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Thread: My review: HP DM1 laptop.

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    A shadowy flight. MSIC's Avatar
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    My review: HP DM1 laptop.

    I recently bought myself a replacement for my netbook, an HP DM1.
    It is specifically the 1010sa model, which is the bottom of the range, although i feel offers the best value for money.

    I picked mine up from a Tottenham Court Road shop for £340, and it's available online from £330 that I've found. [Edit: I just realised, this is the 1020sa model, which comes with 3GB!]
    Edit (06/09/10): Just followed the BHS link, they have increased the price to over £400 (very sneaky of them).
    However Aria are selling it for £309.99 inc VAT, plus delivery, as at today's date.

    My thoughts on use over the past 7 days:

    Positive:

    Value. I think this is a good value machine. The DM1 is also available in other quite similar (but marginally better) configurations but the cost starts to rocket to over £450, which I don’t think is good value.

    Size – I’ve been looking for a replacement for my previous netbook, and wanted something that remained portable but easier to work on. This 11.6” laptop gives me that. Easily slips in to my backpack.

    Screen – 1366 x 768 resolution in 11.6 inches is nice and sharp without being too small for me, and gives so much more useable screen real estate when using websites compared to 1024 x 600. The screen is also really bright when plugged in. Viewing angles are good enough.

    Weight – not as light as the netbook, but you can easily pick it up with one hand, at about 1.5 kg.

    Battery life – I got a crazy 10 hours approx whilst away last weekend, with light use but Wifi on. This was mostly used to allow Steam to install a number of my games over Wifi. I’m not expecting 10 hrs to be typical, but it’s the best laptop I’ve owned from this perspective. 6 cell battery is standard (rather than a cost option), and doesn’t protrude out of the chassis.

    Performance – Yes, it’s a Celeron! But dual core, 64 bit CULV 1.2 Ghz Intel processor with 1 MB cache actually runs Windows 7 really well, with bottlenecks largely being elsewhere.
    Integrated Intel graphics are always bitched about, but in fact it plays games that I like (see data below).

    Keyboard – this was actually the first feature that attracted me to the HP, after wandering round a few shops prodding about 30 different machine’s keyboards. These keys are quite nicely weighted and responsive, and give no flex in the chassis (unlike many others at this price range which feel like they have been built on a bed of foam). I can type comfortably. I think I’d still prefer the macbook / ASUS UL20a type of keyboard, but it’s a million miles better than anything I've seen from Acer. Just to comment on usxhe190's point below, yes it would be nice if it used the approx 1 inch of wasted space making the keys wider, but it's still ok.

    HDMI output! I’ve not used this so far, but can see it being very useful when I’m away on holiday.

    Win 7 Home Premium – despite having a soft spot for Ubuntu Netbook Remix, I have to say that Win 7 really does all that I want, and is very polished. Am so glad they didn’t go down the Win 7 starter pathway. In my mind, given that an OEM disc retails for £70 approx, this means that I paid only £260 for the hardware. (I know it isn't really true, but makes me feel like its an even bigger bargain, compared to my Linux netbook which cost £200). The only negative point is that it's 32bit.

    DDR3 RAM. I guess it's good that it's the modern stuff, rather than DDR2, and should help save juice.

    Indifferent:

    Bluetooth onboard. Nice to know its there, but not sure it’ll get used.

    SD card reader – standard stuff I suppose. I will probably use it a bit, although my D-SLR is compact flash.

    250GB hard drive. It's 5400 speed, can't remember the cache. Am very unlikely to have more than 50GB of stuff on it, given my NAS / home network, although might well load up some films when going on holiday. It's certainly not worth the extra £50 or so to get the 320GB model.

    Webcam & Mic. Only a 0.3 megapixel, but OK for Skype. I’ve never understood why anyone would want a 2 megapixel (or whatever) webcam – you wouldn’t be taking photos with it.

    No optical drive. What can I say – I knew this when I bought it, I rarely use discs these days anyway, and saves cost and weight. More of a positive thing than not. I have an external USB optical drive available if needed.

    The 'crapware' / default installed applications. Yes this includes Microsoft Works (!!), Office 2007 trial, Norton 360 trial, AOL Toolbar... all completely useless and annoying. That said, if HP gets cash from these companies for this which results in a lower purchase price, then I win, and it's only about 15 minutes of uninstalling. Plus, i'm getting to quite enjoy saying goodbye to most of these, in a perverse-pleasure kind of way

    Negative:

    WiFi – It’s a b/g card only, and although the speeds and signal range seem good enough in my home for web browsing and some media playback from my NAS, I must admit to already considering finding a suitable N mini PCI card to swap in. That said, it looks like access to this card and RAM and hard drive is just one simple flap, so should be easy to swap.

    Ethernet – 10/100 only. I guess also a sign of cost cutting, and not something I’ll be using often, but it’s a shame especially given that I recently bought a gigabit switch for my Desktop and NAS.

    2 GB RAM only. More precisely, 1 GB soldered plus the slot filled with 1 GB. Feels a bit mean perhaps, although the higher priced models have more. All in all though, it doesn’t feel like it limits the machine in use, and I can swap a 1 GB for a 4GB stick in the future if needed.

    32bit OS provided If I upgraded the RAM though, I’d use my full Win7 install disc to put 64bit on.

    The touchpad. It's rubbish. That said, i've never thought it was good to use any touchpad for more than emergencies, and use a wireless mouse anyway. But just FYI. It is poor.

    Noise - The fan is initially set to 'always on', and a quick trip to the BIOS changes this for the better. But it still spins up fairly regularly. It's not that the noise is loud as such, but you do notice when it comes on.

    In summary
    I'm very happy with my purchase, and am comfortable to recommend this to family and friends.
    Last edited by MSIC; 06-09-2010 at 10:35 AM.
    I'm commenting on an internet forum. Your facts hold no sway over me.
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  2. #2
    Senior Member usxhe190's Avatar
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    Re: My review: HP DM1 laptop.

    Cool thanks for this. I have been considering buying this for my Dad actually as he travels a lot and seems like it is better than a netbook.

    Was a little concerned about the keys as they didn't use the whole wide of the laptop to use it!

    Was also concerned about battery life as reviews suggested only about 4 to 5 hours life rather than 8 hours!

  3. #3
    A shadowy flight. MSIC's Avatar
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    Re: My review: HP DM1 laptop.

    Ok, first update. Remember, Intel integrated graphics ("Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD").

    Games
    Civ 4 (beyond the sword), (2007)
    and have the following settings:

    Screen res: 1366x768
    A.A. Multi: 0
    Graphics Level: High
    Render Quality: High
    Globe Quality: High
    Movie Quality: High

    Audio set to High Def Audio Codec.

    I would say that this is playable, although FPS is low-ish (probably around 15 - 20 or so). Fine for this sort of game though.

    Torchlight (2009)
    Rimlights : Off
    AA: Off
    Render behind Walls: On
    HW Skinning: Off
    Vsync: Off
    Resolution: 1366x768
    Shadows: Low
    Particle Detail: Low
    Netbook Mode: Off

    This runs quite smoothly. The in-game console shows it at around 18 - 22 fps. It does slow a little with lots of bad guys on screen, although still playable for me.

    Quake 3 Arena (1999)
    GL Ext: On
    Res: 1024x768
    Colour Depth: 32 bit
    Fullscreen On
    Lighting: Lightmap
    Geometric detail: High
    Texture Detail: High
    Texture Quality: 32 bit
    Texture Filter: Trilinear

    Plays super-smooth. Am not sure how many fps, but too high to count!

    Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2006)
    View Distance: 58
    LOD distance: 63
    Resolution: 1366x768
    AA: Off
    Texture Detail: Medium
    Water Quality: Medium
    Shadows: Low
    Lighting Quality: Medium
    Light Bloom: On

    This plays really well at these details. BTW, the space battles are easily a match for X-Wing V Tie Fighter - this game doesn't get enough credit for that!

    Doom 3 (2007)
    Screen Resolution: 640x480
    Video Quality: Low Quality
    Advanced options:
    HQ effects: No
    Enable shadows: Yes
    Enable Specular: No
    Enable Bump Maps: Yes
    VSync: No
    AA: Off

    This is tough to argue whether it's worth playing or not - These settings do give playable framerates for the most part, but visually it's not great, especially considering that the game really sells itself on scary visuals. I suppose if you wanted to learn the level layout or something you can technically do it, but i wouldnt play Doom3 on the laptop just for fun.

    Video
    Test film 1
    Resolution: 1280x720
    Container: Mkv
    Video Codec: AVC1
    Audio Codec: AC3

    Played with VLC (v1.1.0) and with Media Player Classic Homecinema (v1.3.1249), no dropped frames.

    Test film 2
    Resolution: 1920x1080
    Container: m2ts
    Video codec: h264
    Audio codec: AC3

    With VLC, some notable dropped frames and minor pausing, film is not really watchable.
    With MPC-HC, no dropped frames, all perfect.
    Last edited by MSIC; 18-07-2010 at 09:41 AM.
    I'm commenting on an internet forum. Your facts hold no sway over me.
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    System as shown, plus: Microsoft Wireless mobile 4000 mouse and Logitech Illuminated keyboard.
    Sennheiser RS160 wireless headphones. Creative Gigaworks T40 SII. My wife.
    My Hexus Trust

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    Re: My review: HP DM1 laptop.

    Quote Originally Posted by MSIC View Post
    The touchpad. It's rubbish. That said, i've never thought it was good to use any touchpad for more than emergencies, and use a wireless mouse anyway. But just FYI. It is poor.
    A lot of manufacturers seem to be skimping on the touchpads as of late. There is a trend to integrate the 2 mouse buttons into the pad itself, rather than making them actual buttons. This has the unfortunate effect that if, like me, you like to hover your finger over the button ready to press it, the pad can sometimes misinterpret this as you wanting to move the cursor, so it will jump for miles.

    q

  5. #5
    A shadowy flight. MSIC's Avatar
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      • Internet:
      • PlusNet FiberTTC

    Re: My review: HP DM1 laptop.

    I'm commenting on an internet forum. Your facts hold no sway over me.
    - Another poster, from another forum.

    System as shown, plus: Microsoft Wireless mobile 4000 mouse and Logitech Illuminated keyboard.
    Sennheiser RS160 wireless headphones. Creative Gigaworks T40 SII. My wife.
    My Hexus Trust

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