Review: HP6515B

HP is best known for its printers. Little is known about its notebooks especially its business class notebooks. That changed when HP bought over Compaq in 2002. Compaq bought with its M&A the necessary notebook know-how during a time when notebooks are still consider a luxury item

We fast forward to 6 years after the M&A and take a look at its entry mid range business notebook, the HP Compaq 6515B. This baby is powered by a AMD turion X2 64 TL-56 processor ( the AMD equal of the intel core Duo chipset). It has two DDR2-667 memory slots (pictured model has 1x1GB). A 14.1 inch widescreen LCD provides clear clarity and has a storage space of 80GB hard disk. It comes with a combo drive (CD-RW and DVD reader combine together into one). For connectivity, a Broadcom a/b/g wireless adapter, a Broadcom Gigabit (1000 Ethernet based) and 56k modem are installed on the machine. Standard warranty is 1 year parts and labor.

The weight of the notebook @ 2kg place it near light category. But its affordable price of less than $1,500 which makes this a basic office notebook. Its graphics card, the ATI built-in X1250 offers better images when comparing to earlier models of intel based graphics card (before the X3100 models). A 6 Cell battery provides this cutely with 2 to 3 hours of continuous usage (with wireless on). The keyboard needs some getting used to.

On the whole, there are better machines out there but if HP is the only vendor available for your company to purchase from, this model provides good value for money as comparable to its intel based brothers.