When I was in high school (a little while back), I remember hearing that college students were starting to bring laptops into lectures to take notes and do research. I couldn’t even imagine it, because it sounded so strange.

Well, fast forward to 2009, and I can’t even remember the last time I saw a young person with a desktop computer. Not only that, but it has become second nature to bring computers to college classes, and it would be stranger to walk into a class and not see any at all!

Laptops are a funny thing. They have become just as much a fashion item as they are a functional tool for education, entertainment, and communication. Which of course, is how Apple has been slowly edging their way into the college laptop market in recent years, only to trip up all the poor college girls who purchased them (to prove how indie… err… typical, they are! lol) as soon as they need to install a program or delve into the Unix command line (huh?!?!).

What it comes down to is that the best choice for a college laptop is one that:

is affordable and competitively pricedis feature-packed but is still user-friendly and follows mainstream trendshas at least most of the latest technology and input/output jacksis somewhat cute and/or attractive (but not at the cost of a higher price or lack of features!)

In my opinion, for most students, this leaves us with the following type of setup in the year 2009:

runs Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7has USB, HDMI, VGA, DVD, memory card, and audio/mic jackshas embedded WiFi and Bluetoothhas embedded webcamhas solid graphics (dedicated memory), CPU, and RAM (4GB +) with a healthy-sized hard driveis small and light enough to be easily transportableis priced significantly under $1000 for non-business/professional modelsbelongs to a company with generous and reliable customer service

Well, by the looks of this list, we can immediately eliminate most under-performing *discount* models from companies like Acer or Gateway who beef up some of their features but aren’t engineered significantly well, and lack stellar customer support. Then there are companies whose 15 minutes of fame are already lapped dry, like Toshiba, who once dominated the market but has recently gone downhill. We can also eliminate the insanely overpriced and overhyped models from companies like Apple that often perform well but are mostly an expensive and user-unfriendly fashion statement (If you like Unix, then download and install Ubuntu instead for free!)…

This leaves us with a few reliable companies that currently dominate the mid-range American laptop market (which is why the likes of Costco are quick to endorse their products):

HPSonyDell

There are a few other up-and-coming companies that show huge promise, like Samsung and Asus.

Anyway, Dell is pretty good in my opinion, but their technology is sometimes out of date. They seem to keep their prices lower on some laptops by putting older CPUs on their models and taking off high-tech jacks like HDMI.

Sony has been able to drop their prices in recent years and is rapidly becoming an affordable choice. Their designs are reliable, powerful, and have the latest technology. But again, their prices still are higher than average.

This leaves us with HP, who at the moment seems to have both reasonable prices, the latest technology, and well-reputed customer support. They recently send CollegeTimes a free HP Pavillion DV2 laptop to check out which is aimed mostly at college students and multimedia enthusiasts. Here is what we thought:

First of all, just look at this thing. While all the hipsters have been running around with their million dollar Apple laptops, HP has been in the studio designing some truly elegant machines. Pictured above is a white HP DV2.

The DV2 was built mainly for young people and multimedia types, which means it is strong on graphics (ATI Radeon 300 card with dedicated memory), strong on speed (AMD Turion X2 Neo 64), and has plenty of storage (300GB).

It comes pre-installed with Windows Vista, which hasn’t been very well received in the tech world due to its somewhat clunky interface and inefficient setup, but with the recent Service Pack 2 that Microsoft released, a tremendous improvement has been made to the various system issues. At the end of the day, with a solid 4GB of RAM, the DV2 laptop can handle Windows Vista with ease and the user can see it running slick in 64-bit as it was meant to be.

That being said, I’m still a bigger fan of Windows XP and I do look forward to the Windows 7 release. Hell, if you really wanted to, you could even just install Windows 7 on this beauty and it would run amazingly. I just can’t really fully approve of the pseudo-modern UI in Vista, its just not quite simple enough for me.

Anyway. The DV2 comes preloaded with a lot of sweet software. The Windows Photo Gallery is an impressively simple and fast gallery program to organize photos and video by tags, date, and ratings. The interface is very toned down and easy to use. Plus, instead of importing your photos and screwing over your original files (like Apple does), the program intelligently includes whichever folders you specify in its file browser and leaves the data intact.

Windows Media Player, Windows DVD Maker, and the classic Windows Movie Maker have all made significate improvements with recent updates and play nicely with each other. But the really nice catch in Vista is the very progressive Windows Media Center, which performs all kinds of multimedia functions alongside your internet connection – you can even plug in your television to the DV2’s HDMI jack and record television shows! And it only takes a few clicks. Now try finding another laptop under $700 that can boast that. There aren’t many.

The DV2 also comes with a free copy of Magix Music Maker 14, which is pretty friggin’ awesome. Imagine GarageBand, Fruity Loops, and Sonic Foundry all rolled into one amazing music editor for creating loops and custom songs with digital instruments and recordings. You just have to try it to see how powerful yet user-friendly it is.

There are a few trials included with the DV2 such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, and Norton Anti-Virus, but I’m not a big fan of Vista Office (2007 Office). It has amazing features and is very user-friendly, but again, the Vista UI theme is just a little overkill for me. In any case, these 2 programs, along with some other HP freebies like games, Cyberlink DVD Studio, etc. could be quite useful to the non-nerdy students out there who need some reliable options.

Overall, here are the drawbacks of the DV2:

Windows Vista just ain’t the OS it was hoped to be at the end of the dayBlu-Ray DVD drive is not internal – you must plug it in via USB (keeps weight down, but inconvenience up)Touchpad mouse is metallic and becomes a bit sweaty and hard to move your finger on sometimesComes loaded with promo links and trial software which is annoying and might confuse some users

And here are the best things about the DV2:

Quiet and cute as hellPowerful and modern CPU, graphics, storage, and input/output jacksEmbedded WiFi, Bluetooth, and webcam/micVery thin and light and easy to transportComes with some very useful bundled Windows software which is nice for inexperienced usersComes with some sweet 3rd-party software like Music Maker, Cyberlink DVD Studio, etc.

This article was written in response to HP sending CollegeTimes a free HP DV2 laptop. That being said, the opinions herein are currently true and those of the author alone. This is an honest review of HP, the DV2, and the world of laptops in general. I welcome any and all responses and will keep my eyes open for other good laptops!

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