Amazon has a pretty solid deal on an HP MediaSmart Home Server. Found elsewhere for over $550, you can get your hands on it for $450 until September 3rd. It was briefly priced at $419.99 direct from HP but that deal has expired and it’s now $600.

HP announced the Mini 5101 back in late June and we just got one into the ‘Gear office for review. As John noted back when it was announced, the 5101 isn’t a netbook and it’s fallen into the relatively new category of ultralights. I really liked the Mini 1000 and 2140, but the 5101 might be my new favorite.

Here’s a quick rundown of the specs for the review unit we were sent:

Buckle up. HP is apparently prepping its own 11.6-inch netbook (not pictured above) for release later this year. There’s literally no information about it other than ODM giant Quanta will be producing the thing, so I’ll not fluff this piece too much with superfluous text.

It looks like the cool thing to do now is bash HP over its environmental record. Yesterday’s Greepeace action was a huge story for several minutes, drawing attention, apparently, to the company’s rubbish record with respect to various chemicals in its products. And today The Register has photos of shipping containers, used to ship things.

Indie rock band Greenpeace has a problem with HP, specifically its broken promises vis–à-vis toxic chemicals in its products. The band’s frontman, Casey Harrell, says that “HP continues to put hazardous products on the market despite promises made years ago to phase out these toxic compounds.” So, to get back at HP, Greenpeace members “climbed to the top of HP’s global headquarters and painted the message ‘Hazardous Products’ in big, bold letters on the roof.”

Well, the one big advantage HP had in the Windows Home Server game maybe about to disappear. Someone has found a relatively easy way to enable remote Time Machine backup to a WHS. It’s probably only a matter of time before a rough GUI version appear followed up shortly later by a well-polished solution.

HP’s Mini 110 is now available in “Pink Chic” and “White Swirl” along with the original “Black Swirl” color. Also of note: HP is offering a $30 Broadcom video accelerator upgrade.

I’ve been rounding up a lot of ultralights(more about that next week) – I wouldn’t call this a netbook – and this looks to be one of the purdiest of the bunch. The 5101 will cost about $449 and runs an Atom processor. It has a 10-inch screen and full keyboard.

Look for more of these “ultralights” to pop up this year. Notebook manufacturers have realized that selling a tiny laptop for $5 and a few bottle caps was not a very good strategy and so they’re rethinking this whole “netbook” moniker. You’ll see ultralights – smaller notebooks with more powerful hardware – and MIDs like the iPod Touch or whatever Nokia is planning.

HP has replaced its Mini 1000 series of netbooks with the Mini 110 series. Not a whole lot has changed, except that you’ll be able to customize things a bit more.

While students everywhere are preparing to rock the F out this summer, HP has just announced its line of back-to-school notebooks — a cruel reminder to you kids that summer is short and you should always be focused on studying and using your indoor voices.

Don’t count AMD as being out. In response to the ever growing netbook/small laptop market, AMD has announced their new CPU “Congo”, along with putting it into the updated HP Dv2 which is coming out on June 10th. We liked the original Dv2 — however, adding a little more grunt to it with the improved AMD processor can only be a good thing.

We’ve always had a thing for HP’s Minis — from their understated and practical design to the simple Mi OS, they’ve always been among our favorite tiny laptops. This latest iteration ups the specs just a tiny bit; you can choose a 1.66GHz Atom N280 instead of the 1.6GHz N270, and they’re promising full HD support if you opt for the nicer LED-backlit screen and the upcoming video accelerator. Form factor appears to be more or less unchanged, but that’s a good thing.

As with before, you can get an XP edition with less RAM and less storage for $330, or you can go for the $280 Mi version, which has more of both. I’ve never understood that pricing strategy. There’s also a shiny black business version, but its merits (apart from being black) are not well-explained.

It’s hard to beat the sex appeal of HP’s TouchSmart PC. It has 4GB of Ram, a 500GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g/n, and of course that large 22-inch touchscreen with HP’s proprietary software suite. To bad Vista is at the core but you could always upgrade that to Win7 RC.

HP had the Windows Home Server market all to itself until recently. First it was CyberPower, now Acer has entered the market with a small footprint WHS. The Acer Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N might be the best deal out of all of them though.

Uh oh! The hottest computer trend in recent memory, the “overheating and exploding battery,” has found a new victim: HP. A bunch of batteries were shipped from August 2007 to March 2008, two of which “overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage.”

Sounds serious! Are you affected? Handy chart inside.