I bought this notebook through an employee purchase program through my company 3 months back. It was one of those reasons for which I bought it since it was offered for a lesser price than the market one.
I must say I am satisfied to a large extent with it. The features really score a high on all other notebooks available in India as of now for this price. However, if you have the choice of getting a notebook from the US, then I’d say you might get some better deals.
Ok, now coming to its pros and cons, I’d easily say the former are more than the latter. It has a dual core processor (technically, two worker threads at the processors level which enhances the speed and efficiency) which was the latest from Intel at the time when I bought. However, Intel are coming up with quite a few new processors these days. I saw a Duo Core 2 in an ad recently. Yes the processor performs well.
I have a 512MB dedicated NVDIA graphics memory which makes the games that I play, come alive. Its really a pleasure to see such rich graphics. However, I’d still say Mac books score a high when it comes to graphics, hence make a note.
Physical memory of 1 GB and a hard disk of 100 GB are something which have become standard now. but yes, at this price, I should say for memory options, HP is good.
The design is not that great. HP have tried to take care of the ergonomics. But I found a few major flaws.
The system fan is at the bottom. That is when you use the lappy, the fan sits sticking to your thigh and your thigh blocks fan. Thats too bad. And you cannot keep it on the bed or any soft material which will block the ventilation.
The lappy very heavy. When you see models from Lenovo, Sony, this machine is a bulky piece. You cannot carry it around easily. Weighs 3 kgs and thats HEAVY.
Battery performance is on a lower side. I say lower when I compare it with Lenovo. Mine lasts for 2 and half hours. Maybe a 9 cell battery should help.
They dont give operating system CDs with the notebook. Thats first bad thing. And then, it has a software that will create a OS CDs for you. I was happy with this idea until I noticed that you can create only ONE copy of the back up CDs!!! thats crazy. I have written back to HP on that. Yet to get a reply.
You can find all the good points in the HP site or any advertisement about this notebook. And indeed they are good points. Hence I am in sync with all the features and their performances which HP advertises. However, I just figured out what I found could have been better.
I’d still recommend this notebook if you are ok with compromising the above with the price. Else, a lenovo Z60M Think pad is a good competitor for this notebook. Only that it doesnt have a graphics memory dedicated. If you are not particular on a Windows system, then Mac books are unbeatable.
By far, this is power packed notebook which is heavy in its features and heavy in weight too.