For quite some time now, Hewlett Packard has been producing laptops that fall between “good” and “awful.” Has making printers made this company slow in catching up in the notebook category? Since Hewlett Packard (HP) has been known for business machines since its inception some decades ago, the HP DV2799ea SE is of course, built for those with their eyes fixed on business application.

Unfortunately, even business computers need speed and top-notch performance, not only “good looks.” Solidly built outside, the HP DV2799ea disappoints HP fans with slow and mediocre performance on all fronts.

Specifications

The HP DV2799ea SE comes with a wide 14 inch screen and runs with the usual Intel Dual Core T9300. It has 4 gigabytes of RAM and has a tad smaller hard drive at 250 gigabytes. The video card, nVIDIA Geforce 8400m should have compensated, but don’t expect to be able to play Flight Simulator X here. Surprisingly, for a bulky laptop that is on the heavy side, this laptop only has 2 universal serial buses.

When everything runs on USB ports, how come this one comes with only 2? In any case, this laptop has been installed with a 5-in-1 card reader, and of course, a biometric reader for identifying fingerprints.

Performance

Installed with Windows Vista (Home Edition), the HP DV2799ea SE definitely looks the part of a mean but sophisticated machine (HP is known for nice external architecture). However, performance is a bit low.

For instance, connecting the laptop with other external devices is extremely difficult owing to the fact that the 2 USB ports seem to be extra tight- you actually have to use force when you want to connect say, an optical mouse. Surprisingly, even the card reader behaves this way, and seems to be bent on quelling any attempts to insert any memory card in it.

When you switch on the laptop, Windows Vista executes fine, though slowly, which might spell trouble if you plan on installing memory intensive applications that load on start-up, such as industrial-grade antivirus software and antispyware.

Interestingly, creating backup discs or emergency discs take ages to finish, and disappointingly, these discs are sometimes not recognized as authentic emergency discs.

In some instances, the laptop freezes and it takes a while to reboot. Upon reboot, many of the basic start-up utilities take a while to load themselves (sometimes for more than 5 minutes) which would definitely cause the ire of many who are banking on the 4 gigabytes of RAM to do its job properly.

Applications also take a long time to load. How bad is this problem with the HP DV2799ea? Basic programs like snipping tools take minutes to load completely, and often, Windows freezes and you have to reboot again. This sad cycle repeats itself, and no hope seems to be in sight, since an installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 doesn’t solve anything, but in fact, magnifies the already existing problems.

BIOS upgrades are also not recommended as the machine will fail to boot after the upgrade. There is definitely something amiss with this HP laptop.