HP dm4t Review

No (10 char)

 

Dude, you said you got 9 hours with power saver on, and 40% brightness with the nine cell battery...

I'm only getting 6 hours with those same settings! The six cell only gives me around 4 hours... what's wrong?

 

I recently upgraded my Operating System from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Enterprise. However, though all the drivers seem to be installed correctly and there are no unknown devices in my device manager, I am experiencing about 45 seconds of black screen between the Windows 7 boot up screen and the login screen. The computer runs fine after it gets past this lock up, but it concerns me because I can't see the HDD light flashing during this black screen. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

Don't know. Something has to be running that is making the processor work harder or your battery might be messed up.

Seems like a driver problem to me. Go to the Event Viewer and see if there are any errors, that might give you a clue as to what it is

 

The only error I see says that LMS service cannot connect to MEI driver.

 

Ok, how do you think I should go about getting a replacement from HP? I checked my processor, and it's always at below 3% usage other than bootup.

I called them and they made me run the battery check, which said my battery was fine. They then said that since the battery check said my battery is fine, I have to send the laptop so they can 'check' it before they can replace the battery. I complained that they advertised 10.5 hours on their website, and the dude starts rambling on that the battery life numbers were not updated from older processors! So I tell him.. this laptop is a newer model, it never had option for any non-i series processor.. came out this year. He says very sorry I understand but you will have to send in.

Any Idea how I could get a replacement battery from them? What should I say.. lol at this point I'm ready to call and start threatening them that I will never buy HP again and recommend other products to my friends..

 

My main questions with this laptop are : Is the HD 5450 worth it and is the 9-cell worth it? I have a Core 2 Duo/HD 4850 combo with my current desktop and as long as the integrated can handle HD videos, I'm thinking it will be enough.

 

I've just picked up the DM4-1060ea (DM4 with ATI), is it easy enough to do a clean install?

I've downloaded all of the drivers from the HP website, does the laptop include any reinstallation media or is it from a recovery partition?

If it's a recovery partition does it reinstall all of the crap?

 

All you really need is a Windows 7 disc, a USB (or other storage media with the drivers) and your good to go. I deleted every other partition on my Envy except the main one, and it works great. Just make sure you boot from CD by going into the boot settings at startup.

 

What happened to the photos of this? I am concerned that with a 9 cell battery the computer won't fit the 14.5 inch (1.5 deep) case very well. Thanks for any help!

 

I have good things to say about my dm4t:
Very light, solid build, great looks (despite the pinkish hue), nimble and fast and runs very cool.

On the con side I wish it still had a hard switch to turn off the touch pad ( I hate all touch pads) and Wi-Fi. They revert back to default on when Windows logs off or machine is turned off, annoying. The HDD light is on the side of the machine, I am used to glancing down to see what is going on with HDD.
The biggest issue is with the keyboard. I know a lot of people raved about how good it is but I must have gotten a bad lot off the floor because I have gone through two machines trying to find a keyboard that doesn't drop and skip letters constantly. I have a new keyboard on order and pry it is better.

Also, I just tried to run Linux and no go, it wont even boot on this machine. Does anyone else run Linux? How?

Otherwise, it's a sweet machine and very well-priced right now, I see they lowered the price yet again for the holidays! Get it!