OStatic

Today, Hewlett-Packard--the world's number one PC vendor--has announced a new line of notebook computers called ProBooks, with one shown here. The systems fall into the prosumer space (professional/consumer) and are bigger and more fully stocked than most netbooks. Notably, HP is offering SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 as an operating system choice on the ProBooks, in addition to Windows Vista and XP. HP's arch-rival Dell is also continuing to ship portable computers with Linux installed, and is seeing many users satisfied with Linux. Can Linux remain a fixture on portable systems?

The $379.99 Hewlett-Packard Mini 1000 MI netbook is a new Linux-based offering with a customized user interface shell dubbed MI for Mobile Internet. JKOnTheRun has been putting one of the first units through the paces, and offers up a photo tour. These guys try netbooks by the truckload, and they say that this new unit is the smallest and lightest one with a comfortable 10-inch display that they've used. It ships with Ubuntu, a 1.6-GHz Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory, a multi-format card reader, HD audio and 16 GB of SSD storage. The built-in browser is a variant of Firefox, and it looks like it supports extensions. Check the svelte system out here, and check HP's site out for more.