Laptops Arena

On our way to write HP notebook reviews, we stumbled upon the HP EliteBook 6390p, a model which most people forgot about with all this HP Pavilion fuss going around. In September 2008, Hp became aware that business people were in need of a machine with great battery life, as most of them travel and may be away from a power outlet for hours in a row. And since these people care about battery life more than they care about a good graphics card, the HP EliteBook 6390p was born. Besides from the normal battery, this notebook also supports a 12-cell battery which is optional (but VERY USEFUL) since it delivers almost 24 hours of continuous performance. All this, for a small extra fee of $189. We think it's not such a big price to pay considering that the benefit is huge and people have often found themselves on the road with a useless discharged laptop. The additional battery weighs almost 1.77 pounds and if we add it up to the system's 4.7 than you get a pretty heavy laptop but considering that this laptop is for business people to use, we assume that these people also have cars so they won't exactly carry it on their shoulder the whole time.

Since the system is configurable, you can choose between 4 different Intel Core 2 Duo processors (the P 8400 and 8600 and the T 9400 and 9600) and you have 2 different Ram options: 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM. Actually, the laptop only comes with 4 GB but you can always choose to upgrade as the notebook supports a total of 8 GB of RAM. As far as graphics go you can either choose the Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD or the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450. You can choose you disk space (120 GB to 250 GB) depending on the type of files you will be storing on this laptop and the applications you are going to run. As for the ports and connections, you get the wireless and Ethernet adapters, 3 USB ports and a FireWire port plus you audio inputs and outputs, a media card reader and a 56k modem. The webcam is one of the best around as it has 2 megapixels which provides a sharp and crystal clear image. The price usually varies around the sum of 1500 dollars but it can be much higher depending on what the customer wants to add to the system.

On our HP notebook review quest for today, we have decided to talk about something else rather that Pavilion models. How many of you know anything about the HP Envy 15 1060ea notebook? This is the notebook which probably comes closest to the design of the MacBook. The name says it all: it's a 15.6 inch display notebook. With only 2.35 kg in weight, this is surely a gadget you will want to throw in your bag and show it off to kids at school (just kidding, it's way too expensive for school kids). One really cool feature is the light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the monitor. It looks really classy because of the aluminum construction which also makes it very solid and durable. The keyboard is dreamy and you will be able to do some serious speedy typing in no time. Down the left you have a good set of shortcut keys and across the top you can find multimedia touch sensitive controls.



Even if it comes with a external DVD writer, the Envy 15 does not have an optical drive which is bad because the external one mean you will need extra space to put it and if you are on a plane or on a bus you won't have room for that. You can attach this DVD burner to your USB but still it's a lack we are not very pleased with. 320 GB of free space should be enough to store all the files you need, pictures, documents, music, movies, maybe even some games plus all your required applications. The connections are located on the right side which is kind of a cool feature since we mostly use our right hand for doing quick gestures.



You have 3 USB ports, a HDMI output, Ethernet port, an SD card slot plus the audio input and output. The processor left us drooling. The Intel Core i7-720QM is one of the best CPU's that money can buy. When we heard you also get 4 GB of RAM with this notebook (which can be upgradable up to 16 GB) we started drooling even some more. So far, this is something we would expect to find in a gaming laptop. Wait, it gets even better. Your graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 with 1 GB of dedicated memory. Now that is just too much! Mainstream tasks are performed at the speed of light. Watching movies has never been more pleasant whether it was on the notebook's own display or on a external monitor, images were very clear.



Even if this was not designed as a gaming laptop, you can sure use to play some good games, like Crysis which runs smoothly using medium settings. The Envy 15 does not excel at sound quality but it's still acceptable and we have heard speakers producing much worse sound. There were no overheating issues reported (at least you can't fry an egg on this one, like you can on a Toshiba Satellite L300-1AL) but it will get a bit warm during intense usage. Nothing to worry about though, you can still use it on your lap. It appears the only weak point of this laptop is the battery life (or should I say "non-existent" battery life).



We were disappointed to see that this notebook only lasts about 1 hour and 20 minutes with a fully charged battery but then we heard you could buy the slice battery that extends the battery life.  Overall, we were very happy with the performance of this laptop, we would even dare to say it can easily compete with Dell's XPS line of gaming laptops. Who knows, HP may really be on to something here.