I'm running build 7000 on mine and it's great. both 7 and Ubuntu recognize the webcam. the built-in mic MIGHT cause some trouble. check out the windows 7 FAQ over at myhpmini.com (it's under guides) for more detailed info on different OSes for the HP Mini I recently did an in-depth review of the 1000 that talks about OSes over at my blog www.timmontech.com

great post, so true.

Agreed, and as a further comment on my tweet (I'm timmontech). I am a big fan of being able to do multiple things with one device AND not having to worry about storage space. My Archos 605 has 160GB of storage which easily holds all my music and most of my movies. It has a 4.3" touchscreen which is great to use for interaction but still lets it fit in my front pocket... I had an iPod Mini, and iPod Video, and a Zune, but the Archos is perfect for me. Plus it acts like a big thumb-drive when I plug it in, which means I can use it to transfer files or give someone a few songs from my music collection.

This thing makes me laugh. I watched the Apple demo vid just to listen to her say "The iPod Shuffle is easy to control...". then laughed when she explained how you skip songs, change playlists, and use any kind of advanced feature. This isn't apple's best idea IMO. they should've kept the same form factor as the 2nd Gen or something similar and just bumped up the storage space. the click wheel-esque controls are at least familiar and don't require you to bring the product manual with you just to remember how to skip to the beginning of a song.

Wow, can't say I have the same issues and I'm fortunate for that and send my wishes to Ron and his family.

I totally agree about personal values, and integrity especially. You can't kinda have integrity some of the time. If you want it it's a 24x7 deal. Integrity and personal values really help guide your life and like Ron said, you don't wanna feel abandoned by yourself.

Great post! especially like the idea about personal projects. I seem to be a side-project addict, I keep picking up new things to do outside of school work.

Keep up the great content!

I totally understand. My netbook has his own little personality. It's weird, yes, but It's funny how easy it is to start doing it. I just need to name mine.... My mini is like that one guy in high school who ALWAYS had the answer, didn't matter how trivial of a question or how obscure of a subject, he knew it. (I do a LOT of Googling) I also feel like a hardcore hacker when I'm writing Java code on my mini. In reality I'm just writing a minimum heap or a binary tree (relatively simple data structures), but I feel like I'm hacking into the CIA network and giving myself codeword clearance. I really hope that the netbooks catch on, cause they're great value machines. and you can take them ANYWHERE. just for fun I shake my netbook while it's booting.. I watch all the people who don't know about the HP mini cringe, cause they don't know it has a solid state drive.

Overall netbooks are awesome. And very personable.

@John, research time should've been longer I agree. I spent a month just choosing the Mini 1000 and I had a pretty restricted requirements list (SSD, Linux-friendly, easy to type on)

I've commented on other posts by Monika and I find that while her technical accuracy isn't necessarily the best she gets the broad concept across. This is where I'd send someone who just asked me what a netbook was... but then I'd bring them back and help them find out which model best suits their needs.

@Monika a nice attempt at making the netbook market easier to understand, but you left out the great thing about netbooks... the options. there's something for just about everyone, from the people who want a long-battery life travel buddy to the people who want a netbook just for the simplicity and weight savings. This seems to be the biggest influence on choice in this market (it was for me) and should've been addressed better in my opinion. So i applaud you, but not without a few pointers to help you improve future technology posts (remember the war on the Mac Myth post?) you're definitely doing better here (or just insulting a smaller subset of techies)

my HP mini 1030NR is running Ubuntu Netbook Remix without a hitch btw.

I just recently bought an HP mini 1000! with Linux and a 16GB SSD It's perfect for going to class and taking notes or anything else I need it to do.

Thanks Bwana!
Better than I ever expected and I understand the difficulty answering the personal brand question. I see you're using Wordpress for your blog, I've got geeklog right now, but I might move over to wordpress. And I'll be sending a donation your way for sure. That was very helpful and hopefully soon I'll have some content to share with you on my blog (right now it's empty, still playing around with the setup and stuff)