The other day an old friend asked me to build him a gaming computer, and since i had one and was getting sick of having the chunky desktop i told him he could buy mine if he wanted to as he was pretty interested in getting it as soon as possible it left me with little time to make a decision i didn't really want to build another desktop even tho the one i had was suited and built for gaming i found myself not really playing any games on it. so it was a big waste of space, so i decided that it was time to delve back into the realm of notebooks.
The last laptop i had was a Dell Inspiron one of the older models, the laptop was horrible it was poorly constructed and felt cheap, it was loaded with a amd turion 1.8mhz dual core, 1gb of ram, and 120gb HDD, with no graphics card. the laptop was slow but it did it's job and held up nicely. i think it would of probably been faster if i downgraded it to xp. but personally i think vista looks nicer.
So with a couple of days to work out what i could afford i went "laptop hunting" i was looking at the dell website and checking out the new inspirion models, and their newly created Studio series. it seems there is a wait for them as it said on there website to expect some delays and after reading some horror stories on how long some people had to wait to get theirs. i decided to have a look around at what else is out there. on googling most of the laptop manufactures i could think of. One stood out to me instantly, the HP dv5 series of laptops. i was a bit reluctant to get a glossy finish. but it was the only laptop i liked from what i had seen in my price range. i checked out some reviews and it was rated pretty highly, the ones without a dedicated graphics card seemed less popular, but were less expensive and more in my price range and as i wasn't going to be playing games on it i was leaning more towards one without a graphics card. i finally settled on the HP dv5-1008tu.
So today, i rang around and found a place that had them in stock, i thought i might as well go take a look at one in person so i could get a look at it properly and see how bad the gloss really was. when i saw it i got to say i was blown away. it was much thinner than i expected and much more solid than i thought it would be too. it is loaded with the Intel Centrino 2 Cpu, 2.0Ghz with a 1066mhz FSB with a 3Mb L2 cache, it is also a 45nm processor, 2GB of ram (one dimm) and a 320 GB HDD, and of course Vista. With no dedicated graphics card.
During the unboxing i was quite surprised to see that there were no included Disc's. and i thought it was a bit strange, but the polishing cloth was a nice touch, the first boot took forever and a day to get anywhere but once it did the boot times arn't to bad. after reading the included booklets i found out that it was up to you to make your own recovery disc's but the catch is that you can only make one copy. that took about 2 hours all up. then it was on to removing all the HP bloat ware and installing the apps ect i wanted.
The battery life is amazing, my old dell had a 4 cell battery and it wouldn't last long, i charged the laptop up and decided to give it a test run, it ran for about two and a half hours, with wi fi on and no power save feature. which is perfectly acceptable for me, the laptop is quite sturdy and well built. i really like the glowing HP logo on the back it looks really nice. the high gloss finish even tho it does pick up fingerprints, it is not as bad as i thought it would be, and i dont see it when im using the computer so it does not really bother me all that much, but when it does get quite dirty a nice rub down with the supplied polishing cloth should have it looking like new.
Now that i have had a bit of time to play around with it, im liking it more and more, to me personally there is no little niggles or problems.. but im keeping my fingers crossed that i don't run into any issues, i do intend to put some more ram in it.
