HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Build Quality and Design
(The beginning to my review of the HP dv2910us (dv2700) can be found here)
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The lid of the laptop features HP's "Imprint" finish, which is basically just a lot of cool swirly grayish lines on a shiny black background. The finish is surprisingly durable, despite being an absolute fingerprint magnet (I suppose that's why HP includes a wipe-cloth with the laptop); my roommate had an HP laptop with the same finish that remained scratch-free throughout the school year, even though I once dropped a ladder on it. The base of the laptop is made of a very solid, dull, black plastic. While there is some slight flexing in the lid, the base is as solid as can be. All in all, the exterior design is quite attractive (at least to me it is).
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – Unboxing
(The beginning to my review of the HP dv2910us (dv2700) can be found here)
Its become fairly popular in reviews these days, to include pictures and a description of one's experiences with unboxing expensive electronic equipment. Lemming that I am, here's my unboxing experience with my HP dv2910us.
The box is a standard, nondescript brown box bearing an HP and Intel logo on the front, nothing at all like Apple's shiny white boxes, complete with carrying handle, that so many people have become fond of. There are people that are of the opinion that it is Apple's attention to small details, like the box, that has allowed them to be so successful. I frankly couldn't give a crap what the box looks like, and I find the Apple boxes to be unnecessarily flashy.
When I opened the box, I was greeted by a lovely little instruction sheet from HP, a sure sign that HP really does care about improving the user experience. A sort of nice clever trick, the simplified setup guide had been stuck into a little slot above the laptop, so that it is the first thing a new HP laptop owner sees upon opening the box. Its the little stuff that counts, right?
HP dv2910us (dv2700) – A Review
On Saturday, two days ago, I bought a brand new HP dv2910us from Circuit City for $680 (US), with a $50 rebate. The dv2910us is a pre-configured version of the dv2700 series, and its popularity with retail stores right now, is why it tends to be so cheap. The same model can be bought online directly from HP for $829.99.
Just as an aside, I would like to point out that HP makes a model called the dv2911us, which is the same as the dv2910us except that it lacks a Lightscribe drive. Lightscribe drives allow a user to "print" an image directly to the surface of a special Lightscribe disc. Its a neat trick, and if you burn a lot of discs and like to have them look pretty, then maybe Lightscribe is for you. But I doubt I'll be using my Lightscribe drive anytime soon though. For most people, the dv2911us is perfectly fine.
The Amazing Thinkpad
I was helping my uncle move last Saturday, and as we were loading his crap into the moving truck I noticed a laptop sticking out of a box full of cables. I pulled it out, and was surprised to find that it was an IBM Thinkpad T21.
I asked my uncle why he had thrown, what appeared to be a perfectly good laptop, (sans battery) into a box full of junk. He replied that the screen had stopped working years ago, and he had simply thrown tossed the laptop into his garage. He was about to throw it away, since he was moving, but I offered to take it off his hands. Luckily, we were also able to find the AC adapter for the T21 stuffed away in one of his boxes.
Its hard to understand why Thinkpads are so popular with large companies, until you've actually used one for an extended period of time. The old IBM Thinkpads were built to last forever, to suffer amazing punishments and just keep on ticking like nothing had happened; I don't think any other company makes laptops like IBM once did. It is still possible today, to buy a refurbished Thinkpad T20 online for about $200 (US), even though the laptop is close to eight years old. My dad didn't quite understand why I liked the Thinkpad line so much, so I showed him just how sturdy the old T21 was by pushing and pressing against various parts of the laptop's frame and screen, to show how it didn't flex at all, and then proceeded hit it a few times against the ground for good measure. Most other laptops will bend like a sapling in a light wind, the instant some pressure is applied to their screens, whereas I could probably use the lid of my Thinkpad as a hammer.
The Laptop Search
Its about time that I finally got a laptop. I'll be starting my second year of college this fall, and it'll be nice to be able to have a laptop to take to class and the library. For the past few years, I've had the same desktop, a Pentium 4 3Ghz, with 1gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon x800 xl, and it has been quite good to me. I'll be sorry to part with it.
I think its best, when shopping for a computer (or indeed, shopping for most things) to specify what one wants, or does not want out of it.
- So firstly, I want it to able to run Linux well. I've no qualms against diving into configuration files and getting dirty, but I still want a Linux friendly machine.
- Pretty much every laptop these days comes with Vista installed. I hate Vista, but fortunately I have an official ISO image of Windows XP Pro 64-bit, so I want a laptop that will play nicely with Windows XP. (Were it up to me, I would never use Windows, but I need certain programs for school, like Visual Studio, DreamWeaver (Yuck! I can write my own code, thank you very much.), and CAD stuff.)
- I'm not a gamer, so an integrated graphics card would be fine. I would actually prefer to have an Intel integrated graphics because I know Intel tends to be pretty open with their graphics cards. Nvidia would be fine, but not as preferable as Intel, and ATI/AMD is definitely out of the question.
Hot Hot Preshot, Again
Way back in May of this year, I wrote an article complaining about how hot my computer was running. Well now its summer and the air is all smoggy and lovely, so the outside temperature is sitting at a sultry 100+ degrees Fahrenheit. Right now, I'm running Pidgin and Firefox 3 with five tabs and my CPU is at 61 degrees Celsius and my fans are spinning full out. Thanks to Intel's SpeedStep technology (which throttles the CPU's clock speed when the temperature gets too high, in order to prevent the CPU from igniting) my computer is now running at a disgustingly slow speed.
And thats about all I have to say.
And let me just say that this was a disgustingly short post.
It Gets Easier
Check out these ads by Intel.
Intel released these ads for the Intel vPro platform at least a year ago (I think probably much longer). Last summer at work, we would play the songs on our laptop speakers during our breaks. It's major geek humor, but its even funnier if you work in IT. The songs are actually kinda catchy too.
Mad props to the singers, I doubt I would be able to sing "hardware-based remote manageability" with a straight face.
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