Entertainment on the grand scale

If you're in the market for a mid-range laptop, the options are far more appealing than they were a couple of years ago.

That's because makers of middle-of-the-road computers, such as Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Dell, are trying to outdo one another with multimedia laptops that pack in entertainment features.

It's why the good-looking new line of HP Pavilions have Altec Lansing speakers built into them and the Dell Latitudes have fast forward, play and stop buttons embedded along their fronts.

Laptops are increasingly being used to play DVDs and music, so users are wanting good sound and video quality combined with ease of use.

The Pavilion's 15.4-inch screen is its greatest asset. Going from the 12-inch screen on my ageing HP Compaq nc4000 to the new Pavilion is a huge step up. There's plenty of desktop real estate and the screen literally shines when it comes to movie playing.

BrightView technology gives it a glowing quality and a glossy coating to the screen adds to the effect. As such, it can be comfortably viewed from a few metres away.

The Pavilion also comes with a handy remote control that talks to an infrared adapter, which plugs into the PCI card slot.

The Altec Lansing speakers are loud and clear enough for intimate settings, a nice change from having to plug in headphones to get decent audio out of a laptop.

The Pavilion's technical specifications are respectable, although it lacks the new Core Duo Intel chips.

There's a fast Pentium M760, 2 gigahertz processor at the heart of the machine, with 512 megabytes of memory as standard and an 80 gigabyte hard drive.

An ATI Mobility Radeon X700 graphics card does justice to games and graphic-intensive applications.

One of the computer's useful features is QuickPlay, which takes advantage of the Pavilion's hardware configuration to allow a straight launch into DVD or music player mode without having to wait for the laptop to boot up.

Two buttons under the screen control QuickPlay, with the keyboard buttons used for navigating DVD menus or shuffling through the list of songs on a CD. Users can also access the music stored in the My Music folder within Windows without firing up the operating system, a process that normally takes 30 seconds to a minute on a machine moderately loaded with software applications.

The DVD writer includes LightScribe capability, which lets users design labels that are etched on to the surface of a DVD or CD.

The feature, however, requires specially surfaced disks. Luckily, they're rapidly coming down in price - a 10-pack of writable LightScribe disks can be had for $20. The label-design software is basic but functional and the results give a nice, professional touch to home-made disks. No more scribbling in felt tip pen or sticking on paper labels.

The dv4201 is also peripheral-friendly and comes with a FireWire port and four USB ports. The built-in six-in-one card reader accepts all major Flash media formats.

For backup and burning, the DVD-RW is also a LightScribe drive, which uses HP's printing technology to etch images and patterns on to disks as they are burned. The multimedia functions put a dent in battery life and the bright screen is best appreciated when the Pavilion is plugged into mains power. Still, about three hours of battery life at a time was enough for me to get my entertainment fix.

HP Pavilion DV4201TX

Price: $2800

Pros: Plays DVDs and CDs without booting up; bright screen; remote control.

Cons: Extra features add weight.

Herald Rating: 8/10