HP L2000 Review

[thehstrybean]

This review is for the HP L2000 Special Edition Notebook. Yes, this is the LIVESTRONG notebook! With the notebook, you get a cool bag that has Livestrong, AMD, ect on it, a pair of headphones, Livestrong wristband, CDs, manuals, ect...
Specs
[*]HP Special Edition L2000 Notebook PC
[*]Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
[*]AMD Turion(TM) 64 ML-28 (1.6GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
[*]14.0 WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x768)
[*]ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M w/productivity ports
[*]512MB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB)
[*]60 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
[*]DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
[*]54g(TM) 802.11b/g WLAN w/ 125HSM/SpeedBooster(TM)
[*]12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
[*]Microsoft(R) Works/Money

Appearance & Construction
This laptop is very nice looking. I'll take pictures later (gotta get my batteries to charge up). I'm a little dissapointed that HP didn't go with all blue lights on this notebook. Instead, only the WLAN button is blue, while everything else is orange. (Power, mute, touchpad on/off, num & caps lock, CD drive light, and power/activity/charging light). The bottom of this laptop is grooved, something that I've never seen. There are no ports on the back of the laptop except for power. One things that I'm sad to see is the fan on the BOTTOM of the laptop. This makes it hard to actually use it in your lap. The 12 cell battery (the 6 cell may), is actually raised up, like a stand. It turns into a nice thing if your using it on a hard surface, but it makes no difference if it's being used in your lap. The laptop feels very sturdy.

Battery Life
I haven't actually had a chance to test this, but when I do, I'll post it.

Performance
This laptop performs very well. Mine only has 1x512mb of RAM, but that will soon be upgraded, as it's cheaper to buy a stick rather than pay HP to do it. I'm not going to benchmark until then. The future-proofness with the 64-bit computing capabilty of the Turion is very pleasing, and Windows XP x64 will be a very nice upgrade when HP officially makes the drivers for it.


If I've left anything out, please let me know. I've been building PCs for 4 years, but this is my first REAL laptop. My first one was an Inspiron 8100 with a bad HDD. Dell REFUSED to replace it, and I vowed that I would never buy from them again. All in all, this is a very nice laptop. The yellow and orange fits with the Livestrong logo and the Turion logo. It is all very nice.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v303/..._golf19/HP%20L2000%20Pics/IMG_0184.jpg
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v303/..._golf19/HP%20L2000%20Pics/IMG_0189.jpg

 

[ShellGuy]

Can help on at least one of your questions. Turon is the Low Wattage AMD64 chip... The lightscribe is nice but not something that is a deal breaker to me. If you want a burner with it they sell them on their own just get an external enclosure and do it that way. But that is me...


Will G.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

1. Coin toss. Centrino isn't so much the cpu as an integration of a P4 Mobile cpu, an 855 or 915 chipset and wireless networking.
2. Sempron is 32 bit. Battery life is unimpressive from what I gather, but could be wrong.
3. Turion is the A64 version of a Mobile P4: low wattage.
4. Battery life on my friends' A64 laptops is roughly equivalent to mine (A non Mobile P4) - but they all have bigger nicer screens.
5. Lightscribe would not be a factor for me as all my intensive burning is done on my desktop. Dunno what it's worth to you!
6. XP M is a fantastic processor imho. I'd go with something with an XP M over a Sempron or Celeron in a heartbeat. Probably also the lower-end P4 Ms (with 400mhz fsb for sure).

 

[thehstrybean]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
1. Coin toss. Centrino isn't so much the cpu as an integration of a P4 Mobile cpu, an 855 or 915 chipset and wireless networking.
2. Sempron is 32 bit. Battery life is unimpressive from what I gather, but could be wrong.
3. Turion is the A64 version of a Mobile P4: low wattage.
4. Battery life on my friends' A64 laptops is roughly equivalent to mine (A non Mobile P4) - but they all have bigger nicer screens.
5. Lightscribe would not be a factor for me as all my intensive burning is done on my desktop. Dunno what it's worth to you!
6. XP M is a fantastic processor imho. I'd go with something with an XP M over a Sempron or Celeron in a heartbeat. Probably also the lower-end P4 Ms (with 400mhz fsb for sure).

Would you go with an Athlon XP M over an Athlon 64/Turion?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
1. Coin toss. Centrino isn't so much the cpu as an integration of a P4 Mobile cpu, an 855 or 915 chipset and wireless networking. Close, but no cigar The Centrino platform requires the Intel chipset (855 or 915, correct), the Intel wireless card (2200BG or 2915ABG), and the Pentium M CPU. But it isn't a coin toss. From all initial testing, Centrino looks to have about an hour or so of battery life on AMD's Turion. Performance should be similar. However look for a review on a Turion unit as soon as the company gets off their @$$ and gets the shipment to our distributor. You can't go wrong with Centrino.
2. Sempron is 32 bit. Battery life is unimpressive from what I gather, but could be wrong. It is unimpressive yes, but not horrible. Much better than any P4 notebook though and performance is satisfactory for general usage.
3. Turion is the A64 version of a Mobile P4: low wattage. Pretty much correct. AMD took the latest Athlon 64 CPU, made special low power versions that run at lower clock speeds, and labeled them Turion's. Unfortunately they do not have special low power chipsets & wifi like Intel, but Turion should offer similar or better performance at a lower price.
4. Battery life on my friends' A64 laptops is roughly equivalent to mine (A non Mobile P4) - but they all have bigger nicer screens. On a regular DTR A64, you're looking at 2 hours or less in general. On an A64-M, 2.5-3 hours. An a Turion, 3+ hours.
5. Lightscribe would not be a factor for me as all my intensive burning is done on my desktop. Dunno what it's worth to you! Lightscribe is neat, but a bell/whistle to me. I wouldn't care about it on a laptop. I think of every extra bell & whistle on a lappy as something to break
6. XP M is a fantastic processor imho. I'd go with something with an XP M over a Sempron or Celeron in a heartbeat. Probably also the lower-end P4 Ms (with 400mhz fsb for sure). The XP-M is a great CPU, but you're buying old technology. For $829 on a REFURB FROM TIGER DIRECT :Q You can get new Centrino notebooks for that much. The XP-M's do run relatively hot, and only give you 3 hours max battery life. Unfortunately, I generally recommend most people to not bother with AMD notebooks if you want battery life out of 'em. Centrino really is just a great product.

Unfortunately your requirements all kind of eliminate an $800 notebook.
To play DVD's w/out booting up, I would look at HP. Just about the only HP notebook that will game at all is the 17" HP zd8000 series w/X600 graphics. But it weighs 8lbs+ and uses a hot-running P4 == zero battery life.
Gaming is what really throws it off at your price. Best you could do is a used/refurb eMachines M6800/Gateway 742x series. They are the same machine, use A64 chips, 15.4" widescreen, and Radeon 9600 graphics.

Do you need to be portable at all on this? Will it just sit around the house?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
1. Coin toss. Centrino isn't so much the cpu as an integration of a P4 Mobile cpu, an 855 or 915 chipset and wireless networking.
2. Sempron is 32 bit. Battery life is unimpressive from what I gather, but could be wrong.
3. Turion is the A64 version of a Mobile P4: low wattage.
4. Battery life on my friends' A64 laptops is roughly equivalent to mine (A non Mobile P4) - but they all have bigger nicer screens.
5. Lightscribe would not be a factor for me as all my intensive burning is done on my desktop. Dunno what it's worth to you!
6. XP M is a fantastic processor imho. I'd go with something with an XP M over a Sempron or Celeron in a heartbeat. Probably also the lower-end P4 Ms (with 400mhz fsb for sure).

Would you go with an Athlon XP M over an Athlon 64/Turion?

I think I answered this in my previous post, but no.

 

[ShellGuy]

If you have the choice go with the Turon. As for what was said above the Centrino is NOT a mobile P4. It is a P-m processer. XP-m is an older chip. The Turon is the newest and the best of them all..


Will G.

 

[thehstrybean]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
1. Coin toss. Centrino isn't so much the cpu as an integration of a P4 Mobile cpu, an 855 or 915 chipset and wireless networking. Close, but no cigar The Centrino platform requires the Intel chipset (855 or 915, correct), the Intel wireless card (2200BG or 2915ABG), and the Pentium M CPU. But it isn't a coin toss. From all initial testing, Centrino looks to have about an hour or so of battery life on AMD's Turion. Performance should be similar. However look for a review on a Turion unit as soon as the company gets off their @$$ and gets the shipment to our distributor. You can't go wrong with Centrino.
2. Sempron is 32 bit. Battery life is unimpressive from what I gather, but could be wrong. It is unimpressive yes, but not horrible. Much better than any P4 notebook though and performance is satisfactory for general usage.
3. Turion is the A64 version of a Mobile P4: low wattage. Pretty much correct. AMD took the latest Athlon 64 CPU, made special low power versions that run at lower clock speeds, and labeled them Turion's. Unfortunately they do not have special low power chipsets & wifi like Intel, but Turion should offer similar or better performance at a lower price.
4. Battery life on my friends' A64 laptops is roughly equivalent to mine (A non Mobile P4) - but they all have bigger nicer screens. On a regular DTR A64, you're looking at 2 hours or less in general. On an A64-M, 2.5-3 hours. An a Turion, 3+ hours.
5. Lightscribe would not be a factor for me as all my intensive burning is done on my desktop. Dunno what it's worth to you! Lightscribe is neat, but a bell/whistle to me. I wouldn't care about it on a laptop. I think of every extra bell & whistle on a lappy as something to break
6. XP M is a fantastic processor imho. I'd go with something with an XP M over a Sempron or Celeron in a heartbeat. Probably also the lower-end P4 Ms (with 400mhz fsb for sure). The XP-M is a great CPU, but you're buying old technology. For $829 on a REFURB FROM TIGER DIRECT :Q You can get new Centrino notebooks for that much. The XP-M's do run relatively hot, and only give you 3 hours max battery life. Unfortunately, I generally recommend most people to not bother with AMD notebooks if you want battery life out of 'em. Centrino really is just a great product.

Unfortunately your requirements all kind of eliminate an $800 notebook.
To play DVD's w/out booting up, I would look at HP. Just about the only HP notebook that will game at all is the 17" HP zd8000 series w/X600 graphics. But it weighs 8lbs+ and uses a hot-running P4 == zero battery life.
Gaming is what really throws it off at your price. Best you could do is a used/refurb eMachines M6800/Gateway 742x series. They are the same machine, use A64 chips, 15.4" widescreen, and Radeon 9600 graphics.

Do you need to be portable at all on this? Will it just sit around the house?

The amount of gaming I would do is very minimal...Video editing would come way before that...Playing DVDs without booting up is just an added extra...The Averatec plays them without booting up, and CNet said for about 5 hours...But the say that the Athlon XP-M is "crappy", which pushes me to the conclusion that they may be a lttle biased..I've read that the XP-M is one of the best, as stated above...The very fact that they haven't reviewed too many Athlon 64 or Turions (granted the Turion is rather new to the market...)...Anyways...

Yeah, I would like this to be fairly mobile, since it needs to finish up HS and go on to college with some vacations in there...That's one reason I lean toward the ze2000v...it's a full pound and a half lighter than the ze6000...It also has a Turion...But the whole "no lightscribe thing" just really bugs me...Also, it's not a widescreen, which isn't a must, but it would be nice...

Anybody had experience with EMachines? I've heard people say they're awesome, and some say they suck...

I've been reading about PC Card Express...What the heck is it? It replaces the Card Bus (Type I/II), correct? Also, how important would DDR2 be? Does it help battery life that much?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean
The amount of gaming I would do is very minimal...Video editing would come way before that...Playing DVDs without booting up is just an added extra...The Averatec plays them without booting up, and CNet said for about 5 hours...But the say that the Athlon XP-M is "crappy", which pushes me to the conclusion that they may be a lttle biased..I've read that the XP-M is one of the best, as stated above...The very fact that they haven't reviewed too many Athlon 64 or Turions (granted the Turion is rather new to the market...)...Anyways... AXP-M isn't crappy by any means. For a while it was a great mobile processor, a cheap alternative to Centrino when it first came out. But now it runs hot compared to Turion & P-M, offers lackluster performance compared to any A64 chip or P-M (or P4 for that matter), and gets you 3 hours at best. The Averatec XP-M's specifically run hot due to the poor cooling & the fans seem to run constatntly, with a high pitched noise. No point in buying old tech w/lappys

Yeah, I would like this to be fairly mobile, since it needs to finish up HS and go on to college with some vacations in there...That's one reason I lean toward the ze2000v...it's a full pound and a half lighter than the ze6000...It also has a Turion...But the whole "no lightscribe thing" just really bugs me...Also, it's not a widescreen, which isn't a must, but it would be nice... The ze2000v is a good budget machine. downside is the regular 15" XGA screen; i'm not a fan of low-res screens. Let me just reiterate that there is NO reason not to go with a Centrino notebook and you have a lot more options than Turion w/Centrino.

Anybody had experience with EMachines? I've heard people say they're awesome, and some say they suck... eMachines (now Gateway) notebooks are good bang for the buck. Their Centrino notebooks are ok and the gateway 7426gx has 15.4" glossy screen, 64MB Radeon 9550, A64 3700+, 1GB RAM, DVDRW for like $1300 on sale at Best Buy.

I've been reading about PC Card Express...What the heck is it? It replaces the Card Bus (Type I/II), correct? Also, how important would DDR2 be? Does it help battery life that much? PC Card Express, or ExpressCard, will be mainly important only in the coming years. At some point it will replace Cardbus on newer laptops, taking advantage of the higher bandwidth of PCI-E. It is only available on Sonoma-based Pentium M notebooks & some Turion notebooks. It is a good idea to futureproof a little and ExpressCard will be in the future. DDR2 isn't a big deal. It offers negligible performance increase over DDR due to increased latencies. Technically it runs at a lower voltage, but it is hard to quantify if that makes a difference as to overall battery life; I wouldn't worry about it.

In your price range, if you bought an HP you might be able to get the academic discount. Call their 1800# to see, I hear it is a good discount. Just tell them you are entering your first year of college. The ze2000v is okay, but like I said I don't like regular screens. The dv1000 is a 14" widescreen w/BrightView and comes with your precious LightScribe. I really wouldn't worry about that, as it adds a lot to the cost and your $800 budget is tiny already. You could configure a dv1000 or ze2000 for $800 but it won't be much of a video editing machine. You want too much for your money.
My advice is to wait. You said you're in HS? You don't need a laptop there, you don't even need one for college, but it is very nice to have. Just wait till you graduate HS, try to get some grad money together and buy a laptop worth your money. You won't be able to get what you want out of it for $800 and technology only gets better for the money.

 

[thehstrybean]

What is a low-res screen? Just a normal 15"? Is a widescreen low-res?

 

[fbrdphreak]

I define low-res as being a regular aspect ratio (non-widescreen) XGA. i.e. 14 or 15" XGA (1024x768). Everything is rather large, not very sharp, no desktop real estate to move stuff around.

Widescreens are better about it because you have more horizontal room, but a regular 15.4" WXGA still isn't ideal for me. The 14" WXGA on the dv1000 is actually quite nice despite being 1280x768 only. Icons/text are of a reasonable size, good horizontal real estate, vertical is lacking but okay; it just has a nicer look & feel to it.

 

[thehstrybean]

What's the difference with XGA, SWXGA, ect? Which one is the glossy looking, or is that just Brightview?

 

[fbrdphreak]

There are two types of screens, first off. Transmissive (matte, non-glossy) and transreflective (glossy, brighter, truer colors).

Then you have screen resolutions. Check here for a good chart of resolutions:
http://www.prismo.ch/comparisons/notebook.php

 

[thehstrybean]

Well, I've dropped my love for AMD...So now either an Intel or AMD...don't really care...It needs to be widescreen and have teh glossy coating (thanks much for the help, fbrdphreak)...Something for a little video editing...Preferably with some of the little buttons to watch DVDs without powering on the freakin thing...Let's go with the suggestions...

 

[lisasilver10s]

Weight is something I would definatly look at when choosing a laptop. Think of it in terms of milk cartons and carrying them around. It gets really heavy. As for the LightScribe, I love it and think it is well worth it. I have it in my laptop and use it all the time. It is great to burn my pictures on one side and then the label on the other side. My friends are always asking to use it or to have me make them a label on a disc for them. If you are going to be doing video editing and have to give the discs to people it looks very professional. That is just my input after lugging my machine around campus and having some fun burning CD's & DVD's. Good luck with your decision

 

[thehstrybean]

Thanks...I think I'm just gonna get the external DVD drive with Lightscribe...Just as easy...Any lappy suggestions, folks?

BTW, welcome to teh forums lisasilver10s! What lappy do YOU have?

 

[fbrdphreak]

I stick with my recommendation of the dv1000. Light, powerful options, 14" widescreen Brightview, Lightscribe option, relatively cheap, academic discount available.

 

[thehstrybean]

Their student discount is only 5%...Err...

 

[fbrdphreak]

That's it? Crappy, I thought it was more

 

[beverage]

the Office depot rebates out-weigh the academic discount in this case...next week of course, it could be different.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: beverage
the Office depot rebates out-weigh the academic discount in this case...next week of course, it could be different.

Downside to that is that you can't customize it. Are there even any retail models that use the 12-cell?

Either way, brick & mortar stores are a good option. BBY carries the dv1000 also

 

[thehstrybean]

Yeah, it is a sweet deal, but 7.97 lbs is heavy...but the 512mb RAM, Wifi, and DVD Burner make it a sweet deal...I could get this today...Anybody think of a reason not to? I need an objective opinion...

 

[fbrdphreak]

What are you referring to

 

[thehstrybean]

The office depot deal...

 

[lisasilver10s]

I have an HP Pavilion zv5000. It is a good computer, I don't use it for gaming or anything like that but the LightScribe is great as I have said. The only major problem with it is the weight. It is probably 10 pounds or so. The only thing I would say is find 8lbs and carry it around for the day see how you feel about it at the end of the day. If you are ok with it then go for it it sounds good to me.