Great Desktop Replacement but heavy for travel

Author's Rating:

Pros: Has EVERYTHING you could want except a mini-fridge attached.

Cons: Too heavy for lots of travel, gets hot in your lap.

The Bottom Line: 
I would recommend this laptop for the reliability, features and price. It's hard to get this much stuff for a similar price

Author's Review
I got my HP laptop as a replacement for a desktop PC. As such, it had to have all the capabilities, ports, plugs, etc that my desktop had, and it had to do it without chewing my wallet up and spitting it in my face. This is an excellent laptop for that specific use. It has everything... media card reader so I can pop my memory cards out of the digital cameras and right into the laptop to view or edit... BIG hard drive (mine came with the 100 gig drive)... Built in wired and wireless networking... Firewire port so I can plug in my camcorder and edit videos of my 2 little girls... DVD burner so I can create DVDs after editing the video... 15.4 inch screen so I can actually see what I'm doing... and so many USB ports I can't fill them all.

The only difference in mine and the details you will see by going to the View Details section of the review info on this laptop is 1-Mine has a 100 Gig hard drive and 2-Mine has Windows XP Pro.

Let's go thru the list of assets and liabilities and describe them a little better.

We'll start with the liabilities. It's heavy. It's not really made to carry around all over the countryside unless you're a weightlifter (or want to become one). If you want portability and light weight, stop reading right now and look elsewhere. It also creates a good bit of heat. This isn't something unique to this specific laptop, but this HP has the air inlet for processor cooling on the bottom right of the laptop, exactly where your leg is when you sit it in your lap. As a result, it builds up a LOT of heat unless you move your legs out to the edges of the laptop, and even then it gets pretty toasty.

Really, those are about it for the liabilities. Anything else I might want would sacrifice battery life.

On to the other items.

Screen & Video - The 15.4 inch screen is beautiful. I had a 14 inch display before and would never go back. It's hard to believe and inch and a half larger screen could make that big of a difference but it really does. The display is clear and colors vibrant. The screen is easily cleaned when it gets dirty. Trust me, I know. I have 2 little girls under 3 that can't keep their hands off of it. That's OK though, They're worth the minor trouble it causes me to wipe it down every so often. Anyway, the ATI Express 200M video with dedicated 128 megs of video RAM is a big bonus too. It's not fast enough to be a serious gaming machine, but has serious power for playing DVDs and casual non-gaming use.

Keyboard & Touchpad - Awesome! Full sized keyboard. Easier to use than an external keyboard, at least for me. It's tough too. I can't tell you how many cheetos crumbs and things I've had to dump out of mine (see previous reference to the 2 girls under age 3). The touchpad is excellent. There is a button to turn it on or off so if you don't want to use it, you can keep it from drawing power or being affected by sitting your palm on that area. The scroll bar section is so valuable, you'll hate any laptop that doesn't have one. The right side of the touchpad is a scroll section. If you're in a long document or web page, just run your finger up or down that area of the touchpad and it automatically scrolls for you. It's a feature that you won't want to live without after having it for a week or so.

Ports - Need it, it's got it. Tons of USB ports, Firewire port, audio input and output, monitor, S-Video (to connect to the TV), and much more.

DVD/CD - I think these come standard with the DVD Reader, CD-RW combo but I requested mine with the DVD & CD Burner. I've used it a LOT (hundreds of DVDs) and it's never had troubles. Laptop slim-line DVD or CD burners aren't very rugged usually, so I've been extremely pleased with this one.

Sound - Sound is excellent. You're only going to get so much from a small set of speakers, but these do an outstanding job. I've heard better on the Dell and Sony laptops (and Macs too) but not by much.

Hard Drive - Whether you get the standard 80 gig or upgrade to the 100 gig like I did, it gives you tons of room. It's quite, and it's pretty fast for a 4200 RPM drive. I would prefer a faster rotational speed but that would hurt battery life substantially.

Memory Card Reader - Small and accepts pretty much anything except Compact Flash. VERY handy to have if you're into digital photography and don't want to have an external card reader or use a cable to connect your camera. All laptops should have card readers I think.

Battery - For a laptop that produces as much heat as this one, with as many ports, and the size screen, the battery lasts longer than I would think. I've gotten 2 1/2 hours on battery, with the volume cranked all the way, and the screen brightness all the way up, playing a DVD for my girls while camping. I think that's pretty dog-gone good. There are many smaller, lightweight laptops that have battery life much better though.

Network - Built in wired and wireless networking. That means no additional equipment to buy to use it for work, or for home or school. Wireless networking has outstanding range and reliability too.

Processor/performance - Excellent. There are newer Intel and AMD chips both that are faster, but there will ALWAYS be newer chips that are faster. I'm very satisfied with the performance of this machine. It does everything I want, even the heavy lifting items like the video editing, with relative ease. I would recommend upgrading the RAM to 1 gig if you're going to use it in a very demanding manner like that, but otherwise the 512 is sufficient for most people.

Overall, I love my laptop. I paid about $800 for it which was an outstanding price at the time. Even today I would consider it a good price. It's hard to find anything close to that price that can give you all the features this one can. If you're looking for an excellent laptop with an excellent price, then this is the one. If you're looking for something light and portable, look elsewhere.