HP has some relatively new laptops on the market like the DV6000 series which can be customized or bought in made-for-retail editions. Two models are available for retail purchase, one of which is the subject of this review.

First, The Specs

In my eyes, the DV6000 is proof that PCs are affordable as hell today. These specs compare quite favorably to my desktop, all in a sub $800 notebook.

  • AMD Turion 64, dual core processor
  • 2 GB DDR2 memory
  • 15.4″ WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
  • 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7200
  • 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
  • 1.3 Megapixel Webcam with mic built into screen
  • Altec Lansing speakers built in
  • Lithium ion battery-pavilion dv6000 battery
  • 3 USB ports, ExpressCard/54 Slot, Video Out, Integrated Consumer IR, 1 RJ-11, 1 RJ-45
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • The DV6000 comes with a thin, little remote control for use in controlling HP’s multimedia player. HP is using a proprietary multimedia player for playing DVDs called QuickPlay. It ties in with the remote control as well as the QuickPlay buttons on top of the notebook.Powerful hp pavilion dv6000 battery, the player is decent, but many times I found myself simply wanting to use Windows Media Player rather than the QuickPlay popping up full screen. Also, the fact that it is tied into the QuickPlay buttons can be a little annoying at times. Several times I have rested my fingers on the top of the notebook and accidently pressed the DVD button and launched Quickplay. No matter what I’m doing, that interrupts the workflow badly.

    Differences between models

    Where the laptops differ is the case color and processor. The DV6770SE features a white case with silver keyboard and HPs “imprint design.” This laptop features an AMD Turion 64×2 TL-62 processor running at 2.1GHz. The DV6775US features a black lid with gray case and “imprint design” but has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor at 1.66GHz. Don’t be fooled by clock speed, the current crop of Intel processors clobbers all lines of AMD offerings. But, essentially, these laptops are on equal footing.

    The Intel processor will probably give you longer pavilion dv6000 battery life and run cooler, AMD processors are not forgiving when it comes to battery life or heat generation.

    So, that’s the back story and now its time to get to the point. I got the DV6770SE for review but what is said here will apply to the Intel version 99% of the time.

    Display quality

    The display is of what could now be called “average” resolution being only 1280 x 800 (1440 x 900 is becoming more standard) and I wish it was higher. It’s still nice bright and crisp, there were 10 steps between the lowest brightness setting and highest brightness setting. There are enough settings there to keep most people happy. If that’s not good enough for you then additional settings are available in the nvidia Control Panel.

    Activity lights

    Again, not many people think about this on a laptop. Most other laptops have a mix of orange, green, blue and red lights but HP did something different here. Every single activity light on the laptop is a nice “blue” color, even the “caps lock” button and charge indicator are blue. The only change I would make is on the power input, “red” for charging, “blue” for charged which would be similar to Apple’s approach but this is hardly worth crying over– powerbook G4 Battery

    Performance

    Vista has its say about what it thinks about your hardware so lets take a look. As you can see below, despite the “average” nature of its hardware, Vista thinks highly of it. What’s a shock is the rating assigned to the hard drive.

    The hard drive on this laptop is surprisingly fast. Surprising because it is “only” a 5400RPM (as opposed to a faster 7200RPM) drive with a capacity of 250GB. This usually translates to slow performance but I can say that is not the case with this drive. It’s fast, fast enough to receive a data transfer rating of 5.1. Similar 5400RPM drives in my other laptops only rate a 4.2 or so.

    While the 8400M GS graphics card is not a screamer or anything to write home about, it holds its own. You’ll be able to play modern games on this if you lower the graphics effects and resolution a bit. This particular card scored just under 1,700 in 3Dmark06. The same card in a Sony Vaio with 64MB of memory scored barely over 1,000 points.

    It would have been nice to see something closer or a score a little over 2,000 but for this card a score of 1,700 is still nice but not quite on the “excellent” side of things.

    Battery life

    If you don’t mind getting it down to the point where you’re running on “fumes” then its possible to get about 2 hours out of the battery,the same as pavilion dv2000 battery , maybe a few minutes more. Should that not be long enough, HP sells extended life batteries that last longer.

    Conclusions

    The HP Pavilion DV6000 is a really nice,perfect hp dv6000 battery , solid notebook computer and you really can’t go wrong with this unit. The price tag makes it very affordable. The unit sports a nice, sleek design and good all-around performance. It also offers a solid balance of features which really makes this entertainment notebook usable as a desktop replacement. In fact, I enjoy it so much I find myself spending more time working on the DV6000 now than I do my main desktop computer.

    So, despite a few annoyances, you really can’t go wrong with the DV6000 if you are looking for a solid, balanced work notebook without spending too much money.