1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice, May 10 2012
If you're after a laptop that's stylish and powerful, then the HP Pavilion DM4 certainly looks the part, with it's patterned aluminium keyboard surround and lid, and it's no slouch under the hood either. I use mine for development, and its dual core i5 is perfectly capable of running the copy of x64 Windows 7 that it comes pre-installed with, as well as a development environment and a couple of virtual machines, and represents a bargain at this price. The battery life is pretty good too.
If you are looking for a machine to play the latest games, however, you may want to look elsewhere, as this has a screen resolution limited to 1366x768 and no dedicated GPU.
The keyboard has a small travel distance and has the Apple-style key spacing, but it's snappy enough that you know when a key has been pressed. Unfortunately, the F-keys default to their alternative functions such as volume and other media controls (to actually press F2, for example, you need to press Fn + F2). A neat idea for a multimedia system, I just wish I could turn it off for when I'm using the real F-keys. The trackpad is also quite sensitive and takes a little getting used to, particularly since there's no divide between the pad itself and the L/R-click buttons just beneath it.
The gorgeous surround and lid top isn't quite matched by the glossy plastic screen bevel or the matte plastic backing, and there's a few pieces that move more than they should, including part of the screen bevel and the mains port.
But despite the glitches, niggles and minor issues, you can't really argue with the raw performance at this kind of price.