Smooth Machine
Written: Mar 26 '02
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Pros: Light, fast, quiet, smooth-running
Cons: No floppy or CDRW, no PS/2 or game port
The Bottom Line: Out of the box it has been a joy to use, good quality for a good price. Smart looking, durable, my new best friend.
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| stephjen's Full Review: Hewlett Packard HP Pavilion Zt1130 (F3378H) PC Not... |
Powerful, quiet and fast, the HP Pavilion zt1130 is a nice machine to work with.
1.06 ghz Intel Celeron
20 gig Hard drive
256 PC 133 RAM
14.1” TFT Screen
8x DVD
High speed Ethernet card
56K Voice/Data/Fax Modem
3D Sound
3USB, 1 Parallel, RJ-45
1 Type II or Type III PCMCIA Card Slot
S3 Savage 4 Video card
Lithium Ion
It comes loaded with Win XP , MS Works, Money, Norton Antivirus and other little useful things. Software has run smoothly and no crashes thus far.
I sold my desktop that had a 17” monitor and I have to say that I am very pleased with the 14.1” screen. It is a better monitor with better resolution. I suffer from occasional eye strain and I have had no problem with this screen.
Plug and play works well for usb devices and my parallel printer. But, I have a scanner that connects by parallel port to my printer to share the port but I cannot get that to work. If I connect it directly to the port and unplug my printer, there is no problem. To fix this problem usually you can go into the BIOS and change the port setting from ECP to an SPP or Bi-directional BUT the one crazy thing that I have been arguing with HP Tech support about is that there is apparently no way to change the BIOS settings for Ports or devices on this computer. Weird and frustrating. I am going to continue to investigate this.
Another thing one should be aware of is that this computer has no floppy drive or CDRW, so you cannot save to any type of media unless you buy an external drive. Given the price of this computer I took this into consideration and I am buying an external CDRW drive shortly. To have a CDRW in a notebook, the price rises dramatically.
A nice surprise in the box is that if you buy an external usb HP floppy drive from www.hp.com you are entitled to a $50 rebate. I am taking advantage of this offer and in the end I think it is costing me $30 for the floppy.
NO game port! But, I bought a USB Game Port adaptor from Radio Shack for $16.99 and it works very well with my game pad, not so good with a wheel. NO PS/2 or serial connection for a mouse, you must buy a USB mouse if you want one.
The coolest feature about this laptop is the ability to connect to a CRT Monitor or a Television via an S-Video cable (which you have to buy separate of course) But, it is very cool to play games and watch DVD’s on TV.
Over all this computer can be described as a good deal, you get what you pay for, a few extra versatile ports would be nice and an integrated floppy, but hey, what can you expect for under $1500?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1100.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
stephjen
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Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 2 members
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