We figure the design just to the left of the touchpad is more than enough to convince you to impulse-buy the $750
HP Pavilion dv2, but just in case you hesitated, the reviews are in and it's not all sunshine for the AMD
Neo-powered non-netbook.
Laptop Magazine notes it handles HD video pretty well, but it suffers from a cramped keyboard, above average heat, and a less than stellar battery life. Instead, they suggest a Samsung
NC20 as a ligher, cheaper alternative.
CNET said it got beat performance-wise by Intel Core 2 Duo laptops of comparable price range, and although it bested Atom in most tests, the two processors tied when multitasking. As for
PC World, like
Laptop, they did give kudos for better graphics performance, but added the caveat that the NC20 and upcoming MSI X-Slim
X320 would give it a run for its money. For all the nitty-gritty details, browse through the reviews below.
Read - Laptop Magazine
Read - PC Magazine
Read - CNET
posted April 8th 2009 2:58AM
I'll take a guess that even with its slick-off-to-the-left touchpad, glossy screen, and Vista, this laptop still won't get the same venom the Dell Studio XPS 13 got from josh last week, that was brutal.
I guess "above average heat" is a polite way of saying "keep the damn thing away from your nads, unless they can take the 110 degree heat the ass-end of this thing pumps out." And 2.5 hours is pretty pathetic battery life for an ultraportable that just barely beats it's 8+ hour Atom packing companions in everything but video scores. I feel bad for AMD, but this thing is just a big ol' sack of fail.
Have you actually used an Atom? It's laggy even in Firefox. Fuck that.
The Neo doesn't multitask well enough, but at least it's SMOOTH (read: instant) in doing whatever casual tasks you throw at it. My trusty 3000+ (1.8Ghz Single core) told me that.
Other chaps from LaptopReview managed to get 3+ hours on Youtube, so it's obviously not that bad.
And 8 hours for Atoms my arse, unless you plug in one of those fugly batteries and run that idiotic MobileMark virtually-no-load-at-all test. What a joke you are.
Funny, my NC10 special edition gets through an entire work day (8-9 hours) without being plugged it. Maybe it runs on leprechaun magic or something. As for being laggy, I have 5 tabs open in firefox and a movie playing on VLC as I write this, and it's running smooth as you please.
Go back to scaring small children and chasing livestock you ponce, and leave the tech talk to the adults.
It is thick and sleek
You just know where this is going to go
Mildly interesting. However, you can now pick up Toshiba Protege R500s for under a $1000 (without optical), which eats up the DV2 in everything (including weight and battery life) except graphics performance. I don't know, the DV2 looks like a decent college notebook. Netbooks with Atom processors are PURE garbage.
Heck, I'm surprised that HP have the nerve to release another "above average heat" DV series laptop/notebook/whatever. Especially when the list of unsatisfied customers keeps growing from earlier DV series that all seemed to suffer the same problems due to poor design, manufacture, etc.
Check these links 1st, if you are thinking of buying HP http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=233974 or http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1191277
After months of getting to know each and every HP support team from here to Delhi and back, HP will still not admit to a design/manufacture fault and say that they treat each support case individually.
If you want my opinion Dell takes some beating and thier support is one of the best I have encountered, (speaking from a business point of view).
wow and i just got myself a dv1 mini great review guys
Those goofy circles are lame.
Come on AMD, you have to do better than that.
Especially the mobile processors.
Why have you picked only the worst bits from these reviews?
Why not mention how it can handled 3D gaming well with the 3410 graphics chip, ran Photoshop/Video Encoding apps much faster than Atom, how it scored 3.40 hours battery life in PCMag's testing (which from experience is much better than most netbooks), how it runs a full 64bit OS with huge 4GB of RAM, how the heat is MOSTLY provided by the 3410 graphics chip NOT the Neo, how the typing experience with "exceptional" for an ultraportable etc. etc. And also bear in mind future Neo based systems will be cheaper and use the cooler low end graphics chip as well.
tsk tsk
+1
Honestly though, why does every review of any product (well most, there are....certain exceptions) from every site always have to highlight the negative. Just because something has it's share of flaws, doesn't mean they outweigh the advantages. If it's not what you're looking for, then don't buy it but don't trash it because it doesn't fit in your criteria of you what you want out of it. HP is actually doing a very good job of offering as wide a range of laptops as possible, with a variety of form factors, each with assorted specs and price points, and this is just filling in one the the bigger gaps. It would be alot worse if they tried to fit all their customers into one little box and tell them what they want...you know, cause nobody would ever do THAT ;)
I setup a room on FriendFeed which shows a lot more early reviews. You can find it here: http://budurl.com/HPdv2FF The pull quotes are positive and I suggest you read the entire article to get the full story. http://budurl.com/HPdv2FF
One thing for anyone wanting to use this is a HTPC. Laptop Mag's review says it's jerky on 1080p... Guess I'll stick with a Mac Mini...
But apparently it plays like silk at 1079p, which is good enough for most.
Huh, that's funny. This user was able to play back 1080p VC1 and H264 with hardware acceleration locked at 800mhz and throttled GPU with no lost frames...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=368400