Take a moment to read about the audience that HP had in mind when they designed the Mini 1000 MIE. Knowing that HP intended for the computer to be used by those that are less computer savvy, I let my sisters take the unit on a test-drive for a few hours. My sisters are still in their early years in high school and generally use the computer for social networking, word processing, listening to music, and viewing/editing photos. I asked them to try the Mini 100 MIE for a few hours and jot down a few notes for me. Here are notes from users who fall right in the range of the Mini 1000 MIE’s target audience:
Katy:
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Power button is in a strange spot
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Keyboard is somewhat difficult to use because all keys are flat
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Mouse pad is very sensitive
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I like the fact that there is no desktop that can get cluttered with files
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I wouldn’t use the instant messenger that the computer provides because it would require checking it my switching from the web browser screen to the instant messenger screen
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The features of the scrollbar are complicated, sometimes it scrolls when I don’t want it to
Lauren:
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The keyboard takes some getting used to but I like the flat keys & the mouse buttons on the side of the mousepad
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The small screen makes viewing large pictures king of annoying because I can’t see the whole thing at once
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I really like the outside design & how this could easily fit into any small backpack
It is interesting to see the reactions to the computer by those that are less technology savvy. I think that Katy’s comment about the instant messenger (which is Pidgin by the way) was mentioning the fact that when an IM is received, the window isn’t brought to the front through the active window. You have to notice that you received an IM either by sound, or if the system is muted, by the little icon in the task bar (which you can’t see if you are in full screen mode in the browser).
February 9th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
that notification is a issue in maemo as well, except there the icon will float in the corner.
still, that has its own issues, as it will obscure part of the toolbar of the browser (what i most often use in full screen).
all in all, no clue on a possible fix…
February 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
you asked your sisters and both do not have the same opinion, now you can imagine that HP asking a certain amount of potential customers gets 100 different opinions…they just chose the most common ones and implement it. it is absolutely impossible to make a perfect system / device. this is not the goal i think, but to give a system / device which can be adapted to your own needs. i personally think that GNU/Linux is way more customizeable than Windows apart from the fact you don’t pay for anything…. anyway..
pidgin gives you the possibility to adjust notifications with plugins. in either windows or linux. so just install the plugins and mainly “guifications” which gives you a huge choice on how to be notified.
Ben Reply:
February 9th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I know that everyone won’t have the same opinions, but I thought it would be interesting to hear the thoughts of some people who aren’t power users. The difference here is that while someone like you or me might recognize that there is a way to adjust notifications like that, they probably don’t, and don’t realize that they might need to dig into the settings of the program to make it suit their needs.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:31 am
How do you get the Internet to connect to a wireless network – I keep getting prompted for my encryption key, but it won’t take. I read on another site, Amazon I think, that another user could not get the thing to connect to their existing network.
After much trying, punching the key in over and over, it finally said it was connected, but the browser and Thunderbird wasn’t seeing the Internet. Help please!
September 26th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
I think I am what you refer to as a target user of my Mini Mi. I like the whole open source idea, and from reading some articles online, understand that I must own a pretty good and highly costumizable machine. Nevertheless, I’ve been struggling with basic audio settings for a while now – followed instructions from a hp forum to improve sound quality, and had my first steps in the world of gnome-terminal, but so far it has only resulted in messing up other sound settings, especially skype’s.