Laptops are cool, and there’s no denying it. There’s nothing more spiffy looking than sitting in the middle of some public place, typing away as if you’re being immensely productive and that you are making mountains of cash as you type. You’ll need just that too normally, a pile of cash to buy a laptop, but thankfully that isn’t the case anymore these days, as the low-budget/low-end segment of the laptop industry expands.

I knew better than to buy a low-end laptop. I mean I knew perfectly that it wont exactly be running the latest 3D games or anything, but I grabbed one anyway because my sister needs one for her word processing deals. I have no idea why I choose the HP N3215. The only thing that attracted me was its price ($890, about 900 with shipping), and the processor that it’s paired up with. There were lots of sub-$1000 laptops out there at the time when I purchased this laptop, and one too many of them ranges in speed for the processor at barely around 400mhz. So there wasn’t too much fast stuff you can get, and the 475mhz seems to tip off the decision-making. At first, I was aiming for a Celeron 333mhz, 400mhz or something, but I choose the N3215 due to the fact that it doesn’t have just another normal K6-2 in it.

The CPU powering this Pavillion Notebook is an AMD K6-2+. Note the plus sign, does that mean it’s better than a regular K6-2? 100% yes. The difference between the K6-2 and the K6-2+ are as follow: 128k of integrated full-speed L2 cache. Unlike the original K6-2 which doesn’t have an integrated full-speed L2 cache on-chip (the 512k pipe-line burst L2 cache for the K6-2 is located on the motherboard running at speeds below 100mhz), the new K6-2+ have a full speed L2 cache, meaning it is running at the clock speed of the chip. Other new features are AMD’s PowerNow! technology for extended battery life, and finally, new DSP instructions paired up with the original 3DNow! technology. Believe it or not, having a cache running at 475mhz is a lot better than a larger cache running at 100mhz.

I figured that the processor is decent, its brand new, much more superior when compared to a first-generation Celeron, and AMD powered systems are of course cheaper than Intel’s. The storage capacity hits at 4.8 GB, which is really a decent size for a laptop of this price range. These are really all I had going for the N3215. The rest is somewhat downhill. The 12.1” HPD LCD screen is hardly anything to scream about, the quality isn’t great and I have no idea what the refresh rate capabilities are but it doesn’t seem to be too high up the numbers in my opinion (watched a DIVX movie and it was moving along pretty lousy.) But you did get what you paid for, I said to myself. The onboard video card wasn’t too grand either. The Trident CyberBlade is a decent 2D performer, but the fact that the video memory had to be shared from the system RAM just killed it. Of course, you don’t expect dedicated 4 MB for a laptop at this price range… but you still don’t like it either way. I had to throw in another 64 MB because Windows was really running slower than it should. (32 MB subtracted the 4 MB shared brings the available RAM for Windows to 28 MB. We all know that in order for Windows to run at any decent speed, there really should be at least 64 MB of RAM in the system.) Anyway everything else was pretty standard, the Polkaudio speakers are decent, but at the end are still laptop speakers, the ESS 16-bit sound card is okay, the modem seems to connect at a decent rate, pretty average. The laptop weights in at about 7 lbs with the battery, it isn’t too heavy at all, so that’s an okay part too.

I realized that I complained a lot for someone who knew exactly what he was paying for. I’m just pointing out that when you buy a laptop or any system to go with, you really should watch the RAM amount they pack along with the system. And things like shared memory architecture for the video memory really hurts the overall system performance too. This Pavillion Notebook is really fine, I mean perfectly average. The only reason why I wouldn’t recommended it is due to the fact that I’m sure if you shop a little harder, you will find better options. I myself knew better, but I was purely lazy to research up for a better product. Now I bought this for about $900 with shipping a few months ago, so if you can find it for anywhere lower but not above $750, then it may be an okay purchase after all. But I still recommend you invest in a laptop with at least 64 MB of RAM, purely because upgrading them cost too much. If you can find a $1000 laptop with 64 MB of RAM, consider it highly, since SODIMMs (specifically for notebooks) run for quite a lot more than regular desktop DIMMs.


Quick Spec:
K6-2+ 475mhz Processor with 3Dnow! and PowerNow!
32 MB SDRAM shared memory architecture (4 or 8MB for video memory)
Trident CyberBlade i7 AGP 2X
4.8 GB HD, 24X CD-ROM Drive, 3.5” Floppy Disk Drive, 12.1” HPA LCD, built-in 56 Kbps Modem, ESS 16-bit sound card, and Windows 98 Second Edition.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 900
Operating System: Windows
Processor speed: 401-500
Screen Size: 12
RAM: 32
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): Under 4