HP Pavilion dm1-4010us Entertainment PC – Gray
- HP CoolSense technology automatically adjusts thermal settings
- Beats Audio for music as the artists intended
- 1.65GHz VISION E2 Technology from AMD with AMD Dual-Core E-450 Accelerated Processor
- Kensington MicroSaver lock slot
- 6-cell 55WHr lithium-ion battery
Stay more comfortable with HP CoolSense technology on the HP Pavilion dm1-4010us Entertainment PC. This ultra compact notebook lets you control the cooling so heat is directed away from your lap. Also, hear what you’ve been missing with Beats Audio. The dm1 is a great choice for students and business travelers because it’s more powerful than a netbook and more portable than a laptop. Integrated Bluetooth helps you sync your HP laptop to other digital devices, like your smartphone or desktop PC, without using cables. Plus, print, e-mail and browse the web wirelessly using built in Wi-Fi. Edit documents and watch videos on the 11.6 inch diagonal high definition LED backlit display. The HP Pavilion dm1-4010us Entertainment PC weighs just 3.52 lbs and is about 1 inch slim, which makes it easy to carry. The HP Soft touch Imprint finish with the pinwheel design in ash black gives this HP laptop plenty of style, too. Video chat in low light environments using the integrated HP TrueVision HD w
List Price: $ 479.99
Price: $ 448.98
Everything I wanted it to be,
I got this HP to replace my Toshiba 13.3″ netbook that finally BSOD’d after 3 years. I was very happy with my Toshiba and honestly afraid I wouldn’t like this HP, but it was time for an upgrade. My previous lappy before the Toshiba was an HP DV(don’t remember what the numbers were!) and I have a HP desktop, so I’m familiar with the brand and durability.
A few things: I mainly use this computer for the internet. I almost always have 2 browsers open with 4-5 tabs open in each of them (I play a lot of those stupid flash games on facebook and may have 4 up at once without any issues) and have never had lagging, except when my comcast was wigging out. I watch a lot of youtube and have only once experienced a choppy video, after which my comcast promptly went down for 3 hours (pretty sure the computer didn’t have anything to do with that!). I have installed Photoshop CS3 (I know, I’m outdated, but that program is freaking expensive!) and used it almost daily since getting my computer a couple weeks ago– no issues with that either.
So, the pros:
1. Quiet as can be. I haven’t heard the fan or hard drive once.
2. Audio is incredible. Thank you Dr. Dre.
3. Super fast everything.
4. Full sized keyboard is comfortable and has a solid inlay so little nitty gritty things can’t get down there easily. It took me literally 2 seconds to get the feel of the keyboard.
5. Screen is more than big enough (I thought it might seem too small– the 10″ acer/asus ones are just teeeeny to me and I wondered if the extra inch would really make a difference– well it does.)
6. Very sturdy connection between screen and main unit
7. Very light/portable & amazing battery life. The estimate says 9.5- I’m getting closer to 11 hours (I keep my brightness at the minimum).
8. Sturdy power cord connection.
the cons:
1. It is a finger-oil magnet. Not so much finger prints, but rather little finger pad shapes. I gave up trying to deal with that and now just ignore the back of my screen. I’m thinking of getting some vinyl design thing to put on the back of the computer to combat this issue.
2. “Gray” is a poor description (more the fault of Amazon than the computer, though)– on the Amazon page, in the HP description and on the HP site, it says “Finish: HP Imprint finish in charcoal” — I would say that’s a lot closer to correct. It’s not quite black, but nowhere near gray.
3. HP likes to give you a lot of extra crap software that you either don’t need or don’t want. I still haven’t figured out how to turn some of it off, and I’m not sure I ever will. All I can suggest is closing everything out when you start the computer.
4. The webcam isn’t fantastic. I don’t know how it can be called “truevision HD” when the picture looks like my webcam from 2005.
If I could do a 4.5 review I would, but I’ve decided to round up.
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|Good, not great, but better with a reformat and re-install (aka: “Sledgehammer”),
This is the second iteration of HP’s dm1z 11″ AMD powered netbook. The first one had great reviews, boasting excellent graphics for a netbook (even better than many low-cost laptops) and amazing battery life. The latest model, the dm1-4010us has a newer but similar processor and physical redesign.
While HP might not include a lot of 3rd party bloatware on their machines, they certainly have a lot of 1st party crap that the computer would run fine – if not better – without. As a computer science student, I have access to some free software from Microsoft. Luckily, that includes Windows 7 Home Premium. I tried to keep the computer stock, but the combination of excess software and four partitions (one recovery, one for HP’s software, one for the operating system, one for the bootloader – which is impossible to avoid) was too much to bear.
First, with stock software:
The computer was laggy at times. Boot time was slow and some programs took a long time to launch (also an affect of the 5400RPM hard drive). It comes with Norton Internet Security, which is totally useless since Microsoft has their Security Essentials software and is perfectly fine, and very quit. It just sits in the notification area and doesn’t bother you unless something tries to get in, something has gotten in (i.e., YOU let something in), or it’s doing a scheduled scan.
Beats Audio seemed cool at first, but it took me a few dozens times to adjust the sound to get it perfect. Beats Audio, to me, is essentially the “bass boost” button on old budget stereos.
HP bundles some software that’s supposed to help with keeping the computer cool, connecting to networks, getting customer service, games, etc. I found all of that completely useless, since having the correct display driver will likely keep the fan going when it needs to, Windows has perfectly fine networking tools, customer service can be found by calling or emailing HP, or doing a simple web search.
You’ll also need to upgrade the BIOS, and you’ll need to do two in succession since it’s had two updates since the product launched. The updates must be applied in order.
With a clean install of Windows 7:
It’s important to download the WiFi driver and/or ethernet driver FIRST and store it on a USB flash drive before reformatting the hard drive and installing a retail copy of Windows 7. I didn’t do that, so I had to install Ubuntu first (install, not use the live CD, because I had to install the WiFi driver there too, and it required a restart) and then save the driver to a USB flash drive.
Without any of HP’s software, the computer was significantly smoother. Boot time was shortened, less memory was being used, and there’s nothing like seeing a blank list under your “uninstall programs” control panel. Of course, it’s necessary to download and install the display driver from HP, but that’s where I would stop. Audio sounds perfectly fine (through headphones… more on that soon) without the Beats Audio software installed. Strangely, it seems to sound better without it installed at all over having it installed but not using it.
Hardware:
I love the sleek black look. The chiclet keyboard is great. But (here comes a shocker) the touchpad kind of sucks. Whether I use the Synaptics driver or the built-in Windows driver, it’s not fun. Actually, I find it less frustrating when using the generic driver built in to Windows. The feel of the touchpad is weird, because it’s textured. With the Synaptics driver installed, you can use two-finger scrolling or edge scrolling, pinch to zoom, rotate, and there’s a little dimple on the top right of the touchpad that can be double tapped to disable the touchpad. Without the driver, it just works and tracks your finger movement; no scrolling, no disabling feature, no rotating.
The display is really nice. I actually really love the display. With the ATI driver installed, it will auto-adjust the brightness (sort of) based on colors on the screen. For instance, if you are viewing a black image, movie, web page, etc., and then switch to something white, the screen will dim a little bit. Colors look great, purples look purple (if you’ve ever seen a crappy display, purples look light blue and hurt the eyes) and blacks look black.
Video plays nicely, that includes 1080p. No problems with that. I’m able to play Portal 2, which defaults at native resolution with the following settings:
-Anti-Aliasing: None
-Filtering Mode: Bilinear
-Wait for Vertical Sync: Enabled (Double Buffered)
-Multicore Rendering: Enabled
-Shader Detail: Very High
-Effect Detail: Medium
-Model/Texture Detail: High
-Page Pool Memory Available: High
The game played well and looked good, but the framerate seemed pretty low (you can just tell). I think lowering a few of the “high”‘s to “medium” would help…
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