*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Alright guys so I just downloaded the batterybar app from osirus? and my lap to is brand spanking new only 2 days old i charged it all the way and then brought it to class and used the battery i come back to charge it again and the battery wear says it's 9.3%!!!!

Can this be accurate? how can it already be down 9.3% after one use?

If some battery guru can put me at easy here i would greatly appreciate it!

 

For your reading pleasure from Engadget.com .. DM3T review

I don't own one but thought you guys might be interested..

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/13/hp-dm3t-review/

 

Haha, you just beat me to it. I will add it to the first post.

 

just wanna help out my fellow NBRer

 

Why did that Engadget reviewer pan the display so much? It's totally not so bad. But nine-hour battery life? Is anyone getting that here?

 

maybe i'm blind, but the display on my dm3-1030us is fantastic. i like it more than my 14" and 15" Asus laptops.
i might be the only one that doesn't have any complaints with the trackpad, sure it isn't perfect, but it's leaps and bounds better than the one on my Asus x83. buttons are too high and hard to click? these reviewers must have the fingers of a 2 year old

 

Compared to my T400, the trackpad and buttons are not as good. But it doesnt really bother me, its not hard. And yes the display is fantastic.

 

Ahh I am going nuts! My laptop was shipped but the tracking is still not found been a couple days and I got two day shipping too

 

Hey Pasta, I'm thinking about getting the amd version of the dm3 like you and saw you attempted to overclock the GPU, I was wondering what the results of that were? It would be especially nice if you had some 3dmark06 scores Also, what's the battery life like when watching a video for you?

 

so still no word on the hp quickweb feature that the dm3 supposedly is suppose to have? on the user manual it talks about it and in this clip on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTc5Uq_39iI

if anyone could shed more light on the matter i think all of us could benefit!

 

okay the link is wrong i swear it talked about the hp quick web i'm pretty sure they edited it but ? hahaha still i'm not the only one that heard about the hp quickweb on the dm3 right?

 

Envys got that I believe

 

as far as i can tell, there's no quickweb feature on my dm3-1030us
and honestly, i could care less. i have a similar feature on my g50vt-x5 and i've never bothered to use it.

i got a question... is it just me, or does windows not calculate how much time the battery has left? on my dm3, it only shows what percentage of the battery life is left, though it worked on my g50vt and x83vb and both had windows 7. not a big deal, but would just like to know. from my experience, i get 5 hours or 20%/hour of web browsing and open office writer with brightness 3 notches from lowest settings.

 

no it's not just you i had to download batterybar by osiris to calculate remaining time

also 5 hours is pretty good did you do anything to prep your battery? the most i've ever gotten is around 4 alittle under?

any advice? i have the same model number is you dm3 1030us

 

i removed all the bloatware, including norton anti-virus, replaced it with window's security essential. not sure how much that'll affect battery life though
try to keep the laptop running cool, don't leave it on your lap or on the bed. don't block the vents.
screen brightness set to the dimmest level to where i can comfortable view the screen (2-3 notches from the lowest level)
turn off wi-fi when i'm focused on my word document. blue-tooth turned off since i rarely use it.
sometimes my cpu usage spikes to 100% and hovers in the 50-75% range for no apparent reason, so i reboot the laptop.

hoping to replace the HDD with an SDD if there's any reasonable deals on BF or CM, hoping that will comfortably allow me to go beyond 5 hrs

 

did you calibrate the battery? like charge it all the way and then drain it all the way and then charge it again?

 

first thing i did when i got the laptop home
and the recharge rate is obnoxiously looooooooooong
makes me want to get a spare battery since it takes so damn long! or maybe a larger charger if that works

 

I completed a clean install of windows7 earlier this week on my dm3t. Pulled the drivers from the HP website. Everything is good, except I lost the green volume bar and brightness bars when I adjust through the keyboard.

Isn't this feature be handled by the HP Quick Launch Buttons driver? I've reinstalled this like three times, deleting it before reinstalling, etc. Still doesn't work. Device manager shows the appropriate keyboard driver loaded. No other obvious driver issues, and I don't see anything else offered by HP that would fix this....Damn.

Anybody have other ideas that might help?

 

Has anyone tried AMD OverDrive (AMD's overclocking software) on their dm3z? Or is overclocking not possible on the dm3z?

 

Alright guys. I originally saw this laptop when I went to best buy to get some stuff. I thought it looked pretty cool for an hp so I went home and over the next few days researched it and read this forum in its entirety. I will give my best overview of this laptop. I will list its pros and cons for those who are on the fence about buying it.

A little bit about me and my needs for this laptop. I have currently running 5 computers. I have an Imac, A powermac G5 tower, A dell tower, A new 13 inch macbook pro and now the dm3z. Obviously my gf was pissed when I came home with an hp box but im addicted and I might need an intervention to break my addiction to computers.. anyway..

I ultimately went to office depot and picked up their last factory sealed unit the "dm3z" for 499. 549 plus tax was charged but I got a 50 dollar mail in rebate and got the sale price of 499 which I think was a steal for this thing. The decision to buy this model from that store was based on many things including, my personal needs and my bias against hp. This bias was developed through years of product failures at home and in the workplace, their overpriced stuff and their lousy support. They seem to be going in the right direction though on this one.

I have stressed this system over the past week and have been very impressed with the unit. I looked at the "envy " or whatever and in my honest opinion the unit was in no way worth the money they wanted. This one though had 1) a somewhat decent mobile dual core processor, B) decent graphics for an ultraportable and 3) windows 7 with a decent amount of ram (4gbs)

When I got home i immediately was surprised how snappy it ran windows 7. even the bloatware didnt slow its performance down at all. It was VERY snappy, connected to my dual band router (Airport Extreme 2.4+5.0 ghz b/g/n) as soon as it opened up and runs on N all day. It runs youtube HD flawlessly and it does not stutter. Maybe it is my extremely fast internet connection.. I also have used netflix and it works as good as my macbook pro.

Anyway, I immediately installed office home and student 2007 with my external velocity micro dvdrw drive and it installed in like a few minutes. I am again shocked how this computer can handle having like 4 word docs and an excel spreadsheet open as well as firefox with multiple tabs open at the same time. There is no delay and for what I do I cannot bog it down.

As far as heat goes. This laptop does not get that hot. I have had it on for the past 4 hours while laying here and it is only warm. It does not get any warmer than my 13 inch macbook pro. In all seriousness it is expected for any computer to be warm while running.

Battery life. When I bought it I thought "its an amd, its going to run hot and kill the battery etc.." But again to my shock the battery life is great. I tried to do a test on it today and it seemed to last about 5.5 hours while set on "power saver mode". You can buy an extra battery for it for $50 but Im not. By the time the battery is shot completely I will probably have given this to my brother or something.

I traveled with this computer this weekend and loved it. I love the 4 usb ports and watched some home video I had that was on my usb jumb drive.

Display, The led backlit display is incredible. It is extremely crisp and very bright and again for the money I am still shocked I got this thing for 499.

Software stress test,,

Ok so as I said I tried to put this thing through a test, (it has a warranty for a year so ..) anyway i installed 2 sets of steam games first.

First up was Half life 2 and the episodes 2 and 3 and deathmatch,
RUNS FLAWLESSLY! Seriously I used my 10 dollar laptop mouse and played for like an hour. I was impressed and went back to the desktop to see what else I could throw at it.

team fortress 2, I installed this game and played it for 2 hours. Never once did framerates drop. Eventually it was time to go to bed and I retired for the evening to test it again the next day. I did notice that the fan came on during tf2 but is was as soft as my mac fan. This computer seems to have a very small fan that is not too audible. which I like. It only kicks in for me when I have like 20 tabs open or when playing games.

So the next day I went into my office and looked around for some more games to put on the dm3z.

Battlefield vietnam and 1942 (oldschool and fun) it ran flawlessly of course.

CS source Ran again flawlessly

Ok so at this point I was like what else can I try to put on it. Hmm I found my copy of farcry 2. the requirements I belive call for a 2.3 ghz processor or higher. I chuckled and installed it. To my absolute shock I played the first level through completely. In the beginning it was not running as smooth as my dell but it was running fine. Than when you started playing I was running around and completed the first level.. I again was shocked since this thing is a bit above a netbook.. I just got codmw2 for my 360 and prefer games like that on my 360 anyway..

Trackpad , I actually like the trackpad. it is slick and easy to use. it seems to collect oil and after a day of use I began to like it. I was concerned about it but after using it I started liking it. The two finger moves work fine when looking at a doc or a web page you just place to finger on it and go down or up. Also there is a painted line on the right side of the track pad and you can use one finger and go up and down to scroll up and down. I did order the skinstylers trackpad cover and will post what I think when I get it. I ordered it before I bought the laptop and now I am wishing I hadnt because I like the trackpad on this laptop.

SO in conclusion,

This laptop is cheap and fast. It does what I need it to do very quickly. (browse, edit docs and excel spreadsheets, watch videos and play some games that arent that intensive). If I were in the market for a netbook I would buy this over an atom processor in a heartbeat. I had a dell mini 9 that I ebayed and the processor and ram limitation just sucked. It got boged down doing the things I outlined above.

It has a gorgeous metal finish and the bottom is magnesium except for the battery of course. I am glad I bought this computer and I think that it is def. worth 499. It is a great home laptop and again does what I bought it for extremely well. I wouldnt buy it if you want to do some crazy intensive stuff obviously. But for this kind of computer in this price range you cant beat it. Why would I spend an extra 3 or 4 hundred dollars for the asus or something else that is ultimately going to do what I need it do this well? Anyway pm me if you want any tests etc.. As far as the office depot sale is concerned the sale ended and as I was buying it 5 people came in looking for it.

Im loving it and My respect for hp just went up. Plus I am glad I got it for 499.

 

Nice review bhaase1. I tried sending you a pm but it seems to be switched off for you.

 

You save everything in the SWSetup folder?

 

can't overclock the gpu at all right now . It seems like it has to be done with modified bios's but i'm not good with that stuff so hopefully someone who is will take over.

 

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0315900

$250 for 128 gig kingston and

Its not as fast as the ocz and intel and some of the other guys. But its dirt cheap as most 128 gigs start at $350. For a laptop it should do well enough

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1005/11/

as you can see its many times faster than a standard desktop hardrive but not as fast as other ssds. I'm thinking its a good buy if it drops to $200 or less for black friday / cyber monday. You don't get trim support but thats like $200 less than any other 120 gig drive and the price of a 60 gig drive from OCZ and others.

I have a 60 gig ocz right now and its balzing fast but I can only put my os and apps on it as you want to save a good 20% free space for max performance. So right now on my desktop i have windows 7 and about 18 apps i allways use installed and have 22 gigs left. So I doubt its going to work for a laptop. So i'm assuming 80 - 120 gigs will be the sweet spot.

The 60 gig ocz vertex is back up to $240 because of demand (I got mine in june for $180) I'm hoping for balck friday or cyber monday I can get one cheap or the 30 gig for my desktop to put a few games on it.

 

Someone on here was talking about how they were overclocking the 4330 to 4570 levels, and it was stable.

 

I am able to overclock it but it required using three diffrent overclocking tools and they all had to be running to keep it that speed. Half the time it wouldn't stay clocked at that and I had to run the gpu artifact test while using it so i can't test out any games.

Thus the bios change.

 

contemplating formatting and installing xp when mine gets here. heard battery life is better on xp and extricating windows 7 from all the preinstalled bloatware/crapware on hp computers is a giant pain. any thoughts?

personally i miss the days when i could boot instantly into dos and just run the one program i wanted for that session ...

 

win xp may load faster but if u plan on using an ssd or something you want windows 7. also you want a 64bit os

 

too cheap for an ssd at the moment. is there an advantage to 64-bit even though everything seems to run fine on xp? i guess my main problem is that i won't get a disc for windows 7, so i don't know how to do a clean install without the bloatware unless i buy another copy.

 

i saw that listed on fry's ad for $209 a couple weeks ago. thought about jumping on it, but after reading laptopmag's review i wasn't too impressed.
i'm just gonna try to wait and be patient... when intel or ocz offers a 120-160gb ssd for $200-250 is when i'll consider upgrading. hoping that will be reality in less than a year

 

Why aren't you impressed. At idle it uses about .05 watts of power vs 2watts of power for the 5200 rpm drive in the dm3z . Its also faster in everything vs even a 7200rpm 16 meg cache hardrive laptop. It makes no noise and wont break if the laptop is dropped from a resonable height oh and no vibrations.

Sure its not as fast as the intel models or even the rebranded intels that kingston sells. But if you don't need a desktop replacement laptop and have an ultra portable where every ounce of battery life you can squeeze out is important to you then well this is the drive for you if your budget is sub $400 for a 120 gig drive.

You have to remember not only will oyu save power because its idle power is 40 times less than a conventional drive but you will save power while the drive is being acessed because it uses less than 2watts of power and not only that but since its so much faster in loading apps and other things it will be under load much less than a traditional laptop.

Anyway if you need a desktop drive OCZ is going to make 3.5inch drives with 120 gig ones around the $250 mark. It wont work in a laptop but it would be great for a desktop as prices drop.

Also if you want to try an ssd but don't want to throw money around rumor has it that the ocz vertex non turbo will be $100 bones on newegg for black friday its only the 30 gig though but it shoudl be enough to fit windows on for a desktop os .

If it does hit $100 i might buy one as a game drive on my system. Also kingston is going to have a 40 gig V series launch later this month that is only $85 bucks after rebate. Its another good way to test out ssd's as you'd easily fit windows on it and a few programs.

 

maybe i am just looking at the wrong data to base my decision
but here's some comparisons from laptopmag
but it seems like it's only significantly better than a 7200rpm hdd better in opening apps. i can't justify spending $250 and sacrifice nearly 2/3 the storage space if it doesn't perform THAT much better.
what's the total watts that the dm3z consumes? wondering much the 320gb 7200rpm hdd accounts for. luckily, my dm3 doesn't have the vibration issue the bb display model had

 

I don't know if anyone has already posted this, but Walter Mossberg last week published his battery test time for a 500GB/3GB RAM/Intel model:

 

Why are you sending him a PM? Post the question in here so everyone can learn from the answer.

bhaase1, I'm looking forward to your opinions on the skinstyler. If you bought the pair of clear ones, is there any chance I could buy one off you please? Thanks.

 

i just did my own battery test
i read a couple of reviews of owners complaining that their AMD models can't exceed 2-2.5 hrs of battery life under "normal use." not quite sure what they consider "normal use," but i set max screen brightness, max volume, wi-fi on, and was able to play a movie for 2 hrs 40 minutes.

 

Its all about app opening and boot ties thats important along with the power savings. Like I said the power savings is huge over the regular hardrive. I'm not sure what your g oing to gain by shelling out more than double the money for an ocz or intel drive other than faster file transfers and zip times. For those of us with laptop hardrives that are slowr than the desktop verisons the kingston is still a great step up for the value. Like I said . I wouldn't put it in a desktop there are better alternatives to that like having a 60 gig drive as your os/ app drive and a regular drive for your media

 

Ok, so I have been tracking this board for awhile now. I was a huge fan of the DM3 before it came out, and while there have been mixed reviews, I still am considering it. I just need some advice.

I am looking to spend about $1,000-$1,100 on a 13”-14” laptop. This computer will be for personal use, web surfing, watching/streaming videos in hd, possibly blu ray, music, maybe some light gaming, and heavy use of windows office, mainly excel. Battery life is important and the longer the better, but I can always adapt. I think I need between 4-5 hours while using excel, light surfing, maybe some music. I also do not want a laptop that will generate too much heat while using my everyday normal routine of excel, surfing, music.

So my problem is which laptop do I get? I have been researching, and I like the HP DM3, however, I am afraid of the heat issues and battery life when I combine the sp9300/105m (which is the model l like the most). I am considering the asus ul30vt when it comes out (I am in no hurry), as it sounds like it could be slightly better than the DM3 and within my price range. Then I am considering a macbook pro 13. I am looking at the lower end model and would upgrade to 4 gigs of ram and a bigger hard drive on my own (I may look into a refurb unit). Finally, I like Toshiba laptops, but I have not looked into them too much.

Considering I would like to spend all of the $1k – 1.1k, which laptop is best? Anything leftover will be used for accessories. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

 

From what I've read in this thread, the SP9300/105m actually runs very cool, almost shockingly cool. If I remember correctly, the CPU only got to 50C under full load... while the AMDs seem to run idle at that.

Battery life seems to be around 5-6 hours, if not more...a poster here got 4.5 hours while playing videos in full screen.

I just configured a killer system, for $1,130 after the education discount. You could get it for even less if you wait for one of the 25% coupons to come out. Give it a couple of weeks or so and one should hit. Anyway the config I had was the SP9300/105m/Intel 160gb SSD/4gbDDR3/AGN+BT... you're not going to beat this for $1,130... heck man, the Intel drive retails for around ~$600.

G'luk.

 

dm3z with the 4330 for gaming with an ssd and a external bluray drive would be the best I'd say and come under that $1k mark. Figure $700 for the laptop + 250ish for the ssd drive. So your at $950. dunno how much a portable bluray drive is. $100 ?

I can already get close to 6 hours using just word with brightness 3 notches above minimum and an ssd drive and wifi off. Also the 4330 will be tough to beat in terms of gaming.

 

Because I've asked the question I wanted to ask twice in this thread with nobody answering or even commenting on it.

It's about the hardware virtualization (using securable from grc.com) and some temperature readings in idle and stress situations for the L335 (1030US).

 

I've ran securable on my processor. Its the l625

64 mximum bit length , Yes to hardware D.E.P and Yes to hardware virtualization

at idle my cpu is 28-38c depending on what core gets hit. Right now i'm at 36c for core 0 and 28c for core 1. The mobo or whatever T201 is is at 41 c hitting a max of 60c but seems to hover around 51c. The hardrive is 30c and doesn't move.

I haven't had a chance to put it under load. Will run 3dmark 06 later.

 

Anybody know which 160Gb SSD model HP offers for dm3t? Couldn't find any confirmation online, is it really Intel G2 (34nm)?

 

For those who ordered a custom model off hp.com how long did your tracking # take to activate? I got an email saying my order shipped Friday but the tracking # still hasn't activated.

 

got it...
well if it goes on sale again for $200 or less, i'll consider picking one up

after a few days of use... here's my list of complaints about this computer.
- this amd runs incredibly HOT if you're doing something other than light web browsing and word documents. definitely wouldn't be able to comfortably watch a movie with it on your lap.
- hulu hd 480p does not run totally smooth
- trackpad goes haywire sometimes when it comes out of sleep or hibernation. did anyone ever find a fix for this?

 

Power Consumption (Active): 2.5W (TYP)
Power Consumption (Idle): 0.45W (TYP)

Thats the kingston

The western digital green drives are

7.4 watts for full read/write operation, 3.9 watts at idle, and 1.1 watts in standby/sleep modes.

So lets look at application open times from your list. The kingston v is 5.5 seconds the fujitus is 9.7seconds

The kingston uses 13.75watts of power to open an aplication. The western digital would use 71.78watts of power.

Think of the power you'd use when watching a video off your hardrive for 2 hours. The kingston would be much better would it not ? This is a laptop so i don't know how important file transfers are but the hardrive only outclasses the v series in a single large file transfer. if they tested out seek times with lots of small files the kingston would win and thats the most important for gaming.

1) Yea it gets hot esp when gaming. I normaly don't keep it in my lap as well its not really fun even when using it for word processing.

2) Hulu works fine for me. Just takes a bit to load. Do you let the thing load all the way before playing it ?

3) No idea hopefully they are working on it.

 

Hi guys, anyone have any experience with HP's docking solutions? I've got a monitor, mouse and keyboard at home, I thought docking it would be a good idea.

 

There will probably be a driver fix for number 3

The heat no idea about.


As for 480p hulu, I would be REALLY interested to see how this machine performs AFTER they release the gpu accelerated flash update. Until then, ALL performance posts on hulu/youtube video playback is incomplete as it is not yet utilizing all the power the machine has.

What I would like to know is how it handles a 720p and 1080p clip played in vlc player. Could someone with the machine test one of those clips and post the amd dm3 used?

 

the drivers available now won't fix the problem right?

i don't have any 1080p videos to try, but it plays 720p videos effortlessly

 

Best buy puts a software program called "Archie" on all the pcs (not the macs, how quaint, how fair). It sort of acts like a demo reel and sandbox mode. Put files on the display model, or a driver update, background change, it will all revert back to the state it was when archie was first installed.


The rub, and why I hate the software, is that it often mucks with the functionality of other installed programs or even hardware. Not sure it was the difference in your experience, but it could have been.

 

well, good thing i went with the office depot model
$100 cheaper after rebate, 4gb ram, bluetooth