Digital Trends

HP dv9000z

February 21st, 2007 | by Brandon King

Testing and Use

Overall, the system was very responsive and able to run Vista smoothly with all the eye candy enabled. The Windows Experience Index score was a 4.7 at configuration and dropped to a 4.6 by the time it reached our doors, most likely due to the very limited vendor-specific software bundled. (When you keep in mind that this score is out of a possible 6, that’s a mighty nice rating for a portable computer. Also, keep in mind that this score is based on the Experience Index as of January 2007 and will change as the Index changes.) As far as OEM systems go, the lack of gobs of bloatware was refreshing. Aside from a wireless configuration utility, QuickPlay, and a few promotional internet shortcuts, the system was pretty clean. Another performance-enhancing feature is optional RAID configuration of two internal SATA drives, up to 160GB each. Maximum RAM offered is 2GB of DDR2 memory. Still, the Turion is rated as slower than a similarly clocked Core 2 Duo.

We should note that the Quickplay application doesn’t really do anything that Windows Media Center doesn’t. In fact, it does much less, which leaves us scratching our heads as to the usefulness of two quick launch buttons that can’t be customized to perform other functions. The only real reason we could come up with was that this is provides yet another opportunity to see a big HP logo. They could have just gone with a Media Center theme that was HP-ified, but that wouldn’t have been as permanent.

There are two battery options for the dv9200; we received the high capacity model. We tested battery life using playback of an HD-DVD at full screen brightness while connected to a wireless network. Our reasoning was that this would tax the graphics card, CPU, WiFi antennae, and optical drive, and give us an almost worst-case scenario. We weren’t actively exchanging information over WiFi, but the link remained intact for the duration. The high capacity battery has a 15% boost over the standard 8-cell battery offered. For the duration of our test, the laptop was warm to the touch, but not hot. All power options were left as they were configured at the factory. We knew we were in for trouble when the battery was at 70% within 20 minutes. In the end, the battery only lasted 50 minutes under the above conditions. Yes, that is fifty, as in five-zero, minutes.

We couldn’t let it rest at that, so we ran a few other tests, but those numbers are pretty bad under any condition, especially when there is no higher capacity battery available. So, we plugged her in and juiced up the dv9200. That is, until we noticed something disturbing. When we moused over the power meter, the info pop-up said “Plugged in, not charging.” Could this be right? We waited about 10 minutes before 1% was added to the power meter and the status changed to charging. Intrigued by this, we decided to measure how long it took to charge 10% while the computer was on, but not being used, and WiFi was off. It took 11 minutes to recharge 10%, which translates into approximately 2 hours to recharge the battery fully. We put the dv9200 to sleep and waited 11 minutes, which resulted in an 11% increase in charge. The moral of the story? Feel free to tap away while this puppy recharges, since powering it down doesn’t increase the charge rate much. Once recharged, we tried plain old vanilla DVD playback with WiFi off, under the assumption that this would tax the GPU and CPU less (and probably the HD specific chips in the optical drive as well). Under these conditions, the battery lasted just under two hours. That’s not spectacular, but you can watch a DVD on a flight (if you can fit this monster on that tiny snack tray).

The dv9200 is a continuation of the dv9000 line, which was designed while Windows XP still ruled the operating system world. As such, there is nothing Vista-specific about this system’s hardware — no SideShow screen, hybrid drive/motherboard enhancement, TPS module, etc. Is that a bad thing? Not in this case. Most of these features are more useful in notebooks designed for portability. Also, the dv9200 has Bluetooth, which some early SideShow add-on products exchange information over. As of publication, no first-generation Vista-compatible notebooks contain these features, so it would be unfair for us to dock points for their absence. All major manufacturers opted to offer current notebook lines with Vista, rather than offer new models along with the new OS.

We did experience a few glitches. Several times, bringing the laptop out of sleep mode caused the screen to remain off and there was no hard drive activity. Trying to return the computer to sleep mode or hibernate failed, and the system had to be powered down.

The HP dv9200z