One of good Amazon's BF deal is HP DM3, a 13-inch, thin, lightweight notebook with an eight-hour battery life, four-gigabyte memory and no DVD drive. Hewlett-Packard introduced the DM3 in July priced at $649. On Friday it will sell on Amazon for $499.
For those who want full PC performance optimized for mobility, the HP Pavilion dm3 Entertainment series delivers in a surprisingly affordable, minimalist design. Its top and palm rest covers are made of brushed aluminum in Modern Argento gray, while its bottom casing is a magnesium alloy. The metal casing helps ensure maximum durability at minimal weight. The clean design is accentuated by an iconic keyboard. Powered by the latest ultra-low-voltage processor and mobile graphics technologies, it delivers optimal mobile performance to support your on-the-go lifestyle.Get up to 6 hours of life for extended use with the standard battery. Break free with the performance you need in a design you’ll love (without the designer price tag). Set yourself apart with an ultra-thin design in colorized brushed aluminum. Get greater durability with lightweight aluminum-magnesium casing. Experience full-screen views of HD TV and movies with the 16:9 13.3-Inch diagonal display. Enjoy your photos and videos on HD TVs with the HDMI port (cable sold separately). Chat face to face with the HP Webcam and add fun special effects. Relax with extra protection from file loss due to drops with HP ProtectSmart. Enjoy easy access to your favorite entertainment with HP MediaSmart.
Product Features
* 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo X2 Dual-Core Processor for Ultrathin Notebooks (512 MB L2 Cache) * 4 GB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm) * 320GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive * 13.3¿ Diagonal High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1366 x 768); ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics with 128MB Display Cache Memory AMD M780G with 64MB GDDR2 (sideport memory) with up to 1.9 GB total graphics memory * Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, *Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life
Processor, Memory, and Motherboard
* Processor: 1.6 GHz AMD Athlon * Number of Processors: 1 * RAM: 4 GB * RAM Type: SDRAM
I have it in my DV2 - runs kind of warm, but performs nicely under Windows 7.
Are you sure you have the dual core version? I have the DV2 as well and have the single core. Runs great and I love the design. I'm looking forward to upgrading to a dual core.
timdao
Member
posted: Nov. 24, 2009 @ 3:34p
If it sells for 499 and has a $50 dollar rebate to go to $450 its a hot deal...otherwise its just a good deal in that you will probably meet or beat that price in the near future anyways. I had this laptop in my cart just yesterday at $550 + $50 dollar rebate...today they yanked it from the cart into saved items and I guess will republish on Friday. It also in OfficeDepot now for $499 AR as well but that may involve tax for most. This laptop needs to be seen in person to be better appreciated. The metal design is head and shoulders above its peers for the price. Trackpad seems pretty poor though. Also fast hard drive is a major plus.
It isn't in the same class as most of those chips however. For example its faster than the Celeron 900 that you find in the larger but cheapest of laptops BUT also consumes less power. It also consumes much less power vs the Celeron Dual-Core which is why it can achieve about double the battery life. It can be compared to the Pentium U4100 which scores slightly better at 911 and probably has even better battery life (8-10 hr vs 6) but these appear in the more expensive slimlines (i.e. the dm3 chassis itself has the U4100 equivalent at a higher price point).
timdao
Member
posted: Nov. 24, 2009 @ 4:08p
Area51knowitall said: I really like the way it looks and feels. But, then discovered that it is a netbook processor. yucky
There is NO comparison between this chip and the typical Atom N270's. Atom N270's are slower than a decent Pentium M from 4 years ago. The Neo x2 has a decent boost in comparison from this era of chips or Atom N270's.
In looking at this rebate form it seems that Amazon would be on an authorized vendor list which would entitle it to the $50 MIR. Rebate Form
timdao
Member
posted: Nov. 24, 2009 @ 4:23p
eazyc10 said: In looking at this rebate form it seems that Amazon would be on an authorized vendor list which would entitle it to the $50 MIR. Rebate Form
Yes I could have bought it at the $499 AR price yesterday...here is to hoping it lists at $499 before rebate and not $499 AR. If its $449 AR, it pretty much beats any BM doorbuster for quality and price.
BTW here is a listing for the same chassis but Intel branded equivalent. Besides the Intel CPU/GPU combo it also has DDR3 memory architecture (again has power saving benefits here).
timdao said: It isn't in the same class as most of those chips however.Maybe so, but price wise this notebook is competing with those processors (well not the ones at the bottom).
timdao
Member
posted: Nov. 24, 2009 @ 10:33p
STL said: timdao said: It isn't in the same class as most of those chips however.Maybe so, but price wise this notebook is competing with those processors (well not the ones at the bottom).
That is lacking a lot of context. Chips like these (i.e. Neo's from Athlon, and U4100's from Intel) that are used in small-form factor laptops and are beefier than the Atoms in cheap netbooks target a niche market between netbooks and laptops. Actually this niche market historically always existed at a premium over any existing laptops, but the whole netbook thing kind of turned everything around. However it is still there in the form of premium-built hybrids between netbook/laptop and now the price has definitely gone down because of netbooks. But to say that its price is similar to larger laptops and thus the chips being used should have the same amount of power for the price is lacking a whole lot of context and makes for a great apples vs oranges comparison. I've gone and held this laptop side by side to the $430 MSI at Office Depot and they are in completely different classes of what is being offered and may appeal in different ways to different folks. IMO having seen and held both, read up on both, etc the HP DM3 at hypothetical $450 blows the MSI away at $430 for things that matter to *me*, which is more than just paper specs and benchmarks for the $$. At $499 I'd still take it over the MSI when you factor the $430 + tax, etc and that I already have a 15" laptop with a superior 1680 vs 1050 screen
Yes, I guess it just depends if one is willing to sacrifice screen size and speed (and/or pay a premium) for smaller size and less weight. And in the matter of the $430 MSI (or even the $320 MSI from last week) one is giving up 2 years of warranty protection by opting for the HP. Some might think that isn't a big deal, but more than one (notebook) report has shown HP to have rather poor reliability.
Couldn't agree with you more Tim. I myself am in the market for this niche category, between a netbook and a laptop. I've found the DV2-1030us to fit the mold quite well and look forward to upgrading. The one thing i'd like to see is, how does the touchpad on the DV2 compare with the DM3. I've found the DV2 touchpad to be difficult to use but not impossible. I've read similar complaints on the DM3. As long as it's no worse than I can't see why I wouldn't upgrade.
STL said: Yes, I guess it just depends if one is willing to sacrifice screen size and speed (and/or pay a premium) for smaller size and less weight. And in the matter of the $430 MSI (or even the $320 MSI from last week) one is giving up 2 years of warranty protection by opting for the HP. Some might think that isn't a big deal, but more than one (notebook) report has shown HP to have rather poor reliability.
The whole reliability thing definitely is something to consider and the 3 yr warranty is a valuable asset to the MSI's. To be honest I've never had malfunction issues with laptops to reflect the whole 20% will have some failure in 3 years prediction in the SquareTrade report. But the laptops in my households are Toshiba, Asus, Dell, and just recently an Apple...so pretty much all the leaders in reliability. I use HP laptops at work and I really don't like them (they run hot and crash a lot and are also instruments of productivity vs entertainment). MSI is an unknown it seems, but I feel they'll rank close to Asus than to HP in that regard, but that is just a blind guess.
One problem with the 3 year SquareTrade study however is in order to do that study they can only really study 3 year old laptops. 4 Years ago Dell was the industry leader in laptops, and it has since moved to HP. HP was nowhere near dominant back then...also they have since acquired Compaq which I've always regarded as being a bit poorer in quality (thus any Compaq's in those reliability studies would now be under the HP/Compaq umbrella). I think Apples were still using PowerPC chips back then even. Thus it is not the best idea to judge statistics from 3+ years ago and apply them to current models as things in technology can shift so quickly. Korean autos are STILL associated with poor reliability when statistically speaking they have matched the best Japanese models in reliability for some time.
Anyways if I got the MSI and was annoyed by the hissing headphone output, it could be that no amount of warranty is really going to fix that for me, while on this model I might not have that issue, etc. Nor can I get warranty to swap some of their keyboard layout around, etc. Likewise I disliked how much friction there was on the touchpad on the HP and warranty isn't going to change that either. As far as support, MSI doesn't even have a support page to tell you to update the firmware, etc so that your burner can work out of the box. You need to read up on 'deal' forums for this knowledge. I wouldn't call that premium support by any means...at least the HP does have a support page up for that model in the line-up vs being the models that MSI dare not speak its name. Likewise I can imagine HP phone support to be terrible and over-worked vs MSI being smaller and mom and pop friendly.
Technical users/Gamers tend to know how much power they want/need. For casual users there are very few things that really rely heavily on CPU. A few would be flash video playback (and only because Adobe Flash software is horrible regardless of being the industry leader and does a better job of having exploitable security holes than it does at video hardware acceleration). TV Tuner/HD video playback (if not accelerated by GPU which in this case it definitely should be). Atoms will do poorly with large flash playback at this point, and the Neo x2 should do just fine. Same as with software decoded HD video. Most Atom laptops do fine with HD playback because of the GPU support...the same doesn't exist with flash but that is a failure more with flash than the hardware. Once Adobe gets their act together, or if Microsoft Silverlight or another web video standard ever gets a competitive foothold, it becomes pretty irrelevant. The 7200 rpm hard drive in this instance should actually give this laptop an edge with very fast boots/shutdowns as well as application launch speed, etc.
Also the resolution is not 1280 x 800, those were older models.
damatrixz said: HP lists the screen size as 1280 x 800 so its not an hd screen according to that A lot of the HP reps don't know what they are talking about. I have the unit; typing on it as we speak (bought from OD). It's 1366 x 768. 4 hours+ of battery life most times. I got rid of the hdd for an ssd. 7200rpm drive probably will be a bit more costly in terms of battery life as well.
Other pros: -It's very pretty. -HDMI out works fine. -Wireless b/g/n + bluetooth (just doing this upgrade at the HP site costs $50) -Price is very affordable. -Win7 is pretty too.
Cons: -Comes with HP bloatware, but it all was simple to remove. -12gb reserved for recovery partition. You get to make 1 set of recovery disks. -Not many useful settings you can change in the bios (right now at least). -Ram I got is annoyingly 333Mhz since i can't adjust the timings. -It can get annoyingly hot on the left underside if you turn off the "always on" fan option in the bios. -Mouse pointer is messed up when you come out of sleep. -Battery takes FOREVER to charge. -A lot of people also dislike the stiffness of the trackpad; I'm fine with it, though. (You should goto OD or Bestbuy and play with it and see if you think you will get used to it)
In case you're curious, Windows Experience Index shows: processor: 4.2 memory 5.8 (4 gigs) graphics 3.5 gaming graphics 4.9 primary hard disk 5.9.
With the advent of Flash 10.1 (gpu enabled flash processing), ulv processors can more readily handle HD hulu and youtube content. The intel models get bettery battery life, but I think a lot of users were thinking like me: Use this for awhile, and technology for ULVs will improve even more. So why pay extra for something I am probably not going to miss in 1-2 years. For the price and functionality, the dm3z is really hard to beat.
I worried about the warranty too, so I payed with AMEX.
boratwhatwhatwhat
Member
posted: Nov. 25, 2009 @ 3:33a
is the OP sure this isn't the same deal that occurred monday? can you provide a useful link to substantiate your claim? laptop is OOS at Amazon currently, and is being sold through a third party in the link OP provided.
I bought this on monday for 499 AR. is OP calculating the rebate into final price?
boratwhatwhatwhat said: is the OP sure this isn't the same deal that occurred monday? can you provide a useful link to substantiate your claim? laptop is OOS at Amazon currently, and is being sold through a third party in the link OP provided.
I bought this on monday for 499 AR. is OP calculating the rebate into final price?
answer me!
This is BF deal. Wait to see it pop up on Fri morning. Not sure about another $50 rebate on this BF deal though.
jxenon54
New Member
posted: Nov. 25, 2009 @ 2:10p
I just upgraded from my dv4 to the dm3t ($500 off $1399 coupon + FWCB a few weeks back; total ~900). SP9300/512MB Nvidia, 4GB ram, 500GB/7200 rpm... best of everything and then some. PC arrived a couple days ago. I absolutely love it. Looks like ~7-8 hours wifi surfing/charge. And so far Win7 is impressing me. Not nearly the windows train wreck I was fearing...
Looks like this lappy is currently $589 after instant rebate on the HP website - http://www.shopping.HP.com/store/product/product_detail/VM073UA%2523ABA. If the 20% Bing CashBack applies, the net price will be $471 - without the BF rush.
timdao said: eazyc10 said: In looking at this rebate form it seems that Amazon would be on an authorized vendor list which would entitle it to the $50 MIR. Rebate Form
Yes I could have bought it at the $499 AR price yesterday...here is to hoping it lists at $499 before rebate and not $499 AR. If its $449 AR, it pretty much beats any BM doorbuster for quality and price.
BTW here is a listing for the same chassis but Intel branded equivalent. Besides the Intel CPU/GPU combo it also has DDR3 memory architecture (again has power saving benefits here).
Nice idea on the intel variant! Definitely tempting. Also consider that warmth was one potential 'con' of the dm3 series that the higher end intel won't have. The only existing con besides the higher price is just the feeling that I have to put KY on the trackpad to make it feel enjoyable. In all seriousness I think the trackpad is a non-synaptics/non-multi-touch and its really amazing on a macbook how great multi-touch can speed up your operations without the extra bulk of an extra mouse. Macbook's touchpad is very good, I still laugh when people don't recognize what premiums you pay for with the Mac.
If you get a PC that has synaptics based touchpad, chances are someone down the road will make pretty amazing gestured mouse applications/tools for Win 7 if there isn't something out now. Pretty sure MS didn't ship with it because of existing Apple patents.
Has anyone confirmed this deal. I haven't seen anything on the Amazon website regarding this. Also have no idea when this deal would go into play since it doesn't specify a time.
MattH56
Member
posted: Nov. 26, 2009 @ 10:59p
brunsnick said: Can the Academic Purchase Plan discount be combined with bing?
I've heard several people say last time Bing was 25% that they didn't get the bing because of the other discount/coupon that was used.
Didn't see the promo when I bought the laptop, but I just got an email from Amazon for a $20 credit towards Amazon Video On Demand. Promo is only good for a limited number of NBC shows. Unexpected bonus!
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