I have blogged previously about how I have gadget lust for a netbook. Well, I have been playing a lot of attention to the new HP Mini 1000 recently, and boy howdy do I want one. I discovered over the holiday weekend that Best Buy carries this model, so yesterday after work I went to the Best Buy in Sunnyvale, and sure enough, I found one on display:

My HP Mini spy photo

I was pleasantly surprised by the keyboard -- I found it easy to type on, with no mistakes. Smaller than 100% keyboards are hard to do, but I think that HP did a great job with this one. The size and weight are awesome, and the display seemed bright and clear. The mouse buttons being on the side of the trackpad is certainly funky (just making the whole trackpad a button, like Apple has done with the new MacBooks, seems like the way to go here), but I think I could get used to it. So all-in-all, I was impressed with what I saw.

Even worse, it turns out that the price Best Buy is asking (\$450), is around \$50 cheaper than buying the HP Mini 1000 on HP's website. And it's in stock, so I could buy it and get instant gratification.

If it weren't for the recession, and the fact that if I bought it I'd be giving money to Microsoft, I think I would have already cracked. I'm even considering running Windows again -- my experiences with Google Chrome have been quite positive. I could just run Chrome and iTunes on it, and not have to interact with Windows at all.

I predict that I will be torturing myself over this for a few more months, at least.

-Andy.