HP dv2 Available: Thin, Light, $749
We were impressed with the HP dv2 in Vegas early this year and have been waiting for word from HP that this baby was available for purchase. That word came today with the dv2 rocking at $749, a nice price for such a thin and light notebook.
The dv2 is a bit shiny but these specs show how good a deal this is:
- 12.1-inch diagonal LED BrightView display and nearly full-size keyboard
- AMD Athlon™ Neo Processor MV-40
- 320 GB hard drive, providing ample room for photos, music and other content
- HP webcam and microphone for staying in touch with friends and family
- HP MediaSmart software for enjoying photos, listening to music and watching Internet TV or movies in high-definition, including video content from MTV Networks television channels
- Lightweight, external optical disc drive
- 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery
- ENERGY STAR® qualified and EPEAT™ Silver registered
I would be more interested in a 11.6″ 16:9 laptop using the new AMD Conesus platform:
> .45nm CPU
> 780Ge northbridge
> 710 southbridge
That would be the real deal in useful netbooks. Compact and powerful, in addition to cheap plus good battery life.
Not a particularly big concern but how is the video chip in this thing? Is it at least on par with the gma 950 offered in the smaller netbooks? The 12″ samsung VIA that came out about a month ago can’t even run Aero with its chrome9.
I got a hands-on at CES and the dv2 was used to drive 1080p from Blu-Ray to an external monitor. The experience was excellent because the decoding was offloaded from the CPU to the integrated ATI GPU. One of the selling points of the AMD Neo platform is the outstanding entertainment possibilities due to the graphics. I’ll have more info if and when I get the review unit I requested back in January.
For $750, it comes with 4 GB of RAM and an external DVD-R/RW. This beats the Samsung N20 in terms of performance and features for about $200 more. That’s something I’m willing to pay for. Netbooks are too limited in the multimedia department.