As some of you guys may know, i was looking for a new laptop a while ago. I was looking for a poweful yet portable laptop which will have enough processing power for a very solid entertainment device.
The portability was not much of an issue but I did not want a big and heavy laptop at the same time which is difficulty to carry around. Also I was not ready to sacrifice too much on the power as this laptop will be used for video recording and light video edition and encoding work.
Intel recently lunched then 965 chipset family for mobile platform and I made sure I went in for newest Centrino 4 platform ( code named Santa Rosa ).
So after some research and help for fellow TE members I decided to go for HP DV2500T instead of HP6500T as 2500t offered lower footprint and it was lighter. This is HP's latest offering based on this new platform in entertainment laptop category.
So without wasting too much time lets have a look at it, shall we?
[BREAK=Configuration]
Processor : Intel Core2Duo T7100 1.80Ghz 2MB L2 cache
Ram : 2GB (2x1GB DDR2 667 Mhz @ 5-5-5-15 )
Display : 14.1 inch WXGA Brightview 1280x800
GPU : Nvidia 8400M GS 64MB dedicated (Max 767MB shared)
Hard Disk : 120GB 5400RPM
Chipset : 965PM northbridge, ICH8M southbridge
DVD R/W : 8x DVD RW drive with lightscribe
Operating System : Windows Vista Home Premium
Connectivity : 1xExpress card, 1xHDMI, 1xLan, 1x Telephone, 2x USB 2.0, 1xHDMI, 1xSvideo out, 1xVGA out, 1xExpansion port3, 1x1394, 1x AC adapter, SD/MMC/Sony MS/XD card reader
Wifi : Intel Pro 3945ABG
Battery: One 6 Cell Lithium Ion
Dimensions : 13.15" x 9.33" x 1.54" ( LxWxH in display closed condition )
[BREAK=The Laptop]
This is one of the better looking laptops out there at the moment. Its compact and stylish. You will certainly attract some attention while working on this in public. The body finish is somewhat unique. It feels and looks like a carbon fiber textured surface. But that pattern is there for visual effect only and surface is actually very shiny and smooth.
The laptop is not that heavy at under 2.8KG. So its easy to carry around with your. It features a standard 101 key keyboard and in addition to this it has a touch sensitive media control strip at the top which is very useful while media playback.
Also included is a remote control for media center which is neat addition. And it comes included even if you do not order the optional express card tv tuner. Its compact remote and the best thing about it is that it can be stored in empty express card slot when not in use. So you dont need to worry about loosing it.
All the ports are located on the two sides and no ports on the back of the laptop which makes it very easy to attach and remove the devices. HP surely gave some serious thought while designing this laptop.
The power on button is located at left top above the keyboard. And front also has 2 stereo out and a microphone jack ( all 3.5mm) which is nice touch by HP.
Bluetooth and Wifi can be turned on and off by the slider button in front. Also present next to it are the 3 LED indicators for Power, battery and HDD activity.
Here are some pics of this laptop.
[BREAK=The Laptop LCD]
The LCD screen is usually weakpoint of almost all mainstream laptops. All laptops in this category use the TN panel and hence the colour reproduction suffers. So I was not expecting a lot from this laptop's LCD.
Also I read the reviews online which indicated the average LCD of this laptop.
So expecting bad results I had a look at this LCD and as expected the colours were not rendered accurately. But little playing with RGB profiles and I got it to work at my acceptable levels without too much troubles.
Everest reports the panel asLG Philips LP 141WX1-TLA2. It is better than XPS1210 screen in viewing angles as well as colour saturation.
Dont expect the LCD to match high end desktop 8bit panels and you wont be disappointed.
[BREAK=Performance]
I ran usual set of benchmarks on this laptop. Keep in mind this runs on Windows Vista so I was not able to run certain benchmarks which I would have liked to. But this will give you decent enough idea about the general performance of this laptop.
CPU and FPU Performance
Memory Performance
Superpi 1.5
HDD performance
3D Mark 2006
Maximum temperature reached on this laptop
[BREAK=Performance Analysis]
As you can see, the performance is great for the laptop of its size and price tag.
Its not something exceptionally better in performance over previous generation Intel C2D mobile platform. But it is offering better upgrade options and also better battery life. I was amazed to see this laptop last 1 full 3 hour bollywood movie playback with balanced power profile.
This laptop has all one will need to make it a entertainment hub. It has great connectivity options. Presence of HDMI is added bonus to those who own LCD TV with HDMI inputs.
The processor and GPU are decent enough to permit some casual gaming. Keep in mind 8400M is not exceptionally good GPU. Its slightly better than previous generation 7400GO.
I was lucky to have Seagate hard drive in my laptop. Most people have reported to have received this laptop with slower Fijitsu drives. But I got the Seagate which is on average 3-4mbps faster than Fijitsu drives.
The DVD writer is there when you decide to burn some media. Nothing exceptional here.
[BREAK=My viewpoint about HP]
Its not a perfect laptop. I know that very well. HP also loads this with lots of junk. But if you have chosen Vista home premium, you can use the vista upgrade disk provided with the laptop to do clean format and install whenever you wish to do so.
I did complete reformat, repartitioning and reinstall of Vista Home Premium the day I received this laptop. This makes laptop boot much quicker and perform better.
Quickplay buttons on the top of keyboard is also a nice feature to have on entertainment laptop.
Built quality is decent. Its not metal alloy casing. But its considerably better and more durable than Dell Inspiton or Acer laptops I have seen and used. Its sturdy. There is nothing that feels out of place. The Screen hinges are nice and firm. There is no screen latch, this is great news as I always hated screen lock latches on laptops which pop out when using the machine.
Overall I am impressed by what HP has put together here. Its nice package and almost perfect.
The only really negative point about this laptop is its lack of options in bios. You cant do anything in bios. And this laptop does not have legacy support. So you cant install Linux on it. Which is bad news for Linux users.
And as of now, only windows vista is offered with this laptop. You do not have any other option, and you cant install any other OS for that matter due to lack of legacy support.
Other than that, this is very good laptop. I cant find any really -ve points for a windows user.
Purchase Price : US$1278 from costco.com ( Rs. 51759 )
The portability was not much of an issue but I did not want a big and heavy laptop at the same time which is difficulty to carry around. Also I was not ready to sacrifice too much on the power as this laptop will be used for video recording and light video edition and encoding work.
Intel recently lunched then 965 chipset family for mobile platform and I made sure I went in for newest Centrino 4 platform ( code named Santa Rosa ).
So after some research and help for fellow TE members I decided to go for HP DV2500T instead of HP6500T as 2500t offered lower footprint and it was lighter. This is HP's latest offering based on this new platform in entertainment laptop category.
So without wasting too much time lets have a look at it, shall we?
Processor : Intel Core2Duo T7100 1.80Ghz 2MB L2 cache
Ram : 2GB (2x1GB DDR2 667 Mhz @ 5-5-5-15 )
Display : 14.1 inch WXGA Brightview 1280x800
GPU : Nvidia 8400M GS 64MB dedicated (Max 767MB shared)
Hard Disk : 120GB 5400RPM
Chipset : 965PM northbridge, ICH8M southbridge
DVD R/W : 8x DVD RW drive with lightscribe
Operating System : Windows Vista Home Premium
Connectivity : 1xExpress card, 1xHDMI, 1xLan, 1x Telephone, 2x USB 2.0, 1xHDMI, 1xSvideo out, 1xVGA out, 1xExpansion port3, 1x1394, 1x AC adapter, SD/MMC/Sony MS/XD card reader
Wifi : Intel Pro 3945ABG
Battery: One 6 Cell Lithium Ion
Dimensions : 13.15" x 9.33" x 1.54" ( LxWxH in display closed condition )
[BREAK=The Laptop]
This is one of the better looking laptops out there at the moment. Its compact and stylish. You will certainly attract some attention while working on this in public. The body finish is somewhat unique. It feels and looks like a carbon fiber textured surface. But that pattern is there for visual effect only and surface is actually very shiny and smooth.
The laptop is not that heavy at under 2.8KG. So its easy to carry around with your. It features a standard 101 key keyboard and in addition to this it has a touch sensitive media control strip at the top which is very useful while media playback.
Also included is a remote control for media center which is neat addition. And it comes included even if you do not order the optional express card tv tuner. Its compact remote and the best thing about it is that it can be stored in empty express card slot when not in use. So you dont need to worry about loosing it.
All the ports are located on the two sides and no ports on the back of the laptop which makes it very easy to attach and remove the devices. HP surely gave some serious thought while designing this laptop.
The power on button is located at left top above the keyboard. And front also has 2 stereo out and a microphone jack ( all 3.5mm) which is nice touch by HP.
Bluetooth and Wifi can be turned on and off by the slider button in front. Also present next to it are the 3 LED indicators for Power, battery and HDD activity.
Here are some pics of this laptop.
[BREAK=The Laptop LCD]
The LCD screen is usually weakpoint of almost all mainstream laptops. All laptops in this category use the TN panel and hence the colour reproduction suffers. So I was not expecting a lot from this laptop's LCD.
Also I read the reviews online which indicated the average LCD of this laptop.
So expecting bad results I had a look at this LCD and as expected the colours were not rendered accurately. But little playing with RGB profiles and I got it to work at my acceptable levels without too much troubles.
Everest reports the panel asLG Philips LP 141WX1-TLA2. It is better than XPS1210 screen in viewing angles as well as colour saturation.
Dont expect the LCD to match high end desktop 8bit panels and you wont be disappointed.
[BREAK=Performance]
I ran usual set of benchmarks on this laptop. Keep in mind this runs on Windows Vista so I was not able to run certain benchmarks which I would have liked to. But this will give you decent enough idea about the general performance of this laptop.
CPU and FPU Performance
Memory Performance
Superpi 1.5
HDD performance
3D Mark 2006
Maximum temperature reached on this laptop
[BREAK=Performance Analysis]
As you can see, the performance is great for the laptop of its size and price tag.
Its not something exceptionally better in performance over previous generation Intel C2D mobile platform. But it is offering better upgrade options and also better battery life. I was amazed to see this laptop last 1 full 3 hour bollywood movie playback with balanced power profile.
This laptop has all one will need to make it a entertainment hub. It has great connectivity options. Presence of HDMI is added bonus to those who own LCD TV with HDMI inputs.
The processor and GPU are decent enough to permit some casual gaming. Keep in mind 8400M is not exceptionally good GPU. Its slightly better than previous generation 7400GO.
I was lucky to have Seagate hard drive in my laptop. Most people have reported to have received this laptop with slower Fijitsu drives. But I got the Seagate which is on average 3-4mbps faster than Fijitsu drives.
The DVD writer is there when you decide to burn some media. Nothing exceptional here.
[BREAK=My viewpoint about HP]
Its not a perfect laptop. I know that very well. HP also loads this with lots of junk. But if you have chosen Vista home premium, you can use the vista upgrade disk provided with the laptop to do clean format and install whenever you wish to do so.
I did complete reformat, repartitioning and reinstall of Vista Home Premium the day I received this laptop. This makes laptop boot much quicker and perform better.
Quickplay buttons on the top of keyboard is also a nice feature to have on entertainment laptop.
Built quality is decent. Its not metal alloy casing. But its considerably better and more durable than Dell Inspiton or Acer laptops I have seen and used. Its sturdy. There is nothing that feels out of place. The Screen hinges are nice and firm. There is no screen latch, this is great news as I always hated screen lock latches on laptops which pop out when using the machine.
Overall I am impressed by what HP has put together here. Its nice package and almost perfect.
The only really negative point about this laptop is its lack of options in bios. You cant do anything in bios. And this laptop does not have legacy support. So you cant install Linux on it. Which is bad news for Linux users.
And as of now, only windows vista is offered with this laptop. You do not have any other option, and you cant install any other OS for that matter due to lack of legacy support.
Other than that, this is very good laptop. I cant find any really -ve points for a windows user.
Purchase Price : US$1278 from costco.com ( Rs. 51759 )