If you have read any of my previous posts, it should come as little surprise that I am a big fan of netbooks, however given our sister site Appletell does such a great job with the Mac coverage, I do not often get to cover another favorite of mine — OS X. So with that, it is safe to assume that I would be more than willing to pick up an official Apple netbook, should one be announced. Continued.

Until then, I plan to hold off running OS X on a netbook, despite how tempting it is. Of course if you are not as willing to wait as I am, then a new compatibility chart should help you out when it comes to choosing a netbook to work with. Short story, if you are considering going this route then you may want to pick up an MSI Wind, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 or an HP Mini-Note 2133. Other models do and will work, but each will be missing some functionality. Surprisingly one of the more popular models, the Eee PC 9xx and 1000 series lack support for both audio and ethernet.

Perhaps HP is making an effort to clear some inventory in preparation for a refresh of the Mini-Note or maybe they are just looking to offer a little more competition in the netbook market. Either way, it seems it will be the consumer who will be the winner because they have just announced a new, lower price on the low-end Mini-Note models.

The Mini-Note pricing will now begin at just $399, which will give you a very capable netbook running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and features a 1.0GHz Via C7 processor, 8.9-inch display, 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD, VGA camera and a 3-cell battery. Interested in what else HP’s got? Keep reading.