HP Mini 1000 now official, joined by HP Compaq Mini 700

After accidentally blowing its own whistle , HP has rolled out its new Mini 1000 netbook across the pond. UK versions are expected to arrive early next year. As with every netbook scrounging for a slice of Eee PC pie, the specs are fairly familiar. What's interesting is that HP has now decided to drop the VIA C-7 M CPU in favour of the standard Intel Atom N270 processor. Alongside that, you've got your 10.2" widescreen display, a choice of 8GB or 16GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth and integrated webscam. You get a choice of RAM too, which goes up to 2GB if you choose the new MIE Linux operating system rather than Windows XP. The whole thing weighs a decent 1.1kg too. MIE stands for Mobile Internet Experience, which is a fancy new dashboard interface that gives you immediate access to your basic browsing and email tools as well as your various media playback options, without requiring you to fanny about waiting for a full blown OS to boot up. It's backed up by Ubuntu Linux.  ... (link)