HP Compaq 6910p Full Review

The HP Compaq 6910p is HP’s premier 14.1” business notebook, as part of their ‘Balanced Mobility’ line-up. The 6910p is the Santa Rosa refresh of the nc6400. The 6910p includes the addition of a firewire port, Intel Wireless 4965 ABGN, and the option of either integrated Intel X3100 or dedicated ATi X2300 graphics cards.
The 6910p has a similar chassis to the 6510/6515b notebooks, but is slightly thinner.



Being HP Compaq’s premier 14.1” notebook, it comes with a range of security options as standard, such as a TPM chip, drive encryption, smart card reader, Intel Centrino Pro and finger print biometrics, as well as HDD data protection ‘3D DriveGuard’ accelerometer.
The notebook has a sturdy magnesium alloy display enclosure, reducing weight whilst increasing durability.

Reasons for buying

I’m currently in my second year at university, studying a commerce degree. I basically got sick of carrying around the nx8220 in my bag, with all my course books, so decided to bite the bullet on a lighter, more compact notebook. I wanted all the features of the nx8220 in a smaller and lighter notebook, and the 6910p fits the bill, being cheaper than the previous nc6400s, as well as the Lenovo Thinkpad T61 and Dell Latitude D630.

Where and how purchased

I purchased the 6910p online in New Zealand. The original laptop was sent the day payment was made, but subsequently lost by the couriers. Two weeks later they allowed a replacement to be sent, but it was out of stock, and would take another week to be in stock, so I opted for the more expensive model that I’m reviewing now.


My 6910p was specced out as follows:

NZ$2970 w/3yr warranty
CPU: Intel C2D T7500 2.2Ghz 4MB L2 Cache
OS: MS Vista Business 32/64bit
RAM: 2x1024MB DDR2-667 (2GB Total; expandable to 4GB)
Display: 14.1” WXGA 1280x800 Anti-glare 200nit
GPU: ATi X2300 w/128MB Dedicated DDR3 RAM
HDD: 100GB 7200rpm
Optical Drive: MultiBay II DVD SM DL
Battery: 6 cell Li-Ion 55WHr
Wireless: Intel Pro/Wireless 4965 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, Infrared
Weight: 2.30kg w/6 cell and Multibay II DVD SM DL drive
2.15kg w/6 cell and weight saver
Dimensions: 330x240x33-40mm WxDxH (front-back)
Ports/slots: 3xUSB 2.0; MultiBay II; 10/100/1000 Lan; Modem; S-Video out; VGA out; Firewire; Audio in; Audio out; internal microphone; SD/MMC card reader; Smart Card Reader; Type I/II PC Card Reader; SIM card slot; Docking connector; Second battery connector.
Other: Finger print reader, Touch stick with 2 buttons, Touch pad with 2 buttons, Volume up – down, Volume mute, Presentation, Wireless, HP Info Centre touch sensitive buttons.

Included software:
MS Vista Business 32/64bit (one time option on startup, Windows Vista 32bit DVD included)
HP Application and Driver Recovery DVD 32/64bit
Intervideo DVD
Roxio DVD Creator
MS Office 07 60 Day Trial
Google Toolbar
Norton Antivirus 60 Day Update
HP ProtectTools security software

Opening it up

One of the first options you get when you start this thing up is whether to install the 32bit or 64bit version of Vista Business. Since the packaging included the 32bit version only, I decided it would be a good idea to stick with the 32bit version as well, since I was going to do a fresh install later anyway. I was very pleased to see that HP included a recovery DVD as well, meaning I didn’t need to create my own.
After Vista had set itself up, and I could actually use the notebook, I was surprised to see Vista (and ATi Catalyst Control Centre) identify the graphics card as the ATi X1450, although this was remedied by a fresh install and downloading the ATi driver from HP.


The laptop and included DVDs and manual

Design and Build

The screen casing is a magnesium alloy, making it lighter and stronger than the cheaper 6510b. Pushing the lid results in no LCD distortion, which is a change from the nx8220. There is no noticeable flex in the chassis, unless you deliberately move either side in opposite directions, lifting one side, whilst pushing down on the other.
The look of the notebook is professional, being black on the underside, and a gun-metal like-grey around the keyboard and on the lid, whilst the LCD bezel is black.
All 6910p notebooks come with 3 WWAN antennae, and 2 WLAN antennae. Having the three WWAN antennae allows someone who didn’t purchase the laptop with the WWAN card to purchase it separately later, and install it themselves. The SIM card slot is located in the battery bay, and is clearly marked. You must take the battery out before inserting the SIM card, which prevents any possibility of it being knocked out.


Insert you SIM card here

Keyboard

Like the 6510b reviewed by Andrew, the 6910p has touch sensitive volume controls, presentation mode, wireless and HP Info Centre buttons. Thankfully these don’t make sounds, and a welcome feature is the onscreen display for the volume controls, which is nice compared to my nx8220 which lacks such a feature. Although the touch sensitive buttons look nice and attractive, I would agree with Andrew and say that I prefer the old type of rubber buttons like my nx8220.
The keyboard itself has HP’s DuraKey finish and is spill-resistant, not that I’m going to try out that feature. The keys have a different feel to my nx8220 but I’m quickly adjusting to them. The actual size of the keys appears bigger than the nx8220, although this is because of the differing angles of tapering. The keys are more rubbery than the nx8220, which I’m quickly beginning to like. The keyboard is overall nice to type on, and I don’t notice any flexing at all.
Since I’m used to HP touch pads I found this nearly identical to the nx8220. It has good speed and responsiveness and I only needed to adjust the scroll area as I felt it was a tad too large, getting in the way of scrolling. The 6910p also includes a track point, but I have not played around with that since the last time I used a track point was about 12 years ago on a real old IBM.


View of the keyboard

Input and Output Ports

The 6910p offers the standard ports that other business class notebooks of this size offer.



On the front we’ve got the MMC/SD card slot and the Infrared port. To the right are the two speakers. On the left front are the LED lights for Wireless, Power, Battery charge and HDD/DVD activity and HP DriveGuard status.



The right side has the Smart Card reader, MultBay II DVD SM DL drive, USB port, Gigabit LAN and modem ports. (Shown with 8 cell travel battery)



The left side has the fan exhaust, two more USB ports, Firewire port, Audio in, Audio out and the PC Card slot.



At the back is the power jack, S-Video out and VGA out, a long with the lock slot on the left of the battery.


View of the bottom

The screen

The screen is much better than my nx8220. It is brighter. Adjusting the screen brightness using the function keys results in an onscreen display. Again this is something lacking on the nx8220. The screen is brighter than the nx8220 and has much better horizontal viewing angles. I would say the vertical viewing angles are only slightly better though. The screen is bright enough for my needs, but I don’t know how it will stack up when used outside when University starts next week.
I would like the option to lower the brightness further to save battery life, but otherwise I have no complaints.


HP 6910p on the left, compared to my nx8220 on the right.

Sound

The 6910p, like the nc6400 has two speakers on the front right of the notebook. I assumed there was only one speaker as the right side was where all the sound was coming from, but was mistaken. They are sufficient for Windows sounds and warning sounds, and are actually half decent, given that they are both on the right side. Any audiophile would need to use external devices such as speakers or headphones. As such, I haven’t tested it out much, except for listening to online radio, and a bit of AOE3. The volume is sufficient to fill a medium size room, but are nothing to write home about.
Performance and Benchmarks



The notebook scores a respectable 3.9 on the Windows Experience Index, predictably limited by the graphics card.

Super Pi 2M: 56 seconds

3DMark 06: 969
3DMark 05: 2421
PCMark 05: 4394

HDTune:



Performance is on par with what you’d expect from a C2D at 2.2Ghz. It never lags, and the ATi X2300 is enough to be able to play with high settings in AOE III, the only graphically intense game I own. It would have been nice to see the equivalent of the 8400M GS with DX10 but its not a major problem.

Battery life

The included battery is a 6 cell 55WHr battery. It has a higher capacity than the cheaper 6510/6515b notebooks. HP claims that it should last up to 4 ¾ hours on Windows XP. Using the wireless, surfing the net I got around 3 hours 15 minutes. HP also has an 8-cell and 12-cell second battery options that connect underneath the laptop. These raise the rear of the notebook, allowing better typing positions with the raised keyboard. I myself have the 8-cell travel battery which came originally with my nx8220. I would expect the 8 cell to double the battery life of the notebook.

Heat and noise

One of the big issues with the 6510b and 6710b notebooks from HP that many users have been complaining about is the fan noise, and having it spin up ‘every time I move the mouse.’ In fact this has been an issue in many HP notebooks, but you can rest assured that no such problem exists for the 6910p.
Typing this review, all I can hear is the hard drive doing its indexing thing. When the fan does spin up, it is barely audible. Even the fastest fan speed under benchmarking is acceptable, and much less than the nx8220 (which uses a cooler Pentium M). I can assure you there is no vacuum cleaner and it won’t start flying.
Temperatures using Notebook Hardware Control under idle is 50C and 60C under load. The hard drive at maximum performance and idle in NHC is 39C. Unfortunately NHC doesn’t support voltage adjustment on the new Santa Rosa chips.
The left palm rest gets luke warm, due to the performance hard drive (7200rpm). When power management is used to lower the performance of the hard drive, it is not noticeable. The keyboard is generally warm, but not anywhere near hot or as bad as my nx8220 can get.

Wireless

The 6910p came with Intel wireless a/b/g/n. I only have a wireless ‘g’ network at home, but clearly out performs my nx8220. Our router is situated downstairs. Generally my nx8220 gets a ‘good’ reception at 48mbps, whilst the 6910p works flawlessly at ‘excellent’ and 54mbps. Downloading updates from HP resulted in download speeds at the maximum our line offers, whilst the nx8220 only manages half that speed.

Conclusion

The HP 6910p is a perfect laptop for anyone demanding top build quality and excellent performance in a 14.1” form factor. It is a worthy competitor to the Thinkpad T61 and Latitude D630. In New Zealand the 6910p represents good value compared to the competition, being significantly cheaper than lesser spec’d T61s and D630s. It’s light, reasonably thin and has great performance.



Pros:

• Great, solid build quality with magnesium alloy screen casing
• Professional, non-flashy design
• Fast Core 2 Duo performance for a reasonable price
• Light
• Option for WWAN
• Quiet
• Option for either 32/64bit Vista Business
• Vista 32bit DVD and HP Driver and Application Recovery DVD 32/64bit included (NZ model)

Cons:

• Touch sensitive buttons difficult to effectively use
• Two speakers both on the right front
• Fingerprint reader in awkward position
• Could do with lower brightness settings
• Dedicated graphics option lacks DX10 support. Slower than 8400M GS

 

Great review! I really like the fact that it has a pointing stick, it's much more comfortable to use than a touchpad IMO.

 

Thanks! I'm just used to using a track pad as thats all I've ever used basically. Most of the time I prefer it over a mouse even (except when playing games )

 

Thanks for the review! I ordered mine about a week ago with similar specs, except I got the 2 Ghz processor and an 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD. I feel really good about my purchase based on your review and the reviews of the predecessor nc6400.

For everyone else, stay tuned to this thread. I will add my experiences with/thoughts on the 6910p via a post here. I won't be doing any bench marking. I will mostly discuss build, screen quality, etc in relation to the ASUS W3V.

According to HP, my notebook should ship out tomorrow or friday. It is shipping out of Indiana and I am located in Florida, so I should have it by the middle of next week.

 

Thank you for the review!!!

 

Great review, many thanks!

I think you're mistaken with this point. HP QuickSpecs clearly states that there are two integrated stereo speakers on the front. Even its predecessor, nc6400, had two speakers, albeit little strangely positioned.

Totally agree... I couldn't understand why they haven't chosen a newer generation graphics chip for their premium notebook.

 

Thanks... nice review!

 

I've seen those quick specs. I can assure you that the sound only comes from the right front of the notebook. There is no speaker on the left, even if those quickspecs say so
The speaker(s) is still good, but obviously if audio is high importance then external speakers or headphones are needed.

Cheers

 

Great, thank you=) iam going for it.

 

The speakers are placed as such, but there are actually two of them, thus producing a stereo sound. Shine a torch through the mesh and you should see two holes on the right.

 

What the hell is the point of putting two speakers on one side of the notebook and calling it "stereo sound"?

Granted, this is a small notebook, so even if the speakers were placed on opposing sides of the computer there wouldn't be a whole lot of separation going on, but still.

Oh well, that's what headphones are for as marmion stated.

*EDIT* Great review by the way. I really like the look of HP's new business models. No nonsense and tough looking.

 

Thanks, I'll update the review to reflect this. Quite weird though, having both speakers on the right.

 

ahhh a review from the land of sheep! where did ya get the machine from? directly from HP or from a store like harvey norman or noel leeming? whereabouts in NZ are ya. Almost one year out and I still miss the place, oh and hell pizza and burgerfuel too LOL

 

Yes, you're right. I looked into Maintenance and Service Manual and the placement of the speakers is the same as on nc6400. There are two speakers, both of them are placed to the right of the SD media slot. The QuickSpecs are not accurate in this regard.

 

Nice review, marmion!

I wished we could get such a nice config in AU. The options here are pretty crazy, you either get a T7100 or a T7700, with nothing in between and the T7700 option is waaay too expensive. We also don't seem to have the X2300 option here so far, only the Intel graphics. Guess it's time to look into the channel partner configuration catalogue for the RCTOs.

 

I bought it from C1 Shopping Mall, one of the many online computer shops in NZ. Harvey Norman/Noel Leeming etc. don't sell business laptops (and they'd rip you off big time anyway). I'm in Auckland as well.

 

Back to topic:
Nice review. Could you go through it with Lavalys Everest and have a look at the monitor/display section? I'd like to know which manufacturer and model did HP use in your laptop.

 

Is this what you wanted?

Monitor Properties:
Monitor Name Generic PnP Monitor [NoDB]
Monitor ID LPL8D00
Manufacturer LP141WX1-TLA5
Manufacture Date 2007
Serial Number None
Max. Visible Display Size 30 cm x 19 cm (14.0")
Picture Aspect Ratio 5:3
Gamma 2.20
DPMS Mode Support None

Quick search pulls up LG as the manufacturer.

 

That's it - LG.Philips (LPL = Lg.Philips LCD) Thanks a lot.

 

Nice write up!

 

Great, thorough review.

The one thing I would have liked to see though is a picture of the bottom - to see the fan vents on the underside. It's a small detail.

It also would've helped if you took the picture of the displays side by side with the same wallpaper - it is difficult to gauge the differences between the two when the 6910p is showing an all white while the other is showing a car - from my view it looks like the older laptop that you have actually looks better

Just some constructive criticism ^.^

Definitely am interested in these DuraFinish keys you speak of...

EDIT: Is that an LED display, by the way?

 

I'll do another picture for you. I didn't think of it when I was taking them

The display is your normal LCD display, unfortunately no LED.

 

This is a kick butt review. I really think in my opinion that it beats out the T61. This machine is like what the T61 should have been. I wonder if maybe HP hired some of IBM's old thinkpad staff after the Lenovo take over.

The look of the machine is very business slick. It doesn't say steal me like a Dell XPS but it causes the on looker to do a double take.

My friend recently got a 17 inch HP and after using it for a bit, it seems to me that HP really has learned how to make an enterprise class laptop. It's come a long way from an HP laptop I had that fell apart over the years.

What I especially like about HP now is that they are not afraid to offer huge batteries that really allow the notebook to go a day without a plug and doing it without having to take out the Optical drive. If they have a multibay battery; combining it with the 12 cell in that machine would be a road warrior's dream.

 

Yea, I agree completely. I don't know what brought me towards HP in the first place but I'm pretty happy, although I learnt the hard way that you should always get an extended warranty (my nx8220 motherboard failed about a year ago, 3 months or so out of its one year warranty).
With my nx8220 I was able to squeeze out around 8 1/2 hours with both main and 8 cell travel battery which is pretty darn good.

 

Original review has been updated with a picture of the bottom and screen comparison with the same desktop background. Also inserted why I bought and how.

 

Thank you. Really shows how the 6410p is so much more vivid.

Something tells me that these business lines were derived at least somewhat from the old DV5000 series. I used to have an HP DV5035NR, and some of the elements look almost exactly the same - granted these probably are better built, but it looks similar still in many ways.

I really must applaud HP on their "3D" HDD protection - looks like a freaking piece of armor plating covering the HDD, haha. My T60 doesn't have that - it has more active protection built into the HDD.

 

Yea that 3D HDD protection does look effective, but it also 'parks' the HDD if its falling or such (it has an accelerometer), and I believe the HDD/DVD LED turns orange when this happens, so its still got the 'active' protection too.

 

Yeah, the active protection is built into the HDDs from Seagate / Hitachi I believe, since mine also has a 3D Accelerometer, so its not really a technology from HP / IBM, haha. I like the "armor plating" though, like I said. The LED changing color is pretty snazzy though if it does that... mine only shows the difference in a little icon in my system tray monitoring - I can customize the sensitivity and tell it to ignore repetitive bumps (aka if i'm driving).

 

All you can do on the HP is enable or disable it, there's no sensitivity options. Sounds like the IBM may have better software for that!

 

ahhh C1 yeah i used to buy most of my stuff from there. good online store with most things cheaper plus it was dead easy to pickup and pay being only a few mins drive from my old place and yeah id never buy anything from the those big stores either, you always get better prices at the real PC stores.

 

I am 90% sure that my 6910p ships today. I am really excited. I will have to install the extra 1 GB of RAM myself, so I will let you all know how that goes. And I will also give you my general impressions of the build quality, speed, etc. I currently own an ASUS W3V, so I have similar size machine to compare the 6910p to.

Thanks again for the review marmion.

 

Good review, i recieved my 6910p on yesterday and i have the same problem with the video stating that it is a X1450, i spoke with a tech and customer service rep and advised them what i read in your review but they are waiting to hear from a support guy and they want to send me another laptop. My question is do you think by updating the driver that it only changed the name of the video driver and it really has a X1450 video in the laptop because that is stranged that we are both having this issue. And also did you have and unusal amount of space not accounted for on your hard drive. i have a 100gb hard drive and it has a partition for 8.03 for the recovery and a c artition for 85.13 and it's telling me that me availabe space is 65.8gb, when i added all the software in the add/remove programs it adds up to a little over 2gb so it seems that there is 18gb missing without counting to os, it hard for me to believe that WindowsXp pro will take up 18gb, please tell me what you think.

 

The video card issue has been resolved by HP. Its got to do with the factory image or something, but updating to the latest graphics driver from HP's site will fix the issue, the card is still an X2300
As to the HD issue, I can access a total of 94GB, after doing a fresh install. The notebook came originally with a back up partition for HP, an 'OS_TOOLS' partition (1.3GB, barely any used) and then of course the main partition with Vista. Can't remember the capacities though, I just wiped them all and started fresh, since the notebook came with the DVDs for Vista and Recovery Drivers.

 

Well, X2300 is in fact just based on X1300/X1400/X1350/X1450 series with Powerplay 6 support, so drivers can recognize it as X1450. I'd say its not a problem...

 

Okay thanks, know did get two different dvd, because i only reveived the os disc, is that the recovery disc also. Even though they wanted to send me another computer i really didn't want to send this one back because i did to much of that with Dell and i really like the build of this computer and i think once i take care of this i will have a good exp. after i get my docking station and 19" monitor.

 

It may only be NZ models that get the recovery DVD - I got two, one for Vista and one for drivers and applications. I got the same with the nx8220, but it didn't come with a recovery partition.
I wouldn't send the notebook back unless the driver update doesn't fix the graphics card identification. Apparently its a known issue, and the newer 6910ps have the system image updated to reflect the graphics are indeed the X2300.

Enjoy your notebook!

 

Marmion, did you reinstall the os from the disc or did you do a factory recovery

 

I did a fresh install using the discs provided. The OS Disc had all versions of 32bit Vista on it (basically an Any Time Upgrade Disc, except we can't do that in NZ ). The application and driver disc provided by HP is just that. You insert it after installing Vista and it gives you options as to what you install (required drivers, optional software, recommended software etc, and is fully customisable as to what you install). Although I didn't wipe the recovery partition initially, I have now, since I confirmed that the provided DVD was enough to allow full install of drivers and neccessary software from HP.
I believe that in the States you don't get this Application/Driver Disc, which is a shame.

 

it seems tech support dont know much, the had me do a recovery by pressing f11 when i restarted the computer a put it back ti factory settings but know it change my recovert partition under the d: drive and change my dvd drive from d: to e:. it appears it gave me alittle more hd space available. do u think i should reload from the os disc and if i do a system recovery on dvd can i get all the drivers off of there since i don't have a driver disc

 

Unfortunately, the only thing I can recommend doing is burning your own recovery discs, or downloading the latest drivers from HP onto a separate HDD/CD/DVD and then doing a fresh install, if you want to do the fresh install. If its the issue with the graphics card, just download the driver from HP and install. If its the lost HDD space, I'd check that a) your HDD is infact the correct one, and then b) have you acounted for the swsetup folder in your XP partition? I know that the swsetup folder can be large since this contains all the drivers and applications.
The OS disc only contains the OS (in your case XP Pro), so you would need to create your own recovery discs. Unfortunately I can't really help in that regard, as I haven't needed to do that, and I don't know whether you'd get the options to install specific drivers/software like the Application and Driver disc provided in my system did.

 

Looks like the hard drive is somehow limited by interface. I'd check the jumpers maybe it is set on SATA instead of SATA-II...

 

Did a fresh install of the os and know my hard drive is showing to proper space available, it took a long time to download all the drivers from the hp website and the tech is sending me a cd of all the drivers and the software do that i can put the software that wasn't on the website. If i had the drivers and softward cd the experience would have been a litter better. After waiting on the phone for HP support for a long time, one rep finally told me how to get in touch with HP for business notebook when you dial the toll free number then after you say notebook pc then you should say evo notebook and the HP support answers in 2-3 minutes. Marimon by the way how is your lcd, do you noticed any leakage, i noticed a litte and have a maybe a few dead pixels but when i get a good microfiber towel i will try and massage them out. i don't think i will make a big fuss over this because it may take three notebooks being sent to you and i don't think a customers can ever get a perfect screen, and it takes to long to get another notebook. Also by the way did your battery evey get to 100 percent, mine stopped at 97 percent i never noticed it being at 100 and i always use it on ac power except once for about 2min.

 

My screen doesn't have any dead/stuck pixels (thankfully ). The screen is pretty much what I'd expect from a notebook. Nothing noticably brilliant, nor bad. There is a bit of leakage but I can't really notice it unless its a black screen
With the battery, it will only charge if its less than about 90-95%. So if you're on 97% it won't charge to 100% unless you use the battery so that its got less that 90-95% charge.
I agree you've got to take advantage of the business support and if you can't get rid of the dead pixels I'd probably try and get a replacement.
Good to see you got your HD space back. I suspect it is the swsetup folder that has all the HP drivers and applications in it, as it won't be seen in add/remove programmes.
Good luck!

 

Update: My 6910p is in transit. I should receive it on July 19.

Here is a little story about HP's order and shipping department:

When I decided to order the 6910p (I ordered it on July 3), I noticed that the estimated ship date was July 23 (backorder). I called HP and talked to a sales rep. The sales rep told me that, if I ordered the notebook that day, it would ship by July 12 or 13. So I ordered the notebook on July 3.

I called again on July 5 and spoke with the order department and they confirmed that they had received my order and that it would ship on July 12 or 13. I called on July 12 for an update and I was told that it would ship on July 13 and that I would receive a confirmation email when it shipped. By the afternoon of July 13, I had not received the confirmation email. So I called again and explained that I was told on 3 occasions that the the notebook would ship by July 13. The order rep was very polite, but all he could tell me was that they were OUT OF STOCK and that they would be in stock by July 20 and that my notebook would ship by July 21 (which was still within the estimated ship date posted online).

At this point, I am upset. So I threaten to cancel my order and/or demand some sort of compensation from them if my order is delayed until the 21st. The order rep tells me that no supervisor is available (it was Friday evening, so I believed him). So I tell him to have a supervisor call me by Monday at noon or else I will cancel my order. Then on July 14 (saturday), I get a confirmation email that my order has shipped.

Persistence is key.

 

Hey Marmion did you ever get a dw.20.exe-dll error when shutting down or restarting your computer. Straight out of the box it was giving me that error and then a rep help me get rid of it and it came back and now it hard to get rid of. I recieved the driver and software CD on yesterday and a rep wanted to reinstall the os. After that i thought everything was going good when i installed the recommended software, i started getting the error message again. After calling Hp again they had me reinstall some drivers off of the HP website to no avail. One rep was telling me a microsoft application like word and excel, and I explained to her that i have been reading about this error message, and by the way i don't have any of that software on my computer. I have other computers with xp pro and xp home on it with word and excel and i have never incountered that message. They want to keep reinstalling the os, i did an f11, and two clean installs and they want to do another one. This time i am not dealing with them and i will do this on my own, i believe it has something to do with this .Netframework software that is under the recommended software on the utilities cd because everything else under that cd is hp software.

 

I haven't had any errors what so ever, but then again I didn't install everything when I did the fresh install. I don't remember what I chose but I'm afraid I can't help you there.

 

It appears it has something to do with the ATI video, I'm not really sure. When we remove some of the ati ccc. it stops but then it gives other errors when i restart. How to you like your computer, and did you ever own an HP business 17" lcd notebook. I like the 14" with the docking station and the 19" monitor that i purchased. i was thinking maybe a 17" w/o the docking and external monitor but it's hard to determine how small the words will be, because when i go into local stores everything is running on vista and it is hard to tell the difference between vista and xp when it comes to the size of the letters and icons. If you don't mind me asking what exactly do you use the notebook for.

 

Great review Marmion.

Almost ready to buy one myself but am finding if difficult to work out the offical brightness level of the wxga lcd screen.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12699_na/12699_na.HTML

The quickspecs page (link above) says its 200 nit yet the maintenance and service guide on page 98 (link below) reckons its only 180 nit.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01039208/c01039208.pdf

The service guide also states the WXGA screen has a pixel resolution of 1440x900 which I thought was WXGA+ !

What did the service guide that came with your notebook say it was ?

My worry here is that hp are using different manufacturers to source their lcds and it may be pot luck what brightness level you get.

 

I've only used my nx8220 notebook, which is a 15.4" with WXGA 1280x800 screen, and now the 6910p. I use it basically for word processing and internet browsing and other university assignment work (excel and undoubtedly I'll be using powerpoint soon).
I have absolutely no need for any more screen real estate and I find it ample for what I do. My desktop has a 1440x900 19" widescreen LCD, and I barely use it, my laptops are so much more convenient.

The only reason I'd go buying an external is if you are going to be using the notebook at a desk for long periods, and don't want a desktop, or need to take the laptop with you for other reasons.

As for the difference between XP/Vista font size, they are the same. Icons can be changed by going ctrl + scroll up/down in Vista and can be much larger (but at 1280x800 theres no need).

In terms of a 17" notebook, the font size/readibility highly depends on what resolution display you choose, and I can't comment on that I'm afraid.

 

Thanks!
If I compare the screen of the nx8220 (180nits) to the 6910p, the 6910p is brighter, so I'd say it is infact 200nits, and it is definately 1280x800 for the WXGA resolution