A long-awaited retirement

It’s been over three years—from June 11th, 2006 to November 27th, 2006—that my trusty Toshiba Satellite has served me, but the 27th—yesterday by this time of the morning—was the day I officially retired it. I am typing this entry on the Satellite’s replacement: an HP dv6-1355dx.

Having had the machine now for less than a day, any preliminary impressions would have to be considered premature. That having been said, my initial impression is that this is a fine machine. It makes up for every single shortcoming of my previous laptop, save one: being of the 15.6″ screen class, this machine is still large and heavy (it’s wider than but slightly lighter than the Satellite). But that’s okay because I plan on picking up an Asus Eee netbook for all my portability needs. The latter will be my “pitch in the bookbag and take with me to class” computer; the HP will be my “actually get some work done” machine.

It’s very odd that I ended up with this machine, given that until today I was unaware of its existence. Because of the weight and size issue mentioned above, I had been looking at 14″ and lower computers. I had selected one Toshiba Satellite from the bunch—the M505-S4945, which was a recently-discontinued model (displaced when Microsoft released Windows 7) that Best Buy was trying to get rid of. There was nothing wrong with it, and a preliminary audition at the local BB was favorable.

Things had finally came to a head with my previous Satellite, when its battery simply refused to hold any charge whatsoever; in addition, the power cable is finicky, and I’m on my second one of those. The end result is a machine that continuously and at seemingly random intervals simply died. It was when this became unbearable that I conceded it was time for a new machine.

On Thanksgiving, when I was ready to order the M505 online (it was not available in stores), my father (who had been looking at the BB site) suggested a particular model he had seen, the Asus U50A. I explained that far from a behemoth, I wanted a smaller computer that I could carry around in my backpack and balance on a desk, yet which was still reasonably powerful. He didn’t seem to understand, probably because I hadn’t properly explained that the desks at Wayne State are about nine inches across—they’re no more than a shaped strip of wood that flips down in front of the seat. He argued that the Asus—admittedly a very nice machine—was a better computer, and that the extra inch in width shouldn’t be a realistic concern. We traded arguments back and forth until he suggested that, as backup (and in lieu of trying to get my old Satellite working again as backup) I get the Asus along with a netbook of my choice, with the intent of doing my work on the Asus and taking the netbook along with me to class.

Initially I rejected this, partially because it ended up being somewhat more expensive than I had planned, and also because it seemed I was straddling both extremes—a too-big machine and a too-small one. I had had a netbook once, but it only lasted three days before it got stolen, so I never developed a feel for whether or not I could get any serious work done on it. Plus, I had auditioned the M505 and had never even considered the Asus until that day.

Later in the day, and after a little research, I started giving the matter some thought. The Asus represents a tremendous value, and a netbook would be far more portable and manageable than even a 14″ class notebook. I decided I’d go with my father to deliver some fish to a customer the next day (Friday), and on the way back we would visit a Best Buy so I could audition the Asus and see if it there was anything about it that made it untenable. If so, my plan was to order the M505 online.

Best Buy was a madhouse. I had thought by going in the late afternoon we would avoid the Black Friday crowd. Evidently, I was wrong. Best Buy has a sale going on all weekend, which explains why the people were still there—I had forgotten about this little arrangement. Fighting through the crowd to the computer preserve wasn’t easy, but we managed it. I quickly found the Asus and stood myself before it.

I had several things I wanted to test: the keyboard, the trackpad, and the screen quality. I was quite impressed with the keyboard which, contrary to some reports, didn’t flex overly much. It was possible to get it to move, but it took some real downward force. The keys felt very nice. Next was the screen, which I tested with our business website. On a calibrated Samsung 52″ LCD HDTV the banner and tabs are actually closer to the green portion of the gamut as opposed to the blue (which shocked me when I first saw it). The Asus’s screen definitely didn’t produce this color accurately. In fact, it shifted even farther to the blue end than any other monitor on which I had yet seen the site. I tried a Toshiba and an HP to compare, and though white looked similar across the board (the Asus looked slightly more tinted than the other two), neither of these two rendered the blue as inaccurately as the Asus. I’m fully aware, however, that none of these machines are going to have properly-calibrated screens, and as long as white didn’t look putrid and dim (like on my previous Satellite), I would be content.

The final issue was the trackpad. On the Asus this was quite large, but extremely slick and slippery. The mouse buttons felt very stiff to the touch. However, these two issues paled in comparison to the thing I’ll say next: there was no way to scroll pages with a single finger. There was some sort of multi-touch finger contortion I could use, but it was finicky and wanky and nothing I would ever get used to. Try as I might (I went into the configuration settings and everything), I could not produce this functionality. Now I know this might seem a small picking point, but to me it was a deal-breaker. I’ve been using this feature for over three years, and it’s as natural to me as typing. I know that I would never stop trying to scroll along the edge, and it was this interface issue—something I would encounter and regret every single day I owned the computer—that made me decide to look elsewhere.

My father suggested I look at some other models in the same size class. We found a 15.6″ Satellite, but it was unsuitable (no HDMI, a general dearth of some of the other features common to all the other computers I was considering) and was quickly ruled out.

I had never considered HP, mostly on account of my general dislike for their monitors, which I had found to produce fuzzy text and wildly inaccurate colors (as per the two we have in our house). This again goes back to what I said earlier about the importance of the interface on something like a laptop—if the screen and/or keyboard are lousy, you tend to forget what the specs of the machine are and you come to regret your purchase each and every time you use the computer. I know this first hand, having suffered the hideous screen of my previous Toshiba Satellite for over three years. Keeping all this in mind, I decided to look at the HPs anyway. I was surprised—they had some of the nicest screens out of any of the floor models. On the opposite side from the Asus section I found the model on which I am now typing, and after a few minutes of auditioning it shot all the way to the top of my list of contenders. And yet, there was still the M505 online.

At this point my father suggested I look at the other 14″ machines on offer and perhaps go with my initial instinct of having one moderately-sized computer. I saw the younger sibling of the M505, and on a whim I decided to test it out—it was the same size and had the same design, but with an inferior processor. I liked the screen and keyboard, and I was seriously considering just calling it a day and going through with my initial plan when I decided to see how well this machine’s touchpad scrolled.

Unbelievable! This one also lacked any means to achieve vertical scroll! I checked out the settings, just like on the Asus, and there was no way to get it to scroll. Another one bit the dust at that point because there was no way in Hell I could accept the M505 if it had such a deficit. Primed by the success with the HP dv6 eariler, I looked at a 14″ HP that was right next to the 14″ Satellite—there was no comparison here: the HP’s screen was dim and visibly tinted. At this point I should point out that all the laptops I was looking at had LED-backlit screens, which goes to show that this new technology is as variable as the previous one.

What a difference an inch makes!—the 15.6″ HP dv6 has a bright and pleasing display. At this point it looked like the winner—we decided to search for a salesperson and resolved to ask if he could tell us if the Asus could single-finger scroll, and if so, how. While we were waiting, I auditioned an Asus Eee netbook (a lower-end model than the one I was looking at online). I liked it a lot, except—you guessed it—I couldn’t get its trackpad to scroll, either! I looked in its settings and discovered it has a Synaptic touchpad—the most common one you’ll find in portable computers. At this point, I know it had to be possible to get it to scroll vertically, and a few moments later I found the setting and switched it on. The trackpad was nice and responsive, and the scrolling worked fine. At least I had made a definitive decision here—the Asus Eee was fine, and between the blue and black models I want the black one. The blue just looked like somebody had taken the black one and had tried to turn it blue with watercolor paint. Of course my model isn’t offered in stores, so I’ll have to order it.

Soon thereafter a salesperson came over and confirmed—through his own trials—that the Asus trackpad would not allow single-finger vertical scrolling. At the end of the day, a machine I at which I had not even previously looked—the HP dv6-1355dx—won the battle. Unfortunately, it had won the battle for a lot of people because it was sold out.

All told, we had spent over an hour in the store and had gotten absolutely nothing to show for it, except for the knowledge of the precise two models I wanted. We went home, ate some turkey (the real turkey dinner happens the day after Thanksgiving at my house), and headed out to the local BB (we had gone to one that was on our way home earlier). There’s a BB five minutes from my house, and that’s the one we hit. I swept to the back of the store, found the computer, and saw beneath it about half a dozen cardboard boxes that turned out to contain the correct model (these were all mismatched at the other BB). These turned out to be pre-configured models, which carry a cost-premium. I told a salesperson to get me a stock model, and he was really good about it. He didn’t pressure me about getting any extra software or service plans, and he rung the purchase up about five minutes later. We were out of the store in a little over ten minutes in what has to be the most painless electronics purchase I can remember.

Ten minutes later I was home and had unboxed my new machine. Three hours later I had cleaned all the crapware off of it, and an hour later I had Ubuntu Linux installed alongside Windows 7 Home Premium. The only bad thing is that in the 64-bit version of Ubuntu (and other Linux distros as well), the Adobe Flash plugin is whacked. The problem manifests itself mainly in YouTube videos, whose controls don’t work. So I’m stuck on Windows 7 until that issue gets resolved—7 isn’t bad at all, but I’m already missing Ubuntu, especially since aside from the Flash issue it seems to be working absolutely perfectly. I can even adjust my backlight brightness and use the touch-sensitive volume bar—things which I thought sure wouldn’t work and the former of which didn’t work at all on my old Satellite.

So far I’ve only run the machine through some basic paces, though I did hook it up via HDMI to the HDTV and was quite impressed with result. Now I’m just typing up this entry, and in a dimly-lit room I have the screen brightness one click below half and it still seems brighter than on the Satellite at full blast. I haven’t had any calamities yet, and the interface feels very nice. The trackpad is smooth and responsive, the keyboard feels very nice, and the screen is a definite improvement over the Satellite’s—this was its weakest point. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The Satellite has horrible sound. The HP doesn’t really sound that great through the speakers, but its sound hardware is very good—through headphones it sounds quite excellent, with absolutely no circuitry noise even when the volume is turned up full blast while idle. I was very impressed with this and pleasantly surprised and relieved, having been unable to test the sound system prior to purchase.

So, all in all, it was a weird day in that I started out with several prospects in mind and ended up choosing neither of them, but instead something that I had not previously considered. This shows the true power of the in-person trial—if I had ordered online either of the two machines I was considering I would have been very sore indeed to discover the issue with the trackpad. Even if the Satellite M505 had not had this issue, though, I’m confident I made the right choice with the HP dv6—its screen is better than any of the other choices, and pretty much everything else about it is very nice as well. I’m not left wanting of anything at this point; there’s absolutely no buyer’s remorse here. In time I’ll run this machine through the mill of tests to see how well it performs, but I’m sure I’ll be satisfied. It traded blows feature-for-feature with the Asus—tying or beating it in every field except weight—and it’s better than the M505 spec-wise.

Really, it’s one of those magical 85% machines—you can pay hundreds of dollars more, but at the most you’ll get about 15% more performance. Except in the graphics department, where higher-end hardware generally pulls far ahead of the mainstream. But I’m not a computer gamer, so I could care less about graphics performance, just so long as the card can drive the display and a full-HD television simultaneously (which, for the dv6-1355dx, is no trouble at all). In the days and months ahead I’ll break this machine in, though my initial impressions are quite good. We’ll see what happens.