Everything about it sounds good . . . except it's made by HP.

Specs look great, but $400 is almost low end laptop territory. If it was $300-$350 and I was actually looking for a netbook, I might consider it.

11.6" is dangerously close to laptop-size but for $400 I might pick one of these up. Pretty well equipped for that price.

It's hard to tell what the overall size is going to be, but the keyboard has a large bezel on the side compared to the more well laid out netbooks competitors. Either the whole thing is bigger than the current crop (in which case it may still be pretty portable), or the keyboard is going to be very cramped feeling.

I have an HP laptop (a dv9800) that's been absolutely great! I can, of course, run Office apps, I can run Photoshop CS4, I can watch movies, I can play games (mostly I play Team Fortress 2 and World of Warcraft). Never had a problem with it. I think the Ion Mini 311 looks like a great netbook.

battery life?

yeah, at what point do netbooks become laptops screen-size wise?

This might be great for my sister. She's heading to college and needs a computer that can play her web-based flash games while being very portable. (also being low cost is a major plus cause she's bound to break it like the last one)

WOW!! 1.6GHz single core!

Seriously, My nc6220 is over 3 years old and has a 14" screen 1.8GHz single core cpu.
2 GB of RAM
And it sells on eBay for $300
Don't waist your money people!

ALL NETBOOKS = TOTAL CR4P

The only thing that makes this one 1/2 decent is the HD resolution capable video card and LCD but don't expect to be gaming on this thing. It would almost be worth buying if it included a Blu-Ray player.

Throw in:
-3 GB of RAM (or more)
-Blu-Ray drive
-Dual-core higher clock CPU
-Faster FSB
-Windows 7

Then I would probably buy one... at $399

The thing you REALLY need to keep in mind when thinking about purchasing a netbook is that it is really just designed to get on the internet.. Hence the term NET..book. It may be able to do other basic tasks as well such as word processing and sending and receiving e-mails. Don't expect it to be awesome at playing HD movies (this one might be capable though). Don't expect to play any new 3D games. Don't expect to be able to record or watch HDTV. Don't expect it to convert video. Don't expect it to be any good at photo or video editing.

Personally, I would rather have a 5 pound work horse laptop with a large screen that is capable of just about anything and will last years even as software increases in requirements increase.

OK...so it's HD capable...but XP isn't HDCP compliant. How useful...

Netbooks are only useful if you prefer the relatively small size. If not, there are better buys.

People complain too much about the "netbook's power". Like Dark_Lord69. Obviously a r3tard. The point of a netbook is portability and battery life. Yes, you can get a 15" laptop for 400 bucks with better stats, but you're not paying for stats, you're paying for battery life and portability. I have a 17" Sager with 2x 8800m GTX's in SLI, and a desktop Core2Duo Wolfsdale CPU @ 3.16ghz with 4gb of ram and a 1920x1080p screen. It plays crysis on max settings, BUT IT's HUGE AND HAS NO BATTERY LIFE! I bought it to be a portable gaming machine for LAN parties and such. But a netbook is for daily use, dragging around to the office and out to lunch, doing work on long plane rides, ect. This new generation of netbooks are going to be much better in terms of video and picture editing, over-all use ability for random tasks and small gaming (maybe HL2/TF2/WoWish type games, even then wont be the greatest, BUT THATS NOT THE POINT OF A NETBOOK!). Netbooks don't sell so well because they are useless, I find that netbook is a lot more fun to have than an iphone on lunch breaks and such. And to the retard who thinks 400 bucks is too high, come on, you'd buy a laptop with trash stats for 300 but wont buy top of the line for 50-100 bucks more? Give me a break.

It is so funny to see so many people deride netbooks...
How many of those who do so have actually used one?

Having used the MSI Wind for a portable work platform, I can tell you that nothing in the $400 price point comes close to the portability of a netbook. Does it run like a Quad core? Of course not. Do I play games on it? Well, does Sid Meiers Colonize count? LOL - Seriously, being able to drop my little machine into my day planner and run all day is exactly the point of why they are useful. I can write and compile C# code without issue and with very tweaked Vista or Win7 it does a great job at all the things I have thrown at it. Email, Word docs, etc... All works fine.

So don't hate the little netbook. It is purpose built and does the job it was built for very well.

Coyote

11.6 inches? That thing will have Vista on it. Or Windows 7 when it's out.

11.6" screen is nice but Netbooks are supposed to be small and battery efficient. 11.6" isn't small. Make an option for a smaller form factor using a high resolution 8.9" screen and I'm in. FYI - my laptop is a Toshiba Satellite w/ 17" screen, Core2Duo... and what I need is a small portable not a middle sized portable.

Price is too high for me for a 'netbook'. This is more like a laptop with an atom processor.
Battery life? (I expect not much).

Their timing is also bad!
I'd rather wait for Intel to come out with their newer chip.
I'm almost sure the ion device here will outperform intel's offer in 3D performance, but Intel's device might outperform this device in battery life; and since I rarely play games, I find battery life more important than gaming at this moment!

can these things play 1080 video? or blu-ray movies? is USB 2.0 fast enough for external blu-ray drives?

DDR3?
Is that right?

It's got good specs for that price.

ION LE? why oh why do they have to layer the ION in marketing crap, what is the difference between the ION and the ION LE? Also i thought, or at least most other references to the ION used the nividia 9400 with the dual core atom 330 for better performance, but maybe that's just the nettops that aren't running on a battery.

Count me in!

If it has Windows 7 I will be ordering one to replace the Asus 900HA I just sold. I love the specs, especially the fact that it doesn't have Intel graphics. Come on HP, don't let me down.

I just wish it had an Atom 330. I'm still keeping an eye on the ASRock Multibook G22 for that reason since it has one. I just wish it wasn't an ASRock. I've always disregarded Netbooks until the started putting the Ion chipset in them. Now I actually feel comfortable getting rid of my power hungry 4 year AMD turion that I only use for checking e-mail and traveling with.

It's already been done. I bought an Acer AO751h last month from Staples. $399 Canadian and all of the same specs. The 11.6-inch display makes a big difference in usefulness. Anything smaller looks and feels too much like a toy that little girls use to play corporate executive Barbie.

This one is same as 751h just with bete gpu, by the spec is same ase aspire 5737z only dual core exchanged by ion

The price seems just right for this machine, I think HP has a winner on it's hands.