HP Pavilion dv8000

Why mess with a winning formula? In the Pavilion dv8000, HP basically borrowed the same stellar design and QuickPlay feature for instant music and DVD playback from its smaller cousins and added a bigger screen, Turion 64 processor, and ATI graphics. The result: a notebook that will appeal to home users looking to ditch the desktop without spending a fortune. 

The dv8000's 15.6-inch wide frame has plenty of room for a spacious keyboard to complement the separate numeric keypad. The touchpad is smooth and responsive, integrates a scroll zone along the right side, and smartly features the same aspect ratio as the widescreen display.

Without a doubt, the 17-inch screen is the star of the show here. The glossy finish makes colors particularly sharp and vivid. The LCD is perfectly suited for entertainment tasks like DVD movies and 3D games, but be sure to turn the lights down low or off as that high-gloss screen brightly reflects ambient light. The 1440 x 900-pixel resolution strikes the perfect balance between the number of pixels onscreen and the size of each one. We could easily run Outlook and Internet Explorer side by side without squinting to read the text in either application.

The Altec Lansing speakers blew us away with impressive volume. As with other dv series notebooks, you can start listening to music or playing DVDs without waiting for Windows to boot by pressing the DVD or Music QuickPlay button. When burning movies within Windows, LightScribe support etches graphics onto LightScribe-compatible DVD+Rs. The system's overall application performance was quite good.

The 2-GHz AMD Turion 64 ML-37 processor flew through Photoshop, Excel, and Windows Media Encoder without any trouble at all. With a full gigabyte of DDR memory onboard, multitasking wasn't a problem, either. The dv8000 notched a MobileMark score of 176, but that doesn't do the dv8000's real-world performance justice. We expected a mark well above 200.

Like Intel's Pentium M, the Turion 64 processor is designed to balance performance and power consumption, enabling the dv8000 to run for 3 hours and 46 minutes on battery power. The time dropped about 20 minutes when the tri-mode 802.11/b/g Wi-Fi adapter and Bluetooth radios were switched on. The preinstalled HP Wireless Assistant offers a simple interface to quickly enable or disable either wireless radio, as well as connect to nearby networks.

The dv8000 is not a gaming notebook, but it can handle most of the new titles if you're comfortable playing at lower graphics settings. With 128MB of dedicated video memory, plus 128MB of shared system RAM, ATI's Radeon Xpress 200M graphics offered reasonable performance in Far Cry at 1024 x 768 resolution with antialiasing disabled and all of the display settings set to Medium. Some choppiness occurred during particularly fast action sequences, but overall the game ran smoothly. Our 3DMark03 test gave the dv8000 a relatively low score of 1,523, but that's 500 points higher than the Toshiba M65-S809 reviewed in this issue, a 17-inch notebook that uses Intel's integrated graphics.

You'll find a wealth of external interfaces on this system, including an Expansion Port 2 that can be used with the optional HP xb2000 Notebook Expansion Base ($249) docking system that saves space on your desk while raising the 17-inch display to eye level and adding more ports. The ExpressCard/54 slot will accommodate future devices like high-speed cellular modem cards and TV tuners.

HP bundles a decent amount of software for the price, including Microsoft Works 8.0 for productivity chores, Microsoft Money 2005, Microsoft MSN Encarta Plus, Muvee AutoProducer 4.0, and Sonic Digital Media Plus 2.0.

Thanks to an impressive lineup of features, excellent ergonomics, and solid performance, the dv8000 is one of the best desktop replacement notebooks that you can buy. As long as you don't need the most cutting-edge graphics, this big-screen laptop has everything you'll need for work and play.