Compaq 702 10.2-inch Mini Note (Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD, Bluetooth Wireless Networking)

There are things to love and hate about the Compaq Mini. Let's get the bad stuff out the way first. The battery on this netbook is pitifully bad. It will power the netbook for around two hours (on most battery settings) which is limp in comparison to almost all major netbooks. The webcam is quite poor, I tried it out yesterday and everything was too dark even when adjusting the settings via yahoo messenger. The hard disk is audible and there can be a regular 'click' noise - this has notably reduced over time (or perhaps the background noise has increased). There is no VGA port! Though you can buy a VGA dongle from HP that fits into a proprietery expansion port (they should really provide this in the box). So while the Mini looks like a business netbook it isn't meeting a basic business need (connecting to a projector). The VGA dongle still isn't available yet. It has a headphone/mic combo port though how well this works I don't know. The Mini does have a decent built in mic though.

The good bits of this netbook almost make the bad stuff disappear. It arguably has the best keyboard. Many of my friends have netbooks and have found the keyboard on my Mini very enjoyable to use. The screen is wonderful it is very vibrant and bright. It is really light (1.1Kg) and thin so is very easy to carry around. Surprisingly for a netbook it also has a decent speaker (which is built into the hinge), so coupled with the nice screen makes for pleasant watching of video. The design of the netbook is also great, it is beautiful to look and and feels reasonably solid for a cheap device.

I've been using the netbook for creating e-learning content and can report that it happily handles Flash and Dreamweaver CS3 as well as the fairly heavy Aptana IDE. It runs the standard apps like office, visio and project well. I'm very pleased, though should point out that any similarly specced netbook would do the same so it's not something unique about the Mini.

I've read that these netbooks can't handle HD video but have to say that I've been watching a number of HD tv shows in DivX format and it has done fine. I'm not an expert on HD video so can't say it'll run every HD format without issue.

If you are thinking about getting a netbook I would recommend that you do some research on the web. I've found a number of 'portable' applications that run very well such as portable VLC (video player), Thunderbird (e-mail), Audacity (audio editor), Firefox (all from [])and Opera ([]) that run very well.

I also invested in a Sandisk Extreme SDHC memory card and a great program called eboostr that lets you use a usb stick/memory card as a cache device and that has really helped the performance. Upgrading the RAM to 2GB is also a good idea.

All in all the Mini is a nice little netbook with pros and cons. If you need a decent built in webcam, battery (though an extended one is out soon), VGA port is important then you might want to give the Mini a miss. If you need a decent screen, great keyboard, lightweight, well designed netbook then I can really recommend this system.

I have the HP mini 1000 which is identical to the Compaq 702 (from the outside at least) but with a different badge. I have the 16gb ssd. I'm very impressed with the surfing performance, startup time, screen quality, keyboard, much better than I'd hoped for. The touchpad with the buttons on the side is also fine. Battery life is more than 2 hours, long enough to be staring continuously at a 10" screen and a good excuse to take a break! It is the best of the netbooks I tried but since using, i point out a couple of negatives. After 20 minutes use, the fan is constantly on at its highest level, it is on the slightly annoying side and loses one star for that alone (even with the SSD drive, the bottom of the computer is quite hot due to the processor). You don't notice the fan in the shop due to other background noise. The small LED light on the button above the touchpad is slightly annoyingly bright, as are the 2 lights on the front buttons, especially like me you lie on the sofa in a slouched position with the netbook at chest level. Fairly minor points but worth bearing in mind. I'd still recommend it as a superb buy, perfect for surfing the net on the sofa!

After a lot of umming and aahhing I plumped for the Compaq 702EA instead of one of the other excellent netbooks on the market at the moment. Having had many laptops before, I've now migrated to a desktop machine but still wanted something portable I could work on when needed. I couldn't really justify the cost of a full laptop.

To be honest there is no real difference between this beautiful little netbook and a full-size laptop - except the size. It comes with Windows XP installed and a true 60GB hard drive. The screen is bright, clear and at 10-inches very easy to work on. The keyboard is of a very comfortable size, not much smaller than a standard laptop's thanks to the lack of a number-pad hogging real-estate.

For expansion we are offered a proprietary expansion port which needs a special adaptor to enble use with an external display (for example - It might offer other functionality too, the documentation is rather vague on this point). There is an SD memory card slot and two USB ports. I guess I would have preferred three, but that would cause an even bigger drain on the netbook's already small battery. I just use them for a mouse and a memory stick.

Build quality is up to HP/Compaq's usual - that is, very good. One of the key points in my decision to buy.

Documentation and a recovery disk is included. Installed software is sparse, just including Adobe Reader and Microsoft Works 9 along with a few HP utilities for networking etc.

Any negatives? Well, no not really. If you are looking for a netbook at all you probably know what to expect. The Compaq offers compatibility with all the Windows XP compatible software out there, not just Linux. If I was to be really picky I'd choose the touchpad light as my only gripe. It's a small LED between the keyboard and the touchpad. It glows a very bright white when the touchpad is active and orange when off. It also acts a switch to toggle the state. Being so bright can distract the eye while working.

I'm very happy with my purchase - especially given the performance and price. This netbook works just like a laptop, includes a decent hard-drive, decent RAM at 1GB and an operating system it's easy to find software for. It looks pretty darn good too!

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