Product Review

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HP Pavillion ZD7000

HP Pavillion ZD7000

First of all I want to mention that this computer is not for the frequent traveler. It was never HP’s intention for this computer to compete with the new thin and light, highly mobile, Centrino notebooks. Its purpose was to be a true desktop replacement that could also be moved around fairly easily. I’m a web developer and web marketer by profession. I’m also responsible for all the bookkeeping and financial records for the company. The larger keyboard complete with dedicated number pad was the biggest selling point for me.

I use dual flat panel displays on my primary development computer. I love the wide screen notebooks as I can mimic the functionality of dual displays on a single display. There is not quite enough room on the 17” display to make everything fit, but it is definitely a big improvement over the old standard format displays. If you are a person who likes to run multiple applications simultaneously, don’t settle for less. You will be glad you have the 17” wide screen display. (DVD’s are awesome to watch on this notebook!)

Performance is better than expected. The 533Mhz front side bus and the dedicated (not shared!) 64 megs of video ram that powers the Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go video card, are big contributors to the performance of this computer. Ask any gamer what video card they like best. Nvidia will top the list 9 out of 10 times, although ATI makes a respectable card as well. The point being that you are not giving up ANYTHING when you choose this notebook. HP did not skimp like some other manufacturers by using a cheesy, underperforming, shared memory video system. This computer has handled any business task that I’ve asked of it as well as any games I’ve wanted to play. I ran PerformanceTest 4.0 and received a PassMark Rating of 268.0 with 598.7 MegaFLOPS, compared to the 247.7 and 601.3 rating from a similarly configured Compaq Desktop with a 64 meg Nvidia video card. I want to say once again, nice job to HP for getting this one right.

Other reasons that this is a great notebook:

• 4 USB 2.0 ports, not 2.. not 3.. 4 PORTS. Who needs a USB hub when you have 4 ports. The FireWire port is also nice, and necessary if you do any digital video work.

• Built in 54g wireless. I have a wireless network installed at my house and several of my clients. Having the card built-in is a great convenience. Also HP has a button at the top of this notebook to activate or deactivate the wireless interface. This is an important feature when you are back at your primary office and want to make sure that you are only using the wired network connection as it is much faster than wireless.

• Built-in Media Reader. This is a new feature for me and until now I had not realized just how convenient it is. This card reader allows you to read 4 different types of card media without any cables or software. Most recently while at a clients location I was able to take dozens of photographs and immediately display them to my client without having to first hook up the computer and download them to the computer. A side benefit is it conserves battery life on your digital camera.

In conclusion, this computer has exceeded my expectations, with the following prerequisites. First, I knew it was going to be heavy and did not expect it to be easy to carry around and second, I knew, from reading reviews, not to expect stellar battery life. To my surprise, I can reasonably get about 2 hours of heavy use from the battery. Because of the large size of this notebook I had to buy a new case and it still barely fit. I’ve also found that even though it is fairly heavy I still take it to nearly every appointment. From a business perspective, it is worth the backache and arm pain to see the shock from my clients when I open this thing up. So if your old desktop is about to go, consider this notebook from HP. You won’t be disappointed.