HP Fansite

Super HP belated Valentine’s day rumors roundup

Okay, fine, so this may have little to do with Valentine’s day… but let’s spread some love for the several HP notebooks that have been and continue to stay elusive.

Elitebook 8740w: So it seems a lot of people have a couple of grand lying around and are all set to drop it on this long-awaited Mobile Workstation on the precise millisecond it comes out. Question is WHEN?! There was a gap of roughly one month between when the Elitebook 6930p and 8530/8730w series were announced back in 2008. It’s been over a month since the Elitebook 8440 and 8540 models were announced at CES 2010, so where is the 8740w?! (And oh, before I forget 8740w, where are your smaller friends as well?). I suspect the Elitebook 8740w’s elusiveness has something to do with ATI launching FirePro mobile, HP launching DreamColor 2 displays or both. Most likely DreamColor 2 is the culprit. You see, DreamColor displays are a wonderful technology that you don’t see on notebooks everyday… so what a great party/bash it would be for HP to launch the flagship Elitebook 8740w FEATURING DreamColor 2?! It’s very, very, very likely that the 8740w and DreamColor 2 will debut hand-in-hand, at least that’s the way speculation seems to be pointing…

Envy 14 and Envy 17: Cooler than ever. Not that the Envy 13 and 15 aren’t cool enough, in the cool dude sense of the word, because they look awesome. Word is the Envy 14 and Envy 17 will not only LOOK awesome, but stay cool as well… as in, not burn up your palms and thighs as you work on an Office 2010 document or play Crysis 2 at high settings in the future.

Envy 17′s first sale?! Everyone rush out and check your local consumer electronics store(s) now! An enthusiastic reader claims (multiple times) that he’s bought an Envy 17 less than a week ago, from some place that he would’ve never gone to buy a computer from (he doesn’t mention where) and that he got a good deal on it. In another of his comments, he emphasizes that it has a “number pad”, though little else is mentioned. False alarm? Or could someone else really hit the jackpot and find a store selling the Envy 17? Pictures or it didn’t happen!

Shifting things around: If anyone has noticed, HP has shifted their new 8440 and 8540 forwards on their Elitebook page, and relegated the 6930p, 8530p and 8540w to the back seat (or right edge of the page). Perhaps this is a sign of the Elitebook 8740w to come? Or is this just HP doing some website spring cleaning, again?

Okay, I’m done shifting through rumors and whatnot for the day. Back to putting on the finishing touches to my Envy 15 + ATI Mobility Radeon 5830 review…

Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC, mark your calendars

As many of you may know, while I’m not busy with books, papers, friends or HP products, I also love, love, love PC gaming. Did I mention how I recently picked up Assassin’s Creed 1 for PC, played it on a borrowed HP Envy 15 and loved it? No? Well, now you know. After playing Batman Arkham Asylum for PC last December (and writing about its singleplayer experience earlier this month), I sort of went on a “third person action” gaming spree. My “latest” third person perspective game was 2007/2008′s Assassin’s Creed 1, which I started and finished within last week – strange how I missed picking it up when it first came out.

Since it’s an old game, I won’t be writing a full length review about it (though you should lookout for my reviews of Batman Arkham Asylum 1 and Left4Dead 2, as well as a few new HP notebooks, in the coming weeks). But simply put, it was a game with a great storyline, decent character development, lots of nice scenery and part-action, part-stealth gameplay. Though it had its fair share of issues such as missions that get slightly repetitive after awhile and jagged edges/below average image quality (due to either lack of anti-aliasing and/or upsampling from 720p to 1080p, not sure which one, because the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 1 was a direct console port), I still loved it as a whole… and I’ve been looking forward to Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC since.

Well, the release date of Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC, the direct sequel to the original game, was announced less than 12 hours ago – mark your calendars for March 16, 2010, if third person adventure games are your thing (or if you just like intriguing storylines). I hope that after all that waiting (and delay, compared to the console versions which were already out since November 2009), the developers have gotten their act together to go that extra mile to make Assassin’s Creed 2 less of a console port, and more PC optimized (real 1080p and anti-aliasing up to 16X CSAA please!).

While I’m all up for Assassin’s Creed 2, and really happy for the fact Ubisoft is including the full game (unlike consoles, whose players have to buy the two DLC’s which were supposed to be part of the story), they’re charging a whopping $60 for the game. For the record, the MSRP of new PC game titles has been and is usually $50. And I think we have that console game (which was lazily turned into a crippled, console-lified PC game) to blame for starting off the “$60 for PC games” trend. Yes, I’m sure with the launch of Assassin’s Creed 2 as the second ever PC game with a $60 price tag, many PC gamers are praying hard that the disgusting, plain horrid “$60 trend” set by Modern Warfare 2 will not become a norm as other developers release games in the future…

What single-player gaming should be…

Batman: Arkham Asylum for PC (I'm enjoying it, "only" 47% done)

The date is January 2, 2010. No sign of any HP news or rumors so far… so before we get all busy with CES 2010 (Consumer Electronics Show) and the rumored new HP notebooks and stuff, I’d like to take some time today to talk about gaming.

For the last two days before the New Year, I had probably the most exciting and enjoyable single-player gaming experience of 2009. Batman: Arkham Asylum (yes it has a superhero in it, but it certainly won’t be small little children playing this game) is a game which came out in September 2009 for PC, and yes, I’m noticeably late to the party (3rd person perspective games have never been my thing, but a recent experience of Metal Gear Solid 4 on a friend’s Playstation 3 has motivated me to try out more recent 3rd person games for PC*). In terms of single-player replay ability, the Left4Dead series are easily at the top for most re-playable games recently released but in my opinion, Arkham Asylum takes the cake for single-player playing depth.

I’ve spent about 12 hours spread out over two days (New Year’s eve and the eve before the eve) and I’m only 47% through the game (see my little screenshot above). I estimate it’ll take me about 26 hours in total to complete the entire single-player of Arkham Asylum – which is excellent! Compare that to the 4.5 hours it took on the latest Call of Duty title: Modern Warfare 2… and Modern Warfare 2 pales in comparison with its overly short single-player campaign. Granted, Arkham Asylum and Modern Warfare 2 are two games of two different genres but Arkham Asylum is a great example of how single-player should be on every game.

Not only does it take several days (or longer, if you don’t spend too much time playing in one sitting) to complete the game’s single-player mode, the game also makes you feel like you’ve been playing much longer than you really have (especially with some scenarios where you have to sneak around and be stealthy, combined with several high-packed, heart pumping fights/boss fights – there’s a really nice stark contrast here). Arkham Asylum’s gameplay essentially gives you a dose of some ‘stealth’ elements along with quite a bit of action, though it won’t be replacing games dedicated to those respective genres anytime soon.

Oh, did I mention the graphics and environment are both awesome (save for the few pre-rendered cutscenes. My eyes tell me they’re pre-rendered because the details and graphics in cutscenes are much coarser and lower resolution). The “world” of the Arkham Asylum island is nicely sized, and though you have to pass through or go back to some places at times, you don’t really feel “oh no, I’ve been here before, why am I here again” because there’s always something new: be it new bad guys having come back to patrol the area or giant “beanstalk” plants bursting through the walls and floors, presenting the need to find another way around.

What single player gaming should be: Sufficiently long with a good story line (this should be one of the top priorities in my opinion) – 24+ hours of singleplayer gameplay should be good, some level of non-linearity or dynamic/changing in-game elements and/or plot twists. With that all said, I think Eidos (Arkham Asylum’s developer) has won me over and just turned me into a potential customer for the upcoming sequel, Arkham Asylum 2. *Note: I still stand by the fact that I really wish someone would make an MGS4 port for PC!!

Happy holidays/Merry Xmas from HP Fansite (+Colin McRae DiRT 2 preview)

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas from HP Fansite, the title says it all. 2009′s holiday season has been a busy one indeed, and I bet most of us are hoping for an even better year ahead in 2010 (better economy, more saucy HP notebooks and hardware, more mind-blowing game titles, etc).

Oh, speaking of games, I’ve just got the new title Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (it’s a car racing game) for PC for review. I had planned to crash at a friend’s place for a mini “DiRT 2 party” since I know several people who have the game too. Unfortunately, because of everyone’s busy Christmas schedule and my friend/the host’s nice HP Elitebook 8730w(drool)’s display backlight failing at the last minute, I ended up having to play the game myself yesterday.

Although I’m not a huge fan of circuit/grid racing (more of an open-world, non-race car racing game fan), I’m a big lover of DiRT 2′s amazing graphics and sound. Gameplay wise, I’ve finished about six races so far and it’s your pretty standard Need For Speed-style, race to the finish and get 1st place kind of game. I have one beef about DiRT 2 so far though – and that’s painfully long loading screens and wait time before/after every race (the so-so hard metal/rock music during the waits don’t help much either).

I’m not sure if it’s my Pavilion dv4 showing signs of age (hmm, frame rates during races are still good) or poor optimization on DiRT 2′s developers’ behalf, but either way, the 1-2 minute long “Loading…” screens are driving me crazy. I’ll have to go see how the game fared (or fares, not sure many of my buddies would have the time for unboxing video games on Christmas week) on some more powerful notebooks. And that’s it for my initial impressions. I’ll be back with a full review of DiRT 2 after I’m done with the game.

Have a Merry Xmas 2009 everyone!

Installing Windows 7 on the HP Mini 5101 (guide)

I got hold of the Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit disc  the other day and went straight to install it on my HP Mini 5101. Yes, after about five days using Windows XP for the first time in year (at least in normal day-to-day use), I felt like tearing my hair out using the now-ancient UI. No Aero Peek for my windows, crummy file explorer, no ability to search directly for a program, rather basic (versus Vista and Seven) power management area, very crappy Windows Update interface (yeah, you know, the browser-based ActiveX one…), and the list goes on. My initial plan was to install Windows 7 alongside XP and have a system that I could dual boot, but the fact that Windows XP Home couldn’t connect to corporate networks (versus XP Pro) was the last straw.

So I wiped the hard disk clean and did a clean installation of Windows 7. What I was surprised with was the fact that a fresh installation took a mere 32 minutes on an Intel Atom netbook, which is pretty darn fast in my book. I remember that both XP and Vista took longer than that – on more powerful systems too! Installation of Windows 7 was hassle-free for me, the system basically took care of everything after entering the product key up to its ‘first’ boot-up.

I didn’t have to download many drivers manually from HP’s website since Windows 7′s Windows Update utility knew exactly what to do. The drivers I DID download from the official HP Mini 5101 drivers page for Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit include:

• SoundMAX audio driver (Great stuff, it has the same interface and ‘Sonic Focus’ feature found on higher end HP notebooks such as the Elitebook 8730w)
• Wireless drivers (Gotta have these if you want to use WiFi)
• HP 3D DriveGuard (Invaluable protection for your hard disk)
• 2 MP webcam driver

The things that Windows Update automatically found and installed include the Synaptics Touchpad v7.2 driver and Intel graphics driver (a good thing too, since the Intel driver from HP’s website couldn’t work on Windows 7). All-in-all, my Windows 7 installation on the HP Mini 5101 was very smooth with no hiccups. The OS runs on Atom like a champ – everything on Windows 7 is prettier, more functional and flashier than Windows Vista, yet there wasn’t much noticeable ‘lag’ in the animations and starting up of applications.

Bootup time with an ‘empty’ system took about 15 seconds (excluding BIOS screen display). However, bootup time was not as fast as I hoped for AFTER I installed my favorite apps (which include Office 2007, Firefox, AVG Free + Spyware Blaster, TweetDeck, Windows Live Essentials and Foxit Reader) – it now takes about 100 seconds to cold boot the Mini, but I’m cool with that – the old Mini running Vista with the same software/content takes almost five minutes nowadays. I’m now putting the Mini 5101 into either Sleep or Hibernation mode most of the time since they run a LOT faster than older versions of Windows. Sleep mode, especially, screams fast, fast, fast! – the Mini 5101 goes to sleep in about three seconds after I hit the power button, and wakes up in four.

Another post-installation issue with Windows 7 on the Mini 5101 is not really a big issue, in fact… but I was disappointed that the ‘glowing’ Windows logo startup animation is only possible on screens with 1024 x 768 or 1280 x768 resolution and above. The HP Mini 5101 I have has a crappy 1024 x 600 screen: so no pretty animations for me during bootup – instead, there’s the boring Vista-style blank screen with ‘running status bar’ animation. I have plans to get the Mini 5101′s replaced by a third party to the 1366 x 768 high-res option and I’ll post about that if I do.

If you have any questions regarding Windows 7 on the Mini 5101, feel free to fire me an e-mail or post in the comments area below!