HP Pavilion DM3-1040US 13.3-Inch Silver Laptop – Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life
January 7, 2010 | Posted by 
- 1.3GHz Intel Pentium SU4100 Processor (2 MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
- 4 GB DDR3 RAM (2 Dimm), Max supported 8 GB
- 320GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
- 13.3¿ Diagonal High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1366 x 768); Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (shared) with up to 1.6 GB total available graphics memory
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, *Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life
Product Description
For those who want full PC performance optimized for mobility, the HP Pavilion dm3 Entertainment series delivers in a surprisingly affordable, minimalist design. Its top and palm rest covers are made of brushed aluminum in Modern Argento gray, while its bottom casing is a magnesium alloy. The metal casing helps ensure maximum durability at minimal weight. The clean design is accentuated by an iconic keyboard. Powered by the latest ultra-low-voltage processor and mobile graphics technologies, it delivers optimal mobile performance to support your on-the-go lifestyle. Get up to 10 hours of life for extended use with the standard battery. Break free with the performance you need in a design you’ll love (without the designer price tag). Set yourself apart with an ultra-thin design in colorized brushed aluminum. Get greater durability with lightweight aluminum-magnesium casing. Experience full-screen views of HD TV and movies with the 16:9 13.3-Inch diagonal display. Enjoy your photos and videos on HD TVs with the HDMI port (cable sold separately). Chat face to face with the HP Webcam and add fun special effects. Relax with extra protection from file loss due to drops with HP ProtectSmart. Enjoy easy access to your favorite entertainment with HP MediaSmart.
HP Pavilion DM3-1040US 13.3-Inch Silver Laptop – Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life
Categories: HP | 
Tags: 13.3Inch, Any Brands, Battery, DM31040US, Hours, Life, Pavilion, Silver | 
5 Comments »
I was disappointed in not being informed that the computer did not include a DVD/CD internal player, and no information was given as to the appropriate external player.
I should have been warned and the exact available external DVD/CD players recommended, especially for first time buyers!!!
Thanks
Rating: 3 / 5
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dunking a product on Amazon usually gets you more “No” votes. That said, I am compelled to write this review as I believe that HP did an “evil thing” when they rolled out this product.
Before I start bitching, here are the GOOD:
***Killer looks (five stars are not enough)
***Great screen (never feels like I am looking at a 13.3″ screen)
***one of the best keyboards I had used in a long time
***Powerful processor with plenty of RAM (doesn’t struggle even when I keep 10 applications simultaneously open)
***Silent
***Four USB’s and an HDMI out (on such a small body)
***Solid build.
Then there are the BAD:
***Buggy touch pad. Some quick fix solutions are being discussed on the forums. The issue seem to be a software bug. If so, it’s just a matter of time before HP would fix it (I wonder why HP hadn’t done it already; I’ll grit my teeth and wait).
***Mirror surface touchpad is “sticky” (I’m not a “touch pad” guy anyway).
***A laptop bag supplied by HP screams “aesthetic murder” (I’ll budget may be another $100 for a new bag)
***Having to hold function key to access F2 is real pain when working on spreadsheet (but I think I’ll get used to it; I’m already warming up to using FN+Arrow to access HOME and END)
Here is the unforgivable UGLY:
***The battery life is typically 4 hours and not the advertised 10 hours (no gaming or video; only standard office work with WiFi on)!!!
This is absolutely unforgivable because
***This is not a software bug and won’t get fixed in the future
***The difference between the claimed battery life and actual one is so large that it can’t be explained away with fine prints (I can swallow if I get 80% of advertised battery life; not when I get only 40%)
***When the Asian manufacturers (Acer, ASUS and now Sony) claim 10hr, user actually get 10hr or more.
I think HP is having trouble catching up with the “low battery consumption” technologies. Instead of working their butt off, HP took a short cut and made a false “10hr battery” claim. After all, the world is full of suckers like “yours truly”. In my part of the world, such practice is called “cheating”. If you are from Google Land, you may want to call it “doing Evil”.
I bought this laptop because I was tired of carrying my earlier “kitchen sink of a machine” (HP dv9000; beautifully designed). I had this fancy notion that I would carry the notebook to the office, sans the wires, bag and baggage (I’ve seen my friends do this with Acer and Asus). That’s never going to happen till I upgrade some two years down the line.
When I am in the market the next time around, I should remember not to take HP on its face value.
Rating: 3 / 5
This is the best Laptop I have ever owned not to mention its great looking exterior. I’ve never had a problem with its touchpad after disabling it via mouse settings. There is an instructional video as to how to do it on youtube. It runs perfectly on windows 7 ultimate. This is definitely the best laptop of its kind as far as looks, performance, and portability. The only downside I find with it is how hard the touchpad buttons are but I can easily live with it given its very strong points. The Pentium version is definitely better than the AMD one in my opinion.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve had this laptop for a week and I’m loving it.
Pros:
– Light and good looking, great keyboard.
– Price… I got this for under $[...] with rebate.
– Fast… despite the 1.3GHz processor this machine is faster at image processing than my older 1.6GHz laptop and as fast as my 2.3GHz desktop, both running XP. Probably because 64-bit Windows 7 is able to utilize more RAM (expandable to 8GB). No problems running multiple apps.
– All day battery… carrying the cord to work is no more. Runs cool and quiet.
– Beautiful display
– Feels solid.
– No optical drive–let’s speed the obsolescence of these bulky, heavy, battery sucking things.
– Windows 7 is great, though avoid Live Mail and IE, which seems to get worse every release. Thunderbird and Chrome.
Cons:
– Ships with a bug in the Intel power management that causes screen brightness to fluctuate on battery power. This has to be disabled or manually fixed with a download. Scary and inexcusable out of the box problem..
– Touch pad sucks miserably–it must have taken months of redesign and engineering to make a simple touch pad suck this much. But I use mainly keyboard shortcuts or a cordless mouse, so no big deal for me.
– Battery does not fit in completely snug, causing an annoying click when carrying it, and detracts from the “solid” feel.
– MASSIVE HORRIBLE BLOATWARE AND GARBAGE SOFTWARE INSTALLED BY HP. They have installed all these ridiculous things that perform normal Windows functions but with three times the effort and ten times the fanfare, as well as gigabytes of trashy games, useless entertainment software, who knows what else. Tempting to just do a fresh install of Windows from the recovery partition, but I suspect it is rigged to reinstall all the HP crap. This is the only reason I didn’t give this 5 stars. The computer must say “HP” on it a dozen times, between all the stickers and logos–no need to vandalize the OS as well.
Rating: 4 / 5
This really hits the new sweet spot for portable laptops. I think by now pretty much everyone’s over the netbook craze. Yeah, great idea but at the end of the day they’re way too small and they have almost no computing power with those wimpy Atom processors. yet most of us who travel don’t want to lug around a 15″-16″ brick. Along comes the 13.3″ form factor. Amd with it, HP almost hit a grand slam with this DM3. As many others have correctly said, the track pad is nothing short of awful and the mouse buttons are too stiff. That pretty much sums up the negatives of this otherwise wonderful machine. The display is gorgeous, it’s fast as all get-up (I have the Su7300 processor and 7200 rpm hard drive), it has plenty of RAM (4 gigs), the speakers are more than acceptable for a small laptop, battery life is awesome and it’s a classy looking unit clad in all metal.
I’m one of those who remember when laptops cost upwards of $1500 for a bare bones machine that couldn’t do half of what this one does. At it’s price point, it’s a steal. Highly recommended.
But HP should be ashamed of it’s horrid touchpad. C’mon guys, you can do better!!!
Rating: 4 / 5