HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU notebook review
LCD
A glossy 11" wide screen 1366x768 resolution LCD. The gloss makes the screen difficult to read when glare from lights or windows reflects from the screen. An anti-glare screen protector is recommended.
Storage
A modest 320GB 4200 hard drive comes as standard. Up to 25GB of the drive is occupied by the recovery and HP Tools partitions, and the C: drive is already filled with 60GB from the factory. This leaves a little over 210GB free for user data and programs.
The hard drive is the most noticeable bottleneck on this notebook. The boot process and heavy multitasking is noticeably slower. Upgrading the SATA hard drive to a 7200RPM drive will result in significantly faster disk I/O speeds, and even more so if an SSD is fitted.
Bluetooth is a welcome addition. Other laptops in this price range often forgo bluetooth.
A spare slot allows up to another 4GB to be added to the system.
Access hatch
Like many recent small form factor HP notebook PCs, the DM1's bottom hatch comprises entirely of the bottom cover. Once removed, it exposes the entire bottom chassis. This gives access to the usual components: HDD, RAM, CPU Heatsink fan and WiFi card.
Keyboard
The Function Keys across the top of the keyboard are configured by default for system functions rather than F1 though F12. To use the F1-F12 keys, the Fn key must be held down. For example, the F4 key has the function of toggling an external monitor. Interestingly, HP were good enough to detect when ALT-F4 is pressed to bypass the monitor selection, and send Windows the close window command.
Fortunately, the function key behaviour can be changed in the system BIOS. This restores the standard F1-F12 functionality. To access the system functions, hold down the Fn key as per usual.
The keyboard is generally confortable, with good tactile feel. The arrow keys are quite cramped though, and these keys double as the Page Up/Down Home/End key group when used in conjunction with the Fn key. It can be impossible to page up/down in a document or web page with one hand only, as the function key must be pressed with the left hand.
An annoyance of the keyboard is the lack of a dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown key group. This group of keys are shared with the arrow keys, which require the use of the Fn key to activate. It makes it inconvenient to page up and down long documents or webpages, because it takes two hands to depress the Fn key and the arrow keys.
System LED indicators
The status LEDs are: Power, AC adapter / battery charge status, hard drive, LAN. These normally white LEDs are very bright.
The power button LED can be distracting when watching a video in the dark.
The LED next to the DC jack is dual colour. It is white when plugged in, and turns orange when the battery is charging.
The hard drive LED is also a dual colour light. It blinks white during data access, and turns orange when the heads are parked if the system detects a sudden movement. Some newer laptops do not have a hard drive activity LED, making it hard to tell how hard the system is working.
HP have made an interesting modification to the LAN LEDs. Instead of the normal green/yellow indicators, a high brightness white LED is used for the Link indicator. An orange LED blinks during LAN activity.