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First third-generation Netbook: HP Mini 2140

HP's business side is taking another crack at the Netbook market with an updated version, called the HP Mini 2140.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
2 min read

After the initial 7-inch Celeron versions and the second wave of 9- and 10-inch Intel Atom-powered systems, we're finally seeing the third wave of Netbook laptops--machines that take the basic concept of low-cost, low-power computing and start to add in useful extras and features largely missing from the until-now rather Spartan design philosophy of most Netbooks.

Even though the Mini 1000 only hit a few months ago, HP was actually an early player in the Netbook field. The company's business system side came up with the Mini-Note 2133 in spring 2008, with a solid brushed-metal chassis and a nearly full-size keyboard. Unfortunately, this predated Intel's Atom CPU, and rather than using the Celeron processor that came with the very first Netbooks, HP went with an underpowered Via C7-M, which pretty much killed any chance it had of becoming a mainstream product.

Now that the plastic-clad, Atom-powered consumer version has become a hit, HP's business side is taking another crack at the Netbook market with a radically updated version, called the HP Mini 2140.

It keeps the aluminum construction and big keyboard, but updates the components to an Intel Atom CPU, and hard-drive options that include standard platter drives up to 160GB and solid-state drives up to 80GB. The LED display is 10.1 inches, with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Two new additions that threaten to make this our favorite new Netbook are an accelerometer for the hard drive and a full ExpressCard/54 slot--a Netbook first (Lenovo's S10 has a smaller Express Card/34 slot). We recently told HP's consumer side that, as much as we liked the Mini 1000 Netbook, its business-side colleagues had just decisively leap-frogged them.

Look for the HP Mini 2140 later in January, starting at $499. More pics after the jump.