Transportable computer…

HP Pavilion zd8230us 17″ Notebook PC (Intel Pentium 4 Processor 650 (H-T), 1024 MB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, LightScribe DVD+/-RW and CD-RW Combo Drive)

Keeping up with the times is important. Once you go mobile with a PC, it is extremely difficult to be tied down to a desktop. The trade off is that you give up upgradeability for mobility. Out of the box, this machine is good enough for most games, all office products, most A/V software, and still has enough processing power to handle more.

Monitor
It has a very clear 17″ LCD monitor that puts every other laptop to shame. The screen real estate allows for easy switching between numerous applications if necessary. It also makes for a fantastic DVD experience. There are no cons to the monitor.

Speakers
The native speakers are acceptable. This is a laptop, so high fidelity sound isn’t going to be a purchasing point, but these work at least as well as speakers typical for desktops.

Battery
We buy laptops for mobility and a good part of this mobility is the battery. When fully charged, the battery will run about 2 hours when running applications that are not disk input/output intensive, less so when running more demanding applications. If you are on an airplane and want to watch a movie, the battery should get you from opening to closing credits for most non-epic movies. The downside here is that the battery life isn’t as long as they can be for smaller laptops. Another con is the size of the power supply; it is bulky and also fairly weighty. I believe the laptop itself is just below nine pounds. With the power supply, the weight is increased by almost two pounds.

Keyboard etc
The HP Pavilion 8230us has a full keyboard–number pad included. This is extremely helpful if you need to use the laptop for business functions that require lots of numbers. The mouse that is part of the keyboard has automatic scroll, tap-to-click, and can be turned off if a mouse is attached.

Ports
There are ample ports to run any minor task. For ease of use, it has USB ports on each three sides.

General Usage
This is a full keyboard, 17” LCD screen machine; it isn’t going to be ‘light.’ The weight isn’t usually a difficulty, but it can be if you have to lug it for long distances or pack it/unpack it many times. This is one of the trade offs for getting a larger screen and full keyboard. Along with this size comes an additional fan. The machine is likely to run hot, so you don’t want to keep it on your lap unless you like to sweat. Some are opposed to the noise of the fans, but it’s really not so bad. The fans are just part of the trade off to have a full featured machine that is transportable but large.

Item: HP Pavilion zd8230us 17″ Notebook PC (Intel Pentium 4 Processor 650 (H-T), 1024 MB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, LightScribe DVD+/-RW and CD-RW Combo Drive)
Price: $1,799.99
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pros: Full keyboard, great monitor, great processor and processing speed
Cons: Runs hot, is fairly heavy especially with the power supply

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 11:57 am and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.