The HP Pavilion ZV6000 review

So okay. I'm going to do it anyways... and if anyone so much as dares to say I told you so...

The HP Pavilion ZV6000. The piece that I'm going to evaluate has the following configuration:

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
1. Processor: An AMD Athlon64 2.0GHz processor
2. RAM: 1GB DDR SDRAM
3. Hard disk: 80GB HDD (professed, only 72GB, 1GB by me = 1024*1024*1024 bytes, not 1000000000 bytes).
4. Graphics: 128MB ATI Radeon XPRESS with 128MB VRAM
5. DVD burner.
6. Ports and communication: 6-1 media slot, 4 USB ports, PCI slot, firewire port, monitor out, svideo out
7. A 15.4" TFT screen.
8. An 8 cell battery

LOOK & FEEL:
Okay, it will be a misnomer to call this brute a laptop. Its more like a portable desktop. It's big, and heavy and by the standards of my last laptop, this is a hulk.
It is pretty well designed. it has nice curves, and the two tone color finish is good. The bright blue LEDs all over the place are not eye shattering. The screen is bright enough for reading, even with the power off. The keyboard is large and I don't go around pressing the wrong keys all the time, like I did in my Dell Latitude. The overall interface design is thoughtful. The lights for the lock-keys (caps and scroll) are right next to the keys themselves. The touchpad has a nifty button that can turn it off, so that you don't accidentally click all around the place while typing (very useful, believe me). There are visible icons around the keyboard to indicate where each slot is. In fact the only place that I can fault the interface design is in the location of the volume control. That is right in the front, so that it is difficult to reach at best. Other than that this is a thoughtful design for a user interface. But then so are the well placed, large speakers. You _can_ listen to music on it ;).
On the downside, this laptop is heavy. Definitely not a 'lap'top for the gentle. I'm a big guy and I could only hold it on my laps for around half an hour without getting seriously uncomfortable.
4.5STARS.

POWERTRAIN:
Like I said before, this is a portable desktop. That statement is not necessarily derisive. There is a wholesome amount of power in this brute. Think of it as a laptop on steroids. It's processor incorporates some kind of speedstep technology so that it can adjust its processor speed according to requirement, thereby using less power. I have yet to see its declared processor speed rise above 1GHz (with Outlook checking mails, a download on the browser, a JAVA IDE running, a directory copy taking place and a number of applications in the system tray). A lot might be said about the 1GB RAM though. That might be helping.
The hard disk fitted in the brute is a 80GB 5400 rpm. Quite fast at loading applications. My usual suite of Eclipse, MS Office applications, browser windows, Windows Media Player and a 3D FPS game all opened quickly and without fretting. Lots of quickly accessible space is what every person needs.
The graphics performance is great. The game I tried playing on this were rather slightly old. I however did notice good performance on Medal of Honor Spearhead and Breakthrough, NFSU2, and Rise of nations (:p).
I am however going to cut half a point for the CDROM performance. It is a tad slow (probably comes from it being a DVD writer).
Rating: 4.5stars.

SOFTWARE:
The machine I bought came with XPpro. It does, however, come with XPhome as well. The Office suite is more of an advertisement. You can't use it unless you buy the software separately (it asks for the key you don't have). A nice internet dial-up bundle, and a DVD movie player brings on the rear. There is a decent collection of software that one _can_ buy, at an extra cost. I'm going to give this point a 3.5.
Rating: 3.5stars

So that about sums up my purchase. I like the laptop. I was kind of horrified when I first saw it... "What a hulk!!!"... but it grows on you ;).

So over-all a 4star laptop.

That's it from my humble side. Next review will be for the Creative MuVo. Goodbye and Goodnight.