The best laptop available for around $1000 bucks
Written: Nov 17 '02
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Pros: Fast, lightweight, excellent screen, expandibility, price
Cons: No floppy drive, firewire port, only one PCMCIA slot
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a laptop for school around $1000 this is the laptop that will meet all your needs and more.
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| wvabackpacker's Full Review: HP Pavilion xf335 AMD Athlon 1.5 GHz / 20 GB / 256... |
Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve written an epinion, so here we go.
The HP Pavilion Xf335 ze1000 series laptop computer.
~Price and availability-
Let’s start with the price. $1,098 available at your local Sam’s club or via www.samsclub.com So it’s a members only buy, a membership will cost you $35 and is well worth the price for all the discounts. 9/10 rating
~Features-
Windows XP Home Edition
An AMD Athlon XP 1500 processor with PowerNow!
256mb of 133mhz ram via two 128mb chips, standard SODIMM.
30GB 9.5mm Hard Disk. Despite all efforts, I couldn’t find the speed at which the hard drive operates and transfers data. This series of laptops have been upgraded from 20gb to 30gb at the manufacturer.
14.1 inch viewable active matrix XGA Display
DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive 24x8x8x8
One Type II or Type III PCMCIA Cardbus slot
Four programmable quick launch buttons
Touchpad with scrolling feature
Built in NIC
Built in Modem
Two USB ports
Parallel port
VGA Port
Headphone/Speaker and Microphone out ports
55w Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery
75W external power adapter.
~Battery Life-
The question that most people often ask when buying a laptop is, “How long will it run on batteries?” Well, let me answer that one for you. I held off on writing a review on this product so I could fully test the battery and here’s what I found….
Using the computer for just word processing with the screen dimmed….a whopping 4 hour run time! Now let me remind you I have the power saving feature set to maximum battery and the autosave features of Word turned off for minimum hard disk access.
Internet use via the LAN connection or an add on wireless connection… 3 hours
Watching a DVD or burning multiple CDs… a little over 2 hours run time.
All in all, great runtime for this computer. Charging the battery takes about 1 minute for 1.5%
10/10 rating
~PowerNow!
The high runtime for this computer is directly related to the PowerNow feature built into the Mobile XP Athlon Processor. The PowerNow! feature allows the processor to be clocked dynamically. What that means is that the computer can supply lower voltages and run the processor at different lower speeds like 198mhz. Lower speeds mean longer battery life. However, just because you unplug the power cord doesn’t mean the computer will run at 200, 300, or 500mhz the entire time the computer is running on batteries. PowerNow! supplies power on demand. So if the computer is sitting idle it will run at 200mhz, if you startup an application such as SetiAtHome which is processor intensive…the computer will clock itself back to 1300mhz. This dynamic clocking is instantaneous and you will not notice any lag 10/10
~Weight and size-
Other important factors when purchasing a laptop are the physical characteristics. Dimensions are 320x265x34mm weighing in at 6.6lbs. The weight and dimensions of this computer make it slightly too big and heave to be classified as a notebook, thus making it a Laptop computer. 7/10 rating
~Processor-
All the power you need is for normal laptop computing can be found in this computer. The AMD Athlon XP processor delivers 1500mhz of power while only running at 1300mhz or 1.3ghz. What this means is this processor performs at a 1500mhz level while running at only 1300mhz. Basically this processor can do as many calculations in one clock cycle running at 1300mhz as a processor running at 1500mhz…Specifically it is the equivalent of a Pentium 4 1.5ghz processor speed wise. More calculations per cycle means an equivalent speed of a faster processor doing fewer calculations per cycle. 10/10 rating
~Screen-
The screen is beautiful. No lag time in the refresh rate (some LCD screens update so slowly they tend to smear). The video is powered by a ProSavage video processor with shared memory. The shared memory feature is great. You can set the laptop to use 8mb of RAM to save power, 16mb for normal performance, and 32mb for maximum performance. At 16mb the graphics processor can provide the maximum refresh rate of 60hz to the display producing beautiful graphics at 1024x728 (max) at 32bit millions of colors. I suggest getting a 14 inch screen to save extra weight added from a 15 inch screen. 9/10 rating
~Sound-
Here is the first bad feature. Typical laptop speakers. They produce no bass whatsoever. They are quite clear for mid and high range sounds. Not good for movie sound or playing MP3’s, I would suggest an external set of speakers via the speaker port for that.
3/10 rating
~Operating Temperature-
Hot! Well, at least with the power adapter plugged in. While charging the unit can get too hot to sit on your lap. The temperature makes me uncomfortable. While not charging but plugged into AC power the laptop is hot, but not too hot for you lap. While running on batteries the laptop runs fairly cool, the temperature is not noticeable. 7/10 rating
~Keyboard and buttons-
They keyboard is small and fairly quiet. It accommodates my large hands barely which is saying a lot for an 88-key keyboard. The numeric keypad is built into the keyboard and can be turned on with the press of a function key. It’s a little odd using the numeric pad on a slant (since the keys take over the keys from 7 to 0 and 7 to M). The four programmable buttons are great. Easy to program via the Keyboard control panel. The touchpad has a button above it to disable it and the mouse buttons for the clumsy typist. The touchpad is great, you can click and double click with it without using the buttons, merely tap the pad once or twice to do your desired function. To the right of the touchpad is a small divider with an up and down arrow on it. Moving your finger up or down on this part of the pad acts like the scroll button on a normal mouse. The power button is located to the left of the programmable buttons on the top of the keyboard.
~My Complaints-
This laptop is great and I would recommend it to anyone, however, there are a few drawbacks. For one, there is no floppy disk drive built in to the computer. You can purchase a USB floppy drive from the HP website for $49 and the laptop comes with a rebate good for $50 towards the purchase of an HP USB floppy drive…so you can get a drive for free basically.
Second, there isn’t a serial port. I have no serial devices except for a GPS, but this problem was overcome by purchasing a serial to USB connector.
Third, no firewire port. Some laptops are coming with firewire ports, it would have been a nice option but not necessary. It would have made the price more anyway. 6/10
~The cool look-
What I really like about this laptop besides the power, battery time and screen is the look. All of the LED’s for the Power button, Programmable buttons, touchpad, and power/hdd/charge/function indicators are all BLUE. Finally an escape from the boring green LED’s on every other computer out there. The plastic is a dark blue/black with silver trim which encompasses the screen and keyboard. 10/10
~Expandability-
Any 9.5mm hard disk can be used in this unit. To replace, simply remove two screws and it slides out. One screw holds the RAM cover in place. Upgradeable to 1gb of memory. The battery can be replaced by moving locking quick slide and sliding it out. Fast switch if you have more than one battery. Use hibernate mode to change batteries while running on batteries. 10/10
~Other features-
The built in modem and LAN give you access at 56k or 100mbs to any internet connection available to you. The CD burner burns and plays CDs without any problems and DVD’s play smoothly without skipping. 10/10
~Overall-
Overall this is the best laptop you can buy for around $1000 bucks. It has all the features necessary to make it a good laptop and the battery runtime is phenomenal. A floppy drive would have been nice, but would have added weight—the CD burner can easily take its place. I give this laptop an 8 out of a possible 10 rating.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1098
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
wvabackpacker
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Member: Jeremy Hays
Location: Columbus, OH, USA
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 46 members
About Me:
Maybe I'll write another review someday...lots of new gear...
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