LGR - HP Mini 1000 Netbook from 2009
Added 2025-02-14 01:27:03 +0000 UTCGot a classic LGR computer retrospective here! And this time it's something that is a tad bizarre to cover, seeing as it was genuinely my most current computer when I started the show in 2009...
Yep we're taking a look at the HP Mini 1000, one of the more popular netbooks from the wildly short-lived era of the netbook! If you could even call it an era, that is. In hindsight, it was all a bit silly, even though the underlying 45nm tech that made it possible was quite exciting at that very moment. So join me in revisiting the Mini 1000 that I had back in '09 (or close to it) and putting it through its paces 16 years later!
The next video isn't set in stone yet, but if things go well it may end up being a late 90s software/application/game thing that I completely missed out on when new. Either that or some complete randomness that I haven't even thought of yet, that tends to happen more often than not. Either way, I hope you enjoy this episode and thank you for your ongoing support!
Comments
I have an HP mini 2133 with VIA C7-M 1.6ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb hdd, and a battery that still holds charge. I love this little thing. OG Windows Vista still installed. Maybe I'll image this hard drive and put XP on it to see how it runs..Funny thing is, it has a Vista Home badge on top, and a Vista business license on the bottom. Makes sense since these machines where marketed towards students and business people, but it seems HP just didn't want a spring for the for the Vista business badge. Why not just have one that just says Vista instead of business or home? Lol Anyways, great shit as usual. Thanks Clint!
Brent K
2025-03-23 17:30:49 +0000 UTCLoved seeing this Netbook computer Clint and your in-depth video of it
Tom Anderson
2025-02-18 20:15:07 +0000 UTCExcellent transition on the music from the speaker demo to background music. Love it.
Ryan Bailey
2025-02-16 04:59:24 +0000 UTCI still have an Asus EeePC in storage somewhere. I actually ran ableton live on it at a few live jams.
Robert N Cole
2025-02-16 03:02:15 +0000 UTCseems like the end of the netbook era was a punctuation mark of sorts.
Atari Fuzz
2025-02-15 17:57:24 +0000 UTCNo doubt, 2002 is a pretty ideal year for games on these!
LGR
2025-02-15 04:21:02 +0000 UTCMorrowind runs surprisingly well on these! I've got about 400hrs playing it on my Atom N270 Asus EEEpc
Ahmed Khalil
2025-02-15 02:14:51 +0000 UTCI definitely miss the days of having an 11 MacBook Air. I could never afford a 12 powerbook G4 @ $1499. But these netbooks were very appealing option at the time. Great concept but not practical for any real use case.
Eric Richey
2025-02-14 18:42:27 +0000 UTCI pulled two netbooks out of storage last month and have been trying to figure out a new, creative, niche use for them. This video reinforces my conclusion that there is no niche use - they're just so underpowered - but they're still cool!
Vince Fond
2025-02-14 18:15:30 +0000 UTCI got an ASUS Eee PC last year and I love the little thing. Battery life still lasts forever. Upgraded to an SSD. Put a Mini PCIe to USB adapter (https://www.ebay.com/itm/375503933815) with a BT-5 dongle for mouse & stuff. I run Debian Linux on it (since Debian still supports 32-bit machines) on it with MATE desktop (or LXQT). I also dual boot Puppy Linux on it, for fun. Most useful thing it does: Runs Wireguard to connect to my home VPN and uses Remmina to remote desktop into any PC on my network. As a thin-client it works quite well as a remote-desktop viewer. Offloading the work to my more powerful machines. Sometimes I want a terminal shell, but I need my primary monitor unencumbered, so I'll just set the laptop inbetween my split-keyboard and setup an SSH session, so then I can just glance down to see what my aux terminal is doing. It's nice.
Andrew LeTourneau
2025-02-14 16:31:13 +0000 UTCAh yes, nice throwback. I bought the Asus EEE in its second iteration in April 2008. With the 7" screen and a humble 4GB SSD. I quickly replaced this Linux MeGo with XP. Games didn´t work at all on it because of the odd screen wit 800x480, which was cunningly extended to 800x600 when moving the mouse in the upper or lower area. It served me well until around summer 2012 for travels. I remember Youtube in 480p was still usable back then, although with some small hiccups. Still have the device with two chunky aftermarket batteries that makes it a tad higher which adds a bit of writing comfort on the otherwise ho-hum keyboard. TBH I miss the netbook class. Tablets aren´t that great and don´t get me started on convertibles which are usually just tablets with a crappy keyboard attached. Thankfully I got an Acer Spin B11 refurbished a while ago which is pretty close to what a halfway modern netbook might be(with 4GB of RAM and Windows 10 perfectly ok for me to watch Youtube and Twitch). Sadly they don´t make such devices anymore. Or at least not for reasonable prices.
Udo Krawallo
2025-02-14 13:02:32 +0000 UTCMine has a 500Gb spinny disc in it. And XP. The retro gaming thing actually sounds like a good idea. Back when it was new it was mostly used for writing and some net stuff. And also as a place to store images from cameras since memorycards were rather small back then so having a small laptop with a large hard drive was nice.
J Ruonti
2025-02-14 12:01:54 +0000 UTCSeeing that laggy YouTube video playback really brought back some memories of trying to browse the web on hand-me-down Macs I used as a teenager. The 2005 eMac could play 480p videos okay but anything above that was a struggle. And the 2003 iBook G3 pretty much was like what you showed in this video. But even that thing I remember overall to be quite responsive compared to the brief times I used other people's netbooks. And yet I think these netbooks are quite neat.
Niels Poldervaart
2025-02-14 10:04:08 +0000 UTCRegarding the next video I'm hoping that Clint will review Microsoft Creative Writer one day. Despite it being aimed at kids I used it as an adult for real tasks like making posters. Some features make Clippy seem tame and subdued.
Duncan
2025-02-14 09:13:36 +0000 UTCWhen the first Asus Eeeeee came out people were soldering Microdrives to the inside. Unlike full size laptops they were cheap enough to mess around with.
Duncan
2025-02-14 09:03:28 +0000 UTC14:04 You should show the largest of those laptops. Just before netbooks came out laptops seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. Fast processors, 17" screens, and about 2" thick with a couple of large fans in the base. Although there were a few very expensive exceptions from Sony and Toshiba, netbooks showed that there was an untapped market for small and light laptops, something Intel had noticed when they introduced the "Ultrabook" category in 2011.
Duncan
2025-02-14 08:58:23 +0000 UTCThe device looks like someone slipped while dragging a scale slider to 'tiny'. Never owned one of these but I remember seeing them popping up here and there in peoples houses. Because of the limitations I never saw the need of getting one myself though.
icezolation
2025-02-14 08:26:59 +0000 UTCI still have mine, a EeePC 4G, as mentioned above nowadays running XP as a retro gaming device. By the way, what an odd resolution on the HP. o.o
BastetFurry
2025-02-14 07:53:28 +0000 UTCI have collected a bunch over the years and my OG from 2008 has XP on it. Originally i had replaced the Xandros it comes with with Debian as i used it as my main laptop for awhile but some years back changed that to XP to make it a small mobile gaming device. it plays games like Deus Ex just fine. The 32 Bit version of Pico 8 runs just fine too. There is an official tool to get higher resolutions than 800x480 too so that one can play titles like Master of Orion 2. Don't recommend that screen squishing for regular work tough. Back when i got it some months in my now fiance soldered me a dismantled USB stick onto the internal pads, which gave me 8 more GBs to fill up, recently i upgraded that to 64 because i had the stick lying around. If i mod one of my others that one might get a 256 GB treatment with the internal "SSD" being ignored then as this one will get the Linux treatment. In short they make a nice little retro gaming subnotebook and are a nice thing for distraction free writing if you don't mind the small keyboard.
BastetFurry
2025-02-14 07:48:07 +0000 UTCCool. I have my netbook still from the same era. An Asus eee netbook in the seashell series, possibly a 1015. It's been lying in my computer closet for years now, but I did use it quite a bit for some time back when I got it. I got it while I was a student, and used it for school work, but also installed a bunch of retro games like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Age of Empires and DosBox and emulators. Even if it couldn't play up to date games, it's actually one of the first times I played old games extensively and reacquired a liking for them.
Kristian Høy Horsberg
2025-02-14 07:44:26 +0000 UTCMan, now I feel I really want to fix up my Asus Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee PC. Not sure what I'd do with it but still.
J Ruonti
2025-02-14 06:40:12 +0000 UTCIf my requirements for a new notebook in 2009 wasn't a dedicated graphics card to run the Aero design in Windows Vista properly (yea, I was young), I could ended with a netbook back in the days. They were really cheap, but I think, I couldn't have a lot of fun with that small and underpowered devices for a long time.
kepuexe
2025-02-14 05:58:44 +0000 UTCWe used some netbooks to enter bugs for Game QA. It brought me back with a debug console, TV, and laptop with barely enough RAM to load the tracking software.
Frederick G.
2025-02-14 03:47:01 +0000 UTCI plan to cover Nina in some form! Or at the very least continue to use and mention it like I did here
LGR
2025-02-14 03:36:04 +0000 UTCYep this is definitely bringing back memories, my first laptop was a eeepc, dont remember which one exactly but it was one of the earlier ones with the thick hinge. My dad bought it off qvc, so it probably cost way too much lol I remember it was not very good even for web browsing, but knowing how qvc is it was probably an older model at the time they sold at a markup. Regardless I carried it everywhere, no smart phones back then (at least for me) so having portable computing was a novelty
Zachary Outen
2025-02-14 02:54:26 +0000 UTCNetbooks were the first tech fad I remember seeing happen as a teenager. My grandma went to the store on her own and bought what I have to imagine was the cheapest laptop they had, a tiny netbook running Vista. I remember helping her set up Thunderbird, and the screen was actually too low res to complete the installation because parts of a window were off screen. What a time to be alive.
Tyler Compton
2025-02-14 02:53:11 +0000 UTCTalk about nostalgic. I had some model of that and remember running Windows 7 on it. Hackintoshed it. Ran some oddball Linux variations. Memories.
Anicast
2025-02-14 02:49:59 +0000 UTCAlso, something that might be fun to do a video on - the retro web that hobbyists have been keeping alive. Stuff like RetroZilla, ProtoWeb, NINA?
evistre
2025-02-14 02:41:16 +0000 UTCHahahaha. Oh nooooo. I hated and loved these things in equal measure. I worked at a call center at the time, and they made us use these in place of the senior line (supervisor call, escalations or technical help, generally when support has put you on hold) - walking around looking for physical flags rather than using a normal call queue, lol. There was a policy they tried to implement, where if we damaged the netbook, we'd have our (already woefully inadequate) checks garnished to pay for it at a fast clip. Nobody signed it. :p Edit: Anyway, it was an awful work machine, but I wanted one for myself so bad. (Not enough to buy one...)
evistre
2025-02-14 02:07:37 +0000 UTCNice, I had the Dell Mini 10 with a 8gb SSD and had a USB 3G cellular data dongle. Had a lot of fun with it, posting on the web from the middle of nowhere.
Dom Spun
2025-02-14 01:57:03 +0000 UTCFirst comment
Jasonfractic
2025-02-14 01:28:31 +0000 UTC
