Nice looking machine, nice moves by AMD. Gonna have to sell off my Core2 box, hahaha!

"The Pavilion dv2 weighs only 3.8 pounds in its base configuration — in part due to its lack of an internal optical drive. It does have HDMI and DVI outputs for Blu-Ray support, although that would be a questionable benefit considering the small screen."

Given its lack of an internal optical (Blu-Ray) drive, the outputs are of questionable benefit, at least if they are, indeed, intended for Blu-Ray support. Surely the small screen actually makes these outputs of greater, less questioned benefit, since they will allow you to hook this thing to a large screen.

AMD ROCKS AND WILL KICK INTELS FURRY BEHIND

first post

My VAIO SZ weighs a bit less, has an optical drive, and a larger screen. Only the price of this piece of kit is interesting, but even that is not very good.

I always believed that portables weighting 3 to 4 pounds with 12 to 13 inch screens were subnotebooks, so to me this looks more like the first affordable subnotebooks than a new product category. This doesn't mean that this isn't a smart move (it is), as a lot of consumer want the performance and portability of a subnotebook, but most models were priced for "enterprise" customers (around 1000€).

This will also compete well against budget notebooks, since these machines probably have enough power to be you "main" computer if you don't need too much performance, as opposed to atom powered netbooks that are more secondary machines.

What worries me however is that no mention is made of the OS that the HP will feature. If it is XP or Linux it will be OK as the performance of the AMD processor and chipset will clearly differenciate it from atom based machines, but if the machine is encumbered with Vista the benefits may not be that apparent.

On the other hand if HP bundle the dv2 with a Linux distribution that includes a video player that support AMD's new XvBA video acceleration for Linux this would completely outclass the intel platforms for HD video playback!

Repeat - why?

Actually I managed to pick up an Acer Aspire 2920 with 12.1" widescreen (1280x800 res) with a Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2GB Ram and a 250GB Hard Drive from Comet for £350 (managers special reduced from £400). I'd say that's a pretty reasonable sub notebook.

If HP release this in the UK for about £300 AND it has a decent size keyboard then I'm sure it'll be snapped up. Hopefully it will have a Linux option as well as whatever Microsoft peddle.

Rob

Liking the look of this one, for the options it has to customize it and the holy grail of DVI + HDMI outputs.

I'd probably just go for the basic model (maybe with a little extra RAM for good measure), but I can see a lot of people liking the idea of a bigger hard drive and discrete graphics on a lightweight netbook-like machine.

Outputs on the thing look perfect for the odd bit of media centre usage, assuming the integrated graphics can handle HD output.. nvidia's already demo'd their new netbook chipset that can handle it, so that'll be the dealbreaker for me.

Linux would be nice to keep the cost down a bit, paying for yet another vista OEM before wiping it off would bug me.