Customer Reviews

Samsung P560-54P 15.4-Inch Laptop (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 Centrino 2 Processor, 3 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Vista Business)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am very pleased with this laptop. I have researched laptop computers for some time as my pathetic Gateway desktop has been failing. I chose a laptop, clearly, because of its portability. Currently I have an Asus EEE PC 901, but it is just not powerful enough for my applications.

Everybody gets a computer for different personal reasons, so this computer fit my criteria. I need a computer that I can use for school, office, and entertainment.

The great thing about the computer is the minimalist design. I don't need bells and whistles, buttons and gadgets. The rubberized coating makes it feel more durable, and look elegant, less flashy. It is pretty light at a little over 5 pounds. It is very easy to adjust all of the settings using the function key (brightness, volume, etc.)

It has been a drag learning Vista and the new 2007 Office, but I got over it, and now I am happy with it.

The only concern I have is the battery life. The website states up to 6 hours. I am getting a maximum of 4. My brightness is set to the lowest setting, the processor is in power saving mode, and the wifi was turned off for two of the four hours. I think I was being conservative. I don't know how to expect `up to six hours'.

Still, I am very pleased, the LED backlit display is vibrant, the keyboard is a pleasure to type on, and it is so thin and light. The HDMI port is a huge plus for hooking it up to a TV/Surround Sound System. I did that this morning and the image was beautiful on my LCD 62 inch TV. Using Netflix "watch it now" service is fantastic with this laptop on the big screen. Very well deigned.

I would give 5 stars but the battery life is not as expected.

I got this laptop computer a few days ago, I'm totaly impressed. Has a Vista rateing of 4.9, gameing rateing of 5.8. Very fast. After I took all the trial software M/S office, etc. and loaded Open Office and the new Norton 2009 suite it's even faster. After chargeing the batt. it ran for over 3 1/2 hours with some power left. Amazon had it at my house 2 days after I ordered, free shipping (Alaska)

1-18-09 I installed windows 7 64 bit on a new partion so I could duel boot it. No drivers for NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS w/ 512 MB so have to run it with out Areo but is very fast and will wait for a driver update.

12-10-09 Did a clean install windows 7 pro 32 bit. Laptop is very fast with M/S office 07 and Norton Internet Security, all hardware drivers are up to date and work fine, Windows 7 updated the drivers during the install. I'm still impressed.

Being a bit of a laptop snob I wanted something that met my unique requirements but wouldn't break the budget, in particular:

- Reasonable weight (below 3kg)
- Reasonable OS (ie. not Vista)
- Suitable screen (15.4". 15.6" ones are too low for me)
- good graphics card (ie. GeForce or ATI)

The tough part was getting a new 15.4" laptop that was running Win 7 or XP and had a good graphics card. Seems that there aren't many 15.4" laptops left on the market and those that are use Vista. The P560 didn't seem that highly rated or popular compared to other laptops, but as it met pretty much all of my requirements, I went for it and got myself one that came with Win 7. First thing I did after my purchase was to double my memory to 4GB (2GB is quite enough but it's doesn't cost much to double it to cope with future applications and workload).

What a pleasant surprise this has been; it has exceeded my expectations.

Pros:

- all of the above requirements met (GeForce card ensures excellent performance and compatibility with games. I was also able to play the ones that did not work on my previous laptop)

- quiet operation. I can barely hear any HDD sound

- fast startup, especially if plugged into the mains. I can resume as quickly as on an iPad (about half a second)

- professional and sleek design (imo)

Also comes with a fingerprint ID thingie, but I don't use that

Cons:

- battery lasts me about 2 to 3 hours

- even if I put it on a laptop bag it does get a quite hot eventually

Overall, I'm very happy with it.

I give this 5 stars due to it's suitability to my personal requirements given that I went through reviews and specs of about 25 other, mostly highly rated, laptops. On a general level, and for it's time, I'd probably rate it 4 stars.

Thanks for reading and hope this review has helped