Unveiling

Two weeks ago now I got my birthday/graduation/grad-school/next-3-Christmases-in-advance/don't-ask-for-a-loan-anytime-soon heavily subsidized present, a new laptop. I'm required to have one at CMU and the old Compaq just wasn't fit for service anymore.

Since I had a reasonably good desktop already I started out small, considering decent low-end "home and office" machines and even some of the more powerful netbooks. I decided that if I was getting a new computer I might as well get something that's going to last and is worth keeping around for a while. Also, my parents had offered to pay for most of it as a combination birthday and graduation present, so I wasn't limited by the amount of money I was personally willing to shell out. At that point I started seriously comparing good mid-range models from Newegg, dealnews, and Staples. I had narrowed my choices down to a few similar models, and decided to take a look at the display models at Staples before making a decision.

To make a long story short, in the end I threw budget out the window and acquired a very nice HP via Staples, after some advice and inspiration from the extremely helpful managers. The HDX 16t Premium is one of HP's multimedia entertainment lines. This machine is a beast. My particular loadout, the 1370US, features the following:

Core 2 Duo P7750 2.26GHz CPU
4GB DDR2 RAM
16" BrightView Infinity display (1366x768)
NVIDIA GT 130M 1Gb dedicated card
500Gb 7200RPM ProtectSmart HDD
DVD Super-multi drive with Lightscribe
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1

And that's not all. It includes lots of little goodies like an integrated webcam, bass speaker, soft-touch media controls, fingerprint scanner, full keyboard, Windows Media Center remote control, Wireless-N and Bluetooth, e-SATA and card reader, bundled media software (polished HP products, with minimum third-party bloatware) and a stylish scratch-resistant surface. This machine makes my previous laptop, a solid mid-range in its day, seem absolutely primitive.

Take a look at that graphics chip again. With a model number ending in -30, I assumed it was a fairly low-end card and was puzzled by the fact that it comes with a full gigabyte of dedicated memory. Imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered that the GT 130M is actually a slightly overclocked 9650M GT, one of the most powerful mobile cards on the market. This thing plays Oblivion completely maxed out, although I've been using my cooling pad while doing so. I never would have thought my new laptop would beat out my desktop in every regard, but even my 9500GT is no match for this thing. I'm debating whether to even haul my desktop to school with me, since by the time I transfer my files there won't be any benefit to using it over the laptop.

Of course, as fantastic as this machine was out of the box, I'm not one to leave anything in its original state. I spent the first week leeching free wi-fi where I could get it, downloading all of my favorite free software and tweaking just about every setting I could manage to find the in labyrinth of Vista. It's now triple-booting Vista, the Windows 7 RC, and Kubuntu Linux 9.04, all 64-bit editions. I've installed various apps, tools, IDEs, and plugins ranging from FireFox to Eclipse to Trillian Astra, and those only in the Windows partitions. I haven't managed to get Linux online yet, as I'm still a newbie with regards to hardware configuration and don't know how to connect to a wireless network without downloading an application to do so (as they say, you need Internet to get Internet). That may have to wait until I get back to the civilized world and can plug into Ethernet.

By the way, I can't get online with it at all at home, because it doesn't have a dialup modem. Such technologies no longer exist out there in the real world. Aside from that, my only complaint thus far is that it doesn't seem to have adequate cooling for such a powerful video card- as I mentioned, I keep it on an external fan while running games, and it still gets very warm to the touch.

All in all, I'm very happy with this laptop. When I carried it to a friend's house for the initial boot-up and configuration we were like kids in a candy shop. It may be overkill for a second college computer, but it's going to last me a good long time. And for $850, it was a good deal even on such an advanced model.