New HP Pavilion notebooks go for style, go with AMD
HP has had a reputation for delivering sturdy, competent, but unexciting hardware without a lot of pizzazz in the marketing department. As folks used to say, if HP was selling sushi, they'd market it as "cold, dead fish."
Well, somewhere along the line, Hewlett-Packard appears to have swallowed a marketing person, because the press releases for their new line of Pavilion notebooks -- including a competitor to Apple's slimmer-than-slim "Air" -- all gush about how stylish they are.
Stylish? HP?
The dv2 and dv3 are each marketed as "entertainment" notebooks. The dv2 is less than one inch thick and starts at 3.8 pounds, with a 12.1-inch screen and "a nearly full-size keyboard," which might be worth paying attention to if you're ham-handed. It has hard drive options of up to 500 GB and runs on AMD's all-new Athlon Neo Processor (which AMD may have wanted to announce in a few days, though HP had other plans).
An HP webcam and microphone are built in. Options include built-in WWAN (think WiMAX) and an external optical disc drive with Blu-ray capability.
Just to show how stylish it is, it comes in two colors called "Espresso" and "Moonlight." That's "black" and "silver" to the rest of us. It will be available in April starting at $699.
The slightly larger dv3 has a 13.3-inch screen and weighs 4.35 pounds. Its processor is the AMD Turion Ultra X2, and it includes a built-in optical drive and high definition graphics and video and an integrated media card reader. Options include a flash drive for faster bootup, and a backlit keyboard for working in low light. It sounds like it's intended for executives who spend lots of time on planes who want to watch movies when they're not working. It is available for ordering today starting at $799.
Two other notebooks are sort of new though HP actually put them on the price list in mid-December. The dv6 and updated dv7 each have 16:9 aspect ratios and are optimized for HD content, meaning they're great for watching movies on. The dv6 has a 16-inch display -- the first Pavilion to do so -- and the dv7 has a 17.3-inch display and improved graphics processor. The dv6 starts at $869 and the dv7 starts at $899.
"They've typically been $1200, $1300," he said. "It's coming to a lower price point -- not quite as thin, but pretty darn close." Due to the economy, people are being drawn toward lower-cost notebook systems, and they still want thin, he said. "Low-cost thin is the right combination."