Recently, I was able to get my hands on an HP Mini 311 netbook. This is the first time I have ever had a chance to work with a netbook, and I will say right up front, it was not the best experience I have had. The HP Mini 311 was loaned to me by Verizon Wireless for review purposes. During my review, I ran into multiple problems and concerns, which I will describe in detail below.

The Hardware

The HP Mini 311 features an 11.6″ LED HD BrightView widescreen display, Nvidia’s ION gfx chip, a 160GB HHD, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, an HP Broadband Wireless (3G) modem, and 802.11a-n WLAN. The specs on this little machine are impressive, for such a small package. The device, which measures in around 11.5″ x 8″ x 1.25″, features a stylish design with a wide range of ports on both sides. For me, the best thing about the HP Mini 311, is the beautiful high-definition screen, which is paired with the Nvidia ION. The screen on this device is great for watching movies through iTunes, via DVD, or through many of the HD video (non-Flash; more info in the Software section) sites that are on the net today.

The ports on this device are another strong point. On the right side of the device, you have an Ethernet port, VGA, audio out, two USB 2.0 ports and a media card reader. On the left side, you have the security lock, power connector, one USB 2.0 port, and one HDMI out. Yes, you read it right: This netbook features HDMI out, which is an impressive feature for a device in this genre. I tested the HDMI output and was very impressed with the quality.

The Nvidia ION gfx chip and the 11.6″ HD screen are impressive, but there are a few hardware aspects that affected my review in a negative way. First, the touchpad on this device is made of the same material as the rest of the body with no texture difference. I found this very annoying, and I much prefer the textured style touchpad that comes on the unibody MacBook Pro. The second negative I came across with the HP Mini 311 was the keyboard. I found the keys to be to be very cheap feeling, and they wiggle a bit when you touch them.

Essentially, the Pogoplug is a device that allows you to attach any external USB hard drive to the cloud with out any fancy router configurations. The first time I heard about the Pogoplug, I was really excited to get my hands on one and see if it was as great at it sounded. Well, the first generation came and went, and to tell you the truth, I had forgot all about it. In November 2009, Pogoplug announced they would drop a new version of the Pogoplug with a new optimized web interface. When I heard about the new generation of the device, I decided I was not going to let it slip my mind again. Now that I have one, and have been using it for a few weeks, I wanted to do a full write up on the device and share my thoughts and experience.

Unboxing

The Hardware

The Pogoplug in all its pink glory is a pretty slick looking device. One of the complaints people had with the first generation was that it was pretty ugly, and only offered 1 USB port. Well, both of these worries are no more in the second generation of the device. The Pogoplug features 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 gigabit ethernet port, and a 100-240v power port on the rear of the device. On the front of the device, you will find 1 additional USB 2.0 port and a status light that will let you know if your Pogoplug is online. It is hard to explain how the device looks just in words, so be sure to checkout the pictures throughout this article. Essentially, the device itself floats on a pink plastic stand, that doubles as a cable management system. While this device looks odd hovering like it does, you will find, that this hover design allows for 360 degree airflow, which keeps the device nice and cool.

Hey check it out, this is my 100th post. I am pretty excited about this milestone. In light of my 100th post I wanted to put together a quick post to say Thank You to everyone. If you have ever posted a comment, subscribe to my RSS feed, or clicked one of my advertisements, thank you. This is purely a hobby for me, so when I receive a comment from one of my readers, it really means a lot to me. In the coming weeks, I am going to really work to increase my posts per month average, so if you don’t subscribe to my RSS feed already, now is a great time to do so. Thanks again everyone for supporting ATLChris.com up to this point and I hope you will stay around and get more involved as ATLChris.com evolves.

What’s New at ATLChris.com

As many of you know, for the past year, I have been a huge fan and supporter of the Disqus commenting system. The main reason I started using Disqus because I technically didn’t know how to code a kick-ass commenting setup via Wordpress. Well, now that I am professionally developing Wordpress premium themes, I have grown my knowledge of the Wordpress code base, and decided to take it on myself to develop my own custom Wordpress powered comment setup. Well, I am proud to premier my 100% custom Wordpress comment setup TODAY! I hope you all like it. The new comment setup offers threaded replying and jQuery & cookie supported UI interactivity. You can now hide the comment form, the comments themselves, and the trackbacks and pingbacks individually. ATLChris.com will remember what components are show and which are hidden when you return to the site in the future.

One hiccup I have with the new comment setup, is that threading will not display on comments made prior to today. This issue is the result of importing the Disqus comments from the past year in to the Wordpress database. I wish Disqus would offer better exporting tools, but they don’t because they don’t want to make it easy for you to leave. Moving forward though, threading is fully supported!

I just received an email from Andrew Kippen, a representative for Boxee who wanted to publicly respond to NBC CEO Jeff Zucker and his comments to the US Congress concerning the rocky Hulu & Boxee past. Jeff Zucker was recently on C-SPAN discussing the Comcast & NBC merger, when Virginia Rep. Congressman, Rick Boucher, asked “Did Hulu Block Access for the Boxee users to the Hulu programs?” Mr. Zucker explained that Boxee had illegally taken the Hulu content without any business deal. He went on to explain that Hulu had always been open to making a content deal with Boxee. You can view the full C-SPAN footage here: C-SPANArchives.org.

Andrew Kippen, a representative of Boxee sent out a press release with some statements to clarify the remarks Mr. Zucker made on C-SPAN. Andrew’s remarks are below.

I’d like to set the record straight regarding Boxee’s access to Hulu. Boxee uses a web browser to access Hulu’s content – just like Firefox or Internet Explorer. Boxee users click on a link to Hulu’s website and the video within that page plays. We don’t “take” the video. We don’t copy it. We don’t put ads on top of it. The video and the ads play like they do on other browsers or on Hulu Desktop. And it certainly is legal to do so.

Above, Mr. Zucker says the original decision was made by Hulu’s management. That is correct, but as Jason Kilar (Hulu’s CEO) wrote in his post, the request came from NBC. “Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes.”

…

Mr. Zucker says they always said they are open to negotiations. That has not been our experience, but at this point, we will take Mr. Zucker’s offer at face value and will contact him. We are eager to work with both Comcast and NBCU to bring more content on more devices to our users. We believe the Internet represents a great opportunity for content owners and we hope that current artificial barriers put on distribution over the Internet will be taken down.

I can personally vouch for what Andrew said above, Boxee did nothing more than link directly to the Hulu content, including the ads. While it was originally removed, the new Boxee beta has brought back Hulu content. The new method of displaying Hulu content is nothing more than the ingenious use of an internal browser and automatic full screening.