Good news for anyone who was planning on buying a Linux version of the HP 2133 Mini-Note and installing their own operating system instead of paying a few extra bucks to get a Windows Vista version. Notebook Review forum member jckaylis says he was able to install Windows XP and almost everything worked right away. Jckaylis is the same forum member who first reported that his Mini-Note running OpenSUSE was locking up and that he was having problems installing software.

Apparently he had to download a Broadcom Ethernet driver, but Windows Update found almost everything else he needed — except for a good sound driver. So far he’s been unable to get sound working.

This all comes as excellent news. I ordered an OpenSUSE model thinking I would partition the hard drive and install Windows XP on one partition and OpenSUSE or Ubuntu on another. I was expecting to get my HP Mini-Note this weekend, but I got an email from HP on Saturday morning letting me know that my order has been delayed. I was starting to think that this presented me with a good opportunity to call HP and ask if I could spend the extra $50 to get Windows Vista installed, but now that I know XP will work I think I’ll let my order stand and wait for my notebook to arrive.

There’s still no sign of any XP or Linux drivers or other support software or information on the HP web site. Once HP begins to officially offer XP as an option, I expect/hope that we’ll be able to find drivers online. In the meantime, it looks like you can install Windows XP without waiting for HP. If you don’t care about sound drivers. Which I kind of do, but I’m holding out hope that I’ll be able to find a driver that works.

Update: It looks like you can install a Windows hotfix to enable support for an audio driver. I won’t be able to confirm this until my Mini-Note arrives, but it looks like a promising solution.

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5 replies on “Report: Windows XP runs (almost) perfectly on the HP 2133 Mini-Note”

  1. No surprise there. I think the reason Asus is bullish about XP is the reaction people had when XP performed so well. on the 701.

    I feel bad for the Linux Bolsheviks who thought the ULPC platform would be the way into the consumer desktop. Sorry fellaz…not happening.

  2. Everyone has suddenly gotten either Asus Envy or Asus Fear.

    It’s clear now that hp rushed this to market in so many ways:

    1) VIA instead of Atom
    2) SuSE setup sucks
    3) No SuSE support on their website
    4) Another month for XP (although this might be MS’s doing; as I’ve linked on my blog, MS is apparently doing their own nLited version of XP for LCPCs, and hp might be waiting for that)

    And because hp jumped the gun, Asus jumped too by putting out the 900 with Celeron again instead of the planned Atom.

    I’d still like to know why the MSI Wind looks *so much* like the hp Mini — especially down to the “revolutionary” hinge!

    1. I’m not 100% convinced that the Isaiah or Atom processors are going to be as impressive as everyone is hoping. While they’ll certainly help with battery life due to lower energy consumption, they’re not really built for performance. And as more and more people start buying ultraportables, they’re going to expect some performance.. not necessarily Desktop performance, but at the very least the ability to multitask.

      As for the OpenSUSE thing… yeah, I won’t know for sure until I get my unit, but it sounds like HP just decided to throw any old Linux OS on there to keep the price low and make the Mini-Note look like an Eee PC killer. Asus, on the other hand, spent months designing a Linux interface specifically for the Eee PC. I’m not really a big fan of the Easy Mode Xandros interface, but I appreciate that Asus was thinking out of the box when they created it — and designing a computer that works perfectly out of the box while they were at it.

      1. Brad, you linked to benchmarks! The VIA Isaiah was very impressive, kicking the butts of both the Atom and the Celeron.

        Of course, it’d be nice to see how the Isaiah compares to a Core Duo (or is that Duo Core … wtf, you know what I mean).

        1. Yeah, but that was a limited raft of benchmarks without any details about actual performance in actual production machines. Until we see real computers with the Atom processor hit the shelves, I’m going to reserve judgment. But I’m starting to think there’s no way the new chips are going to live up to the hype.

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