HP Pavilion DV2840SE 14.1" Special Edition Laptop (AMD Turion 64 X 2 Dual Core TL-60 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

Following in the pattern of everything conceptualize in America but made in CHINA stay with SONY or TOSHIBA. Bought a computer from AMAZON, first they sent me the wrong computer second three months later the keyboard stop working, since I took my laptop to Costa Rica my WARANNTY IS NOT VALID even thought they have outsource a large part of Customer support in Costa Rica, and they have a huge service center in Costa Rica simple they wont help me out, HOW can a company this large abandonded a customer with out any resposibility. HP is a multinational with out any respest......! I am ambarassed to say come from the bay area as well as this multinational company. Both friends who work in Costa Rica and San Jose California for HP said HOW COULD I have bought HP....! I wanted to give it a try and buy ¨American(made in china¨).

I have Sony SZ110 laptop which I bought two years ago. I decide to look for a new one since the Sony seems to run very slow consider the amount of money I paid for the Sony one($1500). I have looked at HP, Dell, Gateway, and Toshiba, and then decide to go with this HP. I did a custom build this laptop on HP site and cost around $1250. When I saw at best buy discount for $799 ($100 off), I didn't wait very long. I have been a long fan of Sony due to their quality, however, this time it is HP.

Pros: 1) I like the design and the finishing - very shine and glossy. At night when you turn it on, the blue light on the laptop looks outstanding 2) The performance is very good. I have alot of software on this machine including Adobe CS3 suite and this thing shut down in 30 seconds and will boot everything up in 1 minute - fully load. 3) A great price for this kind of laptop.

Cons: 1) The volume control is slow to reponse when using the assign buttons. 2) this baby give out heat about 20-30% more than my sony. 3) The screen is not as bright as my sony (10-15% less), but if you don't have a sony before or don't care about the screen to be very bright, then it doesn't matter.

For your my normal usage, the battery last about 2.25 - 3.00 (6 cells).

Overall, this is a great buy. If I have to buy again, I would buy this one again.

I purchased this laptop for my wife to replace a bulky 17" unit for her. She loves the smaller size and the speed even impresses me (I'm typing this review on my 17" laptop that runs dual hard drives, dual SLI video cards and the fastest dual-core processor you can get today). The video quality is very good and the easy connectivity to wireless networks is very helpful to my wife. Overall, this isa great buy for the money. If I hadn't just bought my 17", I'd probably get one for myself (this coming from someone who upgrades his laptop every 12-14 months - so you know it's a good one).

This piece concerns my review of Sony Vaio CR420 vs. Pavilion dv2810US...

I suppose it should come as no surprise that the Sony name will cost a little more. This Sony Vaio CR420 laptop combines a new Intel T8100 processor with attractive style multiplexed with all the accoutrements of a modern laptop and maybe more considering it has the no yet agreed upon N-wireless 802.11. Aside from enumerating all the other features, you go ahead and read for yourself the fairly detailed Amazon description.

Although it does not contain a separate graphics card it's nvidia graphics chip does provide enough power to turn on all the Vista Aero features I know.

My major gripe with this pretty laptop is that when I compare it to the HP dv2810US it doesn't deliver me anything more (of what I need). Note that the HP Pavilion's CPU is AMD TL-60. While I have heard AMD is getting their butt kicked with T8100 (Penryn) I just don't see it here.

Without going to great detail I considered drive size/speed, memory, weight, screen size (Sony is a noticeably brighter screen btw),Bluetooth (pretty sure both stereo -a2dp),battery life, optical drive, speakers, touchpad, and overall quality of build. The HP performs well in all aspects. Note, I say "performs" instead of compare to differentiate my real world experience versus marketing specs. I do think the Sony is prettier. Note: I got the blue case b/c it uses a silver keyboard I preferred, most if not all these Vaio's have black keys. The Pavilion has black keys also.

Overall, I think a case could be made for choosing the Sony over the much cheaper Pavilion, however, for my station in life and value of a dollar, I chose the Pavilion dv2810us.

Things (of note) I did while I possessed both aforementioned laptops...
connected both wirelessly and wired to my home network (and ultimately Comcast broadband), signed in wirelesly at coffee house to web surf, downloaded and installed updates to Vista, streamed audio/video from Windows Media Server, installed VMWare Server GSX and then multiple OS's within -very slow to start on both laptops(slower than my previous Lifebook S Pentium M 1.6Gz w/ 2MB RAM running XP home).

I contacted both vendor's customer service departments about "downgrading" to XP Pro from the Vista Premium and it turns out to be not so easy. In the case of HP, while they highly recommend against downgrading the Web Chat HP guy said he could point me to some of the drivers on the web... but could not say if all the XP - flavored drivers were available. I didn't get into a discussion with Sony as much but got the same indication.

Hope this helps someone.

PS I like the Sony battery adapter more, it plugs into the laptop from the back with an "L" shape, the HP plugs from the side and sticks out approx 2". Also the Vaio has what I consider and annoying light emanating from under the touchpad -I dislike stray light-sources like that and not sure if it has a reason for it.