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HP Pavilion dv3-4210TX Pre-view

Just this Thursday, I brought home with me a new ‘serious toy’ as our visitors called it, the HP Pavilion dv3-4210TX.I’ve been pining over getting a new workstation for some time now and a few candidates have propped up here and there but the winner had been one that I wasn’t even thinking about.

My initial candidates were two of MSI’s gaming rigs called the GX640 and the GX663. They look different but have several important factors that made them a few of the possible selections, I’ve found out that commercially you don’t really have much choice when you’re going for powerful machines because the general consumers really don’t have a need for them and hence won’t sell as much.

The three main criteria that my new machine had to meet were the following: it must have a powerful processor, a decent graphics card, plenty of memory and somewhat futureproof, which is very hard to reconcile now that the development of computing technology is rapidly evolving. What follows is an image showing a comparison between the very few which I was monitoring.

What attracted me towards the gaming series was the idea of computing within a screen that has a very high resolution, something very important for graphic work, however, I’ve come to terms that being able to carry around the device would be far more advantageous than letting it rest at home. I’ve had previously owned a 17” laptop computer and it was literally a burden to carry around. If I would require the space, it would be so much easier to acquire a new monitor rather than an advanced processor.

Thus it came to be that I am now getting to terms with my new ‘pencil and paper’. You can find the unboxing video below, it’s my first time trying out a video log and its everything including faulty haha. I’ll come up with a review of this unit sometime down the line.

About the author

Mark O.

Mark is an architect and artist who endeavors to design most anything that requires a little bit of thought into it.

Although writing is not considered a primary focus, a little too much time can yield many thoughts that are just begging to be written down.

Armed with a trusty array of content creation devices and surrounded with a continuous flux of technology and life, herein lies those that are fortunate enough to have been given presence through a little bit of movement and a whole lot of iterations.

21 Comments

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  • hi! i’m planning to buy the same model, i’d like to ask for any feedback so far? how’s the video and sound quality? the speed? or any problems? sorry for so much questions and thanks for any response 🙂

    • Well the keyboard takes a little getting used to, especially the smaller up and down arrow keys, as well as the lack of the home/end/pgup/pgdn keys.
      The trackpad, without left and right clickers is a little bit awkward for me but the upside to that is the whole pad works as a navigation area.
      The battery life is dismal, as it can probably run for 3 hours at the lowest and most power saving state and less than two hours when running in full.
      With regards to sound, it is just as weak as most laptop speakers out there (albeit carrying the altec lansing brand) it does have multiple advanced options for dolby surround… hdmi audio also transfers properly.
      With regards to video, there is a buzzing sound that I encounter whenever the video card is seemingly being stressed out, even at high performance setting I get the similar occurrence. I might go ahead and try a driver downgrade and see if it helps any… it happens over one second, the screen freezes and a short buzz comes on and then all is well again as if it required a ‘refresh’ of some sort. If you’re going to be using this for gaming it will be an irritation. Even during prolonged and high def video playback it occasionally happens.
      If the problem becomes persistent I will have to video the occurrence as proof because you cant just as simply make it happen on site if you’re going to have it repaired.
      Of course this unit might just be a lemon… but I’m open to exhausting all possibilities before I have it replaced, if at all.
      Don’t let this dishearten you though, it is able to play anything I throw at it, has good heat management despite the small vent, cleans easily because of the aluminum body, and there’s a lot of fun you can have with the biometric reader and the camera.
      Have a good time shopping!

  • wow, thanks for the speedy response. wasn’t quite expecting to get a reply that fast. thanks for the thorough description of what you had with the laptop. i’ll be thinking about it again. it was a bit disheartening though. i was quite expecting less problems with it. i hope it’s just a coincidence coz i’m really eyeing on that one. anyway, thanks again! if there’s any fix/troubleshoots you had to remedy the mentioned casualties, i hope you can share it here as well. thanks a lot, mark! 🙂

  • hi.

    can you give detailed comments on the display quality? does the palmrest heat easily? any other problems encountered so far with this product?

    • The screen is very bright with 10 levels of illumination. It is not as sharp as my earlier machine and the softness translates to better media watching overall. As with most LED screens, whites and blacks are dominant which gives images better depth but might appear washed out when compared to other displays. The palmrest doesn’t get very hot even during prolonged use. The area with the highest temperature overall is the side where the vents are. Apart from the buzz which I stated before (which I think is more of an audio problem rather than a video one), I have yet to encounter any more.

  • hey can you tell me how many minutes and seconds did it take for the system to start windows 7 as in including complete loading of startup applications? how light is the device at 2.1kgs? appreciate your inputs. have you tried updating all drivers to the current version? thanks

    • I usually don’t measure bootup time but I also tweak the startup configuration so whatever value I may come up with might not be definitive. Weight is just comparable to my previous netbook (NSI U210x with the 9-cell battery installed), it is very easily maneuverable with one hand when I’m readying it for travel so its pretty manageable. As for the drivers yes I have updated to the most recent ones that can be found at the support section of the HP site. Thank you for dropping by as well.

    • Bought mine at accent micro megamall for 51k, I let go of the freebies in exchange for additional 4gb of RAM, AFAIK HP is currently giving out MyFi devices… during the time when I bought mine it was a Nokia C3 the price is for cash or straight card. Enjoy when you get yours!

      • so you got urs for straight payment? their website states a price of 55,990. so instead of the nokia c3 you chose the RAM?

        • I needed to add a thousand pesos but what the heck, RAM is so much more useful to me… Yup, that’s what I did

  • Hi again, may i ask if u already had the buzzing sound fixed and the other problems u have observed earlier? I still haven’t decided yet on what laptop to buy.

    • The buzz still occurs, most noticably when the processors are being taxed, and I’m listening or watching something at the same time, I think its indicative of the turbo boost coming on but then again I can’t be sure, that’s just what I observed, It is a little weird but if you’re doing only one thing with nothing running in the background I dont think the buzz would come on. It still manifests as a short burst. I will try to create a perfect scenario when the buzz will happen so I have something to show the shop if I take it in, the last time I went there, my laptop didnt ‘buzz’ so it was a little bit awkward for me.

  • have you tried to seek help from other related forums? i was trying to search for those but then i couldn’t find any. was your problem an isolated case or did you find others with the same problems as yours?

    • I did. I even dropped a line at the official HP forums when they held the forum help day where a lot of techs were online but I didn’t receive any reply. If this is an isolated case then good for everyone else, if this isn’t then I guess I’ll just have to live with it. You might be over-imagining the buzzing incident but like I said before, it only happens when the processor becomes taxed so much that instead of a ‘hang’ I get a short ‘buzz’ and everything is back to working condition. I still believe that it is the turbo boost coming on until I diagnose otherwise.

    • The unit comes with a Microsoft Office Starter which contains Word and Excel only if I’m not mistaken, it does not require a password, just some form of activation.

    • I do play games but not that heavily, I would advise you to buy the MSI variants instead or the G73 from Asus, they both have venting systems far more sophisticated than what is on this computer… and as you said, the graphics card on this machine, although at 1GB, isnt really meant to handle the newest of games at the highest of settings. find one with a GDDR5 and you wont regret it.

      • im thinking of DV3 because of its portability and sleek design at 13″..do you do HD video editing or rending programs?or autocad?does it run smooth?

        Can i ask whats it Windows experience index from system properties?

        • I do 3d work on the device and it does run very fine… the WEI score is 5.0… lowest in Aero performance.