8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
Great Notebook; Loaded w/Features
Date of Review: Dec 26, 2007
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend this product; one drawback, however, is the high-gloss issue.
***Update as of March 08 at bottom of review***
I have had this notebook for over a week now and at this point I feel that it was a smart buy. I payed 650 at Circuit City without purchasing any of the "extras."
I enjoy the amount of multi-media features, and you won't get much more at this price, if at all. The DVD burner is fast. There is a degree of "bloatware" (useless software) loaded on this machine, but far less than other notebooks and nothing that an hour of removing junk software and shortcuts won't fix. For most people's needs, the Core 2 Duo T5250 will provide more than enough speed, and minus the bloatware, the 1GB of memory runs Vista well.
The display is AWESOME; bright, 15.4" and very crisp. I've watched both an action and a comedy DVD on this machine and both were great experiences. The speakers are above average for a notebook (Altec Lansing). I like the keyboard and the mouse pad, although some reviewers on other sites do not. Chalk that up to personal taste; there's nothing egregiously wrong with either the keypad or mousepad. The remote is a cool feature and there's a slot in the side that stores it.
If you buy a notebook from a large chain, do not fall for the service-plan routine. All new notebooks have a one-year manufacturer's warranty, already decreasing the value of a store's PSP; if you buy a two year plan, the first year is irrelevant because you already have the protection. Check out the average cost of the average laptop repair and you'll find that that second year is never worth the 150+ you pay. The most common repair is replacing the connector that your AC power cable plugs into. This is a cheap repair that at worst is needed once per year. The first one is handle by the MFR warranty and the second one will cost far less than 150. What Circuit City calls optimization is simply removing bloatware; what they call security, is simply installing Norton or the like. Be careful.
***UPDATE-03/08/08***
I need to add that the high-gloss screen is incredibly annoying. If there is any light in the room in which you're working, you will have to deal with staring at a highly visible reflection of your own face. You can't have any major light sources behind you because it will render the machine unusable. I have no idea why someone would do this; the beauty of LCD technology is the no-glare quality of most monitors (my current desktop monitor and old laptop monitor included). Poor show, HP; the high-gloss of the case and screen detriment an otherwise nearly-perfect product. Fingerprints, too. Gross.
