gotshoo?

I bought a new laptop this week. I’ve been searching around for a while, even kicking around the idea of getting a MacBook, but I came across a HP Pavillion dv6000 this week and it fit the bill. I knew it was time to upgrade when I kept bothering Mrs. Shoo to use her laptop. My other laptop works just fine, and I think I’ve already found a home for it, but I’ve got it loaded with Ubuntu and the majority of the applications I use are in a Windows world (Virtual PC, Remote Desktop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio).

Nerd details:

AMD Turion 64

250GB; 2GB Ram - Upgradeable to 4GB

NVIDIA 8400 256mb Dedicated Memory

15.4″ Brightview Screen

Webcam and mic in screen.

HD-DVD Multi Record Drive

Mobile Remote

Vista Home Premium

It’s a pretty sweet laptop. I’ve been using it for about a week and had have no complaints. Okay, I do have one complaint and that’s all the preloaded junk I had to take off, but that was to be expected. The keyboard has taken a little getting used too. The keys have more of a click feed back than other laptop keyboards that I’ve used, but I’ve grown to like it.

I like the touch sensitive media keys just above the keyboard. They’re back lit with blue light, and the volume control you slide your finger across. There’s also a button to turn off the mouse touch pad. Handy if you’re typing a document and keep moving the cursor.

I’ve been plugged in most of the time I’ve used the laptop, but I got about an hour and a half worth of processor intensive multi-tasking usage unplugged, which isn’t bad at all. I assume you could get close to 3 hours if it was just word processing and light internet browsing.

It’s a pretty sharp looking laptop too. The screen is white with a light silver pattern in the background. The keyboard is silver and the base of the laptop is black. Looks like a professional laptop, but not a boring suit laptop.

The laptop is loaded with 3 USB ports, firewire, s-video, vga connection, rj-45 (lan), rj-11 (modem), 5-1 memory card reader, and even a HDMI connector. It also has great set of Altec Lansing speakers which are located above the keyboard.

One complaint that I had about my old laptop was that screen was too close to the keyboard when it was closed and would occasionally rub against the keys and cause marks on the screen. Not the case with this one. There is plenty of clearance between the keyboard and the screen and I don’t think I’ll have the same issue. Neat thing is that the screen is latchless and closes shut using a hinge mechanism.

Now to build some websites so I can pay this thing off!