*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Intel for better battery life.

You timed it by hand?

Under what circumstances did you get 6 hours?

 

Yep, I use my DM3 everyday and I can get about 6-7 hours per charge, usually on power saver mode with about 50% of screen brightness.
I am a college student, and I do research and online class most of the time. I also listen to music, watch hulu TV, CNN news, watch lady Gaga on youtube at times.

 

I don't think I can actually get to 6 hours with that kind of usage. But I will test it soon.

 

ALright so Intel su4100 1.3ghz is for me then. I'll buy it within 2 weeks, it won't be too old by then and finish its lifetime will it?

 

I guess you'll be ok in two weeks. SU4100 is almost the lowest CULV CPU Intel sells now. It might be gone in the DM3 in 2 months but I'm not sure.

 

So you think I should hold off on buying the laptop for now? I could wait and use the desktop but the convinance of a laptop works out so much better for me.
I want the laptop cause I'm super excited about buying a new laptop and cause it's in my price range. But if theres more better things to come then I have no problem waiting, but I really do love the case and desgin of the DM3 series though.

 

No I don't think you should wait. SU4100 is more than fast enough for normal usage.

DM3-1044nr can be had for about $500, unbeatable value in my opinion.

 

Thanks.

 

Man, do I wish MS has publish the actual battery hour before I bought it. 4.4 hr is about what I get on my 1044nr, and I'm fairly pissed at HP for such BS claims. One of biggest reason I went with 1044nr b/c of battery. While I understand it's impossible to get 10hr in real life use but 7~8hr shouldn't be a problem for a spec like 1044nr.

Has anyone able to see the difference between MS signature power plan vs. power saver plan?

 

Hey could someone with the 2.26ghz intel dual core processors please post up their Windows Experience Index numbers on here? I'm deciding between 4 laptops, so i'm trying to get a side by side comparison of them all.

 

hm odd when i had the 1044-nr i thought i got 6-7 hours. perhaps the people complaining of the 4-5 hour battery life did not fully discharge their battery after initially charging it to full?

 

Well I've learned with laptop batteries that as you charge and discharge them more, the battery tends to start gaining time. Obviously there's a huge difference though between 4 and 7 hours. But I know with my laptops, I've had gains of almost an hour.

 

Phil, can I download the window 7 professional instead of home premium, and use the serial # of my DM3?
I have never used window 7 professional, but it does sound more professional to me.

 

No you cannot do that.

The key on the bottom of the DM3 is for Windows 7 Home Premium ONLY.

If you want to use Professional you'll have to obtain a key for it

 

Is anyone else having problems with there wifi consistent dropping off, I have updated all driver clean install new bios but still 90% of the time my wifi drops connection i have been testing speedtest.net and file transfer from my home server, any ideas

 

have you tried anywhere else other than your router/network at home?

I've had absolutely zero issues with connectivity.

 

I'll download the Home Premium then, thanks!

 

I have the 2.26 with 3GB of RAM and a 250GB HD, here are the numbers:
Proc: 5.9
RAM: 5.5
Graphics: 4.7
Gaming graphics: 5.6
Primary Disk: 5.9

I am getting about 4 solid hours of battery life under a good normal load (HD video, surfing, office apps, and some flash).

 

Phil, Now I have the iso. Should I copy the iso to a DVD first? Will it become a bootable DVD? I have never done this b4.

 

Search this forum, I believe you will find instructions. I used ImgBurn to burn my iso files to a disk.

 

Hi, I just got a dm3-1040us and am having a little bit of a problem. Upon initial boot I went ahead and partitioned the main drive into one smaller one with the OS and one big one for data, however I notice that there is a hidden HP Tools partition and a SYSTEM partition that i am not sure the function of. Furthermore, everytime I boot the computer it will ask me which of the 3 drives I want to boot from (SYSTEM, regular C:, or HP Tools). Choosing SYSTEM boots normally, choosing the C: causes a boot error "may have been caused by recent software change" it says, and choosing HP Tools just causes a black screen that stays forever.

What can I do to stop having it ask me what to boot from everytime, and why do I have to choose SYSTEM for it to boot normally if my OS is on the regular C:? What is it even for?

 

theres a much easier way to do this that doesn't involve burning DVDs and using an external drive.

All you need is a 4gb+ flash drive.

Use a program like VirtualClone Drive and mount the .iso file so that you can view the files in explorer. Simply copy everything in the mounted ISO file over into the flash drive and reboot your computer. If you did everything right the Windows Setup screen will appear and windows will install off your hard drive.

It'll go a lot quicker than using a dvd too!

 

Thanks guys. Mission accomplished! I'd like to keep a rebootable DVD as recovery disk.

 

hello guys, just wanted to know the cheapest deal out there for the dm3t. i think all the shops are out of stock now!

 

Wow, my battery life is shorter than I thought. I have a 1044nr and I'm lucky if I get three hours out of this thing. And that's with mostly just surfing the Internet -- no video playing.

I have calibrated the battery -- fully charging and fully discharging -- twice since I got this thing a couple of weeks ago.

But the results are pretty disappointing!

 

anyone know why the 1044us keeps on automatically dimming/re-brightening the laptop?? it won't stay at the brightness level that i have set it to. it's really annoying.

and man, i don't have a flash drive bigger than 4gb so i can't install windows at the moment.

 

Just in case people are wondering what SSD drive HP throws in there. It is SSDSA2MH160G1. I was rather disappointed that it is a G1 and not a G2. For G1 retails at about $449, which is still a good deal, but G2 has faster write + other upgrades in hw. Based on my latest bench, SSD performs as expected 250MB/s read and 70MB/s writes. It's beyond me why HP didn't go w/ G2, prolly just emptying stock.

As far as firmware is concerned, it does have old firmware (045C8781), the latest is (C880+). To upgrade you will need to burn a quick cd/dvd w/ Intel iso found here

Another interesting piece is that according to SMART this beast has already been restarted over 100x, i swear i contributed maybe 10 of mine, so the rest must have come from HP and their testing/OS installation.

Finally, the all-mighty-TRIM functionality is being reported as "NO", will post back after firmware upgrade to see if that enabled it.

 

Ran the update. Now I am at firmware version (045C8820). It was painless and quick. According to Intel, this version has been available since April, which means HP had these drives way before April. The TRIM still says "NO", it may be that only G2s come w/ TRIM.

According to Intel, "This firmware revision has several continuous improvement optimizations intended to provide the best possible user experience with the Intel SSD". Not seeing much difference, I guess I wasn't expecting a huge improvement. Nice to know that I am to date on my drivers tho!

 

That sounds too short. In Power Saver mode and with brightness on 50% you should get more.

 

I put in on a USB key with Microsoft USB tool. It's faster than DVD.

 

I had the same problem b4. I downloaded the "optional update for display" from Windows Update. Its been working w/o dimming issues since then.
I don't have a 4gb flash drive either, so I made a bootable DVD instead.

 

Hey guys. New DM3 owner, just ordered today. SU9300 + Bluetooth + external DVD drive. I Got the EPP pricing but with the usurious California tax (10%) plus the state mandated waste disposal fee, it was still almost $1k.

For the record: I'm switching back from a MacBook. After using Win7 on the wife's laptop and our home desktop, I dont see a reason to go Mac anymore. Interesting point about the Mac - fan base is so rabid that I'll sell it for about $500, paid $1k over 3 years ago. Wow. 1.83Ghz duo with 2GB RAM, 60GB 5400 HDD and no DVD writer...$500.


I'm wading my way thru the 200+ pages of this post and the HP Owners guide thread, but am still unsure of a couple of things that I hope you can help with. I know the bloatware is a big issue for me and want to do a fresh install when the machine arrives - first thing.

QUESTIONS about doing a fresh install:

1. I ordered the "recovery Media" for $19. Can I do a fresh install of windows with out the HP bloatware from this disk?
   
2. I have a legal copy of Win7 Home that I purchased to do a fresh install on our desktop - if I can't use the HP disk, can I use my Win7 disk and enter the code on the computer instead of the one that came with the disk?
   
3. If all of that fails, I think I'm relegated to do this?:
   http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=428068

Any advice humbly appreciated for my first p0st.

Thanks in advance.
.

 

I was having some wifi connectivity problems over these past couple of days. Every time I turned my laptop on it wouldn't connect automatically, and I would have to go through the whole damn troubleshooting routine. Then I would have to disconnect the power from my router and modem, reconnect, play with the laptop some more, and finally -- if I was lucky -- I would connect to my wireless network.

The funny thing is that my iPod Touch stopped connecting to the network as well! But my desktop computer in my bedroom, which has a wifi card, had no trouble connecting to my network, so I know the problem wasn't my router or modem.

Meanwhile, I was using my laptop tonight, and a window popped up saying that I had some Windows Updates awaiting. I clicked to see what they were, and and six of them were labled important (Windows 7 related), and there was one optional update. The optional one was an Intel Driver Update for Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN.

I thought to myself, maybe this is what I really need here. So I downloaded and installed the updates. Then I was required to restart the laptop.

After it rebooted -- wow! It immediately found my network ... with a signal strength of Excellent. The funny thing is that now my iPod Touch connects as well. Could a signal from my laptop have been preventing my iPod from connecting to my network? Strange.

But I'm happy now. Both are working splendidly!

 

so after recharging again, it jumps down from 100% to 94% in less than 5 minutes... anyone know of a good battery diagnostic tool? i may be nitpicking, but that 6% that i lose bothers me. hm, in about 20 minutes of use i went down to 9%.. not very good so far.

 

Yeah, my battery life is pretty dismal, too. I've since lowered my screen brightness to 50%. After a full battery recharge, I'll have to see if that helps.

 

Anyone find a quality USP External DVD burner that supports Lightscribe? I just rcvd an HP Unit:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...ia_drives&product_code=VV827AA#ABB&catLevel=2

Only has 1 fixed USB cable and the instructions/specs are SPARSE at best.

Looking for an alternative...

Cheers, Rick

 

so i searched but no luck.
I got the dm3-1044nr and i want to play my movies on the big 46" TV using the 5.1 from my HTIB. Pic is fine no complaint. But the audio seems to be in 2.1 only. HOw do i make it 5.1? I tried the setting in my KMPlayer already but that didnt help.
This is how i hook up my cables
Laptop HDMI to TV
TV Optical cable out to Sony HTIB in.

 

I am looking for an external BluRay drive too.

 

1. No, restore disk restores to the condition you first received it, ie has bloatware

2. yes, you can install with a normal windows disk and use the key HP gave you.

 

Thanks for the quick response! Rep'd.

Much appreciated...

Is the key the label affixed to the computer or will it be in the package of "stuff" shipped with the machine?

riz.

 

I don't have a DVD drive for my laptop. Is there any way for me to burn my recovery disk to a virtual drive ISO and then burn it from another computer?

Can I download the image from here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=428068 and it will work? I'm concerned because the HP key is OEM and I'm not sure if those images are retail or OEM. I've read elsewhere that this could matter.

It's attached to the bottom.

You are too capable with computers to have owned a mac!

 

alright, so.. yesterday i turned off the computer at 91% (lost 9% after 15-20 minutes). now i turn it on today, and it's 83%. that's an 8% bleedage in the battery. in about 15 hours of being turned off.

those are unacceptable numbers - i'm going to try and send this back. i'm not really impressed with HP products. i'm 0/2 with their stuff so far, so i'll probably stay away from the brand from now on. i guess i'm back on the market, yet once again.

 

I am not seeing your numbers. Yes, there is some "bleedage" during stand-by, but nothing close to what you are describing. I am very pleased with this laptop, except for battery. I feel your pain, and I do believe HP misleads their customers about expectations, but I am still in love with this machine.

 

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the great information on here; read the majority of the posts and it helped me to make up my mind to buy a DM3T. Seems like most people are happy with the computer and no major overall problems with it (despite maybe battery power issues with the AMD processor - which hopefully shouldnt apply to me as I chose the Intel one). Still a little worried about the trackpad, but most on here dont say its as bad as the reviews make it sound.

Was looking at an Envy 15 (as I wanted the I7 quad-core processor for turning all my DVD into MP4 files), but seem to be alot of issues with it.

Last computer was a HP TX1000 with was manufactured with some bad parts, which HP wont acknowledge or fix (though hundreds of people are having the same problem), and it doesnt work at all anymore. Still a little turned off by HP because of that - but hopefully will have better luck with the DM3T...

 

you should be able to get 6-7 hours though, since when i had the 1044-nr it lasted about that long. if you are only getting 3-4 hours you should contact hp.

 

I'm happily/sad to report dm3 is one hella well made notebook. I just dropped my dm3 from 5 feet up to concrete floor, my left corner bezel came apart a bit but not too noticeable, everything else works just fine.

 

Owwwww.


pics?

 

Same here. I now run the card at G210M speeds (625 - 800 - 1500) and it works fine. I don't even notice any extra heat. 3DMark05 is 7185.

 

checked the battery bleeding again. this time i waited about 8.5 hours, and i lost 4%.

 

That sounds reasonable to me. Standby uses about 90-95% less energy, I would expect about 5% degradation of normal battery life during full activity. If you really don't want it to bleed, just shut it off, no harm done.