Small Business Netbook Review: HP Mini 311

A netbook won't replace full-fledged small business notebooks, but don't discount the small, affordable laptop. The HP Mini 311 has a lot to offer, and HardwareCentral.com has the details.

Screen-wise, bigger is better. Once your buddy's invited you over to watch the game on his 50-inch flat screen, your 32-inch TV will look puny forevermore. A movie in IMAX packs a bigger wallop than anything else at your local megaplex. And in a sea of netbooks, most with 10.1-inch displays, an extra inch and a half makes a surprisingly likable difference.

To be sure, no one is going to mistake the 11.6-inch screen of the HP Mini 311 for IMAX. But it's sunny and sharp, with crisp colors (as long as you stick to the top couple of brightness settings), and its 1,366 by 768 resolution is noticeably more roomy than the 1,024 by 600 pixels of most 10.1-inch ultraportables. Web pages and applications don't appear squashed or truncated, and there's room for 720p high-definition videos.

There's sufficient video processing power for 720p videos, too, thanks to Nvidia's Ion graphics platform, a replacement for the wretched GMA 950 integrated graphics of most first-generation Intel Atom netbooks.

Read the complete HP Mini 311 netbook review