*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

There was a slight crackling sound issue on my 1st dm3z, but no popping noises.

 

Mine will be coming in the mail tomorrow, I'll let you know how it fits and such!

I liked the looks of the Black/Wasabi sleeve so had to pull the trigger on it.

 

I was wondering if anybody used that half mini pcie slot (that I believe was intentioned for wwan) for anything else - if you have experimented with this, can you post your results/opinions on this?

 

I just ordered a black dm3 from microsoft store.
It should be in before new years with next day shipping $12

http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/HP-Pavilion-DM3-1044nr/product/C026CBA0

i will let you all know if its legit

 

Sorry, search is not working...

Has anyone overclocked the CULV model 33%?

It has a 800mghz CPU and comes with 1066mghz RAM, so it should work well. Just like how the ASUS UL30vt is overclocked 33% by ASUS...

 

what utility are you going to use to OC it?

asus does it in the bios... our dm3 doesnt have any real options in the bios.

 

Waiting for that one.
Lots of pics please.

 

@ashar014
even i am waiting for your reply...coz even i m thinking abt that one...but on ms store, the screenshots looks different...looks more of plastic feel

 

Yep, I noticed that too, but if you look closely at the second shot, you can see the brushed aluminum. The palm rest looks plastic though.
Something else I noticed: no hp logo on the lid?

 

Response to those looking to get the LAROBE be.ez

 

to anyone that has the LArobe sleeve:
Does it really feel like "a piece of cardboard with neoprene stretched over it" like some reviews say?

 

A little bit; yes. The two facades of the case are sort of a weird texture and then the neoprene goes all around the case. It's not too bad though; it's a real nice fit and it's definitely protective.

 

I've got a dm3z on order with the turion neo x2 and radeon 4330. I have an Intel 80GB x-25m SSD waiting to drop in but heard somewhere today that the southbridge might be locked at SATA/150 first gen SATA-I to keep power consumption down.

Any dm3z owners out there able to confirm/deny or have tested recent SSD's in a similarly configured unit? Is this why HP doesn't offer an SSD in the AMD version of this notebook?

This wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series#Southbridges says the southbridge should support 3gb sata, but wondering if it is throttled by HP...

 

My Dm3t somehow cooked itself after i had it for 3 weeks.
Called the local HP support agent (im in South Africa).
They collected the unit on 31/11, same day i called. they ordered a new motherboard which took 2 weeks, only then did they realize one of the memory sticks was also toast as well as needing to replace the keyboard.
Surely these guys should be able to check everything at the initial test and then order all the replacement parts together, or am i not being practical?

Whats the turn around time for a repair like this in the US?
Or would they replace such a new machine?

i feel i shouldve been given a new unit.

This has totally ruined this experience for me. i cant see myself buying a another HP product.

 

I believe you can return/exchange a laptop for up to 21 days after delivery, so Yes, they would replace the machine.

 

I'm considering buying the DM3 but it seems that every review complains about the touchpad.

Just how bad is the touchpad really if you have used it for a while?

Does it support two finger scrolling?

 

Hey ashar014, have you rcvd the notebook???

 

My first impression of the touchpad was something like "OMG IT'S RUBBING MY FINGERPRINTS OFF."
But after a few days, I had gotten used to it. Maybe it was the finger oil seeping into the touchpad or something.
It's still not as smooth as macbooks' trackpads may be, but I wouldn't call it "terrible". It's actually quite usable.

And there is two finger scrolling, although I found myself using the scroll bar on the side more because it's easier.

In any case, if you don't like the touchpad, you can always get a mouse. I rarely use the trackpad now, after getting the mini explorer mouse.

 

I currently have the LArobe Be.ez sleeve (Black + Wasabi) and I must say it's a damn good case. The case itself is made with two half-shells of memory foam - about 1/4" thick, and is about as pliable as a 50-page novella. It also has a trim of foam running outside the the bottoms of the shells, so it offers great protection in the event of a drop or something similar, especially on the corners where it such a hit can do the most damage. If you press into the foam it leaves an imprint of your finger for a couple of seconds, making it more impact-resistant than caselogic cases, which are little more than a fabric sleeve compared to the be.ez. Regardess, the whole thing weighs roughly the same as other sleeves, since the foam is mostly air anyways. For $20 on amazon, it's a great product both protection as well as design-wise.

The fit is very good (since the be.ez was designed for the 13.3" Macbooks, the dm3 is only slightly different in dimensions), and allow me to fit in a mini-reciever for the mouse as well. The zippers are placed, like the foam trim, outside the half-shells, meaning it won't scratch the laptop during travel.




As for those complaining of the glossy trackpad, clear skinstylers are the way to go. For $10 (for 2 covers), the improved ergonomics are priceless in my book, and finally make the dm3 feel more natural during use. Gliding my finger across the laptop, the resulting surface has even less friction than the surrounding metal palmrest, and feels nearly identical to other matte plastic touchpads I've used. It makes getting around the desktop less of a chore and many times more enjoyable. Visually, the surface is more diffuse matte and fits in very well with the surrounding brushed metal. As an added bonus, in direct light it sparkles! (akin to sandpaper made of glass dust)

 

Good mini-review on those. When you order them do they come with corners rounded or do you have to trim them yourself?

 

It does, but the multi-touch gestures don't work well at all. For me, they almost never register unless done with precision.

My first dm3 had this little sticker on it with images describing the multi-touch functions, and after removing it, the trackpad felt terrible, almost like it was made out of rubber. The feel eventually smoothed out after the first week.

My exchange dm3 was missing this sticker, and the trackpad felt much smoother.

I suspect that it was really a slight film of adhesive residue being left from the sticker on the initial models that caused so much grief in early reviews of the touchpad. My exchanged dm3's touchpad without the sticker was not only smoother, but felt a lot cleaner too.

 

They came square-cut. What I did was apply the cover from the bottom-up, then took a sharp utility knife and trimmed the top edges flush by cutting with the blade angled away from the touchpad to avoid damaging the surface. After I first applied the cover, there seemed to be bumps of adhesive that looked like water stains underneath. I was certain they weren't pockets of air, and through using the touchpad for another week or so, the bumps naturally dissappeared through normal use.

Also worthy to note that SkinStyler sent me an extra clear cover free of charge! I don't know if they will for everyone, but it was certainly a nice touch.

I'll post some pictures of what the skinstyler looks like as soon as I can get a MSDuo to MS convertor for my camera :|

 

You can (meant to be) peel that sticker right off you know lol.

 

No no, I'm talking about after peeling the sticker off, whatever tiny bit of adhesive was left behind probably didn't help with the feel of the trackpad. My second dm3 didn't have this sticker. So no adhesive, and therefore, better initial feel.

EDIT: Lol, I reread my own post again too, and I see where it didn't make sense. I'll edit it as well. Sorry for the awkward working.

 

Now it makes sense

 

What model was your dv2? Are you interested in selling it?

 

Got myself a DM3-1030us (specs in sig) on the 30th. Buying it felt like such a steal!

The main reason why I chose the L335/3200 configuration over the L625/4330 was because I found out that the performance difference between the L625 and L335 is so minimal that it isn't worth consideration. Also, I can trust the L335 to make full use of the Radeon HD 3200, while I know that the 4330 will often be bottlenecked by the modest L625 processor. Although I know that ATI Stream is supposed to make better use of idle GPUs to help the CPU perform everyday computing tasks, the technology is still in its infancy and I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

If you have a tight budget, going with the L335/3200 over the L625/4330 will save you $150 (not counting +tax) which you can use to get more RAM, a hard drive upgrade, Wireless N, notebook accessories, a nice date with your significant other, etc.

The DM3-1030us is an incredibly well-balanced laptop that completely blows away the other laptops in the $500 price bracket, and it even holds its own against high-end ultraportables. It is sexy, light, sturdy, quiet, fast, and affordable.

I am very happy with my purchase.

 

Hey Panda, what is the price you paid and where did you find it? Thanks!

 

Just got my dm3t earlier this week custom from HP, and want to update everyone on any issues the machine came with or not that have been said in this thread.
Overall, I really like the laptop. Everything on the chassis is flush and nothing is lose. I was able to get a higher end version with the Intel SSD hard drive with the $500 coupon they ran a few weeks ago. Though I was disappointed that HP used the Intel SSD G1 model hard drive, which at this moment doesn't support TRIM nor did they announce they even would. I wish they would have used the G2, which isn't much more expensive, must have a larger warehouse of G1's left.
The touchpad doesn't bother me, I personally just disabled the gestures and double click feature as I won't use them and made it more sensitive. Though I use a wireless mouse most of the time anyways.
Also, I do have, but very rarely, that crackling sound from the speaker once in a while, but nothing too bad, hopefully a software update will be able to fix this.
And if anyone cares, the webcam is, well a webcam, not that great and of lower resolution. Though the internal mic works pretty good, and surprisingly picks up clear audio.

 

I found what I think to be a very good deal on a DM3t laptop. What do you guys think? $820 and you get this;

HP Pavilion dm3t Entertainment NB
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor SP9300 (2.26GHz, 6M Cache)
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce G 105M
• 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 13.3" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• External LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer
• Webcam Only
• Wireless-N Card
• HP Color Matching Keyboard
• 6 Cell Polymer Battery
• Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

 

Seems like a good deal to me, that's a comparatively top deal they had compared to their coupon offerings in the past while.

 

Does anyone have flash 10.1 beta 2 up and running?
Is there a noticeable difference in playing HD flash between 10.1 beta 1 and beta 2?

 

After taxes, I got my dm3-1030us from an Office Depot for $605, but it comes with a $50 mail-in rebate.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/328626/HP-Pavilion-dm3-1030us-13-3/

Check out that link. $499 ($100 instant savings + $50 mail-in rebate).

You gotta jump on the deal though as it ends on 1/02/2010!

 

That's a great deal for what's there. Was that just from a normal configuration? Or did you apply a coupon? That's roughly what I'll be getting in a few weeks sans the 7200 RPM drive (5400 is fine for me), wireless N (G is fine until N becomes more standardized), and the external drive. Though I might add the extra battery.

Congrats on your new laptop.

 

I also got my dm3 recently and have been having the same sound issue on and off. Hopfully the driver for it will be updated soon, although it may be some time

 

I just got my laptop a few days ago.
I am trying to adjust my screen brightness and it seem to not work.
How do you adjust the brightness of the display any time you want?

 

Hi everybody. I read this forum in its entirety when deciding which ultraportable I wanted, and settled on the DM3Z. I did a custom order with the L625, 4GB (free upgrade) ram, 250 GB (free upgrade) HD, and the 4330. Selected the base wireless card.

Upon getting it, I replaced the HD with an 80GB Intel G2 SSD and installed Win 7 64 bit home premium using the key on the bottom using a Win 7 Pro upgrade disk that I already had. (there is a an easy and legal trick to do this)

I am loving everything with the laptop so far except for one really frustrating problem. The default wireless card (Atheros AR9285 b/g/n) connects fine to my router, and I can surf the web all day long. I cannot however ping or connect to my windows home server, or other hard wired computers on my network. I cannot ping my DM3 from hard wired computers. I can ping another wireless computer laptop though. I have tried disabling firewalls, trying different wireless card drivers, flushing my DNS cache, clearing my ARP tables, clearing the windows stored route information, removing the Windows 7 homegroup...

If I plug in with a hard wire I can ping and access the server
If I plug in a USB wireless card I can ping and access the server

With the Atheros I can ping my gateway and I can ping websites on the internet.

Needless to say this issue is driving me insane. I am am more then willing to replace the wireless NIC with something else, like an Intel card (if I can ensure that I have the proper number of antennas inside the DM3Z to hook it up)

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go from here?

 

Have you tried to rdp to the WHS desktop? How up to date is your WHS software? I seem to recall that you cannot connect to WHS with a 64bit computer on an a fresh WHS deployment. Running discovery.exe might help connect you to your whs. Grab it off another client pc and run it on your laptop (%programfiles%\Windows Home Server\discovery.exe). On your dm3 you can try one other thing to resolve the WHS via netbios. Drill down to C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and add a new entry to either the hosts or lmhosts file. (If you add it to the lmhosts file make sure to re-name it from lmhosts.sam to lmhosts and no extension.

The file has some samples to follow but essentially the entry will look like:

IPaddy whscomputername #PRE

close and save the file, open a command prompt and type (and press enter) the following to refresh the netbios name cache table:

nbtstat -R

now try to ping the IP or the computer name of the WHS.

You don't happen to have the WHS on a different subnet do you?

Lastly, have you tested the performance of your intel SSD? Is it achieving close to 200MB write speeds?

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

I am unable to RDP to the WHS. I am running 64 bit Win 7 on my Media Center PC and it has no issues connecting to the WHS. The Atheros card can't ping my Vista 64 bit machine either. I think if it was an address resolution thing that I wouldn't be able to ping my WHS when I hook up an ethernet cable or hook up my USB wireless adapter, but it works fine when I do either of those things. I read about some adapters having IPV6 issues with some wireless routers, so I disabled IPV6 on the Atheros but it didn't seem to help. Seems really odd that it only has issues with the one adapter, but not others. Tomorrow I'm going to try to hook it to a friends wireless and see if I can ping across the wireless .

I haven't done any speed tests on the Intel SSD, but my WEI score is 7.6 for the hard drive, which seems pretty good. It also just "feels" quick. Rebooting this thing is pretty darn fast.

 

sorry for the delay,

I had bank issues and could not place my order for the black dm3 until dec 31 10am est. It should arrive by tuesday or wednesday. I will update about the microsoft store black dm3 once i get it.

 

If you right click the battery icon on the taskbar, there should be a "adjust screen brightness" option. Click on that and then at the bottom of the screen there will be a slider to adjust the brightness. Alternatively, you can use the two buttons to the immediate right of the escape key on the upper left hand side of your keyboard (sun image down makes the screen darker/sun image up makes it brighter).

 

I had a talk with MS Store support representative, he said clearly that the notebook is the same as what HP manufactures...when i mentioned him about the screenshots, he said "screenshots will be the same as the original laptop, but if it differs, then we can log a problem"

As per the 20 min talk with him, i was able to interpret one thing about MS signature PC which is MS simply reinstalls(clean instal) the OS + windows application and hence removing all the useless bloatware that HP(or other manufacturer) installs in it, so that a customer can simply start using notebook out-of-the box without any headache.
They doesn't do any changes to the outer hardware.

 

Hi everyone, my DM3's keyboard is damaged and i want to know where I can get it fixed. Can someone PM me to direct me where to get it fixed. The E,A, and the key between the ctrl and alt button popped out and i need replacement keys. Its a minor problem but i would like to know a good place that will do the repair.

Thanks a bunch.

 

We'll see soon enough, the lone purchaser is who we wait for.

 

i woudn;t post my private email on the internet, say that you want a PM.

 

Thanks buddy. I still need help though. Do you know any places? I was thinking about going to the local bestbuy or something.

 

Hi all,

Just picked up my dm3 today and am sorting through it. The space bar on mine seems to have a bit of a rattle to it when ever it's pressed making typing louder than I like. Anyone else seen this from their keyboard?

Thanks!

 

Ok I'm the frequent forum reader, but I'm also somewhat of a gamer. And so far this laptop has covered all my needs and then some. But I have one issue I really am not used to holding "FN" to use the function keys and I'm wondering is there anyway to invert my f1-f12 keys so that i can use the quick link buttons while holding FN plus whatever function key it is located at.

For example:
Hold FN and press F2 to increase my brightness without just hitting f2 and my brightness increase. Cause i kinda would like to just my fuction keys for other programs without having to hold FN and click the f# key kinda want to only press one button... I'm not sure if anyone has that issue but i know you can invert the hot keys on macbooks so that you have to hold Fn to use there hot keys if that's how you prefer to use it. Now i'm just ranting and not aware of what to do.

P.s. sorry for the long reply just wasn't sure where to turn to.

 

Myousuf, you can switch Fn keys in the BIOS.

press ESC at the HP logo on start up. Then I think F10. And its under one of the tabs there.

 

I was thinking that also, that it's just the same but with different lighting that makes it look black. I've seen that before.