By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE ASIAN brands were the first to start the subnotebook revolution but now that the market seems to be more acceptable, US brand HP wants a piece of the action, and so they introduced the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Design

There are certainly several aspects of the Mini-Note that other subnotebooks don’t have; one in particular is design. The Asus Eee PC, the Blue H1 and the Red Fox Wizbook didn’t bother much regarding aesthetics so they left their own subnotebooks looking a lot like toys. HP put some effort with the design and easily, the HP Mini-Note is a standout. Its body has an aluminum finish. The entire device, save for the screen area, is in metallic gray, which gives it a tough industrial look. There are no other objects protruding from the body, though an extended battery could give it some bulk, especially when it is placed on top of a desk.

The Mini-Note has one of the sleekest designs yet in the subnotebook segment, matched only by the Asus Eee PC’s simplistic design. From afar, the Mini-Note looks like nothing more than an aluminum case for small paper notebooks. Even the ports and switches are neatly tucked in around the sides of the unit. Truth be told, it might actually look boring to some people. But that’s where the boring part ends.

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By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

WHEN I heard about Smart’s all-in-one messaging service, dubbed Uzzap, I immediately downloaded the mobile and PC versions to test it.

Here are my first impressions.

I downloaded the mobile application first to run on my Blackberry 8320, which supports Java mobile applications. I quickly found the application not compatible with my unit, although Smart has said in a press release that it can run on handsets that support “high-end Java applications.” I really don’t know what that means.

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