Image source: Engadget

I am extremely close to purchasing an ultra-mobile PC. The Asus EeePC almost has me sold, but not quite. HP is opting for a traditional HDD which means we should get a little bit more space for our buck. There is no word on specs as of yet, but might I be so bold as to predict that HP will try to slightly out-spec their strongest competitor.

The price is set to be $480-800, so there could be some Vista capability in there. I would probably opt for specs that are close to the minimum and try some Ubuntu on it though. If all you need is something to do a little bit of image tweaking, word processing and blogging with, you don’t really need a whole lot in the specs department. This looks like it will be able to manage all of that. I am banking on the options being storage and memory related, with no options on the processor. Considering that HP has opted for a conventional hard disk, we are probably going to see a base offering of 40GB.

At 8.9-inches, the HP Mini-NB is a little bigger than the EeePC, which is not necessarily a bad thing. A bit of extra space for the keyboard is a nice touch. The expected launch date is between March and May, but I am predicting April. May would put it up against the second generation models from AsusTek; competition that is best avoided and March seems a little close to the present.

Sources: Ubergizmo, DigiTimes

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