Sep
Overview Of HP Pavilion HDX Dragon Laptop
Posted in Notebook | Comments OffThe 20.1′ HP HDX is something out of a hi-tech thriller. If anyone’s ever study Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (from the DaVinci Code fame), here is the supercomputer they must’ve used to crack the codes. From the ‘Dragon’ namesake decal about the lid to the extended keyboard below, everything about this notebook screams ‘greater purpose.’ At a price tag approaching five big, it much better meet its looks. We’ll discover out.
In a word, none. This monster weighs in at 15.5 pounds, and the 20.1′ screen doesn’t fit very easily into anything. There’s no locking latch, even though the weight of being used usually sufficient to keep it in place. The HDX was produced being a desktop unit, and not a travel device. To give you an object for comparison, here’s the HDX against its smaller cousin, the HP Pavilion dv2000t 14′ widescreen.
The case of the HP is covered inside a decal known merely as the “Dragon” imprint finish. It covers the entire lid as well as above the volume control once the monitor is raised.
The most interesting features of the HDX may be the way the observe is mounted towards the unit. It uses a silver hinge that rotates both at the base and at the intersection of the hinge at monitor. The reason of this hinge is two-fold. Very first, it gives the observe a higher degree of movement, that is useful provided the monitor’s big viewing size. Secondly, it’s attached much more securely than a normal hinge, and frees the monitor from torque caused by lifting the lid as per a typical hinge. Having a 20.1′ observe, enough twist can do some damage.
The keyboard sports 101 keys, which includes a dedicated numeric pad to the right, something I haven’t seen in laptops I’ve reviewed in the past. Fifteen touch-sensitive controls line the top from the keyboard, backlit in a brilliant blue. They manage every thing from DVD choices, wireless access, and volume control. All in all, this keyboard fits well with my hands, which are larger than average. 1 shortcoming that I noticed in HP’s ultraportable tx1000z may be the mini right-shift key. I frequently hit the up button instead, to the detriment of my capitalization. Sadly, the HDX suffers in the same truncated shift key.
Left of keyboard sits one of the handiest devices that the HDX offers, the remote control. It house 43 buttons in all, definitely the most intricate remote I’ve observed for a notebook. It’s among the features about the HDX that distinguishes the unit as part of the Entertainment series. In the remote you are able to manipulate any aspect of DVD playback, and even record video in the 1.3 Megapixel Webcam.
The touchpad sits in a valley between the palm rests, and it demarcated by a textured surface, as other HP notebooks are. The two buttons below the touchpad give very easily and supply decent feedback, even though they felt overly soft about the model we received. A similar surface sits right from the touchpad in a column shape, and controls scrolling. There’s an unobstrusive black button just between the touchpad and keyboard, which enables/disables the touchpad input. This is a lifesaver if you’re using an external pointing device (read: mouse).
These were actually a non-issue using the system. The dual vents in the rear do an excellent job of keeping air moving. During the review (that is being written about the HDX) the unit exhibited really little heat, even though more heat was coming from the left vent (close to the power cable) than the correct one. Of course, I was only using Microsoft Word and IE, so the load on the processors was minimal.
The notebook is dominated by a 20.1″ WSXGA High-Defnition Ultra BrightView Widescreen Display. Even given its name, the observe is exceptionally bright, probably due to the dual-lamps that power the images. With the ATI video card you are provided the ATI Control Center, which lets you tweak display settings to search for the optimal balance among energy and performance. I pinned the settings to performance, since you shouldn’t have the HDX away from a energy source for lengthy.
HP did an excellent job using the HDX when it comes to audio. It sports four Altec Lansing speakers integrated into the bottom from the observe, and a genuine subwoofer that fires vibrations via the surface you are on. If you flip the notebook over (no small feat) you’ll discover the subwoofer waiting to unleash deep-toned fury. The setup is nothing short of spectacular, especially thinking about this is still considered a notebook.
Our HP model came with the standard 9-Cell Lithium-Ion battery. It’s not sufficient to energy this PC for lengthy, so I think of it more as an emergency than a real asset. The AC adapter (like every thing else on this laptop computer) is pretty big.
That’s what this laptop is truly all about. I use the term laptop computer merely within the nostalgic sense. There’s practically nothing about this notebook that is conducive to putting it on your lap. It weighs almost 16 pounds, and is wide enough to eclipse even the most generous of thighs. That’s because of what’s under the hood, which is one among the impressive aspect of this Intel Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo platform.
The Video Card is really a ball-busting ATI Radeon HD 2600XT Graphics with 256MB DDR3 dedicated graphics memory. Finally! A laptop computer with dedicated graphics. Shared memory is some thing I’ve usually abhorred in laptop computer systems, but I realize the necessity. When you’re looking for a portable workstation, energy conservation rates above Battlefield 2142 framerates, and rightly so. The HDX can’t be concerned with kitschy buzzwords like “conservation” and “energy management”. This notebook has the RAM to spare though, with 4096MB of DDR2 SDRAM powering it (double the as my desktop). All you’d need to round this out is really a beefy processor, or maybe two. Intel provided their Core a couple of Extreme X7800 processor rated at 2.6 GHz to churn ones and zeroes at an impressive rate.
Know that with the more powerful processor you’ll see a reduction in battery life. In the DVD battery test we saw a life of around 90 minutes, which we’ve heard is closer to a couple of hours using the weaker processor.
When running 3DMark 2006, we got a respectable score of 4245. Not really close to the scores of the Alienware Area-51 m9750 we just tested, but it is a far cry in the lackluster scores returned by those laptops stuck with onboard graphics.
The HDX performed admirably, in most cases topped the charts, in each test we put it through. Certain, you cannot carry it close to for too lengthy, but think of it being a desktop in toteable notebook form. It looks like a winner out of your box, and doesn’t disappoint throughout the whole process. If you can justify the price, it is the finest entertainment laptop currently available on the market.