At first it took a lot of time to make a decision between a DELL, LENOVO and HP. Not forgetting the fact that APPLE is also a contender but never in a real race because of their over priced tags which to my opinion are just good for showoff when the same tasks can be done in a better faster way on lower priced machines.
For my everyday needs I have a Lenovo T410 and an old Intel duo core 1.3Ghz Dell machine. I wanted something which will run my Adobe suite without crashing and running out of memory all the time. I must also search for a machine that is not going to put a hole in my pocket beyond my budget restraints. I started looking at Intel new range core i7 but they are simply not fitting in my budget and the call now is only between i5 and i3 cores.
After searching online for days, weeks I was waiting for an opurtunity to find a perfect deal. An average i5 and i3 processor on a laptop would differ between £80-150 straight away along with ram option of 4gb or 6gb. It is obvious to pay that price for performance but paying beyond my needs and my budget will not be my kind of thing. Being a technical guy with an IT profession it makes sense to know my exact needs.
My other two laptops would unfold to go on ebay or possible one of the direct reselling shops(Xe, currency converter). I know I would still get about £250 odd from previous laptops considering they both have good working condition along with a hefty 4gb Ram in both the laptops.
Eventually after all the search and details of looking for perfect configuration at a good price I found what I was looking for. An i5 processor turbo charged 3.2Ghz with 6GB RAM, 1GB graphic card on board, 750GB HDD, HDMI port and all the little nibbles to satisfy my needs for a decent price under £400. Now that is what I call a deal, the only thing is I wont be getting any of the extras in this case. It would be a non OEM packed box with a one year warranty, no OEM discs and no Recovery discs which completes all my tick boxes. As I never ever needed those useless recovery discs since I prefer to configure my HDD partitions to my own needs.
It took me 8 working days after I placed my order online on PCworld website. At first it seemed to be a challenge waiting but in the end it was worth the wait. I got the laptop which arrived in the same state as I would expect to see it in the shop. Just that it was not in its original HP box but that anyways would be going in the bin so who needs to have that.
Accessories only included the battery pack and the charger cable with the wall mount socket for charging.
Ergonomics wise, the keyboard is spacious to use for longer keystrokes without much of strain on your fingers. If you are annoyed with the DELL touchpad this will be a relief as you can enjoy the comfort of not losing your work each time your finger or hand swipes over the touchpad. Lenovo has a better touchpad but I would be satisfied with this since I use an external Logitech wireless K360 keyboard.
Speaker performance is better than any other that you will get closer to in this section. HP Pavilion series comes with Altec Lansing speakers. That no doubt offers you crystal clear sound with additional options to adjust the bass and the treble if you are keen on the music preferences to your ears. You would be amazed even further if you have got a good set of headphones the quality is unbelievably worth tuning into and something hard to get away from.
On the other hand, you would want to know about the Sound surround features that are marked on the left hand bottom panel showing SRS premier sound. It does justify for the quality that you can expect for which you would have paid a good amount already. It sure is anyday a DELL and LENOVO beating machine on the sound output quality in this range.
For ease of connectivity to your other devices this is a well equipped machine. You would get 3 USB slots with two on one side, 1 HDMI port, 1 VGA port, 1 Ethernet Network Port, 1 each headphone and microphone standard jack along with a SD/MMC card reader that serves all the left side of the bottom panel on this HP Pavilion G6 series laptop.
Modern devices all need good and long life powerful batteries. This laptop comes with Li-ion cell battery to give you a good performance of upto3.5hrs easily and then showing last 15% remaining which I would say is second best in the market next to LENOVOs. No one comes next to beating the battery life of Lenovo laptops. Out of everyday use you will see that it does not really faint away like most others especially common in Dell. The power charger for this laptop is on the right side unlike those of the Lenovos and Dell which are on the back and on the left side. On the right side bottom panel you will also find the locking bay, third USB port, a display for charger plugged in and a CD\DVD tray. I personally did not opt for the Blu-ray model as I see it further away from my everyday use.
For this price you cannot get any other laptop in this range to satisfy all your needs. I would recommend this machine to anyone who wants to work on something good on faster processing power, longer battery life and excellent sound quality.
As of all the things there are always something that you feel is not right and that one thing which does not fit this criteria in this laptop is the display. It is reflective panel so if you are sitting in a bright source of light you will expect to see your own reflection in the screen more often than the text or your visuals on the screen. Again, for this price this is an excellent product but I would again recommend anyone buying this product in its entirety of quality and value for money.
FreeBirD 