The Graphics
I recommend staying away from laptops by Toshiba, Sony, and Panasonic to prospective buyers that plan on playing games and considering similarly spec'd laptops. AMD offered to release Catalyst drivers for Mobility Radeons several months ago and these companies chose to opt out. This means that if there's a problem with the laptop's graphics driver e.g. game glitches, you will have to wait/hope that these companies release updated drivers instead of downloading ones released regularly by AMD.
As far as the Radeon 5650, it's been great thus far. I've been running Battlefield: Bad Company 2 smoothly at 1080p on an external monitor with settings on high, and AA and AF off. It will easily play most games out for the PC today and many games coming out. For the programmers out there interested in OpenCL, the 5650 is compatible and only requires downloading the Stream SDK from AMD.
The addition of the integrated Radeon 4250 is also welcomed. It allows for PowerXpress for power savings when running on battery or just to cut down on the electric bill. For those wondering, PowerXpress is AMD's version of switchable graphics. The general difference being PowerXpress is the combination of integrated and dedicated Radeon graphics, while switchable graphics is the combination of Intel HD integrated and either Nvidia or AMD graphics. This is another driver update consideration because Intel doesn't give driver updates to AMD for their graphics users will have to rely on the company from which they buy their laptops.
The Processor
AMD mobile CPUs have gotten a bad reputation for running hot. It's my opinion that it's just laptop manufacturers choosing to pair cheap parts and poor cooling solutions with AMD CPUs because they're "cheap" processors. In fact, the areas that get hottest on the dv6 are the left palm rest where the hard drive resides underneath and the vent on the left side where the laptop fan shunts the heat produced by the CPU and GPU under full load. Rest assured that the dv6 will run as cool as laptops with the Core i processors.
Now, the N930 shouldn't be compared to the Core i7. This CPU is designed and priced to compete with the Core i5 and i3 CPUs. The caveat to comparing it to the i5 and i3 is that the i5 and i3 are dual core with the i5 able to trick Windows into thinking it has 4 cores through Intel's Hyperthreading technology. With Turbo Boost technology on both Core i3 and i5, the Intel processors will perform better on single threaded applications due to their ability to intelligently overclock while the N930 maxes out on its 2.0 GHz limit. The N930 shines with multithreaded programs where it matches or beats i5 processors. For most users, none of this matters since performance differences in everyday programs like web browsers and Microsoft Office are unnoticeable.
The Power Consumption
Because the N930 is a true quad core, actual battery life for the dv6 is 2.5-3 hours with wireless on, Radeon 4250 activated, and 60% screen brightness while doing light tasks like listening to music, web browsing, and typing documents. Laptops sporting CPUs with fewer cores will have longer battery life due to less cores needing power.
In any case, I highly recommend the dv6 to anyone looking for a laptop at a low price with its specifications. A solid processor with the combination of the Radeon 5650 and 4250 make this laptop an excellent purchase.
Error Corrections and Additions (2010-08-19):
The hard drive is not under the left palm rest, but under the touchpad.
The GPU is under the left palm rest, which is what is generating the heat there.
The dv6-3050us is a United States quickship model for the dv6z Select Edition that's customizable on HP's website.
This does not come with the backlit keyboard or touchscreen. It was mentioned in the comments, but I thought to add it here.
The battery is a standard capacity 6 cell 55Wh battery.
This does not come with recovery DVDs. HP has a utility pre-installed that allows users to make them, which requires 5 DVDs or a USB Flash drive of equal capacity. Dual layer and re-writables will not work. I recommend everyone make these recovery discs the first thing after Windows loads and store them somewhere safe. Make 2 sets if you want to be safe.
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This laptop is Amazing, it's fast' light weight and seems to be very well built.I got right at 4hrs on the battery while playing music, surfing the net and transferring files from my old laptop. The battery recharged in just about an hour.The keyboard is solid all though it took a little getting use to, coming from my 17in Dell with a full size keyboard. The track pad is great with pinch to zoom and gestures.
The AMD quad core is powerful and hasn't missed a beat yet. The laptop stays cool and quiet the only time i hear a fan is when it's booting up.
This is a great laptop and i would buy this again in a heart beat
Best Deals for HP Pavilion dv6-3050us 15.6-Inch Laptop
I actually ordered this from HP Direct, since they had a good sale going on, which I heaped a coupon on top of. But, that's neither here nor there.I'm glad I opted for this unit rather than one of the units with a dual-core Turion II Ultra and a 17.3" screen. Honestly, to me, the 15.6" screen seems utterly ginormous. The laptop is definitely large and relatively 'in charge'...
Pros:
Seemingly huge widescreen LCD.
2 GHz quad-core Phenom II mobile processor.
Fingerprint recognition (didn't think I'd use this much; now I wonder how I ever lived without it, as I never even type my password to log in to the system any more, since a simple swipe of the finger logs me in)
Dual ATI video chips for high-performance and power-saving uses.
Nearly every port, communication device and connector you'll ever need (Ethernet, WiFi B/G/N, Bluetooth, VGA out, HDMI out, SD card reader, several USB 2 ports)
Massive 640GB hard drive.
QuickWeb Instant-On environment (lets to power directly into a limited windowed environment to connect to the web, certain online e-mail systems, stream video, listen to your music library, access an event calendar and one or two other functions).
It looks nice. It has an aluminum (I think) outer body, with a pleasant but not overly elaborate design etched into it.
Cons:
HD is 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. Haven't decided yet whether this will be a bottleneck on the system. I hope not. Startup doesn't seem SIGNIFICANTLY faster than Windows XP. A few seconds shaved off here and there. Not sure whether that's a HD seek-time / read-time issue, or if Windows 7 just innately has more stuff to load up.
There is a lot of pre-loaded software that folks may want to take off.
Doesn't come with a hard copy of startup discs. You have to burn your own restore media to a DVD or flash drive. The system only lets you burn them once. So, if you lose them, you're SOL.
By default, the fingerprint reader only lets you set up 8 fingers, not all 10. It's unclear why this is so or how to fix it. A rather silly and arbitrary setting.
When going from wall power to battery power, the system will switch from a high-power video chip to a low-power video chip. The switch in hardware sometimes causes software to hang if it doesn't know how to deal with the change. Best to close as much software as possible before switching chips, or else leave the high-power chip running and deal with the reduced battery life.
The QuickWeb environment seems to not be as good at playing streaming video as Windows proper is, so if you maximize the video it sometimes becomes quite blocky or stuttery. Not sure why this should be so.
The left and right mouse buttons are built into the touchpad and are 'touchy' to say the least. If you tap-click either of them it only works as a left-click. I haven't found a way to set the right button to tap-click as a contextual menu right click. Since they're touch sensitive, if you try to push the buttons manually by pressing down on them, you will likely end up unintentionally moving the cursor off what you were trying to click in the first place before the button is fully depressed. This has become rather noisome. I haven't yet found an adequate software or hardware workaround/hack to make this function 'as-expected.'
Overall, I very much like this laptop. I can't really compare it to any other models out there, since I only need one laptop, really.
The QuickWeb environment is nifty for quickly powering in to a usable environment and surfing the web wirelessly from our WiFi router. Setup was pretty simple. Only take about 1-2 seconds to power into it and 3-5 seconds after you click the browser icon for it to hook up to the WiFi, on average (it's a bit odd that it doesn't hook up immediately, so you get a 'page not found' error, but as soon as it connects, it automatically refreshes the page and connects, so you're up and running).
The fingerprint scanner is a rather nice feature. I never log in manually anymore. Much easier to just swipe a random finger and let it figure out who's logging in, and have it load the appropriate desktop (I only have one desktop, but I'm quite certain that's how it works; it does the heavy lifting). It'll also let you set up website password storage where you can just swipe your finger as authentication. I actually somewhat prefer to type web passwords manually, so I can remember them. But I can see how some folks might be lazy enough to use it, and for them it probably would be handy.
I haven't started gaming on it yet, but with what appear to be some pretty decent video chips built-in, I have little doubt it should do pretty well on the gaming front.
The quad-core processor seems to power through Seti@Home computations like they were nothing. It seems BOINC can make use of the GPU for additional computing power, too. So things it predicts should take about 156 hours take about 54 hours. Things BOINC figures on being about 8 hours are done in about 4-5. At least that seems to be the case so far.
Unlike the one or two other reviewers, I have not encountered any problems with this unit, in terms of defective parts or hardware failures. One assumes they're simply one-offs and not a systemic problem. Granted, I did buy mine from HP, so there may be some additional room for jostling and breakage by buying retail where things get shipped from warehouse to warehouse, then by the Post Office or FedEx before arriving at the end-user's home or business. Not saying that's THE reason things break. Just one possibility. HP does warranty its new products for a full year. They also offer extended warranties for a little extra money if you're really worried about breakage and up-time.
So, in general, I find this to be pretty much everything I was expecting... Yay for a new laptop! :)
Honest reviews on HP Pavilion dv6-3050us 15.6-Inch Laptop
Came very quickly. Kudos to Amazon for shipping and packaging. Love this computer. It has in my opinion, the best array of features for a sub $1000 computer. I thought initially that a 15.6 inch screen might be a tad bit to big but it is perfect. Not too big and not too small either.I still feel like I have to be careful in handling this computer. Maybe because its my first, but it seems to be well built. I like the brushed aluminum finish versus the glossy finishes many laptops have had up till now. great thinking from HP. The combo Ati 4250 and 5650 video cards are awesome too. Now granted, it won't run the absolutely newest spankin brand new titles coming out, but if you are a light to moderate gamer who has mostly older titles (2-4 years old) or just needs a system with good graphics this system fits the bill. Flight Simulator X has issues when flying in new york. Not sure if that's a processor, video card or actaul game issue but then again, that game is hard to run on any system. Did run Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on this dv6 and it handles it like a dream. The 1 GB of DDR3 ram on the Ati Mobility Radeon HD5650 is good, but the best in line for gamers is GDDR5. But then again, I didn't buy this computer for gaming alone. I look forward to doing more with it as I've only had it for a couple of days, but so far it is excellent. It runs videos, even HD Videos (720P) very smoothly. A must buy...especially for those going to school.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for HP Pavilion dv6-3050us 15.6-Inch Laptop
I purchased this computer last summer. I use it for work and play, and overall I've been happy with it.Pros:
1. Big screen with nice graphics. Important for my work, which involves analyzing microscopy pictures.
2. Fast. Starts up fast (I usually set it to hibernate rather than turn it off, making start up even faster) and runs fast.
3. Decent memory (see above with all the microscopy...the images take a lot of disk space, and I'm not even close to filling up the memory. Not to mention tons of personal pictures)
4. Fingerprint log-in is fun, and keeps the computer slightly more secure.
5. Decent built in camera and microphone for video calls.
6. Quiet keyboard with decently spaced keys.
7. Touch pad can be turned on and off easily, and has that cool zoom in/out two finger motion.
8. Decent speakers (better than my last Dell)
9. Easy buttons for controlling sound/screen brightness/calculator/etc
10. Lots of input sources located on the side of the computer (USBs, video, headphones, etc).
11. Lightweight.
12. Windows 7 is much nicer than Windows XP or whatever that other version was that came in between XP and 7. It's fast and has few glitches.
Cons:
1. When trying to zoom into pictures or PDFs, it's easy to turn the image rather than zoom in/out.
2. Runs hot, thanks in part to the quality graphics. I'd recommend getting a fan to cool it off, or a lap desk so you don't overheat it. I haven't over-heated the computer yet, even though I run it all the time, but I definitely make sure I don't keep the computer on my lap (which I could do with my Dell). An easy fix is placing the computer on a book or binder rather than your lap.
3. I really wish it had a number pad. I do a lot of data entry, and it's easier to enter numbers in with a number pad.
4. Really short battery life. I'm lucky if I still get 2 hours on a charge (it started with just 3 hours) thanks to the fan that always runs.
5. The fan always runs.
6. Occasionally when the computer is switching between graphic cards (which it does when you switch from an AC source to the battery, to save on energy), the screen won't come back on until I hit the "increase brightness" button. Occasionally that doesn't work either, and I have to restart the computer. I haven't called HP customer services to ask about this yet.
7. If you run the lower-quality graphics card when the power is coming from the battery, the quality definitely decreases, which is a bummer.
All in all, I can work around the running fan and don't have too much of an issue keeping the computer plugged in. For the price, it's a decent deal. If you want decent memory and speed and can deal with the fan running and an occasional quirk, it's worth the savings.
UPDATE: Hard drive quit after 2.5 years. Bummer.
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