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HP is starting to offer subsidized an HP Mini 1000 netbook (or to be more specific, an HP Mini 1151NR), this week. If you sign up for a 2 year wireless broadband contract, you can snag the netbook for $199. While that’s a few hundred bucks less than buying the netbook, a 3G modem, and a 2 year wireless data plan separately, you could still easily wind up spending over $1600 on the whole package. So is it worth it?

The folks at Engadget got to take a Verizon/HP Mini 1151NR for a spin, and the long and short of it is, good laptop, decent wireless service. You won’t get Verizon FiOS quality upload or download speeds, but in Engadget’s tests, the netbook got average download speeds of around 777kbps down and upload speeds averaging 455kbps.

In other words, you shouldn’t have any problem loading web pages, or most standard definition online videos. If you were going to spring for the long term data plan anyway, it might be worth it.

You can read more about the HP Mini 1000 in the Liliputing Product Database, or check out my review of the non-3G version of this netbook.