Speed, storage, and good looks are served up in generous portions on the 7.8-pound HP Pavilion dv9000t ($2,394, as tested), which sports an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, dual 100GB hard drives, and a glossy 17-inch screen. The icing on the cake is the HD-DVD drive, which plays a growing number of high-def movies, though not at the highest resolution.
With effectively the same design as the dv6000t, the dv9000t offers a shiny black coating and sleek silver inside, with an imprinted pattern on both surfaces. This large, attractive notebook can handle anything from standard office tasks to photos, music, and DVDs—or better yet, all of the above. Its speedy 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 processor lets you perform multiple tasks simultaneously, such as running a virus scan or installing program updates while watching a DVD, without interruptions in the audio or video.
Finding your way around the dv9000t is simple. Its large touchpad is smooth, making for easy scrolling, and it has an integrated scroll bar that makes scanning large documents a snap. You can activate the DVD player and multimedia features using the QuickPlay multimedia buttons, which make starting and stopping movies or listening to tracks simple.
We decided to pit the dv9000t against the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660, the successor to the Qosmio G35-AV650, the world’s first notebook with an integrated HD-DVD drive, by booting up the hi-def version of The Bourne Supremacy. On the dv9000t, the movie looked incrementally better than a standard-definition DVD, but on the G35-AV660, the colors were much more vibrant, and the images were notably sharper. That’s because the Qosmio sports a 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution LCD, compared with our dv9000t’s 1440 x 900-pixel screen. Spending an extra $50 will get you a more HD-friendly 1680 x 1050 pixels, but HP doesn’t offer an 1920 x 1200-pixel option. On the plus side, we like that you can play HD DVDs on the dv9000t using QuickPlay.
We then output the visuals from both notebooks to the HP LC3260N--a 32-inch television--via an HDMI cable. We were less than thrilled with the dv9000t’s visuals. The colors and crispness were still ho-hum, even though we were watching the movie on a much larger screen. Although the G35-AV660 didn’t display images on the big screen with as much pop as it did on its own monitor, The Bourne Supremacy looked sharper and had better color balance when fed through that notebook than it did through the dv9000t.
External speakers are usually a good bet if you want to coax high-quality sound from a laptop, but in this case music and dialogue sounded surprisingly clear when coming through the dv9000t’s built-in Altec Lansing speakers. Turning them all the way up isn’t a good idea, as the sound gets kind of muddy, but midrange sounds were definitely palatable.
An optional built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam takes surprisingly good pictures. It won’t give you seamless videoconferencing, and live video comes through a bit fuzzy, but it did capture movement pretty well. We should note that the screen frame was a bit flimsy and loose.
This desktop replacement’s Core 2 Duo processor scored a good-but-not-spectacular 227 on our MobileMark 2005 test. Thanks to Nvidia’s GeForce Go 7600 graphics, complete with 256MB of dedicated video memory, the dv9000t notched a solid 8,657 on our 3DMark03 test. It scored a good 49 fps using F.E.A.R.’s AutoDetect settings and a respectable 26 fps with the settings maxed out.
Battery life was decent. In our tests, the dv9000t lasted an above-average 2 hours and 44 minutes with Wi-Fi on. As for wireless networking, the system comes with 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It scored a respectable 13.4 Mbps of throughput at 15 feet and 11.5 Mbps at 50 feet.
Other than an HDMI port, the dv9000t features four USB ports, which are conveniently spread across the laptop’s right and left sides. You’ll also find FireWire, VGA, S-Video out, two headphone ports (one S/PDIF capable), and a mic port. We wish this system came with a PC Card slot instead of only an ExpressCard slot, which would offer more in the way of mobile broadband and other peripheral choices. But you can configure this system with an ExpressCard TV tuner for $130.
You’ll find plenty of software right out of the box. The dv9000t includes Corel Paint Shop Pro X, HP’s QuickPlay Direct 2.1 and Photosmart Premier 6.0, Intuit Quicken New User Edition 2006, Microsoft Office Trial 2003 and Money 2006, Muvee autoProducer DVD edition with Burning 5, and more. For those concerned about protection from malware, the dv9000t comes equipped with a 60-day trial of Symantec Norton Internet Security 2006. HP includes a standard one-year warranty and one year of 24/7 toll-free tech support, as well as one-hour e-mail assistance and real-time support chat available online.
For the best HD-DVD capability on the market, you’ll do better with Toshiba’s Qosmio AV-660. But if you love HP’s easy QuickPlay functionality, built-in webcam, and reasonable price, the dv9000t will not disappoint.
