HP Pavilion ze2000

How much notebook can you get for $774? More than you might think, as the HP Pavilion ze2000 crams a lot into this 6.5-pound system, including a 15-inch display, DVD/CD-RW drive, 802.11g networking, and a 4-in-1 memory-card slot. You also get a fair amount of battery life compared to the other three budget laptops we tested. If you're looking to save some cash and don't want to skimp on features, this is a wise investment.

The ze2000 is encased in a silver-colored shell with dark gray side panels. Lifting the lid of this 14.3 x 11.2 x 1.5-inch machine reveals a dark gray housing around the keyboard and display, making for a pretty typical-looking laptop overall, but certainly not an ugly one.

HP outfits this value notebook with a bright, crisp XGA display that's great for just about any task. The speakers were a pleasant surprise, too; the sound these front-mounted Harman Kardon units generated was pretty full.

The system's all-around performance is what you'd expect for the price: just good enough for daily productivity tasks like word processing and checking e-mail, but not recommended for multimedia applications or multitasking. Whether we were encoding an MP3 or editing a digital photo, the 1.4-GHz Intel Celeron 350 processor at the heart of the ze2000 seemed to take its sweet time. PCMark04 backed up our experience, giving the system a low, but not terrible, score of 2330. HP lets you upgrade the CPU to a 1.5-GHz Pentium M 715 for $150 at the time of purchase, and you should seriously consider taking them up on that offer.

Although the 4,200-rpm hard drive contributed to the system's slow performance, its 40GB capacity is convenient. We also liked the supporting drives installed on the system. In addition to a combination DVD/CD-RW drive, which is nice at this price, there's a multiformat flash memory-card reader, which is the ideal way to import files from your digital camera. This reader supports SD/MMCs, Memory Stick, and even xD cards.

As can be expected, the graphics adapter embedded into the ze2000's Intel 855GM core logic chipset is uninspiring. Far Cry played more like a series of still frames than lifelike motion. FutureMark's 3DMark2001 benchmark bore this out, giving the Pavilion ze2000 a meager score of 1849. On the upside, the system played DVD movies flawlessly.

For connecting any other external device, you'll be glad to find three USB 2.0 ports scattered around the sides of the system, in addition to a FireWire port, VGA and S-video outputs, and something HP calls the Expansion Port 2 Connector, which is used to attach an external disk drive.

Perhaps our favorite feature of the Pavilion ze2000 is its battery. While we're not usually impressed by a two-hour battery runtime, the other two budget laptops we tested couldn't crack an hour and a half. The ze2000 managed to play our test DVD for 2 hours 1 minute long, enough to play the average movie and still have 30 minutes left for work. That's when you'll appreciate the comfortable full-sized keyboard and the smooth touchpad with a scroll zone along the right side.

The ze2000's warranty covers parts and labor on this $799 system for a year and offers 24/7 toll-free telephone tech support. As long as you're not heavy into multimedia, the features, endurance, and service on the HP Pavilion ze2000 make it an excellent buy.