HP Pavilion dv2 Ultra Portable

The HP Pavilion DV2 is surely an interesting product. Its somewhat of a hybrid between the currently hot-selling netbooks and your traditional sub-compact notebook. Lets find out if HP has managed to strike the right balance the two markets with it.

Packaged like most HP notebooks, the pavilion dv2 comes in a cardboard box with all the required accessories such as the power charger and user manuals. From the looks of it, the dv2 seems to use recycled paper for part of its packaging and if that is the case then hats off to HP. Also included is a cloth for cleaning the notebook because of its glossy finger-print magnet finishing and an external USB optical drive.

As far as the size and looks are concerned, the Pavilion dv2 could somewhat pass as a netbook. It has dimensions of 11.5″ x 9.45″ x 0.93-1.29″ and a 12.1” screen which is a bit bigger than most netbooks. Weighing in at 1.8Kg, the dv2 is a bit heavy for its size. Like most netbooks, the optical drive is not a part of the unit however HP includes a USB powered one in the packaging that can easily be plugged in.

The configuration of dv2 is quite a bit higher than your traditional netbooks. It has an AMD Athlon Neo CPU rather than an Atom which should offer better performance even though it has the same clock speed of 1.6GHz. Also, the chipset used by the Neo is much more powerful as far as graphics processing is concerned compared to the 945G chipset used by Atom. HP adds 2GB of RAM and a 250GB Hard Drive to the dv2 which is double of what you get with a standard netbook.

Expansion-wise, the dv2 has an Ethernet port, three USB ports, audio input/output, a card reader and video output with VGA and HDMI. HP adds Altec Lansing speakers to give it a nice kick if you like listening to music. The screen resolution of 1280×800 is also more along the lines of traditional notebooks allowing you to easily watch 720p High Def videos. Above the screen sits the Webcam which is 0.3MP resolution- not the best but fairly standard.

Usability wise, the dv2 is comparable to an ultra-portable notebook. The keys are ok in size but I feel that in smaller spaces, a chiclet style keyboard with spaces in the middle works better. The mousepad on the other hand is nice and big in size and the click of the mouse buttons just right- although it would’ve been nice to see multi-touch capabilities. In true HP style, a button located above the mousepad allows you to disable it to prevent accidental movements and clicks- good if you plan to use an external mouse.

What I did find a bit uncomfortable was the heat level on dv2- it gets warm. This is usually the case with ultra-portables as they have to pack much more power than a netbook in a comparable space. Because of the heat issue, the fan kicked in frequently as well producing a bit of a noise- especially if you’re in a quiet environment.