Welcome back! It is nice to see you back again.

HP’s biz-minded Mini 5101 is an inheritor to the Mini 2140. It feels and looks great, except for a premium-price Netbook, we are expecting to get more features, not less. This new version, the Mini 5101, really is a stylistic exit from the 2140, trading the delicately rounded silvery metal look for a sharp-edged black brushed-metal framework. It is a bit larger than its progenitor, and also a little more cost-effective, at $425.

But since the beginning of 2009, we have seen a radical shift in Netbook costs, with entry-level models coming in under $299, for pretty much the same combo of an Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, Windows XP, and a 160GB drive ( in this situation, you get the marginally quicker N280 version of the Atom ).

The HP Mini 5101 offers some notable extras, including a higher-resolution screen and a Gobi-powered mobile broadband module–but those cost extra, and are not included in the $425 base configuration.

This new model also loses the ExpressCard slot found in the older Mini 2140. Still, if you can spend a bit more for your Netbook, you will find that the Mini 5101′s keyboard and touchpad are tough to beat, and the craggy metal construction screams quality. Battery life is also fantastic, and the six-cell battery pokes out only slightly from the base of the system.

One good decision was taking the alternate uses for the Function keys ( F1-F12 ), and swapping them with the original F-key needs. As an example, hitting the volume mute button just needs hitting F8, rather the FN+F8 combination. The sole headache : using ALT+F4 to shut a window now needs ALT+FN+F4. The Mini 5101′s touch pad is a more conventional type, with the mouse buttons found under it, instead of the side mouse buttons and lengthened touch pad found on prior HP Netbooks. We prefer this new style, and the slick, resistance-free touch-pad surface made mousing a breeze.

The final result of all this keyboard / touch-pad / framework engineering is as good a user experience as can be discovered on a 10-inch computer, and propels to the Mini 5101 to the higher end of the Netbook usability chart. The 10.1-inch wide-screen display offers a 1,024×600 local resolution, which is the Netbook norm. That is typically fine for most Web surfing, but long, vertical pages and Word documents can need a large amount of scrolling to read. The inset panel isn’t as nice-looking as the edge-to-edge glass on the Mini 2140, but it does make allowance for a matte screen, which we usually favor. A higher-res display, at 1,366×768, will be available as a $25 option, but we haven’t had an opportunity to check that out in the flesh yet.