Most important and what makes it so darned convenient is its weight, size and portability. It's so light and convenient that I literally take it with me everywhere. I've owned notebooks for several years but their weight is too much for me to lug them around.
The HP mini has a 10.1 inch screen which is more than adequate for me to compose blog posts, edit photos, surf the web, work on a spreadsheet or document and read news articles. If the screen was a mere 7" then I'd be in trouble because that is too small withvery limited real estate.
The built-in wifi means I don't have to carry a wireless card / dongle and I effortlessly connect to open wifi networks. The netbook immediately identifies existing networks and presents a list of available ones and whether or not they're open or secured.
The HP 1033 mini's battery life is great at 5 hours on a six cell Lithium Ion battery. The battery indicator in the task bar makes it easy for me to monitor the battery's status. I can have a morning session, shut down, follow up with an afternoon session and still have enough juice left to compute in the evening.
The minimum cell pack I'd recommend is six, I tried a three cell Acer Aspire One unit and the battery quickly degraded to a mere 2-1/4 hours of battery life which is insufficient.
Most netbooks have three USB ports which is more than enough since they also have built-in media card readers. My only complaint is that the card reader does not read Compact Flash media, which I use in a MicroTrack 24 /96 recorder and digital camera.
The HP mini has a 160 gig drive as did the Acer Aspire One and I strongly recommend this size as being the smallest size I'd consider. You can find netbooks with drives in 60, 80 or 100 gig sizes but 160 is the magic size for me.
Netbooks do not have internal optical drives but the thee USB ports certainly provide for added expandability at my leisure. I normally travel with two 8 gig USB flash drives though I rarely use one, except for game play.
I've installed games on an 8 gig SanDisk drive that acts like a hard drive eliminating the need for me to use a game's compact disc during game play while preserving space on the internal 160 gig drive.
So if I sound jazzed about the netbook it's because I am! I rarely use other computers in the house preferring to surf from the light weight netbook and any room in the house. The netbook's so light and doesn't generate a lot of heat like a standard notebook that I can comfortably surf for hours.
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