HP Pavilion dv6t (NZ599AAR) review

specs | design | performance | in the box | conclusion

Quick specs

• Intel Core i7 Q720 1.6GHz
• 2x2GB DDR3 RAM @ 667MHz
• 2.5" 7200RPM 500GB SATA HDD
• GeForce GT 230M w/ 1GB RAM
• 15.6" 16:9 LED (HP Brightview) screen (1366x768) w/ 1.3MP webcam
• Intel 5100 802.11 AGN wifi
• LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVDRW w/Double Layer
• 8800MAh 95Wh battery
• Weight 6.34lb (2.87kg)

Details

Design
The HP laptops in the Pavilion series all have pretty much the same design. The laptop is well built and feels solid all over. It's got the trademark HP engravings on the cover and on the palm rest and it looks really nice.

Ports and layout:
The laptop has all its ports on the sides and personally i consider that a design flaw on a desktop replacement such as this. Most things that get cables plugged into them (usb, network, power, video, etc.) should be on the back because when you have all of them connected everything just looks more organized. Being constricted on 1 side (back) is better than being constricted on 2 (left and right).

On the right side we have: optical drive, 2 USBs, kensington lock and AC. Placing the optical drive on the right side of a laptop is not a wise choice. Most people are right handed and when using an external mouse you have to move it out of the away when inserting or ejecting a disk. It should be on the left side in my opinion.

On the left side we have: VGA, expansion port, network, HDMI, USB/e-SATA port, another USB, 1394a, SD/MMC/MS Card Reader and 54mm Express Card slot. I think the VGA port has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced at least by a DVI port.

The mic in and headphone jacks are located on the front right side of the laptop. The speakers are placed above the keyboard and provide good sound quality.

Display:
The laptop has a 15.6" LED (HP Brightview) glossy screen, 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1366x768. On top it has a 1.3MP webcam with good video quality and 2 microphones. The screen looks bright and colorful offering good viewing angles but being glossy you can use it as a mirror when dark surfaces are displayed.

This is how bright the screen is compared to a Dell XPS-1645 (on the left) that has a RGBLED display, both on maximum brightness:

Keyboard and touchpad:

The touchpad is medium in size with 2 large buttons on it and a scroll area on the right side. There's also a button above it that disables it completely, presumably for gaming when you're using an external mouse. As with all consumer HP laptops these days, the touchpad is super-glossy and sticky so it's very hard to use (good luck dragging-and-dropping). I don't know why HP keeps using them as this is the laptop's biggest flaw.

The keyboard is solid with large easy-to-type matte keys. As you can see it's even got a numpad. The layout is good with separated directional buttons but i wish they were bigger.

Battery and AC adapter:
The laptop came with a 8800MAh 95Wh battery. I don't know if it's a 9-cell or 12-cell but HP claims a 6-cell would lasts 4.5 hours. I highly doubt these numbers as the specs on this laptop will probably burn through the battery in a few hours at most in high performance mode. As you can see in the pictures the battery sticks out and raises the back of the laptop almost an inch off the table.

The power adapter is quit big too, definitely not the most portable one.

Performance
The laptop comes with windows 7 home premium 64-bit. Out of the box, it's quite fast. It boots from power-on to login screen in 42 sec. Shut down takes 11 seconds from clicking the button to power-off. Going to sleep takes 5 seconds and waking up - 2 seconds. The OS and all the bundled software take about 27gigs and the recovery partition is 13gigs.


Windows experience index:

On AC power in "High Performance Mode" - 5.9

Super PI for 1mil and 8mil (on AC power):

CrystalDiskMark:

PCMark05:
On AC power in "High Performance" profile - 7065
On battery power in High Performance" profile - 7072

3DMark06:

On AC power in "High Performance" profile - 6792

On battery power in "High Performnce" profile - 6810

Wi-fi speed (on AC power):
Tested on Asus RT-N16 b/g/n wireless router at a distance of 5 feet (2 meters).

On 802.11g it averages to 1.8MB/s - aprox. 30% link utilization

On 802.11n it connects at 144Mbps and averages to 10.1MB/s - aprox. 65% link utilization

What's in the box
Battery, AC adapter, manuals.

Pros
- great specs
- great bright screen
- solid matte keyboard with numpad
- good build quality

Cons
- low resolution (1366x768) glossy screen
- very sticky hard to use touchpad
- big power adapter

Conclusion

HP has been making consumer laptops like this for a few good years now. They stick with their proven unique design and upgrade to the latest and greatest components. The end result is a fast and solid computer that should provide great performance for any type of activity, gaming included.

Toshiba Portable Hard Drive (HDDR640E04XR) review

I got my hands on this 2.5" 640GB USB 2.0 external hard drive and thought i'd write a quick review on it. 

Here are the main points:

• USB powered
• Internal shock sensor
• Backup software (with optional 256-Bit AES encryption)
• Size 3.19" x 0.65" x 5" (81.026mm x 16.5mm x 127mm)
• Weight 6oz (170g)

The case is glossy plastic with a mini-usb port on the side, a white activity led on the top and two rubber strips on the bottom that serve as feet.

It's compatible with PC and Mac and comes with backup software for both, though complete system backup is supported only on Windows. The software is on the drive itself, there are no CDs. It's simple and easy to use. Here's how it looks on Windows:

You can backup files and folders as well as your entire system. You do the latter either directly to the hard drive or to a CD/DVD. If you do it to the hard drive it makes it bootable which is quite convenient. Booting from the drive offers you a simple recovery window where you can select what restore point you want to use.

The actual size of the disk is 596GB and it comes pre-formated with FAT32. You can convert it to NTFS without loosing the backup software via a wizard that runs the first time you plug the drive in.

Finally, the moment of truth - CrystalDiskMark:

Overall it's a nice little disk to carry around, if it only were a bit faster.

Sony VAIO P review (VGN-P699E)

specs | design | performance | in the box | conclusion

Quick specs

• Intel Atom Z540 1.86GHz
• 1x2GB RAM DDR2 @ 533MHz
• Samsung 1.8" 256GB SSD HDD
• Intel GMA 500
• 8" 25:12 aspect LED screen (1600x769) w/ 0.3MP webcam
• Atheros AR928x 802.11 BGN wifi + bluetooth + gps
• 2-cell 2100mah 16Wh battery
• Weight 1.5lb (0.7kg)

Details

Design
Sony laptops are designed usually fairly well and this one is no exception. It's solidly built, very light and thin, glossy all over with a mate keyboard.

Ports and layout:
Because of the small size the laptop has a limited number of ports, all of them on the sides except for the SD card and Memory Stick slots which are in the front. There is no optical drive.

On the right side we have:  1 USB and the VGA/Network adapter port.
On the left side we have: AC, 1USB and headphone jack.

In the front we have: wireless on/off switch, SD card slot, Memory Stick SG Duo slot and spring loaded Power switch.

The speakers are located above the keyboard in the left and right corner and provide medium sound quality. They're not very loud.

This model also has the Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband (use your data-plan for internet access) and built in GPS. The navigation software offered is Microsoft Streets and Trips but you can use a number of other programs available, Garmin Mobile PC being one of the better ones out there. The usefulness of the GPS is questionable however since the computer does not have a touchscreen nor are the speakers loud enough to be heard in a car.

Display:
The laptop has a 8" LED glossy screen, with an uncommon 25:12 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1600x768. This resolution is too big for an 8" screen so things look a little small. Increasing the DPI to at least 125% solves the problem in windows (still not all applications are aware of this setting) but not when browsing the web. You will have to zoom in on most websites as the text initially is very hard to read. A more traditional aspect ratio would've provided a much better browsing experience with far less scrolling. In the upper right corner of the screen there's a webcam with good video quality. The screen looks bright and colorful offering medium horizontal and vertical viewing angles and being glossy you can use it as a mirror when dark surfaces are displayed. This is how far it will open:

Keyboard and touchpad:

This laptop does not have a touchpad. Instead it's got a pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard and three mouse buttons on the bottom of the keyboard. The pointing stick can be frustrating at times and takes some getting used to.

The keyboard is excellent for on such a small laptop. It's surprisingly large and comfortable to type on. The layout is good with big well spaced keys. Most things are where you'd expect them to be. It's got a solid fee with no flexing or bending of any kind.

Battery and AC adapter:
This is the laptop's weakest point. The standard battery is a weak 2-cell 2100mah 16Wh rated for 3.5 hours but a more realistic figure is about 2 hours. It does not stick out however and the AC adapter is one of the smallest i've seen. The VGA/Network adapter clips onto the battery so you don't loose it when carrying around.

Performance
This small ultra portable comes with a pretty useful feature that Sony calls an Instant Mode. It's an (almost) instant OS that offers basic things like browsing pictures, watching videos, a web browser, an IM client, Skype, etc. You boot into it by pressing the "Xross Media Bar" button when the computer is off and it takes about 16 seconds to load. It's called that because it uses the same type of user interface as the PSP and the PS3.

The computer came pre-installed with windows vista 32-bit. It's quite slow so i replaced it with windows 7 ultimate 32-bit before i ran any of the benchmarks. It boots from power-on to login screen in 30 sec. Shut down takes 10 secs from clicking the button in the start menu to power-off. Going to sleep takes a quick 4 seconds and waking up - only 2 seconds. 

The laptop also has completely passive cooling so it's practically silent. It does get a little warm but nothing uncomfortable.

Windows experience index:

On AC power in "High Performance" profile - 2.5

Super PI for 1mil and 8mil (on AC power):

"High Performance" profile

CrystalDiskMark:

PCMark05:
On AC power in "High Performance" profile - 1794
On battery power in "High Performance" profile - 1805

3DMark06:

On AC power in "High Performance" profile - 60

On battery power in "High Performnce" profile - 60

Wi-fi speed (on AC power):

Tested on Asus RT-N16 b/g/n wireless router at a distance of 5 feet (2 meters).

On 802.11g it averages to 2.35MB/s - aprox. 40% link utilization

On 802.11n it connects at only 65Mbps and averages to 8MB/s - aprox. 95% link utilization

Video playback:

Playback of a 720p h264 movie proved to be difficult initially. However the latest K-Lite Codec Pack supports DirectX Video Acceleration (using the videocard to assist in decoding the video). Setting the output to "EVR Custom" and "D3D Fullscreen" in Media Player Classic allowed the video to play smoothly and almost lag-free.

CPU usage playing 720p with DirectX Video Acceleration

Playing a video on Hulu was not as good however. Full screen is very slow and even in a window, it starts smooth but soon after gets choppy and unwatchable.

CPU usage playing Hulu in a window

Youtube 480p videos aren't good either starting ok but getting choppy later on.

 CPU usage playing 480p Youtube

Finally Youtube 360p videos play nice and smooth.

 CPU usage playing 360p Youtube

Hopefully when Flash starts using the videocard for rendering these issues will be resolved.

Compared to Fujitsu U820

What's in the box
Battery, AC adapter, vga/network adapter, noise canceling headphones, cleaning cloth, two spare pointing stick caps, manual.

Pros
- excellent keyboard for such a small form factor
- "Instant Mode"
- passive cooling + SSD = completely silent
- good build quality
- small power adapter
- very thin and light

Cons
- high screen resolution, fonts too small at times (1600x768)
- no touchpad, frustrating pointing stick
- ultra wide glossy screen (25:12 aspect) with medium viewing angles
- very poor battery life

Conclusion
Sony has managed to pack an incredible amount of features into such a small device but i am unclear on what they were trying to do with it. The two basic things an ultra-portable needs to do well is offer good browsing experience and have long battery life. The VAIO P doesn't do either of those things well. While the specs and performance are above your typical netbook, the super-wide screen with its high resolution and a meager 2 hours of battery life simply kill the deal. It's great otherwise :)