Very good laptop with an Achiles' Heel. Review on HP Pavilion DV2046TU

I would have rated this laptop to be one of the very best ones if it had these two/three qualities:

1. The air vents for this laptop are_Very_Foolishly_ given below the laptop. This means you cannot place this laptop on your lap(ironically), nor on the bed nor anything cushioning(like a sofa). It needs a solid smooth surface(like a desk-board) to rest on and the heat to dessipate.

It heats up fast in the Indian environment, if you don't have an AC because enough ventilation is not available. Since I mostly use it at home and dont mind carrying the plank(almost its size) around with it, I am getting away with this handicap. But if you want real mobility, and work at as convenient position as possible, then think 10 times before you go for this.

1. This laptop comes with an Nvidia graphics card(basically, Nvidia chipset that also includes Ethernet chip etc) which has upto 128MB of shared memory. effectively meaning that this much of your RAM is not available to your OS/Applications. It is Vista-Ready, but Im yet to test it.

   
   




2. The battery is OK if you work at home or have a charging point available. Again if you are an avid traveller, stay away from this.

   
   

Having said all this, it is still a good performer when it comes to doing my work(I do a lot of processor-intensive work). Unfortunately, it comes with Windows Media Center edition loaded(which does not support multi-core processors, and hence cannot make best use of it). So, I installed Linux on it and the performance rocks. Hope this review might enlighten you enough to(not) buy this laptop.

*For those looking for specs of this machine:

Actual name: HP Pavilion dv6119us Media Center Notebook

CPU: AMD Turion 64 X2(Dual Core) TL-50(1.6 GHz)

RAM: 1GB DDR2 RAM

HDD: 80GB, 5400 SATA

MON: 15.4" Wide Screen with BrightView technology.

Weight: Around 3 Kgs

Battery Life: About 2-3 hours(for heavy usage)

Display: Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 with 128MB Shared VRAM

Sound: Inbuilt Altec Lancing Speakers

Buttons: 2 quick launch buttons(DVD and HP Quick Play)

Network: 10/100 NIC(from Nvidia), 802.11 b/g wi-fi card from Broadcom, Infrared

DVD: 8X DVD R/W(Double layer support) with Lightscribe.(No lightscribe DVDs supplied though)

Ports: USB 3, Svideo 1, SVGA 1, Mic In, Spkr out and PDIF Out,

Card Slots: 1 Express Card/54 slot(also supports ExpressCard/34), 1 modem, 1 NIC jack, 1394 jack.

Extras: 5-in-1 card reader