Digital Home Thoughts: HP Finally Gets on the 13.3' Train

"If 12 is too small and 14 too big, HP now has a laptop to sell you. With the Pavilion dv3500t, the company has slotted a 13-inch model into its already crowded laptop lineup. The dv3500t features a choice of four Intel Core 2 Duo processors (up to the T9400), up to 8GB of RAM, a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card, and up to a 400GB hard drive. The 13.3-inch display features a 1280x800 resolution, and an LED-backlit display is offered for an added $100, which HP indicates will shave nearly a half pound off the system's 4.1-pound weight. Unlike most of HP's laptops, the Pavilion dv3500 does not offer a parallel AMD version (a dv3500z, say, to the Intel-based dv3500t)."

I'm a big fan of small laptops, and a 13.3" screen is a great size for a laptop - it's small enough to be easily portable, but large enough that you don't feel like you're compromising your work style. What amazes me is that it took HP this long to get on board with this size of laptop - they've got to be the last company making notebooks to get here, but at least they finally arrived. I would have preferred to see the optical drive be removable and space for a secondary battery, because I suspect the 6-cell battery humps out the back in a big, ugly way. Also, 1280 x 800 is what I got on my Dell XPS M1330 over a year ago - 1440 x 900 would have been a nice advancement. Still, it's nice to see them releasing a laptop at this size, because their 12" tx2500 Tablet PC isn't going to be for everyone - the tx2500 is surprisingly bulky for a 12 inch laptop.