom 550 processor doesn’t drain power all that much faster than a single core Atom chip.
The netbook is also available with 1880mAh battery, which offers significantly less run time. The lower capacity battery sits perfectly flush with the back and bottom of the netbook, while the 6 cell battery juts out a bit from the bottom, which serves to tilt the keyboard a bit from back to front.
I know some other reviewers have managed to squeeze more battery life out of their demo units. All I can say is, I turned on the laptop and started surfing the web, writing this review, looking at a few videos on YouTube, and about 6 hours later the battery died.
Verdict
Overall, the HP Mini 5103 is an attractive and high performance netbook — which is to say, it’s still a pretty low performance laptop. With a dual core Atom N550 processor, the netbook is definitely faster than the average mini-laptop at some… maybe most tasks. But it’s not really that much faster, and it’s hard to say whether it’s worth paying for this upgrade option without knowing exactly how much HP will charge for the netbook with the Atom N550 CPU.
The base price for the HP Mini 5103 is $399, but at that price you essentially get the same machine as the older HP Mini 5102 — just with a 1.66GHz Atom N455 chip instead of a 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor. The only difference is that the N455 supports DDR3 memory.
Adding the Broadcom video accelerator, HD display, touchscreen, 2GB of memory, and Windows 7 Professional options all serve to increase the price of this netbook. But it’s nice to have all those options. Few netbooks are available with half of those things.
If HP can offer this netbook with a dual core processor, Broadcom card, and maybe and HD display for under $500, there’s a lot of reason to consider this netbook instead of some of the competition. On the other hand, the Acer Aspire One 521 offers better performance in most situations for just $349, even if it gets slightly less battery life (about 5 hours) and has a plastic case instead of metal.
Video Review
You can check out a brief video overview, below, for a better look at the netbook’s design, display, and video playback capabilities.
Sears.com is now offering at least 3 inexpensive Android tablets that appear to be based on designs we’ve seen from Chinese electronics makers. Sears isn’t actually offering the tablets in stores, and the web site says they’re actually sold by a third party distributor called Tech Galore. But if you’re in the market for a 7 to 10 inch Android tablet for $130 to $250, it looks like there’s a new shopping option — although I might hold out on placing orders until I’ve seen some customer reviews. Some of the information about these tablets seems a bit… iffy.
Here’s an overview of the tablets Sears is offering:
While Sears lists the first tablet as “Elken,” I’m pretty sure the name should actually be Eken. The APad 10 inch tablet also shows a picture of the German WePad from Neofonie, which isn’t actually shipping yet — and which is expected to cost considerably more than the $250 asking price. The 10 inch APad also shows a $250 price tag when you search for Android tablets, but the actual product page has no information about the price or how to order.
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The HP Mini 5103 is the latest business-class netbook from Hewlett Packard. Physically it looks almost exactly like the HP Mini 5101 and 5102 which precede it. The primary difference is that in the US the netbook is only available in a new dark brown “espresso” color. Under the hood, the HP Mini 5103 has all the things that made those earlier models special — plus a number of new options.
