HP Pavilion dm4-2180us (Office Depot)

The HP Pavilion dm4-2180us ($799 list at Office Depot), a mainstream laptop, will last you seven hours when you're on the road. Its Intel Core i5 CPU and 6GB of RAM are a powerful combination; whether your work involves day-to-day office tasks or something as strenuous as photo editing, the dm4-2180us has you covered. But there are other laptops out there that have more features and better performance for the price.

Design
The dm4-2180us's steel grey aluminum chassis has a brushed lid, like the Samsung QX411-W01 ($799.99 list, 4 stars). The design adds sophistication to what would otherwise be a metallic brick. The dm4-2180us weighs 4.33 pounds, which puts it on the lighter side of other 14-inch laptops. It's lighter than the Asus U46E-BAL6 ($899.99 list, 4 stars) (4.9 pounds), Samsung QX411-W01 (5.11 pounds), and Toshiba Satellite L745-S4210 ($639.99 list, 3.5 stars) (4.5 pounds).

The 14-inch widescreen has standard 1,366-by-768 resolution, which amounts to 720p HD viewing for online videos and downloaded content. The chiclet keyboard is full-size, but with a shortened Shift key to make room for the arrow buttons. As far as typing experiences go, it's no Lenovo ThinkPad (one of the best typing experiences around), but it will satisfy. The multi-touchpad has a light textured finish, and the right and left mouse buttons were easy to click.

Features
The dm4-2180us has an impressive offering of features, considering the price. It comes with the standard ports: three USB 2.0, HDMI and VGA video, audio and mic jacks, Ethernet, and SD/MMC card reader. The standout features are a fingerprint reader, which will serve to further protect your data from possible intruders, and WiDi 2.0, which is a wireless solution you can use to stream 1080p HD content from your laptop to your HDTV (provided that you have a Netgear Push2TV receiver, a $99 option). The Asus U46E-BAL5 also has WiDi 2.0 as well as a faster USB 3.0 port and WiMAX, a 3G mobile broadband technology that will keep road warriors connected wherever they are. The dm4-2180us may not have WiMAX, but it does include 802.11n Wi-Fi, as well as a DVD-RW drive.

The dm4-2180us has a 640GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, which is the second largest hard drive you could hope to have in this category and at this price. However, the Asus U46E-BAL6 has it beat, providing 750GB of storage space. That said, 640GB should be enough to store a music library, documents, and any other downloadable content you might want to hoard away?only the most enthusiastic downloaders will require more space.

There's some bloatware on the drive, namely a few of HP's own proprietary programs. But with the bloatware comes some useful programs, which includes a free version of Microsoft Office (with ads), Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, and Adobe Premiere Elements 9.

Buyers wanting more peace of mind may want to take advantage of Office Depot's several extended protection and service plans. Their basic two-year protection plan ($169.99) extends this warranty for another year, and includes 24/7 tech support. Adding premium coverage for drops and spills, and extending battery coverage for a second year costs $259.99, and a four-year plan, offering all of the same warranty and accident coverage, including 24/7 tech support, can be had for $349.99.

Performance
With its 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-2430M CPU and 6GB of RAM, the dm4-2180us made quick work of media benchmark tests, like our Handbrake video encoder (1 minute 49 seconds) and Photoshop CS5 (4:03). It beat out the Asus U46E-BAL5 (1:53 on Handbrake; 4:10 on CS5) and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) ($750 direct, 4 stars) (1:58 on Handbrake; 4:10 on CS5) by insignificant margins on both tests.

I saw similar results on our PCMark 7 test of day-to-day tasks. The dm4-2180us (2,316) scored 105 points higher than the Asus U46E-BAL5 (2,215) and beat out the Dell Inspiron 14z by a slim margin (2,308)?again not a huge difference. Both systems will be able to open applications and browse the Web equally as fast.

Because the dm4-2180us is equipped with Intel integrated graphics, it's not going to give you much in the way of gaming performance. Its 21 frame per second (fps) score on Crysis (DirectX 10) alone indicates that this system isn't going to the Steam market. However, it will lend itself to some less-intensive titles, like Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, and Limbo. If you're looking for a machine that can handle more advanced titles, you might have to go for something much more expensive and geared toward gaming, like the Alienware M11xr3 ($1,099 direct, 4 stars).

Battery performance was solid; the dm4-2180us's 55Wh, 6-cell battery lasted 7 hours 50 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 test. It lasted 31 minutes more than the Asus U46E-BAL5's 74WH battery, but couldn't beat out the 8:38 garnered by the Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) (65Wh).

The HP Pavilion dm4-2180us is a great all-around performer and has added features, like a fingerprint reader and WiDi 2.0 that make it well worth its price. However, the Asus U46E-BAL5 has more to give? and not only in hard drive space. Travelers will get much needed use out of the WiMAX broadband on the Asus, and USB 3.0 will help transferring data at faster speeds than USB 2.0 can offer. But if you have no use for advanced wireless features, then the Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z has a backlit keyboard, USB 3.0, and a battery life that's hard to beat.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Pavilion dm4-2180us with several other laptops side by side.

More laptop reviews:
??? Asus K53E-RBR4
??? HP Pavilion dm4-2180us (Office Depot)
??? HP Pavilion dv6-6173cl
??? HP Pavilion dv6-6123cl
??? HP Pavilion dv6-6163cl
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/3lXkHkTsX6k/0,2817,2395375,00.asp

stacy keibler dancing with the stars season 13 cast tay sachs tay sachs watch the walking dead giuliana and bill giuliana and bill