Great Top! Not on the lap though!
Written: Jun 07 '03
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Pros: Mobile, Good Battery Life, Clear Screen -- Good Setup
Cons: Only 1 PCMCIA, Gets Warm, Not a Gaming Rig
The Bottom Line: Need a laptop for doing email, office document editing, etc? Perfect solution.
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| endurance's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion xz148 1.8GHz Notebook Ref... |
In a need to make myself truly more mobile, and have the ability to do things like internet anywhere in the house, office, or friend's house -- I can now have all my tools at hand. I have the PDA still, and it is truly become an organizer, keeping my names, appointments, etc. Now the laptop lets me work on those things.
ITS REFURBISHED
I usually only by refurb'd products from one place, I have done business with them for years, so I know they stand behind any product sold. Compgeeks.com -- They had some great laptop deals, but the catch: Money all at once.
Enter Tiger Direct. 4 Payments - Refurbished HP, a awesome deal, however stay tuned for my Tiger Direct review on why they didnt give me payments... long story.
Anyway, for a refurbished unit this runs like a dream! Battery is new and working, keypad was a little sticky at first, but as I have used the laptop more and more and more no problems.
Screen came clear as a whistle and all componets worked fine, I was on the house LAN via CAT5 within minutes - Did my Windows XP Home updates via Windows Update, and got going with loading apps.
THE LINUX TEST
Since I wasnt too far in, I dropped in a linux on CD distro (Knoppix) to see how this laptop faired with Linux, and if I should continue to keep XP Home, or switch to linux as the laptop's primary OS.
Linux did not detect the proper video, audio, or CDRW/DVD systems. It loaded, and ran fair in 640x480, but that was it. So from that test, I decided it was easier to stick to Windows because Linux would not work.
QUIRKS...
Video card. S3 ProSavageDDR. First off it shares the system ram which with 512MB of PC2100 DDR .. no noticeable differnce seeing as the card starts defauult stealing only 16MB of video ram. You can however modify that setting up to 32MB so you can squeeze every ounce of play out of it.
Unreal Tournament 2003: Ick. As I said in the con's this isn ot a laptop for gaming when it comes to new games - I was able to play but had to turn down EVERY setting to next to nothing just to get on a network game.
WarCraft 3: The masters at Blizzard still only use a 256 colormap, so video/gameplay is fair. Granted 16MB default doesnt handle GREAT - but throw it up to 32MB and your set, game play is smooth, and with a external USB mouse your good to go!
Other quirks include hardware buttons for MP3, Next Track etc. They are not customizeable to say Winamp! It will pop open Winamp as the default MP3 player, but thats about it.
HEAT is the last bad thing I will cover. This bad boy gets hot hot hot, that is why I would definately be careful in holding it on your lap, you may find your TOP is burning your leg. So buyer be-ware.
OVERALL OPINION
Honestly? I love it. I have a 802.11b wireless setup in my house now and I am able to sit in the backyard and code in the cool breeze of the evenings. So it is definately worth the price ($1059) I reccomend it to anyone wanting to get nice laptop that will do pretty much most of the productivity apps. Things I use:
Photosop
Office XP
CuteFTP
Dreamweaver MX
Winamp
MusicMatch
CDBurnerPRO XP
And manyh more. Its 30GB Hard drive has plenty of room to get things going, plus if you need bigger ebay has deals all the time.
A good price on a great laptop, give it a go.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1059
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
endurance
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Member: Charles Brown
Location: Bakersfield,CA
Reviews written: 125
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Graphic Designer who loves Gadgets, and Mobile tools!
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