HP 530

Hello all, I work at several large computer superstores and have access to them all on a daily basis. I Have not purchased these laptops but I instead work with them in order to bring you the highest quality consumer based reviews. I sometimes ask the opinions of my staff and also of customers to bring you up to speed. So without further interuption here is my review on the HP 530 Well this is power value and for just about £300 DESIGN BASIC BASIC BASIC is the words but the build quality is high and it looks like a rather expensive machine and it was very popular at recent months. Especially ... more

The specs of the laptop are as follows Operating system - Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic 32 Processor - Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2050 1.60 GHz 2 MB L2 cache 533 MHz front side bus. Memory- 512 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 533-MHz with 667-MHz Memory upgrade - Upgradeable to 2 GB maximum Hard drives - 80 GB 5400 rpm SATA Optical Drives - DVD/CD-RW combo - DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with Double Layer Display size - 15.4-inch WXGA Brightview Graphics cards - Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with up to 224 MB shared system Network - Intel 82562GT 10/100 Network Connection Wireless - Intel ... more

've left Vista on the HD but partitioned half of the remaining space for linux. All hardware ran 'out-of-the-box' except for the wireless lan, just a quick download from HP and Bobs your uncle or ndiswrapper perhaps. Only problem I had, that the machine comes new with 3 partitions already on it, for backup and stuff for Vista I suppose. PClos wouldn't partition it, but Ubuntu had no such problems. 3D desktop runs wonderful, showing the intel graphics card is up to job. Theres no firewire and only 2 usb ports, but at this price what do you expect. You could also grumble at all the connections ... more

So what's it got and is it worth it. My 530 come with Vista Home Basic 32 pre-installed with the option of the Business 32 version for a little extra. It's powered by an IntelCore Due T2050 processor at 1.6GHz with 2MB level 2 cache and 533MHz FSB. The memory let's it down at only 512Mb, which struggles to keep up woth the demand of Vista. The good news is that the memory can be upgraded to up to 2Gb, however we opted to trash Vista in favour of our ol favourite Windows XP Home. Storage is a reasonable 80Gb SATA Hard Disk Drive and a combi DVD/CD RW drive wth double layer capability allows for ... more

system runss fast enough with 2.16 ghz processor which is duo core. It has a 120 g hard drive and 1 g memory. Have found that system spec is sufficient just for bsic use. I wul say that though i will be having to upgrade my memory shortly due to intrnet usage and the system running vista have notced and ahev been advised also that vista does use much more ram and hard drive than tht of xp and millenium so 2 g is what is usually advised. Viewing sites on the internet etc and other actions such as have slowed down a little, but only because an upgrade on the ram is needed. Is a good machine for ... more