HP Pavilion dm4-1063cl (Costco) Laptop

I just finished setting up a brand new laptop for a client, the HP Pavilion dm4, currently offered at Costco. I'm pretty impressed with it and there's some bang-for-the-buck to be had there.

It has an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon video card with 512MB of dedicated video RAM and a 7200rpm 500GB hard drive. The screen displays 1366x768 resolution, but the video card will support much higher resolution on external displays.

My favorite feature is the ability it has to use two external displays... I hooked it up to my Samsung DLP TV via HDMI and one of my 21" 1680x1050 monitors via VGA and it handled both with no problems. It can only handle two displays at once, so when you activate the two externals, the laptop display goes off. I was honestly hoping for a 3fer, but hey, two large externals is fine.

The body of the laptop is mostly made of metal. That impressed the crap out of me, too. Very well constructed but light as a feather. HP did good. If you buy it at Costco, you get 2 years of full warranty instead of 1 if you buy it anywhere else, even from HP directly.

It also has 3 USB ports, an eSATA port, DVD writer with LightScribe and a chiclet-style keyboard. My client only paid $799 for it. I think this Costco version of this laptop has some upgrades from standard, because everywhere I look online, the standard version has an integrated video card and 5400rpm hard drive and retails for around $900 to $980. That makes this Costco version a very good deal.

I ran it through the PCPitStop Overdrive test online and in comparison with other laptops (and many desktops, too), it's performance was far superior. I was amazed by the 3D video performance as well. I think it's mostly due to the combination of a high-end i5 CPU, dedicated video and fast hard drive. I would probably upgrade it from 4GB of RAM to 8GB, just for that extra edge.

One typical complaint I have read online is the touchpad. Many are saying it doesn't work like it's supposed to, but I couldn't seem to replicate their problems. It worked great for me.

If I had to make one complaint, I would probably say that I'd prefer the dedicated video RAM to be 1GB. But this little laptop does just fine anyway.

Anyway, I thought you all might like to hear about this because I think it would make a nice little field machine that could easily handle CAD. Plus you'd be able to bring it back into the office and plug it in to some nice external monitors to complete the office work. The nicer features do affect the battery life, so a cigarette lighter charger may be in order as well.

Here is PC Mag's review: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364796,00.asp