HP Fansite

Two ‘Books, one bag

Well, here’s a little picture for everyone’s entertainment while waiting for Part 3 of my “choosing an ultra-portable” journey… It’s the HP Elitebook 8440p stacked on top of a 13 inch Apple white/plastic MacBook! Before anyone asks, no I don’t use Macs =) (don’t own one either).

Anyway, I figured I published the first two parts of my series a little too early – because what I ordered hasn’t arrived yet, and I really want to have some ‘in the flesh’ pictures to show you guys. So expect the conclusion of the series to be dragged out to mid to end July after the delivery guy rings my doorbell!

Notebook screen size comparison (9 vs 12 vs 14 vs 17 inch)

For those trying to decide the ‘perfect screen size’ for your next notebook, look no further – here’s a nice illustration/comparison between screen sizes of four screen sizes commonly found on notebooks/netbooks.

Starting from the bottom is HP’s Elitebook 8730w Mobile Workstation, featuring a massive 17 inch DreamColor display (1920 x 1200 pixels here!). Brilliant notebook and beautiful screen but perhaps size is the reason it sits on Mark’s desk 99% of the time.

Next is my trusty silver+black HP Pavilion dv4 notebook PC. It’s not the latest edition, as some HP fans should be able to tell “all-black” is the color scheme for the latest Pavilion dv4. It has a 14 inch screen (1280 x 800 pixels) which is a good compromise between size and portability.

The HP Pavilion dv2 has a 12 inch screen (Also with 1280 x 800 pixels)… and the reason why its screen seems to sit higher than that of the dv4 is the same reason why Trisha hates the design of this ultra portable – big bezel around the screen. But other than the design annoyance, the dv2 is a pretty good portable notebook: slim, light and it plays modern games like Call of Duty, Left4Dead and Need for Speed, and possibly Batman: Arkham Asylum for PC that I wanna get soon. In real life, other 12 inch notebooks with smaller screen bezel areas would be lower-profile, making them even more compact.

And lastly, sitting on top of all the other notebooks (good thing the Elitebook down there can support all that weight), is the HP Mini 2133. Yes, I still use it, although the 2133 has been feeling a little cranky this week – refusing to come out of sleep mode if I leave it for more than an hour. The Mini 2133 has a 8.9 inch screen, slightly smaller than the 10 inch displays that have become the staple of 90% of netbooks this year. The screen is a little small but it’s high in resolution (1280 x 768 pixels). People do ask me if I can actually see the tiny, ant-sized letters on the screen when I’m typing out a Word document at 80% magnification (so I can see two pages at one go).

That’s it for now. I’ll be talking about the HP Envy 13 and Envy 15 more later this week, so stay tuned for that!

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.

Hey! Sony Vaio P hands on

Hey! I thought this was a HP Fansite?! What’s the Sony Vaio P doing here? True, but that still doesn’t stop me from posting a picture of probably one of the most hyped up products of 2009 and comparing it against the HP Mini, does it? It’s not mine anyway, neither am I even having the slightest thought of getting one (1. It’s way overpriced for what it REALLY is, and 2. It really doesn’t offer much over the HP Mini I already have besides the smaller size).

My initial impressions: The Sony Vaio P is small in size, it’s like the HP Mini with only a keyboard (chopping off the trackpad bit of the netbook to make the Vaio P a long, narrow PC), and comes in four colors. The Vaio P has a high resolution 16:9 screen with a resolution of 1600 x 768 pixels (that’s a little more than 200 pixels wider than the HP Mini 2140). The bad news is that if you thought the fonts and all were tiny on a screen like the HP Mini 2133′s, you’re gonna scream looking at the even smaller fonts on the Vaio P. I appreciate the trackpoint (or as some put it, the “nipple” point) on the Vaio P though.

The keyboard on the Vaio P has well spread-out keys that many will probably find better than on most other netbooks, like Asus’ Eee PCs and the Acer Aspire One. Compared to the HP Mini’s, the keyboard on the Vaio P has keys which are a tad smaller but better spaced out, though HP’s keyboards have the edge with a full-sized right SHIFT key and more “travel” when pressing a key… the latter, being my preference, is subjective.

Overall, I would consider the Sony Vaio P more of a luxury product rather than a true affordable netbook. While it does have some edges like a high-res screen and GPS, I’m not sure if the weaker-than-average 1.33 GHz Intel Atom processor and high price tag (almost two to three times more expensive than an average netbook) would make people rush for this thing.

HP Elitebook 8730w and HP Mini 1000

Here we go again, sitting on the Elitebook 8730w’s lap. On Saturday it was the Elitebook 8730w and the Mini Note 2133. This time it’s the HP Mini 1000, pretty much the same as the comparison last week except the 2133 looked like a “mini-me” of the Elitebook 8730w in that picture – the aluminum design of the Mini Note is a whole lot like the 8730w’s magnesium alloy construction. The HP Mini 1000 isn’t switched on in the picture above; the battery was out of juice after roughly 2.5 hours of usage.