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.
