*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

I wish i had it but it`s supposedly only available to beta testers at the moment.

 

I have a dm3t, and after uninstalling a ton of their crapware, I noticed that hibernation doesn't quite work anymore, the computer just goes to a black screen and locks itself, but doesn't power off. Anyone else having this problem? Any thoughts on how to fix this?

 

New video on youtube. It's the SP9300/G105M combo. This guy says he gets 7 hours with light usage. Also he has the SSD. I think I'm about sold on this one.

 

That'd be really great..

It says on hp's page for WinFlash Utility:
"Provides the initial BIOS release for the supported notebook/laptop models."
initial BIOS?
so.. not a BIOS update?

 

i think it was just a temporary misreading from battery bar
battery life has gone back to typical 3-4 hrs

i'm wondering if it's actually a BIOS update now, since it was released back in October. after a day of use, i haven't noticed any changes or improvements

 

guys with the 160 SSD, do yourselves a favor and upgrade the firmware for the SSD, I tried it and it really makes a difference.
http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/index_update.htm

Here's a good article about flashing it
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=1

 

Good find. There's a lot of interesting info in there.

 

Hey, do you guys laptops vibrate at all, even just a little?. Mine vibrates slightly and I'm not sure if this is normal

 

If I put my hands on the left side of the touchpad, I can kinda feel a weak buzzing, but I definitely wouldn't call it 'vibrating'.

 

every laptop will have "vibration", and that's an extremely subjective thing to try to quantify ... i'm just hoping that most people posting here are just REALLY sensitive to all this info and reporting extremes/anomalies

 

I sent mine back because of the vibration issue. It could be felt anywhere on the computer (even if you touched the sides of the screen!).
Was really annoying. I don't believe I'm that over-sensitive and hope that the one I got was an isolated case (even though the one I looked at at the local Best Buy had the exact same feeling).

 

I had gone to Best buy to check out the DM3, and the model they had was the dm3z with the 7200rpm drive. The vibration on it was too much for me, and like nivshk said above, it could be felt from anywhere on the notebook. I had read about the vibration issue here, and went for the slower drive. There's absolutely no vibration on mine.

 

Yeah the vibration sounds like a hard drive issue. What model 7200rpm drives are they putting in there?

 

I think i speak for most of us here when I say that I have the 7200rpm HDD and there is practically no discernable vibration.

 

I ordered the 5400rpm hard drive to avoid the vibration that I felt on the 7200rpm BB model and it didn't help at all. Same exact feeling! (Maybe they put a 7200rpm model in it instead of the 5400rpm I've ordered?)

 

thanks for that post...

 

highly doubt that...
but the vibration i don't know, maybe something is loose.

 

whoa, that's weird:

I have a dm3z, but it says the model is a dm3t. ?

 

I contacted tech support and the guy said it's perfectly normal, because when the laptop is turned off the battery need "to keep the clock and other internal hardware running."
Hmm..sounds like bull.

 

AFAIK the laptop has an internal coin type battery that handles that...

Sounds like bull to me too.

 

Just got my DM3z to replace my DV2. Swapped out the hard drive with a 80gb Intel G2 SSD. Machine is much snappier than the DV2 and I really like the keyboard better. Overall the touchpad is much the same and I have no real big issues with it.

I have not tested battery life yet but did notice the times that I have been unplugged there is no estimate time remaining left, just a percentage.

 

install battery bar, that will give you a good estimate
http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar/

 

My thoughts exactly. Otherwise, the system clock would stop if you removed the battery.

 

Hey Guys,

I have the DM3-1035DX, I want to do a clean install of Win 7 HP, but I'm having some problems. I'm using a Windows 7 Home Premium disk. When I get to the window that ask me "Where do you want to install Windows?" I can't delete any partitions. I can only Format a partition and if I do that I can't install it on that formated partition. I get the error "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information." I would appreciate it if someone can help me out.

Thanks.

 

Yeah thats how id describe it, a buzzing. Anyway I went to the store today and they had a 320Gb modle there and it was about the same as what i'm feeling so im pretty sure theres nothing wrong with mine.

I can feel it mostly along the palm rest. But unless it means the hard drives gonna die on me prematurally, it doesnt bother me at all.


As for the battery drain some of you are getting, I think i had about a 5% drop from 100% when i turned it on one morning.
I have no idea how much batt life im getting, because ive been charging it everynight before the batt gets real low. But the gadget i have up shows about 3hrs 50mins at idle from %100 charge.

 

Try a clean install from booting to the disc. For me, it was put the disc in, reboot, press F12, boot from cd.

 

i love my SSDed DM3T but if you use a macbook with the large glass trackpad and then go back to using this trackpad it is definately limiting.

too bad too becauase mulittouch is really nice, my Asus EEE PC 901 had a much better trackpad and the multitouch function was as good as apples.

what the hell was HP thinking when the desinged this trackpad and then used crappy drivers/software for it.......

seriously, other than the damn trackpad this is better than a macbook in many ways, but the trackpad is really as bad as engadget says...... we have just become use to mediocrity.

 

yea, im considering getting sp9300 with G 105 m or su7300 with G 105 m

please advise which is better for playing blu ray on a 42" tv. thanks!

 

either will play an actualy blu-ray the same.

the SP9300 is a LV CPU with more power and cache
the SU7300 is a ULV CPU with less power and less cache but better at full load with power use. @10w

if you are trying to play downloaded or ripped HD content and call it blu-ray then H/A with your player of choice and the correct codecs they both will paly MKVs, AVIs, MP4s, WMV-HDs, with out issue but if you do not have H/A enabled due to the player or the codec choice then the SP9300 will be better for 1080p hi bitrate encodes

 

i think you guys may be onto something with irregular battery wear on the DM3
the HP was at 9.8% wear after only 2 weeks. i've had this Asus for almost 3 months and it still only shows 1% wear.

given the Asus does have a 9 cell battery compared to the HP's 6 cell... it's pathetic that they have identical battery life considering the Asus has a P7450, Nvidia 9800M GS (60 watt consumption!), CCFL LCD screen.

 

Hi I received my dm3-1020ea direct from HP today.

Unfortunately I have the keyboard flex as seen in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152NLvRryWs&feature=related (which I believe was made by another member).

When I press down on the bottom edge of the keyboard tray, there is a snapping or popping sound - looks to me like it just isn't fitting correctly.

This sort of issue annoys me since I have seen display models which have very well fitted keyboards, but luck would have it that mine seems faulty.

My question is should I put up with this? Would you send this back for an exchange?

Many thanks!

 

I have the same problem, there's a little bit of keyboard flex on the bottom of the keyboard (mostly on the right side). But I don't have any snapping or popping sound, so I didn't think it was a big deal.
I've actually seen review pictures of units that had the same keyboard flex problem.

You can see that the keyboard tray on the right bottom side isn't quite matched up with the chassis. People who's never seen the keyboard flex problem might not noticed the space show in the picture, but I can clearly recognize it since that is exactly how my dm3z's keyboard looks.
I haven't seen another dm3 in person, so I thought this might be fairly common, and I wasn't very worried about it.
There's some other minor cosmetic problems on mine: like the bottom chrome edge has a gap (about 1.5mm) between it and the palm rest on the left side and there's also a slight gap (~1mm) on the right top corner of the screen bezel where the aluminum finish and the glossy plastic meets.
Really don't want to have to exchange this laptop. I have $145 of bing cashback on it.

 

If it's gonna bug you, send it back. It would bug me so it would go back. You paid for a pristine machine, and should get nothing less.

FWIW the unit on display at the wal-mart near me has no flex at all.

 

I don't think you are supposed to lose your bing cashback on exchange (at least this is what HP claims).

I'm waiting for my exchange unit (vibration issue). It takes them more time to build this one than the first one which is really annoying.

 

Oh. Really? That's good news.
I read on the Bing cashback FAQ that "If you return, cancel, or exchange part or all of a purchase, the store may reverse your purchase with us."
So I thought my cashback would be voided.

I'm contacting HP support right now to make sure..

 

mine only has a little of that flex on the left side....

btw it isnt the actual keyboard, there is no flex of the keyboard just the surround.... i was annoyed by it also, but in the end the Asus vt series has similar issues....

which is why a macbook/macbook pro are all more $$ because they generally do not have these faults...

 

Same here and it bugs me like crazy. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna try to exchange it at BB where it was purchased, but I'm not sure if the new unit will be any better. I've debated cracking open the case to see if I can tweak it myself but haven't quite gathered up the nerve yet.

 

I did this, opened it up and was able to reduce the gaps on both corners between these parts. I put a bit of glue on the inside corners while I pressed the corners together. Worked fine.

But be careful, the front chrome trim piece is plastic, with a pretty cheap chrome plating. I managed to pull a bunch of the chrome plating off with the tape I used while gluing the corner joints.

BTW, while you're there, you can also pretty easily improve the feel of the trackpad buttons by reducing the force and travel needed to recognize a click. Just shim the gap under the buttons.

 

I just got the 1030us for 499 last week and am so far very happy with it. My only minor complaint is I was hoping to get closer to the HP claimed 5 hour battery life than I currently am. I get around 3 hours now with a mixture of use such as office, internet, and a little video watching. I have the LCD set at 70 percent. I was hoping to get some tips or tricks people use on here to extend it closer to 4 hours. Any tweaks or settings people use to get 4+ hours out of this machine?

Also I use batterbar and it says out of the box I have 15 wear on my batter already is that anything I should be concerned about?

Thanks!

 

I really want to see what is out there in late 2010 early 2011.


The dm3 should still be around, maybe a dm4 by then too, and hopefully a dm5/dm7


And hopefully there will be an option for an oled panel by then... and an amd fusion chip with a switchable discrete mobile 6330 for more (and additive with the fusion chip) graphics performance.


And a track pad breakthrough supporting up to 5 touch gestures with the responsiveness of military software solutions placed in fighter jets.

And a pico laser projector built into the lid with 1080p resolution that could project a very large and detailed and color accurate image onto any surface.


When we have all these things, the dm3 will be perfect.

 

the pico pj is a cool idea..... much better than a phone....

a notebook has a battery that can power it for a little bit

 

For those of u wanting hardware acceleration for your video files

http://blogo.biz/?p=20

this is to enable hardware acceleration in media player classic , will even work on .mkv files.

You can do the same with windows media player 11 on windows 7. Hope it helps you guys. You should get much better playback.

 

Still no good this is what I'm dealing with.

This is part where I can't delete partitions or create new ones.

 

If it helps I can notice the space in the picture... it is exactly the same as mine. If you compare it to the photo here http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/4/2009/10/HP_dm3.JPG you can see that the space between the keyboard and the chassis isn’t something that appears on all units.

I can’t really tell if this issue is due to a faulty component or just due to it not being put together properly – either way I should imagine that quality control should have picked this up. I have seen display models in probably 3 or 4 shops and none of them were like this.
I’m going to give HP a call now and see what they say.

 

Right,

My unit had two issues in the end – one the keyboard flex and secondly, there were some unusual marks on the track pad. They looked like oil or grease but wouldn’t wipe off, so I gave HP a call and they are sending a replacement over.

Hopefully second time lucky!

I hope I’m not unlucky enough to have the same problems again!!

 

I have used 3 different HP DM3zs

1. Office Depot DM3z-1030us
This one had some flex on the chassis to the right of the trackpad. It was quite noticeable so I returned it and they gave me a refund. I do not recall if it had keyboard flex or not.

2. Staples DM3z-1030us
This is the one I have been using for the last 3 weeks. It has very little flex on the chassis to the right of the trackpad. I do have some keyboard flex toward the bottom and the top of the keyboard. Fortunately it is just the rim of the keyboard and the keys do not seem to be affected. As far is looks goes it is hard to notice. I wouldn’t worry about it to much. Comparing it to a $1000+ Macbook is probably not a fair comparison.

3. HP Direct DM3z
This one was custom ordered for a friend to get Office 2007 included. It has no major chassis flex and less keyboard flex around the rim. But there is something else I noticed….

The DM3zs for Staples and Office Depot have different displays than the HP direct one.

The unit from Staples and Office Depot seems a little brighter and the color temp looks a little bluer.

The HP direct laptop seems a little dimmer and the color temp has a yellow hue to it.

I seem to prefer the Staples - Office Depot model.

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

I think that a small amount of flex around the edges of the keyboard is something I would not mind, and would expect is probably quite normal – after all the keyboard is a separate component and has to join the rest of the chassis somewhere, but for it to appear like it didn’t fit properly and to make a clicking noise when pressed (which mine did) is probably not normal, hence my decision to ask for an exchange.

I wouldn’t compare the dm3 keyboard to that of a Macbook, not only because of the cost, but also because of differences in the design; the dm3’s keyboard sits in a tray whereas the Macbook’s appears to be an integral part of the main chassis, which will mean there is less scope for components not fitting together properly (which I believe is the reason why some people experience the flexing issue with the dm3.)

I just hope, that my replacement doesn’t have any significant flex in the keyboard or the bodywork!

With regards to the difference in screens, as far as I am aware they are all the same panel (in terms of resolution, brightness specifications etc) but differences that users might see are probably down to slight differences within specified manufacturing tolerances for each individual panel.

I think you can make adjustments to the colour and possibly the brightness within ATI control panel – did all of the DM3z’s you have used all have the same graphics adapter?

 

Hey, all.

First post here, looking for common experience with the issue I'm having.

I'd been looking at the dv2 CTO for a very long time before the dm3 came out, and the specs on the dm3z sold me even before it was released. I'd been looking for a nice, thin, light, portable notebook with some light gaming capability, and the L625/HD4330 combination seemed like the perfect fit.

Ordered 11.06, delivered 11.16, and I immediately loaded it with tools for classes and a few of my games. I was impressed with the framerates I was getting in EVE Online and TF2, but stepping up from an Intel X3100 IGP would make anything look good, so. Heh.

Forward to two days ago, when I ended up in a marathon gaming session (~4h), during which the left palm rest developed the heating issue some have described here to a more extreme degree than had been apparent before. Yesterday Win7 bluescreens, reboots, and runs fine for another hour before bluescreening again and either refusing to boot or bluescreening at the login screen.

Performing a scan on the primary HDD partition using the F11 "System Recovery" tool yielded several errors followed by a frozen system. HDD scan from the F2 "System Diagnostics" interface turned up nothing, but the memory scan showed DIMM 1 failed. I noted the "Warranty ID" and called support.

Support's had me run a memory and HDD scan from the BIOS itself, which have turned up nothing; the next action they said they wanted to perform was a System Restore, which I've done; it fails, repeatedly, with a hex code error. I haven't had a chance to call them back yet.

So now I've got a dead system with what will likely turn out to be a bad DIMM, probably due to overheating. Anyone else have any experience with this? Will they ship DIMMs for exchange or make me ship the whole system?

Also, srsly, WTH? The system has a gaming GPU, but I can't use it to game without it overheating? I've got the thing warranted with ADP for the next two years, but if it dies after a month from heat issues, is it going to be in the repair depot more than in my hands?

Guh. Anyway. Replies are appreciated. Thanks for reading.

-kc9mhd

 

well i had read alot of the reviews and thoughts about the dm3t and decided to buy the su7300 w/ nvidia because most people said that was probably the best option. luckily my dad bought me one for my birthday/future christmas and he got me the sp9300 w/ nvidia card. i have to say the sp9300 is so much better than the su7300. it runs so much fast, doesnt lag at all even while run many programs. the battery last a solid 4:30-5:00 hours (medium brightness) with a little battery to spare. the su7300 did last a bit longer but not by much (about 30mins more) (at same brightness). so if you are deciding between the 2 if you have a few extra dollars to spend go with the sp9300. oh and dont forget to remove the hp bloat ware bc it helps battery life.

 

The battery wear while hibernated excuse is absolute BS. I really don't know what to do about this problem. It's incredibly annoying and I have a feeling the laptop maybe drawing more than its share of power even when turned on. My average life on low brightness with wireless browsing is only about 2 hours 45 to 3 hours which seems less than a lot of people on here. I have a l625 4330.