Hardware HP Pavilion dv2-1030ea

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/laptops/2009/05/19/hp-pavilion-dv2-1030ea-ultraportable-review/1

HP's Pavilion dv2-1030ea is based on AMD's Yukon platform, which launched back at CES in January. We check it out to see if it can fill the gap between a cheap and cheerful netbook and highly desirable but equally expensive ultraportable notebook.

 

Sounds like my IBM X31 does most of what this does, with a 3-4 hour battery life too! I must admit the video performance isn't up to 720p or 1080p though...

That looks like a great laptop - that feeling of solidity is lacking in a lot of netbooks imo, and it's something you need for a quality experience.

 

Interesting start, I think we should see some good computers based on this platform.

The only other thing, which I have said before, is that there are Intel based systems that can do most of what this does and more at a similar price, wight etc and with a decent battery life. Samsung Q45 for example, though I believe that has stopped being sold in most places.

The Q210, its replacement, weights a bit more at 1.9KG but has a 4-5Hr battery life, costs around the same amount as this, has a Core 2 Duo and has the potential of a GeForce Go 9200M. And it can play back HD Youtube.

 

My only complaint would be that if I was to buy a laptop over 10" I would want it to perform a little stronger in the gaming environment.

 

I have to say the opposite to tranc3 - I couldn't care less if it can manage gaming or not, even HD video doesn't matter imo. What does matter is that it doesn't get bogged down in 2D.

What matters most to me in a laptop though is quality feel, battery life and lightness. I don't want a laptop that weighs much more than 1.7kg for taking anywhere but downstairs to the sofa.

 

I thought, the ultra-portable notebooks were mainly aimed at businesses? So what's all the HD video, gaming stuff about?

But seriously, I want HD on my laptop, I want it to be light, I want it to be silent and I want it to be quite cool. Gaming is about as interesting as number crunching... it just doesn't have to happen on a laptop.

This thing seemed interesting until the battery part.

Well done, BT. Again.

 

I have used a HP Pavilion TX2550 for about 9 months now, and i cannot possibly imagine life without it anymore
It's a Turion 2GHz chip with a HD3200 IGP, 12,1", touchscreen, lightscribe, altec lansing speakers, everything under the sun basically

The only drawbacks of the thing are heat and noise, and to a lesser extent weight at 2,1Kg. Weight is no issue for me though.
Battery life is fantastic on the included 8-cell, i can play 2h of L4D on it, watch 3,5h of video (not HD), or browse almost 4 hours of interwebs.

Oh, and it costs less then 800 euros.

This means that basically they took out the DVD-drive, touchscreen, big battery, downclocked the CPU, and took a few bucks off the price to arrive at this thing. Cheers!

Seriously though, it's a perfect form factor for people like me that spend a lot of time sitting in trains. 15" is too big, 10" is too small.

 

looks like a nice laptop apart from the crappy battery life...

any plans to review the new Acer timeline series?

 

ya I agree, this looks more promising, they just need to work on that battery.

 

But at least you can admire and marvel at the really quite gorgeous wheels as they bound away down the hill.

 

huh you lost me there ???

 

Read the last page of the review

 

ooooh okay, gotcha the battery life part lol okay.

 

question for the intelligent amongst us:

is the problem with the battery fixable with a bigger battery do you think? Or is it just endemic to the Yukon platform and is only fixible in the next rendition of the platform?

Becuase I want a netbook sized thing, but what if I want to watch a film on a train or if I want to quickly run something that's slightly more demanding than notepad? Even firefox these days is pretty resource intensive with a handful of extensions installed, sometimes even slowing down my MAIN rig. I dread to think what would happen on an atom, just brings back memories of going to get a cup of tea when my 486 had a senior moment.

 

From what they said in the review, it is a mixture of small battery and hungry hardware. The reviews says that the fan spins up a lot to remove heat and this is indicative of hardware that uses a reasonable amount of electricity. Or maybe just bad cooling.

It also has a 2,900mAh battery. The one in my laptop is 4,800mAh so a bit over 50% more, but I get a battery life in the 4-5 hour range under fairly light use, this is probably nearer the "doing nothing" than the "3G" test. On a train with WiFi on and screen at max brightness it is 2.5-3.5 hours-ish.

So, with a bigger battery, it would get better but I don't think that the hardware is particularly juice sipping either.

 

The 3G test is slightly more intensive than a typical WiFi test, but it's a good measure of how good/bad a battery is because 3G really does hit the battery hard.

A bigger battery would improve battery life, but the fundamental problem is that the power saving tech in the Athlon Neo/Yukon platform just isn't aggressive enough - with the same sized battery, you'd get better life out of an Intel-based machine.

OK, you don't get better graphics on the Intel platform which means gaming is more of a hassle, but even though we rib Intel's integrated graphics pretty hard, they do get the basics done with very little power consumption. Intel's power saving tech really kills power consumption when the CPU isn't being used and the benefit is much longer battery life.

 

for more intensive video you could replace the wireless built in card with an HD/Video decoder card which will aid in the higher bit rate videos that you want to watch, of course if you wanted wifi too then you would have to go with a USB based wifi adapter.

 

I must completely disagree on this one personally.

I'm actually quite inclined to think this as being an added feature rather than a complaint.

it can be very handy scrolling through things using the arrow keys and just holding down the Fn key to boost it from one line up/down to one page up/down when needed.

my current 11" notebook has it laid out the exact same way, it's a very reasonable compromise for a small keyboard IMHO

 

I think it's a matter of personal preference and I can see both sides of the argument. I tend to use PgUp/PgDown/Home/End much more than I use the cursor keys, so needing two hands rather than one to use these keys is a personal annoyance.

On topics like keyboard layouts though, opinions can vary quite widely which is why we're presenting a full top down picture of the keyboard so that you can form your own opinion on whether or not the keyboard is to your tastes. If you happen to disagree with our opinion on that point, that's fine, because a keyboard is a very personal thing,after all.

 

Fair enough

I must admit i very rarely used the pgup/pgdn keys at all until i got this laptop.. Whilst it does have a mousewheel-like scroll area on the touchpad, i eventually found the page up/down keys to be easier to use when an external mouse isn't plugged in!
and with my left hand put on the touchpad, my little finger is sat on the Fn key so it was perfect