Review of HP DV6703TX

CONFIGURATION:

* Intel Core 2 Due processor T5450 (1.67 GHz)
* 15.4"" WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen Display
* 160 GB (5400 RPM) Hard Drive
* 2048 MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 Dimm)
* Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/b/g 802 11a/b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
* LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+-RW with Double Layer Support
* 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery
* HP QuickPlay
* 5-in-1 Digital Media Reader
* ExpressCard/54 PC Card Slot
* HP Mobile Remote Control
* nVidia GeForce 8400M GS with 256MB DDR dedicated graphics memory
* Window Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
* Fingerprint Reader
* HP Webcam
* Expansion Port 3
* HP Pavilion WebCam with Integrated Microphones
* Carry case

External Ports

* 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards
* 3 USB 2.0
* 1 HDMI
* 1 VGA port
* 1 RJ11 modem connector
* 1 RJ45 ethernet connector
* Expansion Port 3
* S-video TV out
* 2 headphones-out
* 1 mic-in
* 1 IEEE 1394
* Consumer IR
* AC adapter

Weight 2.78 kg

COST: Rs.49000 all inclusive

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FEATURES
The notebook has a unique feature - ‘capacitive’ touch technology for accessing the audio, launch buttons, and volume controls. By just touching, tapping or swiping these backlit media launch buttons in a very similar manner as on a touch pad, user can have direct access to entertainment objects.

It also comes with HP QuickPlay 2.1 application which allows users to watch DVD movies, listen to music and browse pictures without booting up and users can easily switch between movies, music and pictures with a slick, widescreen interface in the HP QuickPlay 2.1 application or with the dedicated media buttons.

I have somehow not been able to play the DVD's without turning on the OS. Will have to give it more try to know how exactly to do that. Touching the DVD button launches Vista and then the Quickplay starts.

The built in webcam delivers great pictures. The quality is good enough for you to not buy another webcam.

SOFTWARES

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition preinstalled HP Pavilion dv6703TX notebook PC comes with various software including MS Works 8.0, Acrobat Reader , Microsoft Money, HP QuickPlay Direct 2.3 , Quickplay for Windows Version 2.3, Muvee Autoproducer, Sonic Digital Media Plus 7.0, HP Games by Oberon Media, HP Photosmart Premier, Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security software.

First of all I uninstalled Symantec Norton Internet Security, Trial ver of Office 2007 and installed Quickheal Internet security 2008, Office 2007.

DRIVERS

All the drivers and installation files are located in c:\swsetup. I created a copy of all the drivers/softwares there on a DVD n deleted the folder (it occupies around 3 GB space)

DISPLAY & SOUND

The display is awesome and you can really look forward to watching HD movies on this laptop. The sound quality is also quite good.

BATTERY LIFE

Battery life isnt much to talk about. A normal 2-3 hours battery life... With gaming, it will further come down. So if you are always on the move, go 4 a 9 cell battery.

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

The Pavilion's keyboard is ample and comfortable to type on for long periods, and both touchpad and mouse buttons are entirely usable. However, I seem to be still hung on my old compaq laptop and sometimes the scroll on the touchpad causes me to accidentally misplace.

PARTITIONS

I had to shrink C:\ to create new partitions. I shrunk it to 70GB. Inspite of no new installations, I only had 40GB free space left!!! So after tweaking pagefile.sys n hiber*.sys, I freed some space. Uninstalling trial ver. of Office 2007, Norton, HP Games helped freeing more space.

So now I have
C:\- 70GB; D:\ -19.5GB ; E:\ - 25.3GB; F:\ - 23.4; G:\ - 10.5GB(HP RECOVERY PARTITION); H:\ - Lightscribe DVD Writer

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SPACE RESERVED TO COMPLETE THE REVIEW

Current Status - Crysis Demo Installed. Seems to be working pretty well (will post settings soon. Dunno how to go about FPS. Can some1 tell me how to calculate FPS for crysis?). With Doom3 I get around 65fps with about medium settings.

PS:The images n few paras have been sourced from other forums which cannot be mentioned here. So I am not giving away the "credits"

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Printer spool error in Vista with HP Laserjet Printers

Are you facing errors like Windows cannot open printer spool or restart spool or similar errors in your Vista and HP Laserjet printers?

Here are a few tricks which may help you solve your problem.

CAUTION - Following steps involve editing of registry and changing of system settings. It is advised you take a backup of all your data to be on safer side

1. Go to Run - Regedit - Computer - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3. Delete the HP laserjet entry there.

Now try adding HP Laserjet printer through control panel. It should work now.

If it still does not work, try the following steps -

2. Go to Control Panel - Uninstall a program - Turn Windows features on or off - print services - deselect Internet Printing Client and select LPD and LPR option. Click OK and restart your computer

3. Still if the problem persists, repeat step 2. Use your HP Laserjet 1010 driver cd to install drivers on your computer instead of letting Vista install the drivers.

Another method -

4. SOURCE

1) Open My Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View and click on the option for

Show hidden files and folders

2) Now, uncheck the option for "hide extensions for known file types" and click OK

3) Click on Start, Search and in the left column choose All Files and Folders

4) In the "all or part of the filename" box type the following

hpzimn12.dll

5) Make sure the "look in" box has Drive C selected (or whichever drive windows is installed on)

6) Click on Search

7) If the "hpzimn12.dll" file is found, right-click on it and Delete it.

8) Reboot your computer and run the installation CD that came with your printer.

Hopefully this will solve your problem, if it doesnt proceed with the following instructions from Microsoft's Knowledge Base about resolving this issue.

Whenever a computer system is upgraded from one OS to another, older driver files for devices may still be active in the system and cause problems. This was the case in this instance.

Resize a partition in Vista

IMP NOTE: The following procedure involves formating, partitioning your Harddisk. Do not forget to take a backup of your data before proceeding.

SOURCE & CREDIT - WinVista Club

You may not need to have 3rd Party Softwares to achieve resize partitions in Windows Vista.

Try the following steps -

Right Click on Computer - Manage

In the left pane, under Storage category, click on Disk Management

Now select and right click on the partition you wish to modify.

In the context menu, you will see options to Extend, Shrink or Delete the partition. Select the option you want.

You can not merge partitions in Vista with its Utility. If your 2nd partition is empty, you can delete the 2nd partition and then extend the 1st partition, to use the freed up space.

Also note that you can extend only to the right; if you are desirous of extending the partition to the left, you may have to use a 3rd party utility, like Acronis.

Sometimes one or more options may be grayed out and thus unavailable. It could be that such a step may be physically not possible.

How To Resize A Partition In Vista, if Disk Management fails.

Should you wish to continue, nevertheless, please first backup your important data should anything go wrong. You may have to use diskpart.exe ! Diskpart utility can do everything that the Disk Management console can do, and more! It’s invaluable for script writers or anyone who simply prefers working at a command prompt. For more information on it click

Enter diskpart in start menu's search bar and hit enter. A 'command prompt' like window will open. Type list disk and hit enter. This will show you a list of all your hard disks. Now type: select disk to select the disk you want to work with.

If you want to create a partition. Type 'create' and a set of options will appear. Choose one, and type create

There are 2 types of partitions you can create : Primary and Extended. Only a Primary partition can be made bootable, so if you are planning to install an OS, you will have to select this option. For backup purposes you may opt for Extended partitions.

Next, to see which number is associated with the volume you are planning to work with, type: list volume

You will get a list. To select one type: select volume (or select partition as the case may be)

Now depending on what you want to do to the partition you can select any of the following commands. Typing help and hitting enter enumerates the options :

Example : To extend size by 5GB : Type - Extend size=5000 To shrink the volume by minimum 1GB, upto a maximum of 5 GB : Type - Shrink desired=5000 minimum=1000 You can even delete a partition by typing - Delete Partition and hitting enter.

Windows also includes a additional command-line tool for file, system and disk management, called Fsutil. This utility helps you to change the short name of a file, find files by SID's (Security Identifier) and perform other complex tasks. FSUtil and Diskpart are powerful, but not for the inexperienced Windows user. So do be careful, please.

If you get the message : There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation.

Most new computers with OEM Vista pre-installs come with 4 partitions. Hard disks configured as basic disks are limited to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition and multiple logical drives. And as such, if you try to shrink the OS partition, you may find that you cannot create a 5th partition due to this limit.

There could be two possible solutions for this issue:

1) As the disk pre-configured by OEM may have conflicts with disk management tool in Windows Vista, you should try some 3rd party tools like Auslogics Freeware Defrag, to repartition the disk.

2) You may try to delete a less important partition created already and merge the space together to create a new partition with proper drive letter.

Deleting the partitions created by the OEM is often not possible due to the way the OEMs configure the partitions. Therefore the option then is to extend the operating system partition back to the original size to regain use of the unallocated space. If additional storage is needed, consider adding an external USB hard disk.

Vista SP1 is expected to address this issue !