The HP Omnibook XE3 is a Computer on the Go!
Written: Apr 12 '02 (Updated May 23 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Plenty of power and storage!
Cons: A little heavy!
The Bottom Line: Overall Hp has done their homework and produced a nice quality laptop at a reasonable price.
|
|
|
| surferdude7's Full Review: Hewlett Packard OmniBook XE3 (F3468JG) PC Notebook |
The HP Omnibook XE3 laptop (Notebook) with a 1.06-MHz Mobile Intel Pentium III Processor-M, featuring Intel SpeedStep technology is a great laptop that can be taken with you anywhere you go!
This laptop includes a 14.1” LCD screen, 512 MB of 133-MHz SDRAM memory, a 30 GB enhanced IDE hard disk drive, a DVD + CD-RW combo drive, 56-Kbps modem + Ethernet 10/100 LAN and Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition.
Intel SpeedStep Technology
The best way I can describe Intel SpeedStep technology is, it lowers your processor speed slightly (About 150 MHz) when battery power is being used. This is to conserve power, you can override it and run the true speed.
What I Liked!
The DVD + CD-RW combo drive gives you the ability to copy your own CDR and CDRW discs, plus the ability to watch a DVD movie. This acts as a portable DVD player and portable computer in one.
Having a 56-Kbps modem + Ethernet 10/100 LAN included in one is great.
The 30 GB hard drive gives you plenty of room for applications and storage.
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition runs smooth and without any problems, no upgrades needed to make it work with the laptop.
Built solid and priced pretty good at $1599.
Plenty of RAM with 512 MB of 133-MHz SDRAM memory.
My Dislikes!
The HP Omnibook XE3 uses an Intel 830MG graphics controller that shares system memory from 8 MB to 32 MB of memory depending on application needs. Even though it produces a good picture, I prefer a built-in memory card like the nVIDIA chip with 32 MB or 64 MB of memory just for the video.
The 14.1” LCD screen, (measured diagonally) I guess even the 15” screen would be too small for my taste.
The Touch pad, I can never get use to them like a mouse, adding an optical cordless mouse is a necessity for me.
Looks are deceiving, it looks small and light but it is rather heavy at 7.4 pounds.
Other Technical Stuff
Closed the laptop measures 13.03 inches wide by 10.76 inches in length and 1.59 inches thick.
DVD + CD-RW is an 8x DVD-ROM, 8x CDR, 4x CDRW and a 24x CD read speed.
The 14.1-inch diagonal screen is a 1024 x 768 XGA TFT display with 16-bit video.
Built-in speakers are Polk Audio
Built-in floppy 1.44 MB
Universal AC adapter included
Ports include PS/2 keyboard, mouse port, parallel port, infrared port, microphone-in port, video out, TV out and two USB ports. Also there is a RJ-45 LAN jack and RJ-11 modem jack.
Two 16-/32-bit PC-Card slots for expansion.
Software
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0
Microsoft Fax
Microsoft Firewall
Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2002 (trial)
InterVideo WinDVD 2001
VERITAS HP RecordNow
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0
HP Toptools and e-diags for Windows system diagnostic tools
Touch pad tap and scroll functionality by Synaptics
Overall
It is one of the most comfortable laptops that I have used with all the controls in easy reach and use.
DVD movies look great on the little 14.1” screen, the wide screen movies look funny with the black bars on the top and bottom but the picture is clear.
The sound from the built-in speakers also surprised me having a lot of bass that is not usually found on laptops. Music CDs, MP3 files and DVD movies all sounded good. Though I did miss the 5.1 digital Dolby sound that my home stereo system and my computer have.
When riding in the car and using it to play a DVD movie didn’t seem to bother the performance one bit, even if we hit a bump.
There is a built-in smart rechargeable 9-cell Lithium-Ion battery that recharges in about 2 hours. The battery is suppose to get 3 to 4 hours of use but I could only get about 2.5 hours before it started to warn me that the battery needs to be recharged.
Games played as good as on my home computer as long as I used the cordless mouse!
This laptop is slightly faster than my home computer, which only has an 800MHz Athlon processor, you can see the difference on some programs. Everything is included with the rechargeable battery, AC adapter and preloaded software so it is ready to run. You will have to charge the battery the first time.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1599
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
surferdude7
|
 - Top 10 |
|
Location: Elizabethtown, Ky.
Reviews written: 374
Trusted by: 1167 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.