Good, but a bit heavy.
Written: Sep 14 '03
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Pros: Good basic laptop, some nice extras.
Cons: A little heavy, poor driver support for some stuff.
The Bottom Line: Good.
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| racemate's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion Ze4430us PC Notebook |
Summary of Specs:
Note that there's a lot of ways to customize the ze4400 series, if you order directly from HP; I was in a hurry, and HP was estimating 2-3 weeks to build and ship, so I went down to Best Buy instead. This is the 4430 model; there's a very similar 4420 model also, which has a bit slower processor, half the memory, and no wireless networking, for a bit less money.
Athlon XP-M processor, 1.8 GHz equivalent to 2400+ MHz Pentium
512 MB of PC2100 DDR memory
40 GB hard drive (Toshiba, actually 38 GB as formatted)
15" 1024x768 LCD screen
DVD/CDRW drive (non-removable, 8x, 8x, 24x speeds)
2 USB 1.1 ports
1 Firewire port
1 serial port, 1 PS/2 port
ATI graphics (IGM version of the Radeon, 64MB of shared memory)
built-in 54g wireless (compatible with 802.11b networks; Broadcom hardware)
Weight: 7.25 pounds, 10.72"x1.62"x12.96"
Synaptics Touchpad
Windows XP Home Edition, assorted "useful" software like Word Perfect, Quicken, MusicMatch, and Roxio for CD writing.
Hardware to mention:
* Case:
Feels good and sturdy. Rubber feet on the inside lip of the screen, to keep it from banging against the bottom part. Nice colors - silver and greyish-blue. The caps-lock indicator, power button and (5) "one-touch" buttons at the top of the keyboard all glow a cool shade of blue when it's on, too.
* Touchpad
I'm not a fan of touchpads - maybe I just have big fingers or something but it's hard to make them work exactly right. And when I'm typing I very often brush up against it and send the pointer off in all directions. This seems better than most, in that regard, or at least there's software that lets me adjust the sensitivity to minimize the palm contact. It's got two buttons and a separate small panel on the right side that acts like a scroll-wheel - touch the upper half to scroll up, etc. The scroll-panel is a bit more sensitive than the rest of it, I think. There's also a button above the touchpad to turn it off entirely; at my desk, I usually leave it off and plug a USB mouse in. (This one, usually.)
* Keyboard
Nice keyboard, for a laptop; the keys have a nice feel, although I could do with a bit more "clickiness" and feedback, and they're "flat", which throws me off a bit.
* Screen
Nice and big and bright; I like it a lot. Although the box doesn't say, this must be the XGA screen; HP also makes a SXGA+ version with a resolution of 1400x1050. I'd sort of wanted the SXGA screen, but this one (1024x768) really is adequate. I haven't noticed any dead pixels or other problems.
* Ports
USB works. I haven't tried firewire or anything else yet. There's only the two USB ports, and only 1.1 at that; they're at the back, right between the ethernet and power jacks, which makes it a bit crowded back there for, say, a "memory key" or other USB storage "drive". The PS/2 connector for the external keyboard/mouse is on the right side, which is nicer.
* Wireless
I haven't tried it in 54g mode because I don't have any 54g networks to access. It's a Broadcom model, which means that driver support is a bit (read: heavily) restricted. There's a button on the outside of the laptop to turn off the wireless hardware entirely, which is nice when you know there's no network around - presumably it uses a small amount of power looking, and turning it off saves that much more for battery life.
It works fine with 802.11b networks (which is what most of them are still); Windows is a bit stubborn about configuring connections when there's WEP security involved (getting the right keys entered was a major chore), but it worked fine going to a local coffee shop with wireless access, and on my home wireless network.
* Battery
Brand new battery, I'm not sure how well it'll age. I'm getting just a bit over 4 hours of light usage; more like a bit less than 2 the other night, playing a graphics-heavy game. This is in Window's "portable/laptop" mode.
Two weeks later: A bit less than 4 hours now, but still nothing to sneeze at.
Software:
* Well, it's XP.
I don't like Windows XP. I do not like it, Sam I am. I would not like it in its box, I would not feed it to a fox. But it does seem to have the best driver support for this particular notebook. I tried "downgrading" to Win2K (which at least has a more sensible approach to security); didn't work too well. I then re-installed XP from the install CD included with the laptop, but the "one-touch" buttons didn't work, the wireless hardware wasn't recognized, and the touchpad drivers weren't as nice (although all the rest of it did work). HP includes a 4-CD set of rescue disks, to completely restore the original contents of the hard drive; putting that back on worked as expected.
* Linux compatible, sort of.
I tried Gentoo and Slackware. Both booted just fine. This page (http://www.c133.org/ze4420/index.php) has a summary of linux support for the nearly-identical ze4420us model. X works, but only in vesa/framebuffer mode (i.e., no graphics acceleration at all); it looks like better X drivers will be coming up in the next major release (due sometime later this year). Both the current kernel (2.4.x) and the testing (2.6.0-test4) work fine; the 2.6 kernels will have better ACPI support, but I haven't put the time in yet to get that correctly set up on mine. (ACPI is what allows the computer to "stand by" when you close the lid, or adjust the CPU speed to conserve battery life when you unplug the AC adaptor, etc.) Still, if you're looking for something that "just works" right now, I can't really recommend this laptop for Linux just yet. (Later this year, maybe. Hopefully.)
* Includes WP, Quicken, stuff like that.
Word Perfect is still pretty cool, and better by far than Word, but, well, "everyone else" uses Word, so. But it's good to have some software included so the computer's useful right off the bat. If you order direct from HP, you can get Office included from the start also.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1300
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
racemate
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Location: Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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