I've just unpacked my new HP 210 netbook, which I picked up at Staples for 349.99 plus tax. I'd been planning on waiting for the Business/Education HP Mini 5102, but the price really put me off. Yes, they will (eventually) ship the $400 version they promised. No, it won't be for a while yet. Worse, the ones they're currently selling, to ship in February, don't have the touchscreen display, despite their $900 price tag.

The 93% keyboard is a little tight, but the key feel is very nice. The 210 has "island" keys with short throw and I like the touchpad quite well. HP has put the buttons at the bottom, where most folks think they belong, unlike the Mini 110's layout, which I liked fairly well anyway.

The display includes rotation settings so you can put it in portrait mode, and it's crisp and clear enough that I'd be happy to try using it as an eBook reader in portrait mode...if only the trackpad would switch orientations along with the screen, which it doesn't appear to. That's a software hack though, so it would be easy for HP to add in. In fact, you can find a program at PC World (see links) called eeRotate that does both and ran fine on my 210.

What the touch pad does have is multi-point touch, so you can use two fingered gestures to scroll, zoom and rotate, at least if the application you're in allows it. I quickly got used to making gestures with my thumbs without my hands leaving the keys, which is pretty handy.

As with almost every laptop I've ever seen, the screen doesn't recline enough to suit me. How far should it go? Unreasonably I'd like 270 degrees or more, so I could prop it with the keyboard hidden and just see the display. Perfect for watching media, or using with an external keyboard. If I was being reasonable, I'd ask for 180 degrees, so I could lay it flat and look down on it when standing at a counter, or even slip it into the magazine holder on the cross-trainer at they gym. Unusual requests? Maybe, but they shouldn't be. Bluetooth is supposed to be available for the 210, but not in the off the rack model I got. No matter really. The current crop of low profile Bluetooth modules don't cost much, and it never hurts to have a mini-mouse around for your system.

If you really want to, you can just about thumb the keyboard on the mini. Well, despite the fact that's how Im writing this bit, it's a stretch. The LED back-lit display, not to be confused with a fully LED display, is nonetheless less crisp and bright. The 1024x600 display does suffer when looking at web pages, most of whom use a 1024x768 display as their standard, but it's easy enough to use a zoom gesture on the trackpad to shrink it down a bit, or to scroll down, so that helps ease the pain.

One of my big complaints about netbooks is the ugly way that the extended batteries stick out, especially as I'm not willing to give up the ability to do all day computing. The Mini 210 does stick out, but not quite like a sore thumb. Rather, they've angled the battery away from the unit so that it only adds about half a diameter to the unit's thickness, and only a slight angle to it's resting position. Again, I'd like the display to tilt back a bit more to make up for this angle, but, I want a lot.

The Mini 210 comes with Windows 7 Starter, which I've been happy with on netbooks. For programs, it comes with trial versions of everything you'd expect, and as usual it has Microsoft Works loaded. Works isn't a bad suite, though, and if you're used to Word 2003, you'll probably find it more comfortable to use than Word 2007 or many of the other programs. It harks back to a simpler time, and that's okay by me. Still, you may need access to Outlook or something else you can only get from a full Office installation.

Office 2007 is a pretty intense piece of software, but running Word 2007 on the 210 doesn't seem to create any problems. Aside from the form factor, you wouldn't know that machine isn't a full sized system. I'm sure you could choke it with large graphics, but as far as I could tell it's very workable.

Netbook as ebook? The HP 210's display is 1024x600 in a 10.1 diagonal display, which is reasonably close in size and ratio to say, a trade paperback (typically 7.25 x 5.5 ), and I do a lot of reading, so it's only natural that I try to read on the 210. You can certainly rotate the screen, and if you set your page size to 10.25 x 6 inches, you'll find that a program like Word, or a formatted PDF will fit perfectly. I found a font size of 12pts to be comfortable, and after working my way through a hundred or so pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes courtesy of the Gutenberg Project, decided that it was perfectly workable...at least from a readability standpoint. Ergonometrics didn't rate quite as well.

Since the hinge only allows the 201 to open to about 120 degrees, so you can't quite get it open far enough to hold comfortably, but I've already complained about that.

I also tried using the 201 as an MP3/Podcast player, and unsurprisingly it worked fine...with the caveat that there are no external controls for the media player. Someday, all that will be normal, but for now I'm still trying to make a netbook into something it wasn't quite meant to be.

In terms of the things it clearly was designed to do though, I have to give the Mini 210 high marks across the board. Battery life ran between 7 and 10 hours as expected, and total recharge time from a dead battery was only 2 hours. Machine performance for the Microsoft Office Suite was quite acceptable, and as I've said before, the keyboard is perfectly comfortable.

All in all, the HP Mini 210 is a solid performer at a reasonable price that should satisfy anyone looking for a basic netbook, or even a little more.