HP Pavilion dv2660se
Laptops these days seem to come “a dime a dozen”. They’re are a number of different companies offering a number of different models and it can be hard to figure out which company and which model best suits your needs. On of the larger companies is HP. HP has been known for it’s business laptops, cheap desktops and lately with its “Gaming Laptop” the HDX Dragon. Today’s review, however, is focusing on one of HP’s newest laptops, the Pavilion dv2660se.
The dv2600se (which from this point on will be referred to as the SE), is a Best Buy exclusive, meaning you can only buy it from Best Buy. The SE features a nice design, featuring cool graphics etched into the case, a hefty processor and a large hard drive.
Here are a few of the technical specifications for the Pavilion dv2660se:
- Street Price: $1,049.99
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5250
- 250GB Sata (5400rpm)
- 2GB Ram
- 14.1″ WXGA widescreen (1280 x 800 resolution)
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Things I like
There are many things that I like about the SE. This laptop is a fast machine. It comes loaded with 2GB of ram and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor which means it’ll be able to handle any programs that you through at it (even video editing programs). A great thing about the SE is that you can upgrade the ram all the way up to 4GB (which is plenty). When I was using this laptop I could feel the speed. My previous laptop was no where close to being equal with the SE and it just felt nice knowing that your laptop could handle anything.
The other thing I like about the SE is the fact that it has a 250GB hard drive. Most laptops will put a small sized hard drive to cut the costs but HP was smart and knew that people liked having extra space. The 250GB will mean that you can store all of your photos, music, videos, games and anything else that you want on your laptop, without the need of getting an external drive.
Things I don’t like
Unfortunately HP still doesn’t seem to understand that people demand a good graphics card. The SE only comes with an integrated Intel graphics card which mean it won’t be able to handle some of the newer games that are coming out. This is definitely a poor decision on HP’s part since this laptop seems to be geared more towards the younger generation and they like to play games.
I also didn’t like the overall feel of the SE. It felt cheap and looks much cooler online than in person. The graphics (on the case) look faded, like they had some cloudy kind of clear coat on it. The mouse pad buttons felt cheap and the screen looked washed out. Since this is a special edition I would have thought that HP would have spent more time on little details such as this.
Pros:
- Fast processor
- Lots of ram (with the possibility to upgrade!)
- Large hard drive
- Not that expensive
Cons:
- The Laptop feels cheap
- 14.1″ screen is a little too small for my liking
- Integrated graphics card means you won’t be able to play some of the newer games.
Final Thoughts
Companies need to stop putting integrated graphics cards in their laptops!!! If this laptop had a Radeon or Nvidia card I would recommend this to everyone and their dog. Because of the SE’s lack of a good graphics card I’m not going to be able to recommend this laptop. It looks ok and performs great (unless you want to game), but since it doesn’t have a decent graphics card in my opinion it is almost unusable. I would spend your money elsewhere and get a better laptop.
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Written by Adam McKerlie on December 12th, 2007 | Category: Laptop |
Leon Sexton
December 24, 2007 at 11:01 pm
This laptop is mobile perfection - with style. I am not really a PC gamer (have a PS3 for that) so I agree with the writer’s comments that all laptop manufacturers should kick the bad habit of packing cheap, non-upgradeable graphics chips in their products. It is THE achilles heel of so many otherwise PERFECT machines! Nonetheless, I am a “complainer” by nature and after 1 week of ownership, I love everything about this machine. I upgraded the Vista home edition to Ultimate (I bought it nearly a year ago, but it performed like a sloth on my older Compaq so I put XP back on it).
I was concerned at first regarding the processor speed, as my older notebook is a Centrino 1.5ghz (also with memory upgraded to 2gb). I was pleasantly surprised to see the real difference between that and this new Centrino duo 1.5. I find the performance improvement to be quite staggering (Windows Experience score was 2.1 on my old centrino, vs. 3.5 on the DV2660se). The notebook even comes with an “eyeglass cleaner” type rag for keeping the stylish casing polished & free of smudges. Classy. Ok folks, I’m a former music producer/artist turned network engineer. I like performance & style. This one has it all. First notebook I’ve ever bought which came out the box with everything I needed (high capacity battery, memory, huge hard disk, etc.). HP has gotten a major salute from a man that gives few compliments… Great Job HP!!!
Leon Sexton
December 24, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Oh, just one more comment. The salesman at Best Buy sheepishly told me as a final comment “the only thing wierd about the machine is that it has a thick battery that sticks out of the bottom of the unit”. I think he was worried that I would not like this feature, but little did he know - that was probably the final comment that sealed the deal for me! When I bought my previous V2135US notebook, the 2nd upgrade I required was a $189 battery upgrade to replace the lethargic little battery that came in the box. This DV2660se COMES WITH the same type of battery (though my old ones won’t fit this machine since the fat battery for the V2135US has the connector on the side of the battery. The new battery looks nearly identical, but has the connector in the middle of the battery for this notebook model… Perhaps that’s my ONLY “complaint”. (-:
Kamil
January 5, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I’ve just bought this laptop during the boxing day sale .. wasnt extremely expensive. I think is a great value for the price, it has everyting I need so it’s large hard drive, enough of ram for vista, can put 1 ram extra more if needed (as vista wont recognize more :(), nice trendy look, small screen size which is great for mobility but it’s still not too small.
the only things i dont like are large sticking out battery as it’s 12 cell. I will be buying a 6 cell for travel and other purposes which is an extra cost and another thing is that I experienced some network connectivity probelms but this could have been an isolated problem with just my router so it’s not a big deal i guess.
great machine overall.
regards.
Leon Sexton
January 5, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Kamil, beware of that 6 cell battery that you are talking about buying! My older laptop is the V2000 which uses the same style of battery as the DV2660se (just that the connector is on the side of the battery instead of in the middle like this one). The 6 cell battery is lethargic. After about 1 year, the battery will be lucky to put out power for 45 minutes (even if you regularly discharge/recharge the battery according to the standard “best practices”. Just a piece of advice. My V2000 came with the slim 6 cell battery. I ended up buying 2 of the 12 cell ones for that system, just as I have bought a 2nd 12 cell for my new DV2660se. I still average 4.5 hours per battery even with my old V2000 12 cell (about 2.5 years later).
Leon Sexton
January 6, 2008 at 12:31 am
Kamil, another comment for you. You metioned that you experienced network connectivity problems. Could have very well been a router problem. I’m a wireless warrior and I’ve never had any connection problems. The reason I replied on that topic however, is because the notebook comes bundled with Windows Vista HOME PREMIUM… That’s like a slightly less pathetic version of Windows XP Home Edition. The Vista version comparison mentions that Vista Ultimate has additional “advanced networking capabilities” not available in “lesser” builds of Vista. Fortunately for me, I bought the Vista Ultimate upgrade nearly a year ago to try on my V2000 laptop (1.5ghz centrino, 2 gb ram, 160gb hard disk). The achilles heel of that older system was the onboard graphics chip. It made the otherwise beefy notebook get like a 2.1 performance rating on the Vista system benchmark… It was almost unusable unless I disabled all of the VISTA AERO styled visuals and detuned it to look like Windows XP… Long story short, I put XP back on that laptop, and saved my license for - - the day after I bought my DV2660se. I immediately upgraded Vista Home to Vista Ultimate and the system has run like a champion ever since! Only one FYI: if you decide to upgrade the OS, you’ll need to reinstall the HP “support software” afterwards to keep everything working properly (link below). It’s a pretty painless operation.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfr.....mp;lang=en
One last thing that I was a bit concerned about with mine was that the battery display only shows “%” instead of “time remaining”. That was annoying (even my older V2000 had this feature in the beginning, but I think after one of the bios updates, that one also STOPPED reporting time remaining and now also just shows the percent full. I contacted the HP chat support and they gave me this link to a 3rd party app. provider.
http://www.nistech.com/Download/BatteryBar.exe
The app is nothing to rave about, but I found it to be satisfactory… Only catch-22 is that this download is an eval version with a time limit… If you like it & want to keep it, it will cost you another (ching ching…) $10.
Lastly, since additional batteries have always been among my first upgrades when I get a new laptop - I’ve learned the hard way that the HP site is not the best place to get the replacement powerpacks… I bought my first one (for the old HP) for $189, and then found a second one about a year and a half later at Tiger Direct for $15 (it works PERFECTLY!).
The replacement 12 cell for the DV2660se currently costs $184 if you buy it from HP, but there are MANY sellers on EBay that offer new or refurbished batteries for as low as $50… I believe the one I got (in original HP factory sealed packaging) was like $65 after S & H.
Michelle
January 10, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Leon, I also recently got the dv2660se & just love it. I found a great gadget for battery status on Microsoft’s website & it was free. Gives me % and time remaining. I don’t know if it would work on Ultimate, but it works fine on my Premium. As far as I’m concerned this is a nifty laptop. I’m using it for school (going for IT degree). It works great with my VMware, too. I can’t complain!
Leon Sexton
January 11, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Hi Michelle, would you mind sharing the URL to that MS power management app? I’d love to try it out. The one I purchased is ok, but it doesn’t make me celebrate… (-:
Good luck with your IT studies!!! I’ve been in the IT biz for about 18 years. There’s never a dull moment! LOL!
Leon Sexton
January 12, 2008 at 12:03 am
Michelle,
If the application will work on Vista Home Premium, it will work on Ultimate as well. For this function of the OS, there is no difference between the Vista versions.
Michelle
January 13, 2008 at 3:06 am
I figured it would work that way, but since I’m not completely versed in these things yet, I didn’t want to assume…
The general page for the gadgets is:
http://gallery.microsoft.com/v.....;mkt=en-us
It’s fun to search through, but can take a long time.
The gadget of which I was speaking is located at:
http://gallery.live.com/liveIt.....1&pl=1
They have a lot of good stuff, a lot of junk. You just have to want to weed through it all.
Leon Sexton
January 17, 2008 at 7:01 am
Thanks a lot Michelle! I’ll try this app out. (-:
jason
January 28, 2008 at 7:28 am
I am thinking of buying this laptop. I do have one question, has anyone successfully installed Windows XP on it? If so, was it a chore?
Adam McKerlie
January 28, 2008 at 7:58 am
Hey Jason, Installing XP on this laptop is the same process as you would on any other laptop. Generally as long as the copy is Legal you shouldn’t have any problems.
Helen
January 28, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I am thinking about buying the HP Pavilion DV2699 Special Edition. It is the same series though. Can anybody tell me if it has an instant on mode where you can just watch DVDs/play music without having to boot up windows? Also, how good is the webcam- does it have any fun features? (for example, you can add special effect to your cam like make it look like it is snowing) Thanks in advance.
Jason
January 28, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Thanks Adam!
I was not sure since I have heard horror stories of “upgrading” some Vista machines to XP professional.
Helen
January 29, 2008 at 12:20 am
Forget what I posted before. I just found out that the thing I was looking for is called “HP Quickplay”. And yes, it has it
Leon Sexton
January 29, 2008 at 6:51 am
Hi Jason,
I haven’t tried to run XP on this particular notebook, but I did see that XP drivers are available at the HP site. Here is the link.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfr.....n&
I have heard rumors of some XP “downgrades”, but haven’t seen or used one myself. My only experience with going downstream has been that you should make sure that your important personal folders are COPIED elsewhere. On one occassion, I made a ghost image of my older laptop which I’d installed VISTA on. When I tried to restore the data after the lapop had XP installed, many of the “My Documents” folders were unreadable. I kind of think that this may have been due to some VISTA encryption (when you choose in your user profile to make your files & folders “private”. It’s just a theory, but I did the same operation on another occasion and just made a seperate copy of the VISTA “documents”, “favorites”, etc… Keep in mind that the file structures of Vista & XP are not the same. “c:\users\{username}” as opposed to XP’s heirarchy “c:\documents and settings\{user profile name}” Just that you do an old school file copy of these folders from VISTA. Make a folder with copies of your documents, pictures, downloads, links, favorites, etc. I’m not exactly sure why my ghost image failed me on more than one occasion (most files were ok, but the problems seemed to be consistent with the “private” user data. The manual copy worked for me, so I didn’t research the questions further…
Besides ensuring transfer of your personal folders, use the HP link to make sure that you have all of the hardware drivers before you begin any OS install.
Then you should have no serious issues… Good luck!
bdf24
February 15, 2008 at 6:44 am
Installing XP on this laptop wasn’t too bad. Just make sure you use a tool like Belarc Advisor to get all of the hardware specs so you know which drivers to look for after you install XP. You will need to hook a USB floppy drive to install the SATA drivers, or you can make a custom XP installation disk with the drivers already on it. Without doing one of the two options above, XP will not see the hard drive. It took me a whole day, but I was able to find drivers for everything. Works great, It’s been over a month so far with XP. Oh and make sure you make a recovery disk incase you need/want to put Vista back on the laptop.
Ant-Val
April 23, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Good point with the SATA driver. I have no idea where in the world I would get my hands on a floppy drive these days outside of buying one, and for their age and sophistication they’re still oddly expensive compared to maybe making a bootable USB-Flash device using 2.88 Floppy emulation. (hmmm) I wonder if it would work… I know this laptop supports USB-Booting with the new BIOS update (01/2008) not sure about the stock BIOS (08/2007).
eddy dumby
June 3, 2008 at 6:03 am
Hi there,
I noticed this hp 2600 series is discontinued by HP (including this hp dv2660se that I was interested in purchasing). Does anyone know which series replaced 2600? I’d like to find another hp model that would match the discontinued hp dv2660se without sacrificing anything. I’d appreciate if you can help me. Thanks!
Adam A
June 12, 2008 at 4:51 am
Ne 1 wanna buy one of these for $800? I just switched over to a macbook and have no need for this laptop. It’s only 7 months old and is still under warranty. Just a few minor external scratches. Interested? feel free to email me: adambriz320@yahoo.com
Farhan
September 16, 2008 at 11:31 am
I don’t agree at all with the notion that this laptop “looks cheap”. It’s freaking sweet. Everyone stops me at the library (I’m a college student) and compliments its cool design. The only thing I dislike about this laptop is the mouse pad. It’s too smooth and can get greasy. Whatever though…I use a mouse with my laptops.