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Full user review
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4 out of 5 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Fantastic laptop, 12 cell battery doesnt last 6 hours"
Pros: Great starting weight, decent GPU, touch pad on / off button
Cons: Runs warm on battery while playing game. OK not great wirelss performance. 12 cell battery lasts 3-4 hours not 6 or 8
Summary: I bought this laptop just as it came out on June 26th. I've been using it for about a month now and I'm very satisfied with its performance and features. The weight of the laptop starts at 5.4 pounds but jumps to 6.2 pounds with the 12-cell battery which isn?t too bad considering that other laptops start at 6.2 or 7 lb and go up from there. The DVDRW-DL I got with mine is an 8x read / write with 2x double layer and 24x cdrw drive. Don?t ask me about the Re-write speeds. The screen is fantastic and crisp but the bright view technology causes glare which means that when I try to use the laptop in the car (parked of course) its hard to see the screen when its dimmed down or running a program with a lot of shadows like a game. The CPU is 64-bit ready so you don?t have to worry about not being able to run the next version of Windows Vista (longhorn) or other 64 bit software. This helps keep the laptop useful for oh say? 4 years or so, your guess is as good as mine but any extra ability to run or handle future hardware and software is a bonus to me and keeps my investment useful longer.
I have the following configuration:
AMD Turion 64 with 1MB l2 cache
1GB DDR 2100 ( 512 from HP at $25 + 512 from online for $50)
60 GB hard drive (get the 80 or 100) if you?ll need the space)
DVDRW double layer (get the light-scribe option for only $25, I didn?t get it and now regret it)
Windows XP Professional (at only $36 dollars extra, why wouldn?t you)
The keyboad of the laptop has a good feel to it with crisp movement and good layout. I have large hands and have no trouble hitting the keys. The large enter, delete, and shift keys are a plus as many laptops have tiny ones that are hard to hit. I do play light computer gaming (halo, un-real 2001) on the laptop using the keyboard and USB mouse with no trouble. I can also type my full 40+ wpm. One of the best features is the ability to turn off the touchpad by simply pressing a button. Many new HP and Compaq laptops have this and I can?t tell you enouph how handy it is. On my old laptop I would have trouble typing a long document because my thumb would keep hitting the pad and moving something or ?tapping? and selecting something. With this button all of that goes away and I can type without hassle. There is even a software feature that will let you disable tapping entirely so there will never again be accidental selecting of icons or words! My Dad?s expensive Sony doesn?t have either feature and that makes him very jealous.
Also, get windows XP professional, I wont review it hear but suffice to say that when it comes to operating system security and features XP home edition is a blasphemy on this earth and should never have existed. The laptop DOES NOT COME with Windows XP 64 bit. I don?t know how it runs with Linux of other OS strait, but I?m running VMware and Virtual PC on the laptop with no problems so I can run a full Linux Red Hat and Free BSD 5.3 environment within my windows.
The wireless performance of the laptop is fairly good but not fantastic. I have a linksys WAP54G in the upstairs office network closet and in my room about 40ft away and down I get poor signal strength but 10 Mbps. This is fine for small file transfer, internet, and even online gaming as the game goes over a 5MB / 384 kb cable modem anyway. The biggest problem with the wireless and Windows XP appears to be a common one that many companies wont tell you about. When windows XP (home or pro) connects to a WEP enabled network (64 or 128) it will connect to the network just fine but then wont get a DHCP address, nor can it connect when the IP address is entered manually. I?m still trying to track down the cause and fix of this and I?ve even tried my Dad?s Sony laptop and replaced the Linksys to no effect. Look this one up online, you?d be surprised what you find.
I got mine with the 12-cell battery and I don?t get the advertised 6 or 8 hours of life, I haven?t tried running it down yet, but my guess is that I?ll get 3 ? 4 hours doing basic office apps with no graphics. I run a program called SpeedStep XP which forces the laptop to run at its minimum of 800 Mhz on battery. Without this program the laptop would switch between the full 1600 Mhz and 800 Mhz when on battery. I also used the advanced settings on the graphics chip (Radion 200M 128 MB) and forced it to use the maximum battery setting when on battery. Other laptops such as my Dad?s Sony Vaio have similar software built in. SpeedStep XP can be downloaded from http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/.
The graphics card is a Radion 200M with user configurable 32, 64, or 128 MB of shared RAM. This is not a completely discreet graphics chip and does share some calculations with the CPU. A discreet graphics chip like the Radion 9200 or 9000 found in other laptops would probably yield better performance. A few 3D games I?ve played on the laptop so fare are Halo 1, Unreal 2001, and BattleField 1942 with Desert Combat expansion.
In order to get the best performance out of the graphics and computer, you have to have 1GB of RAM. Here?s how to do it on the cheap. Get the single 512 RAM option from HP shopping but don?t get the 1 GB option, its $100 and too expensive. Go online and get almost any PC 2100 DDR SO-DIMM module for $50 and plug it in yourself. I?ve done it, trust me, it?s easy if you are careful and pay attention.
It should also be noted that HP tech support is setup to help ONLY the basics of problems. If you have an advanced problem and are an advanced or expert user like me, they will treat you like a newbie anyway. They can?t help you solve any thing more than the basic bone-head trouble shooting solutions and will suggest fixes that have nothing to do with the problem. I?ve got 10 years of experience with Microsoft Windows 95 though XP though Server 2003 and I know when the person on the other end of the phone doesn?t know what they?re talking about.Updated
Its now November 2005 and I'm still loving the laptop. I can get similar configs from the L2000s base model for a little less, but my L2000 is still a fantastic buy, no regrets.
The 12-cell battery seems to be able to sustain me for an entire school day of note taking now. I've found that I loose on average 20% of the battery for every hour of use. That works out to about 4 hours of life with a comfortable 20% of flex life between heavy use and wireless use.
I've also located a program called RMclock 1.7 which can be used to regulate the voltage of the processor at different P-states. DO NOT SAVE the configuration of this program until you've worked out a stable configuration setup. If the config is un-stable, then the laptop will crash constantly or at a bad time when the voltage needs to be increased but is being held back.
My Dad has compared this laptop to his Sony S series laptop. His laptop cost $2,500 dollars new (1 yr ago), weighs 4.5 pounds, has a Radion 9700 graphics, Centrino 2 Ghz, 80 GB HD and 1GB Ram. He says that compared to his Sony, mine weighs allot more, but has a better keyboard, touchpad, sound, similar battery-life, better screen, and more options. He's probably going to replace his Sony (company owned) with a similar L2000 laptop this December.
A fantastic buy for student and office work, few other laptops out there can match this one for performance, battery life, and price. Now stop reading and go out and get one, you know you want to =8-).
