HP Fansite

HP Pavilion dv7 featured in Microsoft’s latest ad

The HP Pavilion dv7 was recently featured in Microsoft’s latest “Lauren and the under-$1000 17 inch laptop ad“. As usual, many Apple/Mac fanboys are screaming and trying to enforce “Windows PCs are rubbish”, yet again. Is that not surprising? Somebody actually said the $699 HP Pavilion dv7 is a, quote, “crappy budget notebook”… excuse me? The HP Pavilion dv7 is a very capable notebook – you can watch videos, play games (intensive ones included) and do a whole lot of things on it; it’s nowhere CLOSE to being a “crappy budget notebook”. Did anyone read about a certain brand’s PC hard disks failing because of using the built-in speakers at a loud volume (hint: it’s not HP); now they are the real makers of really cheap notebooks, in all senses of the word.

Back to the point… people should just face the facts: ANY other notebook PC is priced much lower, with better specifications, than an “equivalent” Apple Mac/Macbook computer. True, even I would agree that the advertisement may be somewhat “stretched” in the sense most people won’t shop for their notebook based on screen size alone, but here’s a real life experience from me: A friend of mine, Steven, has been looking for a decent notebook PC priced around $900. He’s in college right now and wants something that he can use for documents, surfing the web and also for watching movies as well as some gaming (he wants to be able to run games like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4 and 5 at decent quality settings and frame rate).

He’s not asking for a massive screen (in fact he prefers a 14 to 15 inch LCD as a nice compromise between portability and screen viewability) but he’s quite particular about the graphics and gaming part there. Here’s a comparison of the HP Pavilion dv4 notebook PC versus the unibody Macbook (click for larger):

Upper left: HP Online Store, Lower left: Apple Online Store, Right: Excel comparison table (As of March 30, 2009)

A HP Pavilion dv4 with a 2.4 GHz processor, 3 GB of RAM, 320 GB hard disk, 512 MB Nvidia GeForce G105M graphics and 14 inch screen would run you roughly $925.
A Macbook (Unibody model) with a 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, 320 GB hard disk, 256 MB Nvidia 9400M graphics and 13 inch screen would cost about $1600!!!

Turns out a *similar* Macbook would cost almost $700 extra while having inferior graphics, a smaller LCD and 1 GB RAM less than the HP. Hey, point proven. And the higher you go, the larger the price difference between a Windows computer and a *similar* Apple computer.

He’s already checked out other “Windows PC” options and likes the HP Pavilion dv4′s build quality and design better versus the others; and is currently waiting for any additional/potential “summer specials” before springing for the notebook.

UPDATE (April 2009): Steven finally bought a laptop after much comparison and shopping around; he got a good deal on a HP Pavilion dv3000 and went for that, instead of the dv4 he was planning for.

Windows Vista is laggy. Right…

It’s been almost two whole years since Windows Vista was released and more than two years that we’ve been hearing the endless criticisms and statements shooting down the operating system. No doubt Apple’s “Get a Mac”  ads (whose nature subsequently turned into “constant anti-Vista preaching”) have played a large role in diluting people’s minds and implanting the idea that Windows Vista is crappy. Most of the time, many small issues in Vista get over exaggerated into huge problems.

And what’s worse is that majority of these Vista-haters probably have not even used Vista before! – the idea in their head just came from word of mouth from friends, the net, comments in some of the so-called “technology magazines/websites” or some of those ridiculous Get-a-Mac ads. The most they do is probably walk into a computer shop, use a PC or two running Vista (use as in move the mouse around for a bit, click on the start button, open Internet Explorer) and conclude “oh it looks pretty… but it’s probably slow and useless anyway”.

My first experience with Vista was somewhere in February 2007, not long after the final release by Microsoft, where I had Windows Vista Ultimate running on a then-new HP notebook. From that point in time until now, I have been using Windows Vista and have never looked back. During my 23 months with Windows Vista, I have not had many issues with the OS at all; aside from the system coming up with an occasional dreaded blue screen of death during my attempts to run some ancient games (read: 1996-1998 games) and incompatibility with Norton Internet Security 2007 at the initial stage.

I’ve also been able to run Photoshop CS3 (and quite recently, CS4) and many, many modern games smoothly on Vista…. umm, not to mention multi-tasking (running many programs; plus some heavy ones like Photoshop with multiple RAW images loaded) is part of my daily life. Hey whaddaya know, no crashes, my system isn’t laggy, and I haven’t got a BSOD since my last attempt to run a 1997 game 13 months back. All in contrast to the usual Vista stereotype.

I had “another one of those days” again this week, when I was using my HP Compaq 6510b (yeah it’s an old notebook, anyone care to sponsor me an Elitebook? =) and was approached by some guy who happened to see my Windows 7 wallpaper which became the conversation starter. Apparently once you get an impression of something, it sticks in your head, even if you never tried it before.

Dude: Hey is that the latest Windows?
Me: No, it’s just Windows Vista with a wallpaper which says Windows 7.
Dude: (looking confused) So this isn’t the latest Windows? How come this (points to “Windows 7″ on the screen) doesn’t say Windows Vista?
Me: It’s just a wallpaper I downloaded from the net.
Dude: Oh… anyhow, I heard Windows Vista is horrible.
Me: It’s not as bad as people say. I’ve been running it fine for almost 2 years now.
Dude: But it’s slow right?
Me: Not exactly, unless I’m running a few huge applications at one go… in which case, any PC would run slowly.
Dude: Then it must be laggy in something, like playing games…
Me: I play lots of games at home, mostly on their highest settings on Vista and they still run quite well in fact.
Dude: That can’t be right. Windows Vista is huge and slow.
Me: Have you personally used Vista before?
Dude: No, I just heard from people that it sucks.
Me: That’s not always true. No doubt it uses a little more memory, I think it’s still as usable as previous Windows versions.
Dude: But in the end, it’s still laggy, isn’t it?

Oh bother! The era of insane, sometimes completely false, anti-Vista sentiments will soon be over… I hope Windows 7 will turn future conversation pieces of the world from “Windows Vista sucks” to “Windows 7 rocks”.

A little overload

Wow, this is madness, my HP Mini Note 2133 hung for quite a bit while I was rushing out this morning. I was trying to download about 150+ MB worth of files from my USB drive and SD card, so I didn’t need to bring those with me (Yes, data security is a large concern for me). I had three instances of File Explorer open, along with Firefox having several tabs open, Microsoft Word 2007 attempting to open one of my (huge) files… and then AVG decides to start its once in a while computer scan – oh what a right time to start a scan and bog down my system!! One more app decided to run by itself – Windows Update and everything grinded to a halt. Bugger.

I knew I had to close some of the programs… It took a while (like a minute?) for the Mini to close Office 2007, then my browser window, then the My Documents folder (which then came up with “This program is not responding”). I then reopened File Explorer, transferred my files across to the HDD, unplugged my flash drives and was out the door. In a way, I was lucky not having to reboot Windows Vista – because I was going to do that when the system hung and wouldn’t respond to any of my mouse clicks.

The secret of the Elitebook 8730w’s middle button

I always had questioned the need for a “third mouse button” on a notebook PC but the middle button above/below the HP Elitebook 8730w’s touchpad is certainly more useful than it looks. Coming from some of HP’s smaller notebook PCs with your conventional two buttons, I really appreciate the extra button. The MAIN two things I like about it: It’s so easy to activate the “track and scroll” feature to move left/right and up/down just by moving the cursor and ESPECIALLY simple to open/close new tabs in Firefox.

On a two button mouse, I had to hover over an internet link and either 1) press both the left and right buttons together or 2) right click and “open in new tab”. Now I just hit the center button.

And oh, I managed to get my hands on and try out the new Apple MacBook Pro last weekend (you know, the one with the glass trackpad). Honestly, I don’t quite care at all for a “glass trackpad” which has no buttons, no tactile feedback as to “where” the button is. The entire trackpad is “clickable” but is more “clicky” towards the bottom – a design that supposedly gives you more space to move and scroll but I digress.

Call me old-school or “un-cool” but I’d rather have my two (or three) buttons back, thanks =) . If I wanted more “mouse power”, I’d attach an external mouse to one of the three (or four on the HP 8730w) USB ports on my Compaq notebook. The MacBook/MacBook Pro notebooks only have two USB ports, so an external mouse would take up a precious USB port, leaving just one more left… ah, that probably explains what’s up with the glass trackpad.