HP G62-340us 15.6-Inch Laptop PC - Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life (Charcoal)

You need to understand where I'm coming from - my most recent computer was running a Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. That being said this computer is a significant step up, and I think it's great. I think it's also important to know what I'm using this computer for....I work in a hospital and use this to log on to the hospital system, use Microsoft Office, and surf the internet. For these applications this computer is perfect. I've had it for about 1 month and have had no issues. It does come loaded with a bunch of HP software which can be uninstalled so that's not a problem.

The battery is listed as 4 hrs...it probably doesn't last that long - I haven't officially timed the battery life but it's probably closer to 3 hrs. The case is plastic, the cold startup time is fast <30 sec, the wake from hibernate time is close to 3 seconds, the display is clear; the keyboard is easy to type on. The only thing that took me some time to get used to is the touchpad as it does not have any defined boundaries and the buttons are a little stiff. I seemed to have gotten use to both and for me they are minor issues.

I think the computer is ideal for any student or person who has similar tasks to the mine (listed above - probably the vast majority of people). I'm not a gamer and don't intend on using this for playing high intensity video games or doing a lot of photo/video/music editing. This computer is probably not suited for that type of work.

Overall I'm very happy with the product. I think for the money (paid $420 pretax) its hard to beat.

HP Pavilion dm4-1160us 14-Inch Laptop PC - Up to 6.25 Hours of Battery Life (Argento)

I won't bother telling you how powerful, quiet, and lightweight this machine is. People seem to just want to focus on the touchpad. Maybe early runs of it had problems, but mine works perfectly. The only quirk is that if you have two fingers on the touchpad at the same time, and try to move the mouse, you get this fricking 4-headed arrow that has crazy effects (in chrome, it increases and decreases the font size). Just make sure that one finger stays on the mouse button, and another finger can move the mouse. The problem arises because there is no tactile border between the mouse buttons and the touchpad, so if you are careless, you can end up with two fingers on the touchpad, and.....chaos. It took me about 7 minutes to figure out that if you keep your index finger on the lower half of the mouse button (which you *can* feel) then it's easy to move the mouse with another finger and have no problems. I actually find the touchpad quite responsive.
I love this machine, and think it is a steal for not much more than $700. Maybe it's not for everybody, but don't let rumors of touchpad issues dissuade you.

HP W2207H 22-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor

Product Description
Product Description
The HP w2207 with BrightView panel provides an elegant flat panel monitor with a wide view for work or play. Adjust the tilt, height and switch between landscape or portrait orientation of the display to suit your needs. Get a high quality widescreen picture with a Brightview panel and high contrast ratio. Maximize desk space with innovative features such as integrated speakers, keyboard parking space and Easy Clip by attaching on photo and flower holders to your monitor. Extreme resolution at 1680 x 1050 and 5 ms response time for bright, awesome graphic quality perfect for videos, photo editing or gaming on your PC. Standard 15-pin D-sub analog and advanced HDMI digital interfaces for optimal graphic performance. Dual inputs support true digital (HDMI) and traditional analog (VGA) signals. HDCP-enabled for optimum viewing of High Definition content (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Double hinge base allows height adjustment from the youngest to oldest viewer to view comfortably. The HP w2207 provides a BrightView widescreen panel for brilliant picture quality. Dimensions unpacked, max position: 18.95"(h) x 20.61"(w) x 11.38"(d).

Product Description
The HP Pavilion w2207h is a 22" wide-screen flat panel monitor with liquid crystal display LCD and thin-film transistor TFT screen. Coupling a wide screen and 720p 1080i high-def imaging, this monitor offers exceptional viewing if you (plan to) use your PC or Macintosh for viewing video. Consider adding an optional TV tuner adapter to your PC and this monitor doubles as a TV monitor. Rated with a 5-millisecond response time, the display offers dynamite performance for fast-action videogame play. The HP Pavilion w2207h comes with a table stand but it is also VESA 100 compatible for use with an optional wall mount. Do more with the w2207h! BriteView Technology enhances clarity and provides brilliant colors 1680 x 1050 factory-set resolution at 60 Hz Video inputs supported - VGA analog signal and HDMI digital signal Supports HDCP High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection to prevent transmission of non-encrypted high definition content Plug and Play capability, if supported by your computer system On-screen display (OSD) adjustments for ease of setup and screen optimization Display size - 22 (55.9 cm) diagonal and viewable image Input terminal VGA 15-pin D-type connector Scanning frequency - Horizontal scan range 24-82 KHz, Vertical scan range 48-76 Hz Contrast ratio - up to 2000 - 1 Dynamic-Contrast ratio - up to 3000 - 1 Response time - 5 ms (on-off) Pixel pitch - 0.252 mm EMI standard FCC Class B Mounting Standard - VESA 4-hole 100x100mm Unit Dimensions - Height 18.9 x Width 20.5 x Depth 11.3 (48.1x52.3x28.9cm) Weight - 19.8 pounds (9 kg) Box includes Monitor, Power cable, VGA cable, Audio cable, DVI cable, Documentation CD, 1-Year HP Warranty card

This is a sweet monitor! The colors are rich. This is a glossy display .

This monitor has a VGA and an HDMI input - there is no DVI so you need a dvi-hdmi cable if your going to hook it up to your dvi port on your computer's video card , the monitor does not come with this cable... it does come with and hdmi and vga cable.

I hooked my Xbox 360 using the xbox vga cable and it is awesome!

I hooked my computer using the hdmi to dvi cable (bought separately ) .. the button in from allows me to switch screen so both can be up and running using the one screen. You can also change the richness of the colors with a button in front too (photo,gaming,text,etc...) so when your gaming just press the button and jack up the colors ...

The monitor does portrait mode too.

Overall this is a quality monitor for a great price.... only short coming is the hdmi-dvi lack of cable , it should come with it but does not.

HP C7280 Photosmart All-in-One Printer (CC567A#ABA)

Printer, scanner, copier, fax, ADF, duplexer, color LED information display, USB, wired Ethernet, 802.11B/G wireless, memory card reader (CF, SD/MMC, XD, MS/Duo). The HP C7280 is a marvelous dream machine. Has a photo paper tray and a red eye removal button too. My unit (French) came with OCR scanning software. Haven't tried it though. The unit is surprisingly modest in size.

Documentation and software is very good. Be patient with software installation. It is not a quick process. All my computers are Windows Vista Premium. Before installing, disable anti-virus software, possibly firewall, file sync, and backup software. The software warned about this. I ignored the warnings and the installation process failed until I disabled them. An end user should never have to be concerned about this -- but I digress.

I'm using the printer to print documentation (mono), usually two-up and double sided. Print quality seems fine although I'm not looking with a critical eye. My printer is networked wirelessly to the router. First page out is very fast on my Ethernet wired computer but somewhat slow on my wireless notebook. The slowness is probably inherent to the notebook-to-router-to-printer wireless networking as opposed to the C7280. Making one of the links wired seems to make a speed difference. If you find this to be an issue, consider putting the printer on an AC power line network such as the well reviewed Panasonic BL-PA100KTA HD-PLC Ethernet Adaptor.

With so many functions, this machine is a modern marvel. I'm really suprised at how well this newly produced machine works. There's a lot of difficult technology packed into this box. Great work HP!

I have three minor issues. First, the installation software shouldn't ask me to disable software to install new software. The software industry needs to sort this out. Second, give me an option to disable the balloon popup that says something like "Printer HP C7280 is disconnected from network". It appears often and intermittently. I'm not sure if this is a wireless network issue or an HP issue. Regardless, I want to opt to not see the message. Just an icon change is sufficient. Third, I haven't found an option to print pages in reverse order.

Update 22-Sep-2007: Wireless printing performance was improved when I changed the router's wireless channel to a lesser used channel. I used a WiFi finder device to show all wireless networks and their channel numbers. There's software that can do that too. I then picked a less noisy channel. I also changed the printer's IP address to a static IP. It seemed that the router was assigning new IP addresses when the connection got flaky. This was particularly a problem since three computer's were using the printer. The static IP assignment will lock the printer's IP to a fixed address thus ending the IP roulette issue.

Update 11-Nov-2007: Flaky wireless problems have been resolved by upgrading to a D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router. Fine product. Recommended. YMMV.

Update 21-Mar-2008: Update software available! I found their new software, filename 100_228_PS_AIO_02_Full_Net_enu.exe available at HP's website, to be a much more pleasant install and a bit better usability. I installed using the "custom" mode, selected manual update, deselected checkboxes for update, supplies and web printing. Be sure you have a C: drive though. One of my three computers has no C: drive which causes the install to abort. I'll have to change the drive letter to C:

Update 24-Mar-2008: New software didn't recognize duplexer unit. Asked me to manually flip paper. Solution is to set Printer Properties->Device Settings->Duplex Unit to Installed. Why doesn't the software automatically detect the duplex unit? Argh.

HP Officejet 6310 All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (Q8061A#ABA)

I recently upgraded to the HP6310 from the HP7110 a machine I was more than happy with. The move has been excellent, all functions are faster particularly color printing, the unit is significantly more compact and the quality of images are also a serious upgrade. The unit has almost no shake and is extremely quiet in operation, particularly in comparison with my old 7110. In addition the price differential between this machine and the much inferior HP5610 is very small.

New features include the ability to take several formats of camera memory cards and read directly from them to print contact sheets, six ink color with inkjet photo ink and up to 24 x 8.5 prints. There are also wired and wireless network options etc but I have not used them.

Installation was a breeze, I was up and running in maybe 10 minutes, the controls are intuitive but if needed the instruction book is unusually easy to follow.

Why not five stars: it drinks ink and the cartridges are small -that gets expensive.

If you can live with the ink issue this is a great machine for the home office or small business.