Souped up HP Mini 311 options coming soon

The HP Mini 311 is already a pretty full featured machine as far as low power mini-laptops go. It has a high resolution 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, NVIDIA ION LE graphics, and gets close to 6 hours of battery life. But it looks like things are about to get even better.

Right now, the laptop ships with 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and NVIDIA ION LE which doesn’t support DirectX 10. But the folks at MyHPMini discovered a few interesting things in the computer’s service manual.

Basically, the HP Mini 311 will soon be available with Windows 7, and while some computer makers are restricting their mini-laptops to run only Windows 7 Starter, the HP Mini 311 will be available with a choice of Windows 7 Starter, Basic, Premium, and Professional. Or at least it will support all of those options, it remains to be seen whether HP will offer all four options to customers.

Once the Windows 7 models hit the shelves, you’ll also start seeing the HP Mini 311 with full NVIDIA ION support (no more LE), 2 or 3GB of RAM, 250GB or 320GB hard drives or an 80GB solid state disk

Of course, most of these options are likely going to drive up the price, and the $399 price tag is one of the most appealing things about the HP Mini 311 today. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a low end model with Windows 7 Starter Edition continuing to sell for under $400.