I bought this while stationed on a small Army depot, which has nothing to do within walking distance. It will definitely do all your web surfing, document writing and other normal use you would get out of a portable PC. The charge lasts a pretty long time, considering it has a large screen for a netbook.
One big factor in my purchasing this over other netbooks was the Nvidia ION motherboard/Graphics processor, which is much more capable of graphical power than most netbooks which use Intel's shared video processor. Out of the box, it will play games such as Warcraft 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004 with graphics maxed. This wasn't enough for me, so I overclocked the CPU and GPU (I won't tell you how to void your warranty, there are plenty of forums with this info on them), and can play Age of Empires 3, Command and Conquer 3, Fable and Neverwinter Nights 2 with a great framerate at medium high graphics levels. Don't expect this little thing to be able to play Bioshock 2 or Left 4 Dead 2. (Games were downloaded via Steam, EA, Atari, Blizzard and Impulse, if you need a good idea of where to buy digital copies of games)
The only thing I dislike about this netbook is all the space taken up by HP's "what if" restoration files. About 35GB were freed up after removing system restore, hibernate, and all the install files for the programs that come pre-installed. I wouldn't get delete-happy unless you have some knowledge about computers and know or find out what you NEED and don't need. If you want to find out what parts of your hard drive are being used by large files or folders, a great free program to use is TreeSize, which will break down how your hard disk space is being used.
I use the netbook mainly for streaming music from the internet, watching downloaded movies, surfing the 'net, and playing games. If you have any sort of internet connection or a flash drive, you don't even mind that the netbook lacks a disc drive. I currently use this netbook with a laser mouse and a 17" widescreen monitor as the secondary display. The keyboard is natural to type on, and doesn't require much adjusting. There are pretty many useful keys that work with the function button, such as volume control, locking Windows, and changing the screen brightness. The mousepad is a little bit awkward until you get used to it, with the mouse buttons being right on the edge, and if I switch back to a different laptop at school I will be trying to hit buttons on the edge of the laptop! Not really an issue, even if I didn't use a mouse. I can't find any way to disable the mousepad, but when typing normally I have never had any problems with bumping the mousepad or its buttons. The speakers are pretty good for a netbook, but being located under the front where your palms rest, it sounds the best when playing music and have the netbook closed and flipped upside-down. I usually use headphones, because I currently have roommates, and enjoy turning the volume up more than some would prefer. Movies look great on it so far. I would definitely reccommend this little beast.Get more detail about HP Mini 311-1000NR 11.6-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life.
