The first impression when I got it in my hands… It is pretty, the body is stylish, the black lid with a silver colored inner portion. The texture on the body is simply beautiful. And the weight is not that high.
I turned it on… The blue lights are beautiful. There are a lot of quick access buttons provided near the keyboard/pad for volume control, muting, starting DVD player, play/pause music, etc and the HP installed software is well coupled with these shortcut keys to provide an excellent experience. You have additional keys for things like suspend, brightness control and all that can be used along with a “fn” key… The 14.1’’ wide screen is smart. It has got 1280x800 resolution giving you good space to work and have fun…
The booting time was short. For the first boot it will go to the registration of Windows XP (Home edition). Once it’s over we can create a restore disc incase we need it later.
The first thing I checked was the camera… It was pretty good taking pictures at 640x480 sizes at 96dpi. The video recording is also very good as it’s giving a good frame rate without losing frames. It managed to work in darker environments…The next item in my check list was the DVD writer. First I tried putting in all the old DVDs that I had with me that didn’t read in my old PC as they had a lot of scratches on them. To my surprise, they all were working well with this drive!!! I couldn’t try writing discs as I forgot to buy some blank DVDs as I was hurrying to my room to have a look at the new gadget I got… But I noticed that the drive is equipped with “light scribe technology” meaning you can print the name and some details on the disc using the same drive (provided you have light scribe discs with you).
I tried to load some applications that needed some CPU attention to them and I found the results really good. Of course I have got a good processor and 512MB of RAM which is plenty for almost all the applications that we use nowadays… The 80GB SATA hard drive is vast and fast enough to store all our files and to load applications in a jiffy…
I didn’t get enough time to check the performance of the graphics subsystem as I didn’t have any games with me and to be frank I am not that interested in games. I got good results when I tried to watch the DVD movies. I tried this running on batteries and it played the entire movie without any trouble and gave me an additional 20minutes after that… The machine is equipped with Altec lansing speakers and they are very good in delivering quality sound. The sound never got distorted during my tests with bass boosting and high volume… That’s all I want…
For the communication part It has got all the stuffs that you here; Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, LAN connector, modem, etc. The only thing I noticed missing was the Infra red port and I was a little unhappy about this as my mobile phone has got only IR for communication. I think I have to buy a data cable for my mobile phone now. For the expansion part we had; express card slot, expansion port, etc… The much popular PCMCI slot is missing and HP says that express card slot is for that.. Well I don’t know… Then there are 3 USB ports, 1 USB (square type) port for connecting digital cameras and all, 5 in 1 card reader, S-Video connector, VGA connector(for connecting to LCD projectors and external monitors), etc… There was another mechanism for supporting security locks…
Yes, I for got to tell you about the remote control. It’s neat and easy to use and the best part is, it fits in the express card slot on the laptop base. So we don’t have to worry about where we left it last time after watching the movie…
Considering all these, the laptop is really good for entertainment and work. It is stylish, power packed and portable. I recommend you this machine as I have done a lot of research before buying it… The final word, I LOVE IT!!!
Faiz
