Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DM3-1040US 13.3-Inch Silver Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

At $649 after rebate I think this laptop hits a real sweet spot in the 13" market! I've had it for a week now and am really enjoying it. I also purchased a Samsung slim DVD writer since this mahcine doesn't include an optical drive.

Pros:

- Runs very cool with the Intel processor - have never had the fan kick on
- No problem streaming video, and has an HDMI for for your HDTV
- Best looking notebook for the price
- Very fast and quiet hdd
- I have to admit I really am enjoying Windows 7 - I skipped the whole Vista thing
- The back lit LED screen is beautiful
- With 4GB RAM the system multi-taks very well
- Battery Life - I get 5 to 6 hrs with my custom settings, cross country trips on a plane are now a reality
- The keyboard is great to type on, although the use of a fn key to use f1-f12 isn't for me

Cons:

- Quite a bit of crapware and bloatware to get rid of
- The track pad leaves something to be desired - buggy in that it sometimes locks up from resume or comes back as a magnifying glass. You can find out how to fix this in the forurms...
- The mouse buttons on the track pad are too small and require too much pressure to click.

I used to travel with a back breaking 15.4 Dell M65, this will be a joy to travel with, and I will use it more at home because of how beautiful the screen is, and it is completely quiet. In my option you can't go wrong here.HP Pavilion DM3-1040US 13.3-Inch Silver Laptop - Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

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.

I understand most of the people taking this unit out of the box have a certain level of expectation, but not all computers have up to date drivers and bios updates installed from the factory. Most if not all of the issues addressed within the reviews for this product are non existent in a fully updated unit with all the current offerings from HPs site. My unit received early 2010 has the very first bios while the update offered is 12 revisions later.

I use this machine as an always on solution that uses low power to keep the power bill down. I use it as a media center, magicjack always on phone system ( throughout my house) and for file transfers. When im lazy I take it to bed to surf before sleep.

Pros
- Appearance. Lid and palm rest is brushed aluminum and looks top notch. I have not seen a laptop that looks this good, friends and family LOVE the look of the computer.

-Noise. Near silent. I read reviews with people complaining about the fan. Its nearly undetectable and I consider it a real plus. I got this just for this reason to replace a HTPC that was too loud for my bedroom. Im thrilled with the cooling so far with the majority of the heat being in the thinnest sections of the palmrest area. Heat exhaust is out the back right and does not blow on you in any way.

- Weight. Doesnt compare to most full size laptops. This thing can be played with in hand in bed more like a netbook. Freedom of usage is closer to a netbook

-Performance. While lacking dedicated video I can testify to what this little powerhouse can do. Play video files up to 14gb+ mkv format BlueRay files (Star Trek 1008p) with perfect playback. The ONLY place this unit is lacking is HD flash video playback (Hulu HD) Still works fine in non full screen or standard definitions. 720p works but above that starts to see framerate loss that affects experience. This will improve with flash updates and future drivers. This unit will likely never be flawless with 1080 streaming. All 720 streaming seems to be fluid enough to be comfortable. This computer can multitask but its obviously for running one primary application at a time. Background processes and minor apps aside, this isnt a computer for watching streaming videos and doing processor intensive apps. Its just a little light on CPU to really hammer it. If your not clicking like a madman you will have no issues.

-Size. You cant find a full function laptop in a size this small. This is small and light and easy to carry yet it has the power to do full size laptop tasks. Its very thin, impressively so

-Hardware/Software included for price. DDR3 Ram, 7200rpm HDD, Windows 7 Premium. This is the smallest computer I could find that runs a full real version of Windows 7. Win7 basic in netbooks was not an option for me.

-Stereo Microphone. The microphone array in the lid of this unit is the best ive ever heard. Ive interacted with hundreds of computers and laptops and this is as good as they get. PERFECT clarity

-Keyboard. Middle of the road here. Not the best but not bad. Im typing fairly clean with it so no complaints so far. VERY minor flex.

-Soundbar. Altec lansing soundbar built into the lower front. Sounds slightly above average and as long as your expectations arent too high on bass its very good. Some comparable computers sound like an AM radio. This is up there with full size premium notebooks.

-Price. This computer is much lower cost than anything comparable in finish or function.

Cons
-TouchPad. The touchpad is a chrome smooth finish which makes your finger almost stick to it as your moving it around. Buttons are much too hard to press and click. Fingerprints are a constant on the touchpad area. The multi-touch features are a gimmick at best and should be disabled. I have to agree that this is one of the worst touchpads ive ever come across. It seems to be standard for netbooks and small laptops. This should improve with time. Noones happy with the touchpads in most if not all the 10-13" laptops I researched before buying. There is a bright white indicator for the touchpad that is an outrage. It reflects back onto the screen causing an artifact in what your trying to watch. Fixable but unexcusable. Red is off and bright white is on. Are you kidding me?

-Screen. The Screen on this is like most smaller netbooks. Very poor viewing angle. When you hit the sweet spot it looks good. Its not anything spectacular and all the manufacturers have all kinds of names and distinctions for their screens all of which mean nothing. Most leave something to be desired. This is no mac book pro screen. FAR from it.

-Battery Life. The advertised battery life is an absolute lie. To get anywhere in the realm of what they are claiming it would have to be in sleep mode untouched and even then its a reach. Under normal usage, video playback, web surfing etc, the battery life is just like a full frame laptop. 2 - 2.5 hours tops.

-Plastic Trim. While the unit looks stellar theres a fake crome plastic trim that has poor fitting corner joints and takes away from the total build quality (Minor)

Conclusion: I would buy this laptop again and would recommend it to a friend. Its only real drawback, the touchpad, is a mute issue for those of us that frequent a mouse. The touchpad is not enough of a drawback to not buy this fantastic computer. I did not test the webcam.

Overall, this is a pretty nice laptop.. but there are a few glaring caveats. I'll try to make this as short as possible.

Pros:

- Some good design attributes. From the aluminum lid/magnesium chassis (this is unique to the dm3, as in other laptops in this category are not constructed of the magnesium chassis). Keyboard is among the best i've ever used.
- Great battery life (i can get 7-8 hours with screen brightness turned down.
- Good webcam.
- Screen is decent. Can't complain about the brightness, and viewing angles are ok.
Cons:

- As some have noted, the touchpad when waking up from sleep/hibernation gets screwy. You can fix this issue with a bios flash (look for it on HP's website).
- Truncated up and down keys.
- I *believe* the chassis is bigger than the category average. It also weighs about .7 lbs more than the acer 3810, and .5 lbs more than the asus ul30a.
- Touchpad takes a while getting used to. If you press too hard, your fingers will smudge against the mirror finish. To correctly use it, try letting your fingers "hover" above the surface.. lightly touching it.

Overall, I think the DM3 is a worthy purchase.. if you can deal with the laptop's imperfections. Out of the Asus UL30A, Acer Timeline 3810, Lenovo U350, and Toshiba T135 (other laptops in the DM3's category), I would rank the HP DM3 as a close 3rd to the Acer Timeline 3810.

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.

I bought a DM3 series computer in early December 2009. At first I was amazed at how great the system was. Then I found that it would freeze up every time I tried to close the lid and reopen it. This is pretty fundamental for a laptop, so I figured I had loaded something that was having a problem. After talking with HP tech support, however, I found out this is a known problem with the unit and that their solution was to shut the unit down every time you want to close it. Unbelieveable that they would ship it with this kind of known error!!

DO NOT BUY THIS COMPUTER!!

Once they finally acknowledge this as a problem and they work on fixing it, it will be a great system. For now, however, don't buy it unless you are willing to reset it every time you want to close it.

This review is originally for the HP Pavilion dm3 1130us (AMD & ATI model) which is essentially the same except for CPU and GPU and a newer production version.

The DM3z is a good compromise between the portability of a netbook and the functionality of a full sized laptop. Technically in the "Ultra-portable/Thin & Light" category, I would say it is a netbook on steroids. I was looking for a portable computing solution but didn't want a small keyboard or a hard-to-read/small screen. It had to have a small form factor, yet have a more powerful processor and graphics than traditional netbooks. I use it mainly for office work, web surfing, video streaming, music listening and light gaming.

Most of the specs are readily available on Amazon, but you can get a more in-depth overview by going to HP's site and looking up the dm3z line in their Ultra-Portable category. The 1130 is essentially a later production run of the 1030, which is still available on Amazon as of this writing.

Back to what I was looking for;
Basically, I wanted a MacBook but only had about five hundred bucks to spend. I'm a Mac user normally but could not see paying so much for a laptop. I searched high & low and weighed several other options. In this laptop segment and at this price point, it is all about compromise and what you want as an end user. In this end, the 1130us was the best fit for me. I was able to find it on sale for under five hundred on the OfficeMax site and then found a fifty dollar rebate. I used that saving to buy a http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002C1BBU8/ , and so far that is working perfectly too. I was a little leery about getting an HP since they don't have the best reliability reputation, but I would expect more problem reports from a company that sells so many computers. My mother-in-law has a 3 year old Pavilion that still runs like new.

What I like about it:

1. It's fast, faster than I expected. Initial set-up was a snap. The 1.6GHz AMD Athon Neo X2 dual-core processor and ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 graphics see to that. Perhaps not the best combo for intense Photoshop sessions or cutting edge 3D gaming, but I have several apps and browser windows open at once with no system slowdowns. Online video from various sources streams just fine and I've played a number of games (including Star Wars Battlefront) with no issues. The AMD cpu and ATI gpu combo uses more wattage than the Intel option, but I think you would sacrifice computing power for battery life if you went the Pentium or Core Duo route.

1b. 7200 RPM 320GB Hard Drive. Did I say it was fast? And spacious.

2. The screen. It is glossy, but not as bad as some and it is nice and bright. 13.3" w/ a 1366x768 widescreen resolution means things are a bit smaller than on a standard desktop monitor, but everything is nice and crisp and the colors are good. It seems much bigger. HD content looks great on it and the viewing angle isn't bad. I had a stuck pixel, but it went away. The lid opens about 135 degrees back so you can easily work with it on your lap. It has a nice firm hinge so there are no worries of it falling one way or the other.

3. Wi-Fi draft N. I've only had fast and excellent connectivity so far. Having bluetooth is nice too, but I've yet to use it.

4. Windows 7, not a cobbled Started Edition. Coming from OSX, I have to say I'm growing more and more impressed with the latest Windows OS. It seems to have more intricacies than with OSX, but I'm getting used to it and have to say the user interface is top notch. Before this, I've used XP and am so glad that Microsoft has finally refined their product. Connect a device for the first time and either the drivers are already there or they download automatically. Nice. Lots of eye candy too.

5. Touch pad. Some reviewers pan it, but I find it works well for me after a slight learning curve. Sure, it is the only fingerprint magnet on an otherwise lovely case, but I like the feel of the shiny chrome finish and find the multi-finger gestures useful. The "mouse-buttons" could be a little easier to depress, but that is a small quibble, just tap the pad. It is also very customizable to your specific needs. The 1030us touch pad had some wake-from-sleep issues, but that was fixed in the latest BIOS. I also use a http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002OGMNT4 but have no problems adjusting to the touch pad if I leave mouse at the office.

6. 4 USB, 5-in1 card reader, 1 VGA, and 1 HDMI port. Connectivity ahoy!

7. Full sized keyboard. It took a little adjustment, but I like the quiet, island style keys. When in the proper position, I can type just as fast as with my desktop's keyboard. I measured it, and it is slightly LARGER than my G5's primary keyboard area!

8. The case. This is one sturdy feeling case with little or no flex that I can detect. You can hold it by a corner without fear. I love that it isn't a finger print magnet like so many others out there. The brushed aluminum finish is very attractive and gives it a high-end appearance.

9. It came with 4GB DDR2 ram, expandable to 8GB. With the 64bit OS, I could do this, but see no need to at the present time.

10. Cool. Even after all day use the air blowing out of the rear side exhaust vent is only slightly warm. The front wrist rests can get a little warm, but never uncomfortable (at least to me).

11. Quiet. If a completely silent room you can hear the faint breath of the fan, but otherwise it and the spinning hard drive are unnoticeable.

12. Well packaged. There are no disks included, but the manual and documentation are pretty clear.

13. Price. Find this on sale and you've got yourself one heck of a deal!


What's not so great about it:

1. It is about 13" wide and weights about nearly 5 pounds with the battery inserted. For me that's no big deal but if you plan to lug your laptop around a lot, you may want to look at something smaller and lighter. It is only one inch thick so it slides easily into most bags.

2. Speakers. You know going in that they won't be that great, but I still couldn't help being a little disappointed. However, I tweaked the sound settings and get decent output now, though not very loud. It does the job though. Use earphones. I connected it to my speakers with a subwoofer and Pandora radio sounds terrific!

3. Battery life. I get about 4 hours of constant general use life out of it. Another reviewer stated he was able to play the entire Fellowship of the Ring movie before it went into hibernation, but I have not tested that. The good news is that 4 hours is still decent, and the power cord isn't too cumbersome. If you need an all-day, cord-free laptop/netbook, look elsewhere.

4. Some bloatware. Being new to Windows I researched what to do when you first get a computer. One of the most common recommendations is to remove the manufacturer installed software. I got rid of the MS Office trial and Norton. I'll still playing around with the suite of HP software. I may keep some, but will probably ditch a good bit of it. However, some users may like the included software. Even with it, the 1130us is a speedy customer.

5. No optical drive, but I knew that and won't need one every day. The Samsung will also be useful for my other computers.

6. No OS restore disk. I know, there is no optical drive and there is a recovery partition, but it still would have been nice.

7. Possible fit and finish issues. I just noticed a very slight gap along the top right front edge where the wrist wrest meets the side paneling. Pressing down on it does reveal a little flex. Not enough to return it, but it is worth keeping an eye on and could be cause for concern. It is too early to tell. (see my product photos)


I have not used the Quickweb feature, but Windows 7 boots up (after some re-configuration) in less than a minute so I'm not sure I'd need it. I've also not yet used the HDMI out port or webcam. I plan to test both soon and have heard that the webcam is good in low light. I've only been using the 1130us for a little over a week so I can't speak to its long-term reliability, but so far so good. I'll post an update if I have anything new to add.

So, is the dm3 1130us the right model for you? If you are not a 3D gamer and want a nice looking, sturdy, portable laptop without most of the limitations of a netbook, then the answer could be "yes". Of course, technology is changing rapidly and in a few months the next latest and greatest will be out. But if you need something now, and want a lot of oomph at a great value, then the dm3 1130us could be your best bet. It exceeds my expectations at a price point other laptops couldn't match, so that is why I'm giving it 5 (4 1/2 actually) stars.

I bought this laptop in December 2009 and I have been using it ever since at work and at home. Before buying it, I did an extensive research comparing similar laptops (Asus, Toshiba, Acer) within the thin and light category. The main reasons why I bought it were:

1) Aluminum chasis: It makes a HUGE difference compare to plastic laptops in terms of looks, feel, design, and durability. And I don't have to worry about getting it dirty with my fingerprints.

2) Chiclet keyboard. It is a pleasure to type on this laptop. It would have been better if this laptop had offered a back-lit keyboard option.

3) Thin but not so light: I needed something to carry around without breaking my back and that was easy to slip in my messenger bag. It is not as light as other laptops in the same category but it works for me.

4) Intel Pentium: I wanted a dual core laptop with Windows 7 64-bit. It works perfect for everyday tasks. I was hesitating between buying this laptop and the Intel Core 2 Duo version (never care about the AMD option). I took the Intel Pentium option because I didn't want to spend so much money since I knew that the new iCore processors were going to be in the market this year.

5) No optical drive. I hardly used it with my previous laptop, so I didn't really need it. By the way, my brother gave me an external optical drive as a xmas gift...

HP offered a customized version of this laptop on its website with an Intel Core 2 Duo (2.26 GHz)and a Nvidia GeForce chipset. Actually my dad bought this option with Windows 7 Professional and it cost him like 1,200 dollars including accesories (optical drive). For that price, I told my dad, I would have bought the 13'' Apple's MacBook Pro. Now he regrets his decision and he learnt the lesson.

Just to cover the flaws of this laptop and why I didn't give it the 5 stars it should have deserved:

1) The mirror trackpad is just frustrating and uncomfortable. Since I always use an optical mouse, I don't really care about this.

2) It does get hot on the left palm area. Since it hasn't burned my hand yet, I don't really care about this.

My second purchase choice was the ASUS laptop, but for my taste it looked too plastic and too cheap. It was thin though but the HP looked much much better.

I had originally wanted to purchase this computer over the Asus UL30LA - X5, but with all of the great reviews the Asus was getting, I decided to go with the Asus. I was not pleased with the build quality with Asus so I returned it for the DM3, and I am glad I did.

This is great little notebook, there are some things I do not like but overall it's a keeper.
Any one who is still deciding on whether or not to grab this, just do it.

Pros:
Excellent screen, very bright, in comparison to my Sony Vaio TZ, it's only a notch lower in brightness and clarity, again this thing was $1500 cheaper.
Build quality. Feels very solid, no creeks or weird noises yet.
No finger prints, other than the touch pad.
Pretty zippy with the 4gig DDR3 and 7200 rpm drive. I have had no problems watching HD youtube and Hulu. when full screen, there was a few stutters but nothing to really discourage me from watching the videos in HD. I am not a gamer but did load up COD 2 MW and I am able to play in full 1366 x 768 or 1360 x 768 without any stutter that I can tell.
Plenty of USB ports
HDMI
Stays cool
The wireless N is super fast with great rasnge from any where in our house.
Fast HDD

Cons:
It's heavy compare to other 13.3"
No BT (I read another site that there is room to add a BT card)
Battery life is not 10 hrs. So far the best I am getting is just a little over 5hrs with the screen brigtness down 3 notches from the brightest, wifi, internet browser and a few office programs. I think I can get 6 hrs if i turn off wifi and kill the screen brightness one more notch (I will experiment but 5 hrs is fine for now). This is where the Asus UL30 shines with its 8+ hrs with the same setting.
HP bloatware. it took about 2 hours to get rid of all traces of the crap they put on this thing.
Another annoyance is the battery meter. I don't know why HP does not allow windows default battery monitor to give the estimated time rather than just the % left.I downloaded battery bar and it's works great but that's something they should have left alone. I understand that all HP does this.

On the fence:

Not sure about the touch pad. The tracking/accuracy is not as bad as what everyone is saying but I don't like the mirror finish, which attracts finger prints and I can see my ugly mug every time I look down.

I use an external mouse 90% of the time with a Nano receiver.

Overall, I am glad I returned the Asus for the HP.

Some concerns from others regarding the DM3:

I have had no freezing coming out of hibernation and no crackling sound from speakers.

I also have the newest drivers from HP and new Bios.

I will give it a 8/10.

This is a great little laptop and works beautifully for the price. I really like this laptop and let me tell you why I find it to be such a great little laptop and why it's such a good deal and SOOO much better than a netbook. I will also tell you the drawbacks as well.

First, it really runs alot better than I thought it would. With Windows 7 and 4gb of ram, this is smooth and rarely have I been able to push it too hard with basic tasks. I use a desktop for most of my serious work (video encoding, picture editing, and long term writing and spreadsheet work). But when I want to go out this almost always goes with me. It can handle anything online well, and I have really been impressed with how good the wireless range and reception are. I had a netbook and got rid of it as soon as I could as it was incredibly slow even with Windows XP. Really almost unusable. This is about 4 times the computer most netbooks are and really only about $150 more. Think of how many hours you will use this for (my guess is over an hour a day for a year). Then realize 50 cents per hour is not that much to be paying.

Second is size and style. I used to have 15.6 inch laptop with a great big old battery graphics card and the whole works. This small laptop has completely replaced it. It's quite thin, beautifully designed with some good use of metal and just well sculpted. It doesn't look like it's just one solid piece, but everything looks like it belongs. Nothing sticks out and it all just feels right. And at under 4 pounds, it weighs as much as about a nalgene full of water. It just looks great.

Battery life is also great. I routinely get 5 hours of video on flights and other things. Also it charges back up in a matter of an hour or so which is really great. It stays pretty cool, and quiet as well the fan noise will not be noticeable in coffee shop or in most meetings.

The keyboard and screen work great, in fact they are some of the best I have had in recent memory. The screen is bright and quite clear, and the keyboard is just rock solid. No flexing at all.

Also it has great connectivity with HDMI I have used this to play movies and TV shows from Hulu on a couple of occasions.

So now onto the not as great stuff.
First the trackpad initially had a few issues (completely freezing after coming out of sleep, and sometimes being weird with the multitouch zoom and scroll). However, there is a software update from HP that completely fixed the problem. Google it and you can get it fixed. Also the buttons on it were stiff at first, but they have loosened up and I quite like them now.

Second, the fan is quiet (my refrigerator in the next room is currently covering the noise) but it's always on. And for some reason the sound isn't as pretty as most fans. It's more true white noise than a whoosh sound most fans make. It doesn't seem to have a nice tone but just be a bit harsh.

Finally, the battery rattles a little bit. I was able to fix this with a piece of paper tucked strategically, but I shouldn't have to do that cmon HP!

Okay so this computer is basically as powerful as most low end laptops out there, it is thinner, lighter and gets better battery life and is more beautiful. As long as you are okay with no DVD drive, go ahead and pick this up. Look for a deal, you should be able to find one for just north of $500 if you wait a week or two and shop the deals.