Thursday, October 21, 2004
Big & Badass: The hp zd7820us 17" Widescreen Laptop
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 01:30 PM
Remember a few days ago I mentioned that I was in the midst of trying to install Windows Media Center 2005 on something? Well, this is what I was working on:
Pathetic picture, isn't it? That photo just doesn't do it justice. Why hp doesn't have a press room with high-res photos is beyond me (much of what they do makes no sense to me). Regardless, I bought this bad-boy about a week ago and have been testing and tweaking it since. How big is it? It's the biggest laptop I've seen, period. Here are some comparison photos next to my wee Fujitsu P5020D:
It's HUGE. It's not meant for traveling - I doubt I'll do more than take it from room to room, and perhaps to events where I need to have monstrous processing power with me. The specs are pretty hefty: 3.2 Ghz P4, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB 5400 RPM drive. Driving the 17 inch, 1680 x 1050 resolution screen is a Nvidia GeForce FX Go5700 with 128MB DDR dedicated RAM. It has an Xbrite screen, which I believe is a Sony technology. Trust me when I say that this is the nicest LCD screen I've ever seen - it puts my Dell 2001FP monitors to shame, and that's a hard thing to do. The high resolution and insanely crisp screen make this laptop ideal for digital media work - I'm looking forward to loading it up with gobs of software.
The performance is impressive as well - it feels very snappy and responsive, and the gaming performance is simply awesome. I don't own Doom 3 yet, so the most demanding game I have is City of Heroes. Running the game at full native resolution, 1680 x 1050, results in butter-smooth game play and images that are jaw-dropping. I can't play this game at 1600 x 1200 on my desktop computer due to a lack of GPU firepower, but I can do exactly that on the zd7820us. Awesome! 8O
If I lived in the US, I would have configured it a bit differently, but being in Canada we can't order custom configs: hp releases a few different models and says "This is it, take your pick". The 2x DVD burner is a bit pokey, but I didn't have much of a choice - if you live in the US, you can get it with a 4x burner.
That's all for now - pepper me with questions if you wish. Next up I'll talk about the adventure of trying to build the most up-to-date and stable software platform possible...
Pathetic picture, isn't it? That photo just doesn't do it justice. Why hp doesn't have a press room with high-res photos is beyond me (much of what they do makes no sense to me). Regardless, I bought this bad-boy about a week ago and have been testing and tweaking it since. How big is it? It's the biggest laptop I've seen, period. Here are some comparison photos next to my wee Fujitsu P5020D:
It's HUGE. It's not meant for traveling - I doubt I'll do more than take it from room to room, and perhaps to events where I need to have monstrous processing power with me. The specs are pretty hefty: 3.2 Ghz P4, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB 5400 RPM drive. Driving the 17 inch, 1680 x 1050 resolution screen is a Nvidia GeForce FX Go5700 with 128MB DDR dedicated RAM. It has an Xbrite screen, which I believe is a Sony technology. Trust me when I say that this is the nicest LCD screen I've ever seen - it puts my Dell 2001FP monitors to shame, and that's a hard thing to do. The high resolution and insanely crisp screen make this laptop ideal for digital media work - I'm looking forward to loading it up with gobs of software.
The performance is impressive as well - it feels very snappy and responsive, and the gaming performance is simply awesome. I don't own Doom 3 yet, so the most demanding game I have is City of Heroes. Running the game at full native resolution, 1680 x 1050, results in butter-smooth game play and images that are jaw-dropping. I can't play this game at 1600 x 1200 on my desktop computer due to a lack of GPU firepower, but I can do exactly that on the zd7820us. Awesome! 8O
If I lived in the US, I would have configured it a bit differently, but being in Canada we can't order custom configs: hp releases a few different models and says "This is it, take your pick". The 2x DVD burner is a bit pokey, but I didn't have much of a choice - if you live in the US, you can get it with a 4x burner.
That's all for now - pepper me with questions if you wish. Next up I'll talk about the adventure of trying to build the most up-to-date and stable software platform possible...
