HP Pavilion Media Center Dv9655ea Entertainment

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Look & Feel	Excellent
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Robustness & Durability	Excellent
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Everything, AMD Dual Core, Graphics, Looks, Performance, Specs
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The HP DV9655ea.

As a small business owner (I.T) I have to have a Laptop. It's as simple as that. My old laptop was a Toshiba Equium M70 on XP. Being in I.T meant that I had to have the latest OS from Microsoft in order to help clients when they need help with Vista.

Usually when somebody asks me to find them a laptop for their needs, I can do it swiftly, effectively and find them their perfect laptop.

This was not to be the case with me, I sat there for hours and hours going through supplier products. The main 3 I whittled myself down to where Toshiba, HP and Acer.

I already had a Toshiba and to be honest, I really thought the speakers on their new version looked naff. Acer, a pretty budget make and often need repair.

After going through specs after specs, I chose this laptop, Down to the build quality, reliability of HP.

The Specs:
AMD Turion 64 X2 2.0 Ghz Dual-Core Processor
Nvidia 8400M GS Graphics
2 x 160GB HDDs (320GB)
2GB of DDR2 Ram
Memory Card Reader
DVD-RW with Lightscribe
Firewire, USB 2.0, S-Video, VGA
HDMI Out
Altec Lansing Speakers
17" Widescreen Brightview Display
Two Remote Controls (Push In and Large External)
DVB-T Television Tuner
Built in Web-Cam

As you can see, the specs are pretty impressive, For a laptop that costs around £700 you are getting what you pay for.

- AMD Turion 64X2
The Dual-Core processor in this laptop is second to none, everything runs very quickly, smoothly and the whole Vista OS is VERY responsive.

Compared to a Single Core Centrino (which I had peviously) this is more than a step-up, it's definately in a different league. Video encoding times have been sliced by more than half, Graphics editing programs such as Photoshop when rendering very high quality images has also speeded up dramatically.

Being dual core you can do many things at once without the normally associated slowdown with a conventional single core chip. for example I was lightscribing a DVD whilst editing Graphics for a website in photoshop, checking e-mail, instant messaging and looking on business forums without ANY slow down what so ever! Amazing!

Being the energy efficient model, it shuts down it's clock speed and only uses it's potential when needed, ofcourse you can't tell when it's running on 800mhz or 2.0ghz (unless you use an app like CPUZ to have a look) as it's always dynamically changing to suit what you are doing on the machine. The upshot of this is that battery life is improved.

- Nvidia 8400M GS

The speed and efficiency isn't JUST down to the AMD processor. The branded graphics chip also eases the straing. Vista is an amazingly resource hungry OS so you do need a decent pc to run it properly. In Vista the gaming graphics for this is 4.6 the top you can get is 5.9 so I'd say (as everyone else would) that's very good going for a laptop in this price range. This chip is the second to bottom of the current Nvidia Line up, but it is DirectX 10 and will play the latest games but not on maximum settings but that would depend on the game in question.

- 2 x HDD 160GB (320GB)

This is wonderful. It allows you do speed up and organise your files no end. Install your programs on one, and then dump all your data onto the other. whilst one HDD runs Vista and Programs, the other can fetch the files.. Unzipping/Compressing and Transferring to the 2ND HDD are amazingly fast. These hard drives are also SATA and running at 5,400rpm

- 2GB of DDR2 Ram

All new laptops come with DDR2 ram nowadays. With Vista the MINIMUM you want is 2GB. I removed the bloatware anti-virus and at desktop it sits with around 40% used. Remember 32-bit versions of vista can only handle upto 4GB of Ram. The 2GB though is enough for this machine because of it's speed, Plenty of windows can be opened with no slow down.

- 17" Display

WOW, The display on this thing is amazing, it uses the brightview/clearview technology to produce colour rich, crystal clear images. Being so big means it's a very capable desktop replacement. What suprised me was how light the laptop is, considering it's size in width.

The laptop is very slim, and possibly the slimest of all the current 17" Laptops. My old one was 15.4" and am I glad that I took the option of having a much bigger screen, wonderful!

There is a web-cam integrated into the display surround, There are no technical specs for this, but having seen this and another one, it is a 1.3megapixel. The picture is clear and colourful. Also integrated is a stereo microphone set-up.

DVD-RW with Lightscribe.

The DVD-RW drive in this laptop has Lightscribe. Never having used it before I was eager to try it out. What is it? Well, Lightscribing a disc is a very simple process, using the Laser inside the drive, you burn an image into the top of the disc, thus never needed labels, silly print settings and un-aligned messy print jobs again.

You uses special Light-Scribe DVDs for this, as they have the Dye on top that reacts when the laser hits it. Depending on laser frequency and duration the dye turns darker, hence how it can burn images onto the top side of the disc!

The downside to that though, is it can only do it in Greyscale, no colour! You can buy different coloured discs though in order to improve visual appeal. I suspect a new dye is already being invented to change colours at different frequencies in order for this to become a full colour process.

the laptop also comes with a DVB-T Tuner, 2 Remotes and a DVB Mini Aerial.

Using Windows Media Centre (Which you get in All Vista editions EXCEPT from Basic and Business) you can watch live TV, Record, Rewind and review TV. You can also pick up digital radio stations if your area supports it. This is great when coupled with your HDMI connection and HD-TV and especially perfect for when the digital switch over happens and your not ready yet.

Battery Life - One downside to this laptop is the battery life. The large screen and powerful hardware can muster about 3.0 hours when used on power saver.

There are all sorts of neat little touches, for example there is a very slim bar that runs just above the keyboard, this is the quick launch bar and is touch sensitive, so for the volume, you place your finger on the appropriate section and pretend your using a slider left and right to adjust the volume. Very responsive, snazzy and keeps the look 'clean'

The overall design of the laptop is the best I have seen (and I've sold quite alot). It's very very slim, Light for it's 17" size and has been awarded the 2007 Red-Dot Design award for it's very cool imprint finish.

If you use programs like Photoshop, need loads of windows open, want power when you need it, play the odd game, want Entertainment as well as power, function and style...

There is no other laptop you should buy. This is the one for you.