Bottom Line:
HP's Mini 5102 is practically precisely the same because the Mini 5101, nevertheless it has much better battery daily life. You'll be able to practically obtain a complete day of use out of its 6-cell battery (as long as you close the lid if you aren't actively employing it) and the significant challenging drive signifies it is possible to have close to a significant library of music and videos. We love the unit's create quality, its substantial resolution display screen and its keyboard, but detest how lengthy it will require to have up and operating.
Critique by
Elias Plastiras Computer World Australia (online) 06 / 04 / 10 Inquire a Question HP Mini 5102 appears and feels just like Mini 5101, however it has superior battery lifestyle and is more affordable
The HP Mini 5102 is often a netbook created with business customers in brain. It's an anodised aluminium lid and its durable style areas it a rung higher than most other netbooks to the market place. In addition, it appears excellent and, contrary to common perception, enterprise consumers apparently do value a little of flair — so HP has introduced the Mini 5102 not only in black, but also in red and blue.
The HP Mini 5102 and also the HP Mini 5101
Physically, the Mini 5102 appears exactly like the HP Mini 5101, which isn’t a bad thing — we loved the 5101. The HP Mini 5102 is small and has a tapered body, getting thinner from the rear to the front. Its huge battery gives it a nice slope when resting on a table, and it’s comfortable to type on. We like the fact that the RAM slot can be accessed without making use of tools, but the keyboard has to be removed in order to acquire to the hard generate bay. Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to pop off the keyboard and if the generate ever needs replacing.
The HP Mini 5102 with its keyboard removed.
HP Mini 5102 specs and speed
The Mini 5102 is also similar to the Mini 5101 within the inside, with the main difference being a newer Intel Atom CPU. It’s still much better than the majority of consumer netbooks around the market, mainly because you get 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM (most netbooks ship with 1GB), a 1366x768-resolution display screen rather than 1024x576 or 1024x600, and a 7200rpm hard generate instead of a 5400rpm generate. The tough drive is 320GB — which indicates that you absolutely must transfer all your songs and movies onto it if you want to acquire the most out of it! The netbook's battery has a prolonged 66 Watt-hour rating, which will let you watch at least two movies without requiring a recharge.
The HP Mini 5102 runs an Intel Atom N450 CPU that runs at precisely the same clock speed because the Intel Atom N280 CPU it replaces (1.66GHz), nonetheless it has an integrated graphics chipset, which indicates there are only two main chips in the Mini 5102: the CPU and the I/O controller. This helps to keep the Mini 5102 a smidgin cooler than the Mini 5101 and is the main difference the two netbooks. You still get 802.11 draft-n Wi-Fi (it even uses exactly the same Broadcom 43224AG chip that was in the Mini 5101), as well as Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet. There is often a built-in webcam that can be used for face recognition security as well as conferencing, and you obtain a VGA port, an SD card slot, microphone and headphone ports, and three USB 2.0 ports. It’s definitely a well stocked netbook.
Apart from the upgraded processor, one of the other differences between the Mini 5102 and its predecessor is that the newer netbook runs
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit instead of Windows XP, and it runs it very well. There is an option to install Linux (SUSE Enterprise 11) or you are able to still choose Windows XP if your company hasn’t migrated to
Windows 7 yet.
In our tests, the Mini 5102 produced slower times than the Mini 5101, which we put down mainly to the operating system difference. In the iTunes MP3 encoding test, the Mini 5102 took 8min 47sec to encode 53min worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3s, which is one minute slower than the Mini 5101. In Blender 3D, it took 7min 39sec to render an image making use of two CPU threads, and this is 42sec slower than the Mini 5101. It was also slower in the tough generate test. The Mini 5102’s Western Digital Scorpio Blue (WD3200BEKT-60V5T1) recorded 26.17 megabytes per second in our transfer tests. This is about 6.1MBps faster than a typical netbook, but over 2MBps slower than the Mini 5101, which used a Fujitsu generate.
But while the performance tests show the Mini 5102 to be slower than the model it replaces, it actually feels reasonably zippy during everyday operation. You can easily use it to browse the Web while you work on documents and listen to new music, and standard-definition movies will play just fine. Because the display is wider than a typical netbook display screen, you can even use
Windows 7’s Aero Snap feature to line up two windows side by side.
HP Mini 5102 battery life
The battery life of the Mini 5102 is stellar. The 66 Watt-hour battery lasted 5hr 3min in our rundown test, in which we disable power management, maximise brightness, enable Wi-Fi and loop an Xvid-encoded video. If you use the netbook for Web browsing and document creation, and you near the lid once you aren’t actively using it, then you can go an entire day without having to plug in to an outlet.
With such a extended battery existence, it’s a shame that a Sleep-and-Charge style USB port hasn’t been implemented so that you could charge your iPhone in your backpack while to the go, for example. For that sort of functionality,
Buy Windows 7 Starter Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 Download - Freewa, you have to turn to Toshiba’s NB300.
The HP Mini 5102’s battery has a physical indicator to let you know if you need to charge before you hit the road.
HP Mini 5102 setup
We deplore the setup procedure of the Mini 5102. Once you first pull it from the box and boot it up,
Office 2010 Serial Generator, you have to put up with a setup process that takes well over an hour. This installs all of HP’s utilities and trialware (such as Microsoft Office) and there are some registration screens that require your attention. It’s not a pleasant experience and a busy admin looking to quickly deploy the Mini 5102 will rapidly lose patience.
That said, once it’s up and running you can get rid of all the preinstalled software, or put it to use. There is really a credentials manager, file synchronisation software, troubleshooting and maintenance software (whose pop-up reminders can generate you crazy) and Corel Home Office Suite just to name a few. You also get 3D difficult generate protection as well as the ability to encrypt your data. A pre-
Windows 7 environment is available, called HP QuickLook; it lets you check calendar entries and contacts. This feature is aimed at users who want quick access to this information when their laptop is switched off. However, if you already have a smartphone then there is no need to use this software. Furthermore, it has QuickWeb, which as its name suggests, is for browsing the Web. We think that an implantation of Splashtop similar to the one around the HP Mini 210 would be significantly more useful.
Conclusion
In terms of speed and seems, the HP Mini 5102 is not an upgrade over the HP Mini 5101. In fact, all you’re getting with this model can be a revision of the same netbook that was released ten months ago, but with considerably longer battery daily life and a a lot lower retail price. Whether you’re a organization user or not, we think it’s worth going for the Mini 5102 over many other netbooks within the marketplace, especially because of its excellent battery daily life, very good construct good quality, larger display resolution, faster networking and larger memory capacity. However, we do wish HP would give us a break from all the preinstalled utilities and a very long setup procedure.
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