HP’s Mini-Note PC 2133 is intended for an education market (with a price that starts at $499), but it has enough going for it that the appeal stretches into the consumer and business user segments too.

First, the outside specs. The Mini-Note has an 8.9-inch display, which is scratch resistant. The keyboard is 92 percent the size of a normal keyboard, not small enough to give most people difficulty in using it, but still reduced to make it easier for younger users to reach the keys. It weighs in at 2.63 pounds.

Now for the inside specs. The display has 1280×768 resolution. The processor is a Via Technologies C7-M ULV processor, a chip in use in a number of mobile computing devices. The computer comes with a single gigabyte of DDR2 SDRAM, though the machine can hold up to two gigabytes. There’s a 120 gigabyte hard drive (vs. the solid state drives that other such devices include), wireless 802.11 a/b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0. If you suddenly jerk the machine, a 3-D DriveGuard utility locks the hard drive to protect it from “shock and distress.” In other words, it’s less likely, you’ll lose your data.

You’ll find two USB 2.0 ports, an RJ-11 Ethernet port, a VGA port, a docking connector, an ExpressCard slot and an SD memory card slot that accepts SD, SDHC and MMC media cards.

There’s a built-in microphone, webcam, integrated stereo speakers, a headphone jack, an external microphone jack and touch controls for volume control and mute.

The power source is a rechargeable 3-cell lithium-ion battery, which provides a bit over two hours of battery life.

On the operating system front, the PriceGrabber-offered edition runs Windows Vista, but you can also find versions that have SuSE Linux. It also includes Microsoft Office Ready 2007 — which isn’t the same as getting Office itself! You have to put out another $150 to $180 to get an activation key to turn on the applications.

Overall, this HP offering provides a lot of punch for the money. A sub-$600 computer running Windows Vista and weighing in under three pounds? This isn’t the kind of device that forces you to change your computing habits. When you have a 120 gigabytes of space, there’s no need to rely on online services to store your data or provide your applications. You may find performance sluggish with Vista running on a gigabyte of RAM, which means you may want to up that to two gigs. HP’s offering is a far cry from the “disposable” computer concept that Asus is dominating with its $250 Asus Eee PC, but if budget isn’t a concern, this model has a lot going for it.

Next: the Everex CloudBook.