Powerful, but finicky
Written: Aug 31 '02 (Updated Sep 05 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Good performance for the price, Nice screen
Cons: Not very tough feeling, hates static electricity
The Bottom Line: Powerful and stable (except for static electricity, see above), but all in all I wish we were still buying Dells...
|
|
|
| betamale's Full Review: Hewlett Packard OmniBook XE3 (F3954KT) PC Notebook |
Furter update, Au-ust(see below) 2005.
Alp_abet now looks like t_is w_en usin t_is macine:
abcdef-_ijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
You do not actually -et _yp_ens and underlines instead of the missin- letters, t_ey simply are untypeable.
Also, t_e backspace key only works intermittently
Case is cracked in two places, macine is stil vulnerable to static electricicy, but 3.5 years and it is oterwise still runnin well. (I can repair te keyboard IF I open t_e case a-ain and reseat t_e keyboard connector. (quote marks and apostrop_es are dead now too...)
________
UPDATE SEPT. 12, 2003: In the past year the modem failed (and I had it replaced under warranty) & 5 keys on the keyboard ceased functioning. I got the keys working again following a tip on the HP support website to open the case then disconnect and reconnect the keyboard ribbon cable.
I have to reiterate my not recommended rating on this machine.
_________________
Don't get me wrong, I like this machine, I've done a lot of productive work using it, but I would not recommend it to someone looking for a laptop.
Performance wise, you could not ask for a more powerful machine. I use this machine for everything from reviewing (and even updating) cad drawings, word processing, making spreadsheets, web browsing and graphic design. I think HP got it right with this one, because even though it is just a 1.06 GHz machine, it seems faster at some tasks than my 1.5 GHz desktop.
My reservations with this machine are based upon what I will call its "hardening".
Something every laptop user knows is that lugging your machine along on each road-warrior mission is tough on a machine. If a machine isn't made tough enough to survive travel, it really is just a small, pretty desktop that doesn't use very much electricity.
I just don't think that this HP is anywhere near as tough as the Dell and Toshiba machines my company used to purchase for us. Those machines felt solid, were free of squeaks and rattles, plus they didn't bend when you picked them up-upside down.
The HP's lid is so thin that it bends a perceivable amount when lifted upside down.
And, as I mentioned in the Cons above, this machine is the flakiest I've ever had when it comes to static electricity. If I walk across carpeting in a dry room, or even just slide my butt around too much on an upholstered chair, I have to ground myself before touching the machine or the resulting static hit will lock up the machine.
Not just crash it, but lock it up to the point that I have to unplug the power supply AND drop the battery to get the machine to even think about rebooting.
I've had 4 other laptops over the past 8 years, and none of the others ever exhibited behavior like that. For this reason, and for the apparent lack of physical hardening, I cannot recommend this machine, nor other XE3's made on the same chasis.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1440
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
betamale
|
|
Location: USA
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.