HP Pavillion XU155 PIII 750MHz / 30GB / 256MB / WinXP / Notebook Computer

HP Pavillion XU155 PIII 750MHz / 30GB / 256MB / WinXP / Notebook Computer

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jskaczmarek
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The right ultra-portable at the right price.

Written: Mar 19 '03
  • User Rating: Excellent
  • Ease of Use:
  • Quality of Tech Support:
Pros:Small, lightweight, fast, powerful notebook. 2 USB ports.
Cons:No PS/2 port, only 1 PC Card slot on notebook itself, clunky base station.
The Bottom Line: A great ultraportable - powerful, cheap, light + portable, expandable. And so cool looking. I love this little guy.

I bought the xu155 used off of Half.com and have not regretted the purchase once. The computer is small and lightweight, easy to take anywhere, and has a very small footprint. It is slick looking, and has lots of useful ports on the notebook itself. The expansion base/docking station has lots of expandability. A great notebook if you can get it used and cheap.

Pros:
- Small (less than an inch border around the 12.1" screen), lightweight (less than 3.5 pounds) and very slick (silver/black).
- Notebook proper has most of the ports you need (modem, LAN 10/100, VGA video, sound in/out, 2 USB, 1 Type II PC Card Slot). There are external volume controls.
- Big hard drive, reasonably expandable RAM (maxes out at 512 MB RAM), and quite fast processor (750 MHz PIII). Great for almost anything, audio/office/graphics although you would probably want an external monitor for graphics work.
- 12.1" screen is quite readable at 1024x768 w/ large fonts on. LCD is reasonably bright, although I have seen better.
- Battery life is good. Power button is kind of clumsy but no big deal.
- Works well w/ wireless internet (I have a 3co card).
- Docking station accepts lot of extras (2 PC Cards, 2 optical Drives, lots of extra ports).

Cons:
- docking station is a bit large and clunky for an ultraportable. Has unnecessary features like an LCD clock.
- Would be nice if the notebook proper had a few more ports (like PS/2, Firewire) and an extra PC Card SLot. But the 2 USB ports are good for most applications.
- BIOS Setup is not obviously accessible. To get to it, you have to shut down and then turn the machine back on while holding down the F1 key.
- External USB floppy drive. I recommend getting it though as this is the only way to install BIOS updates.
- HP's legendary crummy tech support. But being a tech myself this doesn't bother me at all. They are reasonably easy to bully into agreeing that one of you parts is broken and they need to send a new one free of charge :)

Recommended: Yes


Amount Paid (US$): 850
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 12 inches
RAM: 128
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30

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