HP DV2 Initial Impressions (Pics 56K warning)

precisely....

 

Laptop Magazine's DV2-1030US review: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/hp-pavilion-dv2-1030us.aspx?page=1

*EDIT* And another review: http://www.t3.com/reviews/computers/laptops/exclusive-hp-pavilion-dv2-full-review

 

Looks like Europe (UK?) is getting an extra model and bluetooth as standard.



http://www.ditii.com/2009/04/08/hp-dv2-ultraportable-notebook-and-amd-athlon-neo-cpu-launched/

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10214683-1.html
acer one new netbook

 

I for one was really excited about the DV2 until I read the reviews and comments about the battery life. I can probabaly live with the heat and I think it is a really sharp looking unit. I have not totally ruled it out. Was just wondering what others feel about the ~2-1/2 hour battery life mentioned in the Laptop Mag review?

 

Your point is well taken. As with so many product types, the more specific one is with one's actual use, the more likely one can find an optimal compromise (at the risk of stating the obvious). For instance, I spend long hours with a notebook in/on my lap (as opposed to on a desk or coffee table); so, weight counts with me. However, I can usually access an electric plug; so, battery life is not as much a deciding factor (for my use). Clearly, this type use differs the needs of a constantly-mobile user, like a student or someone who wants to use it on commuter busses and trains etc.

What causes a LOT of confusion is trying to use small netbooks and ultra-light notebooks for applications which require great heat dissipation, like 'gaming' - something that presents great thermodynamic engineering challenges. Of course manufacturers are reluctant to declare their product unsuitable for an application, like gaming - unless they have another product more suitable for the application.

Thus, whether they like to accept it (or not), if people want long battery life, they can't expect netbooks/notebooks to do well at high-power-demanding applications ... at least until there are greater engineering breakthroughs in batteries and heat dissipation. Both Intel and AMD are well aware of this and are working hard at (and making progress on) low-power-consumption cpu's.

The original presumption of 'netbooks' was "just enough" cpu power for modest email and browsing use. Those limitations were quickly forgotten as people demand more and more from tiny form factors which can not quietly dissipate the heat generated by more computing intensive applications, like gaming.

 

Disappointing for the type of device it is, but I just need two hours off the plug at most, so that works for me.

 

PC Magazine's review: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344567,00.asp

It seems the top complaints about this notebook so far is the keyboard, heat and battery life. It is interesting to note that they got 3 hours and 40 minutes out of the battery, which is a pretty big difference from the other reviews stating roughly two and a half hours.

 

I"m slightly biased because I own the laptop and it works quite well for my uses.

I have a few questions about the PC Mag review or maybe just disagree:

Can't really see too many problems with the keyboard, it seems to be like the HP Mini series, maybe they didn't like those keyboards as well.

As for the HD playback they say they had problems running a 1080P clip, they must not have used the system with a DXVA compatible player.
I've never had any problems playing back any HD videos.

As for the heat, I guess the numbers don't lie although I can't see this notebook being hotter than any other one i've used.

Its not a terrible review but like others, it seems to be being compared to everything else, oh well i'm still happy with it.

 

I doubt the keyboard will be an issue for me; I had a HP Mini 1030 and the keyboard worked pretty well. My concerns at this point is the heat and fan noise, which seems to be a problem for the recent HP notebooks.

 

yes, i can confirm that battery life of the dv2 is around three (3) hours. for me, however, battery life is non-issue because most of time i have used my dv2 while it's plugged into an AC outlet.

 

Ah, I did forget to ask something. Did any of you guys try putting Windows XP on the DV2 yet?

 

Every person is different but the heat problem is not a problem for me as I can't see this being any warmer than other notebooks i've had.

I have 2 hitachi 7k200 100GB sata drives i'm note using right now. I"ll pop the hard drive out of my DV2 tonight and see if I can install windows XP

There are not many drivers listed on HP's website for windows XP other than the wireless driver and HP quicklaunch buttons, shouldn't be too much of an issue as I can go download the ATI drivers from ati's website and try them.

 

Let me know what drivers you used for the other devices like the sound and whatever else this notebook has. I'm on a lunch break so I figured I should grab the XP drivers ahead of time.

 

Good points. I guess what I was hoping for was longer battery life so I do not have to tote my power supply around when I take the machine in my back pack to work or upstairs at home to sit and watch TV while I surf. In actual prcatice, I am rarely without AC power. Others have mentioned more on the order of 3 - 3-1/2 hours of battery life. If it would give me that, I would probably be happy with it.

 

I was wondering about the keyboard comment too. From looking at the pictures and what someone else mentioned, it looks a lot like the the keyboards on the Mini's. Correct me if I am wrong, but seems to me the reviews I saw on the HP Mini netbooks said that the keyboards were good. I guess I am wondering which is it? Good or not? Unless they mean not so good in reference to the type/size of machine the DV2 is.

 

The HP Mini has one of the best keyboards out of all the netbooks, so it's a good thing...for a 10" netbook. However since this keyboard remains mostly unchanged on the DV2, it is a bit of a downfall since there certainly is enough room to fit a full-size keyboard.

My guess is HP did this to save cost. If you're worried about it, check out a HP Mini at a Best Buy or any store by you that has a display model. If you can get used to its keyboard, you'll be fine with the DV2.

 

Wow, the dv2 looks really impressive. The only downside I see is the battery life, which could be better. :-\

 

Long time lurker, but I ordered one of these today after reading this thread about ten times. I had an HDX16, but it was too big for what I needed it for, so I had been looking for an ultraportable, something like the Envy133, but without the luxury bells and whistles. I had it shipped overnight, so I'll post some impressions tomorrow when it arrives. Thanks to the OP for the pictures and review, and everyone else who posted in this thread, be it positives or negatives.

 

I'm glad to help out, truth be told I was probably not going to buy this as soon as I did, although I wanted to be the first one on NBR to get one and share my experiences, I kind of did the same thing with my N10J

So if this is the same keyboard as the HP MINI's wouldn't it be alot smaller in this chassis vs the Mini's it just seems bigger and easier to type on.

The only comparison for keyabords I have are the MSI wind 10" N10J and this notebook.

The wind's keyboard was much too small, the N10J's keyboard was great and as far as i'm concerned it was "normal" like any other laptop, and this keyboard on the DV2 is pretty much normal to me I can't type very quick on this keyboard and it doesn't feel too small.

 

Few questions. How well can it run Photoshop? Is this Neo processor slower than an Intel U7500 @ 1.06ghz (Sony TZ160) ?

 

how well an application runs is rather subjective; performance is highly sensitive to what you are doing and against what content. i purchased and installed Photoshop Elements 7 on my dv2 and i'm enjoying the application thus far on Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) and 4GB of main memory.

 

The neo is not a new cpu really from AMD, its basically an Athlon 64 1.6ghz single core, which can run at very low voltages, if that helps at all.

 

Hi All,

Been lurking here for about a month. I bought a DV2 from Fry's today so i thought I'd join.

I'm still letting it download the gazillion windows updates and removing all the bloatware.

So far i like the overall looks and size/weight. I have always been a fan of small portables and have owned quite a few going all the way back to the Toshiba Libretto running windows 95. (so yes that dates me a bit)

Anyway, so far I have noticed that the fan runs quite a bit installing software and updates but is only noticeable in a quiet room. In our offices it's not noticeable.

One question for the group, my case seems to be very slightly warped in that the left front does not sit flush to the desk but has a couple of mm play if you press down. It doesn't interfere with typing, but I did notice it almost immediately. Am i being anal about it or should i take it back and exchange it?

Thanks to all that have posted so far, it's been helpful in me deciding to buy one.

PS: If anybody cares, the USB DVD drive that came with my DV2 also works on my wifes Macbook air. Discovered that by accident

Cheers!

 

Desert lap after I read your post I checked my notebook and its EXACTLY the same, almost like its warped, thats very odd, although it doesn't bother me at all.

Glad you like it so far, can you run the 3Dmark benchmarks like 2003 and 2006 if you get a chance i'd like to compare scores.

 

I just received mine today, and it does not appear to be warped. I can put pressure on it, and there is no give. Extremely impressed with the build quality, and the screen is excellent.

 

Here's the review I've been waiting for, CNET's: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-dv2/4505-3121_7-33483187.html

It plays Unreal Tournament III at 34 FPS with native resolution, nice.

 

Found it today at Office Depot:

SKU: 643149
Brand/Model: HP Pavilion dv2-1030us
Price: $749.99 after $50 mail-in rebate
Screen: 12.1” Diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
Processor: Athlon Neo MV-40 (1.6 GHz)
RAM: 4GB
Hard Drive: 320GB w/ ProtectSmart hard drive protection
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD3410 w/512MB dedicated
Wireless: 802.11 BGN
Webcam: Yes
OS: MS Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Multimedia Drive: External LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Battery: 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery
Weight: 3.81lbs

Link to HP specs

 

well i ordered this laptop and it's supposed to be here tomorrow and i'm already thinking of returning it. i'm confused. there are other laptops in the same price range around 13's that will DESTROY this laptop.

 

Destroy is a subjective term, you have to ask yourself what you want in a notebook netbook laptop or whatever you want to call it.

Right now this is my only computer and its serving me just fine, I was looking for something small and lightweight that I could take around with me, and NOT have to give up performance. Its is faster than the Atom based netbooks by a wide margin and i'm not talking about benchmarks i'm talking about REAL world usage. I came form an N10J and while it was nice, it didn't have the same feel of performance this one does.

The only thing I could say I wish I had more of was battery life, but its not that big of a deal, and since its the only thing i would change on the notebook, i'll just buy another battery. People are quick to jump on the battery bandwagon when its easily solved by getting another battery.

This notebook isn't meant as a desktop replacement and isn't meant to be super fast. Its designed to be faster than netbooks and provide more multimedia capabilities than netbooks offer, while managing to be very compact.

As i've mentioned before this is a VERY thin notebook and a lot of my friends have commented on this, it is something to look at.

If i was you, I would take everything in this thread with a grain of salt, use the notebook for a few days and be subjective about it and not start judging it before you get it. I"ll say that about any notebook people are looking at buying, if you think it fits your needs try it and see but don't count it out because people who don't ever OWN the notebook are talking negative about it.

 

Just got a DV2-1030US two days ago. So far so good. This is meant to be a thinner, lighter alternative to a slightly aging Dell M1210 (~2 lbs. difference between the two, not including the external HP DVD drive).

Only complaint thus far is I'm a little disappointed with non-DirectX video playback (e.g., HULU, ABC.com, et cetera). This goes for both HD and non-HD content where I get a 1-2 second frequency stuttering.

Has anyone tried installing Win7 on here?

Cheers, T

 

Yesterday was the first real workday i have had with my DV2. My work is such that I'm constantly moving from building to building and place to place so smaller and lighter is better.

Using the system for office, web browsing, itunes playback with headphones and light in-design use i was able to get right at 4 hours before the battery conked out.

Given the price/size/weight/cost equation i'm quite satisfied with that. I was able to get considerably better battery life out of the thinkpad 301 i borrowed (got right at 5.5 hours with it) but of course it cost $2500.

Other observations are that playing back video on this machine seems to be a light load (heat, fan usage) than on the thinkpad or my older dell and toshiba systems. Conversely running apps seems to be a bit more of a strain on this system. I attribute it to the graphics card on the HP for the video and the CPU on the dell and toshiba for the disparity.

Under long stretches of use, the bottom front left does get quite warm but overall no worse than the toshiba portege i have.

I thinking this one's a keeper especially since the relative price compared to the toshibas and dells and sonys make me more likely to take it with me and use it vs. babying the much more expensive systems.

I have not had a chance to run any benchmarks yet, but will probably try that this weekend.

Also, to the person that was getting stuttering on hulu, I had the exact same issue with both my toshiba and my wife's macbook air. Turns out that our netgear access point was the root cause and adjusting the MTU (i think) to a larger than default size fixed the issue and hulu plays great on my DV2

 

Silvr6,

Or anyone, do we know when/if the the gobi cards will be available for purchase?

I can see the slot for it on the bottom of the unit and having a 3g card would truly make this machine perfect for what i need in a portable.

 

how do you get rid of the HP crap? i don't have my own copy of vista.

 

anyone can help?

 

Has anyone tried World of Warcraft on this machine yet? My wife really wants it, but WoW playability would be a show stopper

 

Installed Win7 without any issues. Drivers from the HP site install fine (mousepad, audio, lightscribe). All of the other hardware was taken care of by windows updates.

Boots up are a little faster than with Vista-64 (minus HP toolbar), but that could be due to a clean install free of HP software.

Video playback under flash based sources (e.g., ABC and hulu) seem to be a little smoother, but I still get enough stuttering to be annoying.

In case any engineers/scientists are out there using MATLAB (R2008a), bench comes in 2nd to last on the list at about 50% of the "Macintosh dual 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon". This is about the same as I got with Vista-64.

Forgot to add that I installed Win7 32bit because I needed VPN.

Update:
Here are my scores using the windows experience assessment:
Processor: 3.0
Memory: 4.9
Graphics: 3.9
Gaming: 5.4 <- this is using the newest drivers from ATI
Hard disk: 5.5

 

You could try uninstalling the programs installed by HP that you don't need. However, you would still be better off borrowing a Vista DVD and doing a clean install(see sticky posted in the HP forum).

 

well i've been playing around with mine. doing what i usually do when on a computer and this thing is the same as any new computer i've ever used. i think people overbuy when buying computers a LOT. most people just use the net and type documents but get sold on a whole bunch of other things. i love this computer. does what i need it to do in a speedy fashion while looking good and being slim.

 

can some1 please test the speaker for me? the sound seems coming from the left side speaker instead of center. Another thing is my dv2 doesn't sit flat on the table (one leg is higher than the other). What should I do?

 

RE: Hornizuka

My speakers are working fine. There were a couple of folks (in this thread) who have noted that their DV2's don't sit flat. I would think about returning if this interferes with how you use the keyboard (i.e, it rocks around while typing).

 

Well I had an unfortunate surprise this morning. Last night I was downloading some TV shows from itunes and since the connection was slow i just gave up waiting and decided to just let it finish while I went to bed.

This morning the machine was hard frozen and was blisteringly hot all over.

I had to pull the battery and adapter to turn it off and now it wont turn on past the post screen before complaining of an internal error 4454?????

So i guess back to frys on Monday.

One odd but potentially important tidbit. As i had made mention before, the case was slightly warped. It's not a lot more than slightly warped and is like a teeter totter on my desk.

HMMM. I hope i just got a bad unit cause I liked the machine up to this point.

 

So it seems the version with the HD 3410 runs quite hot, and battery life is not great. What about the version with the X1250? Does anybody even consider it?

 

If the version with the 1250 had HDMI, I would have bought it in a flash, although HDMI was a must, in my opinion it doesn't run that hot, although everyone has different ideas of what hot is. Don't forget you can undervolt this cpu quite a bit too

 

Which ATI drivers would those be??? I downloaded catalyst 9.4 and it didnt' seem like anything changed in the device manager driver-wise. My windows experience index stayed the same too. I have a 4.1 for gaming, and a 3.4 for processor...

Let me know asap! 5.5 would be great. The windows 7 driver download via ATI's site (game.amd.com) looked identical in size (63.6mb) to the windows vista one.

 

RE: untitledfolder

Installed from ATI site using 9-4_beta_win7_32_dd_CC (90,729 KB).

Device manager shows the driver date to be 3/16/2009 and version number 8.600.0.0.

 

Yeah, battery life also seems worse in some reviews than in your posts...

 

I played with HP DV2 at Fry's on the weekend and it's a nice laptop. I'm not looking for new laptop, but if I plan to buy one, I think HP DV3Z is better choice.

 

here is the full review from Notebookreview.com

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4963&review=hp+pavilion+dv2

One thing I have noticed is that the keyboard layout is different than the one I got(I like the one in the review). Also it looks like 1030US comes with bluetooth and bigger harddrive as well! Dam......that sux!

 

Well i could only get 3 hours 20 minutes with my notebook and that was with my cpu undervolted, and i'm sure that the notebook in the review wasn't undervolted.

I"m not using the stock install of the OS, maybe that has something to do with it, either way I still like my notebook,