*HP dm3 (3XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Just wanted to also say after 30 days with my dm3t (Core i3, 4 gb RAM, 320 GB HD, Intel integrated graphics, backlit keyboard options) I am still very happy. The only observed "problem" areas for me are:
- trackpad is still not great, but I can live with it
- battery life is OK (4.5 hours) but not HPs advertised 7+ hours
- the keyboard lettering is very light colored and occasionally difficult to read if light is hitting the keyboard from the side (for instance, light coming in from a window, from the side of the machine).

I still highly recommend the laptop for anyone who wants a beautiful, nicely designed and reasonably fast, non-gaming PC in the 13" class. At $500 less than a MacBook Pro 13" it is a steal.

 

Agreed, the new dm3 with the new silver keyboard and metalic surround, is the coolest looking HP out there....I hate grey plastic and black keyboards now...very ugly and woeful in low light conditions.....

 

So my overall impressions about the dm3 after 2 days of use;
Firstly, its still beautiful (maybe the old metallic look has a little edge over it when it comes to the exterior, but the interior looks way better now). The weight is much better now. The hinge system looks kinda weird at first, but then you get used to it and realize its equally cool too. Webcam, bluetooth, keypad , wireless etc all working efficiently
Now to the cons: overall the general build is good except a few minor poor finishing touches. My touchpad doesnt seem to sit perfectly, and so it feels a little wobbly when you tap it, especially at the right and left icon area. It also doesnt flush perfectly with the palm rest (maybe .5mm-not much though but still...). The battery also doesnt flush perfectly and so does the webcam are. These are really very minor details but if you look hard you might find it. The backspace button does not always register my presses, especially in the first half area of the button (I almost always hav to press exactly on the words "backspace" before it registers.
Performance is ok, not blazingly fast! It takes some 2 or 3 seconds for office 2010 to start, 5-8seconds for hp thermal assistant or media smart to start, and about 30-45seconds to boot windows.
Screen in bright and beautiful, battery life on full brightness and wireless about 4hrs or maybe 4.5hrs (yet to do detailed battery life tests!!).
Soft touch exterior is cool but oily fingerprints can be a pain to remove (av tried damp cloth but didnt get much improvement..any ideas??).
So generally beautiful laptop, good build with few minor imperfections, trackpad improved but "not yet there", good performance (ideally get corei3). Highly recommended!!
I got the dm3-3012nr from microsoft and I don't have the quickweb option. There is no link to download on hp's website. Anybody knows how I can install quickweb (a friend bought his dm3-3010us from hp directly, and he has the quickweb)!! Thanks

 

Nice write-up. Pretty much agree with your assessment except haven't really notices that much wrong with the fit and finish....track pad and mouse buttons defo subpar.....vertical viewing angle is crap on some hi-res jpegs/avis/mkvs files....nice for web forums like this though....on the fingerprints, I usually just swab the whole thing down, display, keyboard, and all, with a tissue of rubbing alcohol

 

Agree on a few very minor fit and finish issues. Battery fit is very slightly off. HP TrueVision label on webcam is not quite exactly horizontal. Trackpad is perfectly flush though and no problems with key action. Case does pick up a few fingerprints but much better than the glossy cases of recent years. Rubbing them with a soft cloth or tshirt usually does the trick. BTW, MS Word, Powerpoint, and Excel all launch w/in about a second for me (Core i3). Boot time is a bit pokey though (1 minute). Resumes from sleep in a second or two so quickweb didn't seem worth the trouble.

Biggest issues: trackpad is hard to use IMO and keyboard lettering is hard to see in certain daylight lighting conditions.

Also - I like the hinge design. Seems pretty beefy and looks nice. And agree with Tarts - it's about the coolest looking laptop out there, especially given the price!

 

Does the dm3-3x touchpad not support the multi-touch gestures. I have the synaptics driver and it looks like the multi touch gestures cannot be enabled.
Also any ideas on how I can get quickweb to work on dm3-3012nr (microsoft signature)? thanks

 

Go to control panel - mouse - devise settings....make sure synaptic pointing devise in enabled (button) and then the settings button will open a window for the multi-touch gesture settings. You can also get there from the taskbar tray.

There's a setting in the bios to turn on the quickweb but I couldn't get it to work so I'm thinking MS must have removed it....ie on power up, it tries to boot quickweb, black screen, then continues on booting windows...so I turned it back off in the bios to boot win7 faster. You might play around with it to see if you can get it to work.

 

I have the same issue...I just got this as a temporary laptop until the dual-core sandy bridge comes out. The synaptics software is pretty much the same on the Envy 14, but the multitouch feature is blocked for me...cant activate it. It's greyed out.

 

did you check your drivers?...it works on mine...

 

yeah, i just had to update it.....i didnt have internet and i thought it was out of the box. Thanks tarts!

BTW, when i play videos on like 480p on hulu....its really laggy...is there a way to play it without all the jerking motions?

Thanks again!

 

right click the video, and under the flash settings, disable/uncheck hardware acceleration
isn't she a beaut...

 

wow....thank you so much! it worked! are there and secrets/tweaks that you would recommend me to do to optimize it more?

Thanks!
Kangu

EDIT: Just to make sure, movies that are 1080p dont run well on this laptop right? I tried playing despicable me (bluray quality) and it tends to fragment and freezes every now and them. I am on high performance btw.

 

I have updated my drivers to the latest Synaptics 15.1.6.64 but the multi touch gestures still cant be enabled. They have been greyed out so i cant even select that option. Any help?

 

did you let windows update it? like when you go to device manager then update it from there. after that once you restart you laptop it should be enabled.

 

Yes, the do play well. Mine has played every movie (divx, xvid, x264, mp4..etc) that I've thrown at it. You might not have the right codec pack to watch your movie....Try using Media Player Classic x64....it should have all the codecs you need and it's one of the first things I install on a new system and pin to the taskbar.

Don't know why it's not working for you...it should...keep trying stuff, you'll get them eventually.

 

Anyone know that driver to install to display the volume/display brightness to appear when you press the the keys so I can tell how bright or how loud my computer is?

Thank you

 

Last December I got the HP dm3-3012nr which I like a lot; however, at night I close the lead and in the morning when I try to wake it up it takes 15-20 minutes; the little circle keeps going, there is noise in the background. If I try to open a program before is done with this routine, gets frozen. Is very frustrating!
I ran the anti-virus and malwarebytes every day and nothing malicious is found. Any words of wisdom? Should I send it back? Thanks so much!

 

try ctrl-alt-del to see what's running...maybe a system maintenance proggie or something...or try a restore point to an earlier date...

 

I bought two dm3's about 6weeks ago (one from MSStore and the other hp). Two weeks down the line there was this creaking noise from both speakers (like playing sound at the highest volume through some cheap earphones) in the one from hp, but my friend managed with it using the headphones which sound alright. Then just two days ago, mine developed the same problem.
I have a feeling its the speakers, because I have tried all sorts of different media players and besides the sound is fine with the headphones. Its kinda strange that both laptops from different retailers end up with the same problem. Anybody has similar issues, or any solutions?? Am wondering if its probably a driver/software issue or I have to send them back. thanks

 

Hello guys, am trying to buy an hdmi cable online to hook my dm3-3012 with my sony lcd hdtv. I am not sure which specs to buy(hdmi 1.3b, hdmi 1.4 etc). Can someone help me out? And are there any instructions on hooking it up? Or its just plug and play? thanks

 

I have 1 question about this new DM3.

Can it run 1080P with ease, or open a firefox with 20 tabs without choking with the stock build ?

 

In the right format and with the correct codecs, you should be able to play 1080p smoothly, thanks to the Intel HD integrated Graphics.

 

Is it just me or does everything seem somewhat choppy? I have the dm3-3012nr. When I minimize windows, open programs, click on links, browse forward/back to pages, or even holding backspace to delete sentences, many times there will be that split second choppy lag. My unit is brand new.

 

I picked up this HP DM3-3010 laptop a couple wks ago at MicroCenter. Cost was $480 before rebate of $50, so net was $430. Here are my initial thoughts after playing around with it....

Pros:
- Nice design. This is my first laptop to not have screws in the bottom when you want to get to the harddisk or memory chips. HP did a good job of designing it in such a way that you slide a few levers and out pops the covers for each component. You just pop them back in place when you are done.
- Screen is nice and bright.
- Good size and weight balance for 13.3" Notebook

Cons:
- Runs hot! Heat pours out of the left side probably because HP still doesn't know how to properly design thermal cooling solutions. Don't let the marketing fool you with fancy terms like Coolsense and Thermal Assistant.
- Battery life is short. They market it for 7.5 hrs, but expect half of that while doing normal computing tasks.
- Bluetooth software is jinxed. Office 2003 programs would show error messages and I couldn't figure out what was causing it. After some playing around, I uninstalled the bluetooth software and the crashes went away.
- Fan is noisy and speed can't be modified. It's either on / off in the BIOS setting and you can't modify the speed because HP locks the BIOS. When you first turn it on, get ready to hear jet engines taking off....
- HP Bloatware. There is a ton of crapware on the machine. I haven't went thru it all to determine if I need it or not. I know this brings down the price, but really wish they had an option to remove it all except the basics. Get ready to spend time manually uninstalling it or reloading the O/S without it.
- Standby lights. I don't know why engineers can't figure out that we don't need bright lights telling us when we put this to sleep. First night in my room and there were 3 obnoxious bright lights blinking away that had to be covered.

A few other thoughts:
- I've seen mention of people not liking the touchpad, but I really don't have a problem with it. It stays out of the way from my typing and has two click buttons (vs the one button that you see most laptops going to these days).
- Miss my CD / DVD rom drive. I thought I could get along without it, but had to purchase a portable one a few days later.
- After all the patches were installed, my Windows Experience Index: Processor: 3.9, Memory: 5.9, Graphics: 3.7, Gaming 4.8, and Disk 5.6

 

hey guys i just bought this laptop. does everyone have the problem where their battery gauge will not show the remaining time? I had to download a third party app. Does anybody else have this problem??

my specs are:

Core i3-380um 1.33Ghz
Intel HD graphics
3GB Dual Channel DDR3 ram
320GB 7,200rpm HDD
Backlit keyboard

Windows Experience Index
Processor 4.8
Memory 5.1
Graphics 3.5
Gaming 4.7
Disk 5.9

Overall I love the laptop, the only two things that I don't like is that the battery doesn't display remaining and the battery life is not so great. I had a dv6-6013cl w/ sandybridge + beats audio and that laptop on balanced battery setting got ~5.5-6hrs of battery life. My third party gauge displays 4.5hrs only.

 

can anybody help me out? i downloaded battery bar but I would like to have the windows 7 gauge if anything.

 

Oh, that's not a problem at all. HP chooses not to display the remaining time (for what reason, I couldn't tell you).

 

wait do you have the same issue?? i am just wondering if everyone who has the dm3t have this issue or only some owners. thanks

 

HP notebooks do not display the remaining time.

 

i don't get why you and the tech people say this. i have a dv5, a new dv6t, and my roommate has the hp envy 14-1211 and all these laptops display the time remaining perfectly fine.

i talked with HP support on the phone the guy was very helpful his supervisor and tech specialist were all confused as to why this happens because their HP laptops also display the time remaining. They have left the case open.

NOW MY QUESTION TO DM3T-3xxx OWNERS! Who can view their time remaining and Who cannot!? I want to know if this happens to everyone with a dm3t-3000 or just some. Please let me know!

 

I guess it depends on the model, but for this particular laptop and some other HP laptops (such as the older generation dm3t that I own) are configured to not display remaining time. Again, not an issue/problem with your laptop.

 

damn hp... oh wells at least i got it from costco.com with free 2 year warranty!!

 

gizmodian do you know if we can adjust the backlit keyboard brightness on the dm3t??

 

I'm not sure, but I don't think so...