HP6700t Combat Ready Now

In an attempt to keep to my every-three-year-plan of buying a new laptop despite the fact that I didn’t want to wait to see what the new Sager’s were going to be priced at I ordered a new laptop from HP.

My old laptop was a Sager 3880, 2.0GHz Intel Pentium M, 2gigs of RAM, 100Gb 7200RPM hard drive, a 128MB nVIDIA GeForce Go 6600, with a 15.4 inch WUXGA screen. It served me well and I still plan to use it, but I needed something newer and therefore better and when I priced out the 6700t it was just to good to let not get.

I placed my order on May 3rd, called up the next day to cancel and reordered. In my attempt to match to the Sager 6690 I had chosen to add the 25 dollar camera to the laptop. It didn’t occur to me that for another 25 dollars I could get three gigs of RAM and in reading reviews somebody had pointed out that it would be cheaper to upgrade to four gigs because I would only have to replace one stick.

It was very easy to cancel and change my order by calling HP. My laptop was shipped on the 9th and arrived on the 12th by FedEx.

The new specs were:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHhz processor
3gigs of RAM
256MB nVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card
1280 x 800 15.4 WXGA screen
120Gb 5400 RPM hard drive
Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)

It included free shipping, though they still charge for tax, 100 dollars off and cost me a total of 968.83$.

I spent the first night uninstalling all the crapware on the machine. The next day I followed this guide on doing a clean install without having to reactivate Windows, reinstalled the drivers, updated Windows, including SP1, and installed my software, and spent the rest of night trying to figure out how to use Partimage from the SystemRescueCd to make a backup image of the drive -this guide, among others helped a lot. The next morning I messed up some of the files associated with the Window’s theme and created a situation that I had no interface. So I got to spend some time learning how to use the Command Prompt from a booted Windows disc, and managed to replace the messed up files with originals. But now I have it the way I want and all seems well.

My initial impression is that it is much faster, even with Vista. I’ve done little Eve-Online with the premium graphics and was getting a high FPS just floating around, haven’t taken it into combat yet. My only real complaint is with the screen. Not just the low resolution but also the fact that the screen is glossy. My 3880 wasn’t so I could look at it standing up, off to the side, but the screen on this HP seems to do well only looking at it straight on. Also when I open the screen I have to hold the laptop down because the screen will pull the base up with it (it might also have to do with the weight, my 3880 seems much heavier compared the 6700). Continuing is the fact that the screen doesn’t actually clip or lock to the base, as you close it and you reach a certain point and it just snaps shut.

Even with the latest 174.xx nVidia drivers from LaptopVideo2Go I’m unable to double my resolution so my desktop extends past the screen and I could scroll around. It works for my 3880 with XP, it doesn’t work with Vista, so I’m going to have to get used to using virtual desktops.

The only other problem I seem to have is the keyboard. It feels great, no bend, but the placement of the keys is just something to get used and the fact that Print Screen needs the Function key to be held.

As far as Vista goes I have no complaints, no real problems other then the custom resolution but that isn’t causing me a problem. Of course I haven’t really started using the laptop with Flash or Flex yet so I don’t know what problems I might encounter. And there is the fact that it 64-bit but that hasn’t caused problems either except for having to re-download software for 64-bit Windows. Actually I had to turn off UAC to install the SQL Server Management Studio Express, but I turned it back on afterward.