The HP Pavilion DV2 was the first laptop to adopt the AMD Neo platform, which provides significantly better CPU and graphics performance than you’ll get from an Intel Atom powered netbook. Unfortunately, with great power comes not-so-great battery life, and the DV2 was only able to get around 2.5 hours per charge.
Now HP is rolling out the successor to the DV2, the HP Pavilion DM3. HP says this laptop will get up to 10 hours of battery life using a 6 cell battery and an Intel Core 2 duo processor. It’s also available with a dual core AMD Neo processor and ATI graphics, but that version won’t get the same kind of battery life. Both models will have discrete graphics cards which can be switched on or off depending on whether you need to boost your graphics performance or battery life.
Those who were hoping for another 12.1 inch or smaller netbook might be disappointed to note that the DM3 will have a 13.3 inch display. But the laptop measures just about an inch thick and weighs 4.2 pounds. The AMD version starts at $549, while the Intel model will have a starting price of $649. And if you’re looking for something smaller, there’s always the HP Mini 311 with NVIDIA ION graphics and a slower Intel Atom CPU.
The HP Pavilion DM3 supports hard drive capacities up to 500GB and is being positioned as a multimedia machine. It’ll ship with HP’s MediaSmart software for music, videos, photos,and internet TV.
You can find more photos of the DM3 after the break.
Update: Notebooks.com has some hands-on photos and a first look video. You can also check out the video after the page break.
I just received my DV2Z with the dual core Turion Neo processor, 4GB RAM and ATI Mobility HD 3410 less a week ago and am very happy with it. I am curious as to what non Intel Video card options will be available with the Core 2 Proc
Thats great! Can you provide some idea about the battery life you are getting? And are things like HD youtube videos working?
With Wifi on, brightness at about half, I am getting around 2.5 hours doing everything from web browsing to 3D gaming (World of Warcraft, CC:Red Alert 3). I have not tried HD Youtube explicitly, but I am running the Hulu Desktop application and have the quality set to high with no jumps or stutters. That ATI card is doing an impressive job. I will try out streaming YouTube HD tonight and let you know.
Thanks for those numbers!
Any information on a release date and options pricing for this?
A 500MB hard drive?! Wowwee! 😉