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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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