It is amazing how much laptop you can get under $600 these days

31 May 2009

I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t absolutely need another laptop. After a failed experiment with an MSI Wind Netbook, I decided that I would try using a second laptop for my stay at home, roam around the house computer. Soon I’ll be trading my beloved Macbook Pro in for a shiny new 17” Macbook Pro, but while I am waiting to see what Apple will announce at WWDC, I realized that owning that computer would only add to my need for another more portable computer to have around the house.

First and foremost, as a regular Mac user, there are a few things I just can’t stand doing on a Mac. I am doing the #1 thing on that list right now, blogging. Microsoft Windows Live Writer is the tool of choice for me personally, and I like it so much that I pretty much bought this laptop just to run it.

I have tried running it in Parallels and VMWare Fusion on the Mac, as well as boot camp on the Macbook Pro to use it that way. The problem comes down to convenience.

Just What Can You Get for $579?

Quite a lot actually. I honestly had no less than a dozen laptops to choose from in this price range. I had decided it couldn’t be a Celeron or Pentium D, so that narrowed it down to around 8 or so, but it was the HP Pavilion dv4-1225dx that caught my attention after my wife pointed out it’s stylish case and I decided to make the purchase.

The specs are pretty incredible actually. 2.0Ghz AMD Dual Core 64-bit CPU, 4GB of Ram, 250GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, 14.1” LCD @ 1280×800, ATI Radeon HD3800 video, VGA out, HP Dock connector, Ethernet, eSATa/USB 2.0 Combo Port, SD card slot, HP Media Smart Remote/Port, Mic in and two headphone jacks, two more USB 2.0 ports on the right side and a modem (why?) round out the connectivity.

How It Looks and Feels

There are some really nice touches as well, it has a chromish case which is cool looking even though it attracts fingerprints terribly. The touch strip controls at the top of the laptop allow volume and mute as well as media controls, along with a wifi enable/disable button. The touchpad itself has a super handy button to turn it off for those people like me who use an external mouse. Sadly it did not have Bluetooth, but a Logitech notebook mouse kit tidied that up with a very inconspicuous USB adapter that should be able to stay connected all the time.

The laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. In reality the I turned it on, opened the drive and inserted a Windows 7 Ultimate RC DVD and installed the operating system on the first boot so I never saw how it came set up.

The display is roomy enough at this resolution, at least for how I will use it, and besides being a bit too glossy for my tastes, it has great color and contrast.

The one thing I have to give the most props too, and which was the thing I hated the most about the last HP laptop I had, is the keyboard. The keyboard on this laptop is actually much better than the one on my Macbook Pro. I wish it was backlit like the Macbook Pro, but for typing, it’s top notch to say the least.

The PC scores a totally acceptable 4.1 on the Windows Experience Index, which is especially good because it’s only the video that brings it down that low, every other score is 4.9 – 5.4.

It includes a blank tray in case you want to save a little weight not carrying an optical drive, ditto for the media smart remote. I haven’t used it on the battery yet, so I have no idea how well the real world compares to the 2 hours and 44 minutes they claim it gets, but that’s how I will use this laptop any way. I doubt it will very often not be tethered to the wall.

Parting Thoughts

I wish Hewlett Packard would take a few design and marketing ideas from Apple. Mostly I would say stop covering your laptops in ass loads of stickers. While I was installing software I had to use adhesive remover to take off the last few. It shipped with two feature list stickers on the left side, another on the right. Those three were more static cling type so they came off easily. It was the AMD sticker, the ATI sticker, the Energy Star sticker and the Windows Vista sticker that gave me so much trouble. Why do they feel they must use the case for a billboard? ugh.

Windows 7 runs on this thing like a dream and now I can leave my Macbook Pro in my backpack to save some wear and tear from loading and unloading it twice a day.

Submit this post to