Design and Appearance (Cont'd)
HP includes a small infrared remote that can be used to control their QuickPlay application, which is basically an alternative to Windows Media Center. The remote can be stored in the ExpressCard slot when not in use, which is sort of a cool feature even if it makes the shape of the remote somewhat awkward. If you make use of an ExpressCard device, however, you will need to find the remote a new home.
Looking at the rear of the laptop, there's not much to see besides the ventilation grille on the right. We also get a good shot of the extended capacity battery, and if its size seemed awkward from the other angles it's even more awkward when you realize that the battery isn't exactly centered. If you put the laptop on a hard surface, it's not much of a problem, but we found the extended capacity battery made the notebook less comfortable to have sitting on your lap during use. For those who need additional battery life, it's a sacrifice they're probably willing to make, but it really would have been better if HP had been able to come up with a slightly different battery design/location.
Here's another look at the notebook, this time from the bottom. Once again, you can see how the off-center location might make things awkward if you use the large 12-cell battery. The standard 6-cell battery sits flush with the bottom of the laptop, so it doesn't present any problem.
Here's a look at the basic 6-cell as well as the 12-cell battery. The difference in size isn't really visible from this angle, but you can see that the larger battery has twice the capacity of the standard 6-cell battery (95 WHr compared to 47 WHr). Twice the capacity will result in twice as much battery life, give or take a few minutes, so for lengthier trips the option to get a 12-cell battery could come in useful.
Other than removing the battery, there are only two hatches on the bottom for the laptop. The middle one provides access to the memory slots and mini-PCI card, and the other covers the hard drive. While it is possible to dismantle the laptop further, most users will not need to do so; the only other potential upgrade you could make would be to the processor, and at present there are only two officially supported processors anyway.
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HP includes a small infrared remote that can be used to control their QuickPlay application, which is basically an alternative to Windows Media Center. The remote can be stored in the ExpressCard slot when not in use, which is sort of a cool feature even if it makes the shape of the remote somewhat awkward. If you make use of an ExpressCard device, however, you will need to find the remote a new home.
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Looking at the rear of the laptop, there's not much to see besides the ventilation grille on the right. We also get a good shot of the extended capacity battery, and if its size seemed awkward from the other angles it's even more awkward when you realize that the battery isn't exactly centered. If you put the laptop on a hard surface, it's not much of a problem, but we found the extended capacity battery made the notebook less comfortable to have sitting on your lap during use. For those who need additional battery life, it's a sacrifice they're probably willing to make, but it really would have been better if HP had been able to come up with a slightly different battery design/location.
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Here's another look at the notebook, this time from the bottom. Once again, you can see how the off-center location might make things awkward if you use the large 12-cell battery. The standard 6-cell battery sits flush with the bottom of the laptop, so it doesn't present any problem.
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Here's a look at the basic 6-cell as well as the 12-cell battery. The difference in size isn't really visible from this angle, but you can see that the larger battery has twice the capacity of the standard 6-cell battery (95 WHr compared to 47 WHr). Twice the capacity will result in twice as much battery life, give or take a few minutes, so for lengthier trips the option to get a 12-cell battery could come in useful.
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Other than removing the battery, there are only two hatches on the bottom for the laptop. The middle one provides access to the memory slots and mini-PCI card, and the other covers the hard drive. While it is possible to dismantle the laptop further, most users will not need to do so; the only other potential upgrade you could make would be to the processor, and at present there are only two officially supported processors anyway.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link
Funny you should mention the E-155-C.... :DFant - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Seems HP shipped you a badly specced machine. They should have used a 5400rpm drive and the nvidia graphics chip as well as the extended 6-cell. All three would have improved your benchmarks. Out of curiousity, did you use a clean vista build or the out of the box vista build that hp supplies with loads of extras installed?JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
HP's install, minus a bunch of software that I didn't want running. Although, when I ran SYSmark 2007, I ahd to do a clean install first. (Now you know why the lack of GbE was annoying - image a HDD over 100 Mbit and I averaged 3 MB/s instead of 12 MB/s with GbE. Not sure why, but Acronis only manages to use about 25% of the Ethernet bandwidth.) Anyway, I like to make the testing close to "real world", and most people don't buy an HP, Dell, Gateway, etc. notebook only to install their own operating system. (Businesses are different story, but let's not go there.)I actually don't think that the configuration they sent was all that bad. It may not perform as well in benchmarks, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people get way too hung up on benchmark results. Do you want a faster hard drive, or do you prefer having a bit more storage? There is no right answer, although personally I would generally go with one of the 120-160GB 7200 RPM laptop drives if possible. As for the battery, they did send me the 12-cell for testing, and the only thing I really would like to know is the capacity of the extended 6-cell. The basic 6-cell is a 47 WHr, so if they extended capacity is 65 WHr it would increase battery life by about 35-40%. I'm trying to get an answer from HP about the capacity of the other 6-cell offering.
Fant - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
I have a dv6500t with the extended 6-cell. I havent done any formal testing but I probably get just under 3 hours with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan in Vista and a bit over 3 hours when using the Power Saver Plan. I did notice that the cpu seems to stay at the lower speed with the Power Saver Plan but seems to stay at the higher speeds with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan even when I am not doing much cpu intensive tasks.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
Can you check the battery and see what the rating is? Usually it will say something like "10.8V ~= xx WHr". I want to know the Watt-Hour rating. I'm not sure why, but the notebook I have almost never runs at minimum CPU speed. Weird.hubajube - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was waiting to read on how this laptop performed when watching HD DVD's. I'm interested in buying this for my wife for her to use as a work laptop but at the same time I'd like to use it as a HTPC. Oh well guess I'll have to spend the money to find out. :(JarredWalton - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Yeah, they didn't send the HD-DVD version. I'm not sure if the 8400M GS is required for that or not - maybe X3100 can do enough to handle it (but I doubt it). Anyway, we've tested 8600 cards with HD-DVD, and I don't see why the 8400M wouldn't handle it fine. Problem is, the display is still pretty poor, especially when you consider that video overlay can have a color correction profile applied.shady3005 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was gonna consider this laptop but was turned off by the lack of gigabit ethernet. Dint know about the horrible display at that time. So i was waiting for an upgrade to this laptop but sadly none came.Then I set my eyes on the new Macbook pro. Just 500$ higher that top dv6500t config but worth every extra penny. Amazing display , much lighter , thinner , sexier and CPU (2.2Ghz) and Graphics (8600GT M) upgrade with much better battery life.
Please review the new MacBooks with Santa Rosa ..... I would like to hear how awesome they are ..
crimson117 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I lol'd pretty good at this one :)
BPB - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Maybe I missed it, if so please excuse me, but I think you simply used the ABG wireless setup. I was wondering how well the N wireless works, and how well it talks to other N devices such as my Belkin N1. My wife's HP works quite well with the Belkin N PCMCIA and router, but for our next notebook I'd like to have the N built-in.