I’ve been hearing about Dell losing marketshare to HP for a while but I’ve always been a Dell guy. But when I started to play with the new HP dv6000 series laptops, I had a change of heart. It also coincided with a new Dell laptop that was too hot to use on my lap and had serious performance issues for a Core 2 Duo.

I was changing sides. I went on-line just before the holidays and started to look at the DV6000 HPs and was able to build a serious system for about 1400. Alas, the wait would be 3 weeks and I wanted something sooner, like that day. I went over to Fry’s and experienced their abysmal customer service which sent me back to Best Buy where they had a fresh-off-the-boat Special Edition, the DV6780se. The case is a cool bronze metallic which makes this much more interesting looking than your everyday thick black shingle.

The se comes with 3GB of RAM, a good video card, Altec Lansing speakers, 12 cell battery for about 4 hours of solid use, webcam, 220GB HD, gold tone keyboard, HDMI out, firewire, B/G/N networking, lightscribe and a 1.67 Socket P Intel Dual Core CPU.

First, it’s fast in spite of what seems like a small CPU. I’ve had no issues and I demand a lot from these systems. The 3GB of ram and 220GB hard drive are a nice departure from the standard 1GB and 80GB you see in so many systems. The touch sensitive bar below the speakers is great if I only use it for volume control. Before I continue to gush, I have a few small issues:

- The gold tone keyboard is impossible to use in low light. I use this in bed witha small night stand light. The keyboard made it very hard to type.
- No Bluetooth. This is a silly thing not to include but this in NOT HP’s fault, Best Buy does not like to sell laptops with Bluetooth when they can sell you Bluetooth as a nice $40 extra. Adding factory bluetooth after the fact is very complex.
- The touchpad management allows you to do everything except change acceleration. Very weird. I have to move my finger across the pad 3 times to get across the screen.

Other than the gold keyboard, this is a DV6000 / Best Buy complaint in general.

Since I don’t use Bluetooth very much it’s not a deal breaker but I would have paid more for one with that included, just in case I ever wanted to use it. The keyboard is another thing. I bought a factory black keyboard for $20 on ebay and replaced the gold one. I use this in low-light all the time, the black one is a HUGE difference.

If I could change one thing, backlit keyboards. We take these things everywhere, it’s time this was standard on most systems or at least an option that’s easy to replace.

All things considered, I think I paid about $1100 for it and that’s a screaming deal. It’s pretty, fast, reliable and an all-around all-star. It’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

Update: Someone else reviewed it too

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Gadgets, Technology.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.