Sep 14, 2010 10:16 AM
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My old laptop's mainboard broke down and I was browsing to a huge amount of laptops for daily use. It should be able to do the daily internet browsing, email checking and office work. So I stumbled on the HP 530. I like HP laptops because they have a discreet design and I already used a HP laptop which I got at my former job. I decided to give it a try.
Design
It doesn't look too funky and as I already said, it's very discreet. People won't look strange at you while you're sitting in a bar or in the train and using it. Basically it feels very well built and doesn't seem to break apart when you look at it, unlike a lot of other laptops nowadays.
Features
It has everything you might need. The keyboard feels good, the keys are not wiggling around and the keyboard is said to be "spill proof"(I wouldn't try to spill my coffee into it, though.).
The HP 530 has an "BrightView"(glare) screen which displays a nice high-contrast image.A 320GB hard disk is more than enough for mobile use and the Core2Duo T6570 and the 3GB of RAM are great to make Windows 7 Professional(32 bit not 64!) feel snappy. For connectivity it features WiFi, Bluetooth and the standard 10/100 Mbit Ethernet port. For nostalgic people there's also a 56kbit fax modem integrated. It also features a 2 Megapixel integrated webcam which works nicely and flawlessly together with Skype.
The Intel graphics chipset is fine for watching movies and also displays a nice picture on older VGA monitors or beamers without a HDMI interface.
Cons
Battery life could be better(it's about 3 hours while normal internet browsing)
The track pad is sometimes a bit dodgy
Windows 7 32bit(I'd like to have the 64bit one and add 4GB of RAM)
