My Compaq Mini

I've bought a Compaq Mini 700 series (730eo) netbook computer. The price was 3000 Swedish kronor (SEK). I've used it for 2 weeks now and gotten myself an opinion of how it is so here is my review.

Pros:

• Small and light. I put my computer on my kitchen scale and it was 1066 grams. The trend now is bigger netbooks but this is still in the smaller range.
• Good keyboard. I've tested a bunch of netbooks at my local store and this had one of the best keyboards
• Good value for money.

Cons:

• Noisy fan and bad fan control. The fan really makes some noise and the fan control is not that good at adapting the speed of the fan. I have solved this problem and I'll post another blog post about it later
• Slow hard drive (4200 RPM). But it is good enough for me. I can even develop Java programs in Eclipse with it. So it does not bug me that much.
• Only a 3 cell battery that lasts 2 hours (3 max). I guess that is a compromise for its small wiegth
• Low quality web cam. Other netbooks have much better (I tried these in the store as well). But that does not bother me that much.

Here is a picture of the keyboard layout (Swedish):


One thing I really like with a netbook is that I can move it around my apartment so easy. I read websites at the kitchen table, use it at the couch when I watch tv and can have it in my lap when I sit at the balcony.

Update: Here is how I fixed the fan control: http://blog.lesc.se/2009/10/how-to-improve-fan-control-on-hpcompaq.html