A fully featured laptop that doesn’t break your piggy bank
By Paul Marc Rañon
The Presario V3047 measures slightly more than 33 centimeters wide, 24 centimeters in depth, 4 centimeters thick, and weighs about 2.5 kilograms (it weighs about 2.9 kilograms with the AC adapter). The notebook has a thin-and-light form factor that gives a good impression of being portable and compact for people who are always on-the-go.
The V3047 is fitted with the latest Intel Centrino Duo T2400 processor that runs at 1.83 GHz clock speed, an Intel 945GM graphics processor with 128MB memory, 512MB RAM, DDR II SDRAM, and a 60GB hard drive memory.
The V3047 has been developed by HP Compaq which renders a new feel and look for their newest Presario line of laptops. Saying goodbye to their too familiar silver design of previous Presario models, the V3047 sports a dark gray, pinstriped, high-gloss finish that is particularly scratch-resistant, which is the most common dilemma of many laptop users to date.
The V3047 has a 14.1-inch widescreen display with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. It sports a glossy coating overlaying the display screen. This baby gave a good impression with its video quality, thanks to HP’s BrightView technology. Even though regular guys will like the V3047, we guess hardcore serious gamers will also be smitten (although we don’t recommend any laptop or notebook for extended heavy gaming).
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| HP COMPAQ PRESARIO V3047 | |
The keyboard of the V3047 is quite large which made me comfortable to type and encode documents during extended periods, especially given our deadlines at work. The Presario V3047 mouse buttons and touchpad are almost prominent but with minimal size nonetheless.
Although, I find the glossy touchpad a little bit slippery, it was just a minor issue for me, and I was able to adjust to it. One of the things I really liked about the V3047’s touchpad was its good vertical and horizontal scrolling functionality, and the presence of a touchpad on/off button. This completely eliminates stubborn cursor movements whenever the external mouse is connected to the V3047. From the regular mouse to the Bluetooth-enabled wireless mouse, things definitely went well for the Presario V3047.
Another good feature of the V3047 is having the Altec Lansing stereo speakers that can be found above the keyboard. During the tests, the speakers delivered a modest and decent audio quality. Although the sound becomes a little bit muffled when closing the laptop lid, the V3047 speakers fared well, especially when listening to MP3s and watching Casablanca.
The V3047 is already equipped and configured with a full version of Windows XP Home Edition SP2; it is Windows Vista capable if you need the OS upgrade. HP also included a bundle of software, including a trial version of Norton Internet Security, basic productivity Microsoft Works suite, 31 HP Games, wireless and tech support utilities, and HP’s very own QuickPlay 2.1 multimedia program that can play CDs and DVDs even with or without Windows being booted.
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| HP COMPAQ PRESARIO V3047 | | Included ports are three USB 2.0 ports, one four-pin FireWire port, S-Video out, VGA out, and a connector for expansion base for HP xb3000 Notebook Expansion Base (for a true desktop experience). And by the way, this writer liked the unique yet neat feature of the AC adapter port because it glows blue during charging.
Don’t freak out if the V3047 doesn’t have a Type II PC Card slot, because it has instead an ExpressCard slot and a 5-in-1 memory card reader (SD/MS/MS Pro/MMC/xD). The laptop unit that was lent had a CD/CD-RW/DVD-RAM optical drive (can be upgraded to DVD R/RW drive with DL support or LightScribe DVD R/RW SuperMulti drive with DL support) that reads and burns CDs and reads DVD/DVD-R/DVD-RW discs. Even though we were quite impressed with its reading and burning capabilities, the optical drive emitted a buzzing noise while a CD is being read and/or burned.
As for network connections, it includes 802.11a/b/g network interface, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 56Kbps modem. Another impressive feature of the V3047 is it has a handy switch that’s located on the left side of the notebook, wherein you can turn on/off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (known as HP Wireless Assistant) for wireless connection to the Internet and file transfers from your favorite mobile phone to the V3047. It also conserves battery power when not in use.
The V3047 is equipped with a 6-cell standard Lithium Ion battery that has a charging time of 2 hours, with a lifespan of about 4 hours, using all applications. The nicest feature this writer likes about the V3047 is that even though it is turned on and the laptop lid is closed, the battery is still at the same level before “hibernation”. A user has a battery upgrade option to 8-cell, or even a 12-cell Li-Ion if you have the “bread” to order on-line.
The HP Compaq Presario V3047 is an impressive notebook to own. Although it has some minor shortcomings, the bottom line is that it can easily handle word processing, e-mail, and even considerably more demanding tasks. This pretty lass is not recommended for serious gaming because it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card. But for students and professionals, including those in the media industry, Tech101 definitely recommends the V3047.
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