Why You Can Trust CNET HP Pavilion zd7000 review: HP Pavilion zd7000
HP Pavilion zd7000
Microsoft has upgraded its TV- and media-friendly Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) to MCE 2004, and HP's Pavilion zd7000 runs the new version. The $2,600 laptop features a big, wide-screen display; a handheld remote; a DVD burner; and an external box that ties in to your television signal. MCE 2004 may be better suited for a PC, especially if accommodating the OS requires a 9.2-pound laptop, plus multiple cables and paraphernalia. Nevertheless, the HP Pavilion zd7000 is among the fastest, best-designed laptops CNET has ever tested, and it's equipped to please videographers, shutterbugs, gamers, and even those who ponder spreadsheets. However, its sheer weight and heat, plus a battery that conks out just past two hours, may discourage you from taking the laptop off your desk.
After looking at several recent big-screen laptops, we think the HP Pavilion zd7000 has the best implementation of a nonstandard-resolution display. In particular, its resolution is appropriate for its screen size, unlike others we've seen. HP's Pavilion nx7000, for example, crams its 1,680x1,050 resolution onto a 15.4-inch (diagonal) wide-screen LCD--that's 130 pixels per inch, a view so dense, you have to squint.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The HP Pavilion zd7000 tops out at a comfortable 100 pixels per inch, displaying a 1,440x900 native resolution--enough to sail through a spreadsheet as easily as through a movie. We love the display's saturated colors and its sharp, clean text on an evenly lit background. The image fades when viewing from above or the side, however, so gathering friends around for a movie won't work.
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| The big keyboard includes a separate numeric keypad. |
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| The wide touchpad features a scrolling strip down the right-hand edge. |
The HP Pavilion zd7000's size allows for uncluttered, uncrowded hands-on elements. A long, ridged latch opens the lid easily to reveal a full-size keyboard--even the Backspace key is big--with a separate numeric keypad. Keys provide a good "pop" feel and operate silently, and the keyboard is almost free of wiggle and sag. A wide touchpad features a scrolling strip down the right-hand edge; ordinary left- and right-click mouse buttons sit just below it. Stereo speakers line the laptop's entire front edge and sound at least as good as small external speakers. There's also a power button for the 802.11g Wi-Fi radio.
 | "="" --="">/sc/30557633-2-200-DT3.gif" width="200" height="150" border="0" /> The DVD-rewritable drive is fixed, so you can't swap in another battery. |
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HP stocked the Pavilion zd7000 with features on the outside and muscle on the inside. Along the edges, it has a quartet of USB 2.0 ports; a four-pin FireWire port; S-Video; two flash memory slots that read Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, and SmartMedia; and a Type II/Type III PC Card slot. A fixed DVD-R/RW drive accommodates most optical media but, unfortunately, not a backup battery. Inside, there's a screaming-hot 3.2GHz desktop Pentium 4 (it really does run hot; good thing the Pavilion zd7000 is too heavy to park on your lap for long); Nvidia's AGP 8X GeForce FX Go5600 graphics controller with 128MB of its own memory; 512MB of 333MHz memory filling both memory slots; and a 60GB hard drive.
Microsoft streamlined and extended Media Center Edition (MCE) 2004 in some useful ways. The basic idea is a separate, no-keyboard interface that lets you use the remote to run utilities for viewing and recording television, organizing and displaying photos, and performing other media-oriented activities. MCE 2004 can teach itself how to work with your set-top box, walk you through calibrating color on your screen, and notify you when someone is trying to call you (if you have Caller ID). It can download current TV schedules unattended and record a TV show while you're using the system for other tasks. Microsoft also improved the television listings; you now have tools to sort and filter them, and you can find listings based on keywords.
For those moments away from television, HP bundles Microsoft Works 7.0 with Microsoft Money 2003 and Encarta Internet Edition.
Mobile application performance
The HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE comes in first place in mobile performance in this small test group of desktop replacements. The HP Pavilion zd7000 is the first laptop we've tested with Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor. The difference between this chip and the normal Pentium 4 is the addition of a 2MB L3 memory cache on the Extreme Edition chip as well as its normal 512K L2 memory cache. The HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's mobile performance score has less to do with this major bump in cache memory and more to do with how low the speed of the processor is throttled in order to conserve battery life. In this case, the HP Pavilion zd7000's 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor does not drop its speed significantly and as a result ends up with the highest MobileMark performance score we've yet seen. Unfortunately, the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's great mobile performance does not come without a price, as is seen in its battery life score. The Dell Inspiron XPS with its Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor is a distant second in mobile performance, with the original HP Pavilion zd7000 P4 bringing up the rear. Often with desktop replacements, mobile performance comes down to how much battery life the manufacturer is comfortable sacrificing. In the case of the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE, HP chooses mobile performance, designing a system that can run office and content-creation applications very fast in a mobile state.
| BAPCo MobileMark 2002 performance rating |
SysMark 2002 performance
The Pentium 4 Extreme Edition-based HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE significantly outperforms its Pentium 4-based predecessor, with increases of about 14 percent over the older processor. This is due not only to the laptop's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition chip, which has a superlarge 2MB L3 memory cache, but also to the system's increased RAM, about (1GB as opposed to 512MB) and faster 5,400rpm hard drive. All of these factors result in a 24 percent increase in office-productivity performance and a 3 percent increase in Internet content-creation performance. However, the great hardware improvement isn't enough to win out over the Dell Inspiron XPS. Although the Dell Inspiron XPS uses the normal version of the Pentium 4, it runs at a faster 3.4GHz. Also, the system includes a superfast 7,200rpm hard drive, which helps give it a performance boost over the competition. That said, the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's maximum performance is still one of the best we've seen and should satisfy the performance demands of even the most demanding user.
| BAPCo SysMark 2002 rating | | SysMark 2002 Internet content creation | | SysMark 2002 office productivity |
To measure maximum notebook application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark 2002, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).
3D graphics performance
The HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE places a distant second behind the Dell Inspiron XPS in 3D graphics performance. The good news is that the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's 3D score is a huge 25 percent increase over the older model's, thanks mostly to the P4EE processor's huge 2MB L3 memory cache. The 3D performance of this system is great. However, the Dell Inspiron XPS performs even better. Using 3D architecture that is about half a generation ahead of the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's, the Dell Inspiron XPS houses ATI's newest mobile GPU, the Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB, which is the successor to the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Dell Inspiron XPS beats the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE by 15 percent. It should be noted, however, that the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE is still one of the highest-scoring 3D laptops we've seen. It was just outclassed by newer hardware. Still, the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE should have no problem meeting the performance needs of most gamers.
| Futuremark's 3DMark2001 SE |
To measure 3D graphics performance, CNET Labs uses Futuremark's 3DMark2001 SE. We use 3DMark to measure desktop replacement notebook performance with the DirectX 8.1 interface at the 32-bit color setting at a resolution of 1,024x768.
Performance analysis written by CNET Labs assistant lab manager Eric Franklin.
Find out more about how we test laptops. System configurations:
Dell Inspiron XPS
Windows XP Professional; 3.4GHz Intel Pentium 4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB 7,200rpm
HP Pavilion zd7000 P4
Windows XP Media Center 2004; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX Go5600 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 80GN 60GB 4,200rpm
HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE
Windows XP Professional; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition; 1024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX Go5600 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 80GB 5,400rpm
The HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE pays the price for its impressive mobile performance with lackluster battery life that puts it in a distant last place in our group of desktop replacements. Although the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE includes a huge 14.8V, 6,600mAh (98WHr) battery, the battery is drained in less than two hours. This is a result of its CPU running at a relatively high speed, as evidenced by its great mobile performance. The Dell Inspiron XPS which includes a Pentium 4-3.4GHz processor, came in first place in battery life. Since the Dell Inspiron XPS's 14.8V, 6,400mAh (95WHr) battery has specs similar to the HP Pavilion zd7000's battery, this difference in battery life can most likely be attributed to the Dell Inspiron XPS's throttling of its fast processor down to a level below the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE's. As the mobile performance results indicate, the Dell Inspiron XPS is less concerned with mobile performance and more with battery life. The older HP Pavilion zd7000 P4 with its 14.8V, 6,450mAh (95WHr) came in a very close second place behind the Dell Inspiron XPS. The HP Pavilion zd7000 P4 was the worst mobile performer of this lot, falling about 4 percent behind the Dell Inspiron XPS. Basically, the vanilla zd7000 P4 system uses less juice to power its CPU than the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE does. Consequently, the HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE has battery life that fails to inspire, but having said that, battery life is probably the least important aspect of a desktop replacement, since most users will be using it while it's plugged in.
Battery life analysis written by CNET Labs assistant lab manager Eric Franklin.
| BAPCo MobileMark 2002 battery life in minutes |
To measure mobile application performance and battery life, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's MobileMark 2002. MobileMark measures both application performance and battery life concurrently using a number of popular applications (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5.0).
Find out more about how we test laptops. System configurations:
Dell Inspiron XPS
Windows XP Professional; 3.4GHz Intel Pentium 4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB 7,200rpm
HP Pavilion zd7000 P4
Windows XP Media Center 2004; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX Go5600 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 80GN 60GB 4,200rpm
HP Pavilion zd7000 P4EE
Windows XP Professional; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition; 1024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia GeForce FX Go5600 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 80GB 5,400rpm
HP covers the Pavilion zd7000 with a one-year warranty that includes free, 24/7, toll-free tech support with free pickup and delivery for repair. Considering the laptop's hefty price tag and complicated software, we think HP should provide a three-year warranty; instead, the company charges you $180 to upgrade.
The company's printed documentation provides extensive, clear information on setting up and operating the laptop. There is detailed troubleshooting help on a CD. The package doesn't cover XP Media Center Edition well, however, and Microsoft's help files are choppy and brief.
To find out more about how this product's warranty really stacks up and what you should look for in terms of service and support, take a look at CNET's hardware warranty explainer.