A closer look at the new HP Pavilion dv2 with Athlon Neo processor

I had a chance to check out the newly announced HP Pavilion dv2 notebook tonight at the Digital Experience and I have to say – I’m nearly sold on the new platform featuring the Athlon Neo processor.

Now let’s be clear here – the Neo processor is designed for a new market segment. It’s that space that resides between inexpensive netbooks and expensive ultra-portable notebooks. On one end of the spectrum you have cheap systems with small screens and just enough processing power. On the other hand, you have small systems with larger screens with super light weights .. yet they’re also expensive.

Now the Athlon Neo aims to deliver the best of both worlds. The dv2 provides better performance than an Intel Atom processor and thanks to discrete graphics, you’ll get better 3D and video performance too. All this doesn’t come at a price either as the dv2 will start at $699 on up AND you’ll get a lightweight system to boot.

There are a couple of caveats of course.

1. The dv2 is not lighter than a netbook. It’s still a 12 inch notebook and thus it’s weight is more akin to around 3 to 4 pounds. It is however, quite thin – measuring just under an inch thick.

2. The Athlon Neo is not as power efficient as the Intel Atom so the dv2 delivers around 3 hours of battery life. Sorry to those of you hoping for 5+ hours of battery life. If you want that – go netbooks.

Other tidbits from tonight:

The dv2 supports up to 4GB of RAM
The Neo is in fact a 64 bit processor so you can install Windows Vista 64 bit

Here’s the black colored version of the dv2 with the optional external optical drive (which you can purchase with Blu-ray support too).

For those of you wondering what the dv2 is like compared to a netbook – here’s the 12 inch dv2 up against the 10 inch HP Mini

Written by flung

January 8th, 2009 at 5:06 am

1,315 views

Posted in HP, Netbook News

Tagged with HP Pavilion dv2

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Florida DUI Lawyer 7 months ago 1 point
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thanks to discrete graphics, you’ll get better 3D and video performance too. All this doesn’t come at a price either as the dv2 will start at $699 on up AND you’ll get a lightweight system to boot

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HP Pavilion dv2 1 year ago 1 point
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I almost got that dv5 or whatever they call they "blue-label" Best Buy laptop. HP does make some phenomenal laptops (barring their love affair with AMD), but they gloss the hell out of everything they make. A real shame.

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