Even though the times are tough and many students and their families have a pinched budget, when you’re in school and need a laptop to do your school work, there’s not much you can do but to bite the bullet on making a laptop purpose.  Laptops are a very important tool for being efficient and succeeding in college these days, so it’s worth buying a quality laptop to last your four years.

The good news is that there are man ways to reduce your costs of buying a laptop and scoring a deal, we’ve covered options in the past such as student discounts from Dell, HP and Lenovo and of course the use of discount coupon codes.  Another way to really save money is by buying refurbished “like new” laptops direct from a manufacturer.  Several manufacturers offer refurbished laptops, but Dell has one of the best online sites for buying refurbished laptops, and they also offer some of the best deals.

Dell calls their refurbished laptop sales area Dell Outlet.  Dell Outlet sells laptops that fall into one of three categories in the Oulet:

1. Previously Ordered New - Laptops that were ordered by a Dell customer, delivered and either immediately returned without being opened or removed from the box and then returned without being powered up.
2. Refurbished - Laptops that were ordered by a Dell customer, delivered, then opened and used for a period of time (generally 21-days or less).  If there was anything previously wrong with the system Dell replaces the part and then resells it as refurbished.  There is a chance that some cosmetic blemishes exist on a refurbished laptop, the Dell Outlet listing will not specify if a laptop does or does not have a cosmetic defect.
3. Scratch & Dent - Laptops that were cosmetically damaged during the production process and never shipped to a customer or laptops that were shipped out to customers and are returned with a cosmetic blemish.  Cosmetic blemishes generally mean paint scratches or nicks, not gigantic dents that compromise the structural integrity of a laptop.

In general the Scratch & Dent offerings are the most discounted, Refurbished second most and Previously Ordered New are the highest priced Outlet systems.  Below is a price comparison table of a Dell Outlet Studio 15 laptop compared to the new system price at the time of this writing:

Here you can see that the Scratch & Dent system is $50 cheaper than an equivalent Refurbished system.  The total savings on the Scratch & Dent from brand new is $270, which is about a 30% off savings.

Dell Outlet Warranty

A lot of people buying a refurbished system are worried that they won’t receive the same support or warranty as a new system.  This is not the case, Dell Outlet backs up all refurb laptops with a 1-year warranty.  You actually get the same level of tech support (24 hours a day 7-days a week phone support) and ability to upgrade or extend a warranty as you do with any new system.  You also have the same 21-day Dell return policy that comes with new laptops, note that there is a 15% restocking fee and you still pay for the shipping and handling.  You can check out Dell’s warranty and return information here.

How “Used” Does a Refurbished Laptop Look?

There is of course some variation in how used a system looks, the reason prices are low is because you take a slight risk in not knowing the exact condition of a system.  You might get a system that looks 99% new, or you might get one that’s got a noticeable blemish, such as scratches in the paint.  There is no way to tell exactly what a system looks like ahead of time, don’t bother calling Dell to ask if they can send a photo or tell you exactly what is wrong with the cosmetics of a system, they won’t be able to tell you.  When I ordered an XPS M1330 laptop from Dell Outlet last year the only noticeable difference was that there was a “Refurbished” green sticker on the bottom of the laptop and the instruction manual was a bit crumpled.  The sticker was easily removed and I could care less about the instruction manual.  Even the packaging was new, as Dell reboxes and repackages all Outlet PCs after inspecting them.

Advantage Other than Price

There is an advantage other than the better price you get on a Dell Outlet PC.  The laptop will ship almost immediately.  I ordered a laptop on a Monday morning and had it by Wednesday with 2-day shipping.  Typically with a new Dell PC you configure a system, order it and then have to wait 2 - 3 weeks as your laptop goes through a series of build, test and shipping phases.

Tips on Buying

A good idea is to come up with a configuration you want to buy for a laptop, and then keep checking Dell Outlet to see if the configuration shows up.  The online tools are pretty easy to use for filtering by a specific configuration, price or model.  The stock is frequently updated, it seems like the morning is best for finding the most newly added and available products so certainly check then.  You should also be flexible with the configuration you want, sometimes the precise configuration will take a while to show up, so if you need a laptop fast just be ready to accept the fact you may just have to go with something close to what you want.

Dell Outlet Coupons

As crazy as it may seem with prices already being much below new prices, Dell Outlet does offer coupon codes, sometimes in the range of 15 - 20% off.  The best way to track these coupon codes is via Twitter: http://twitter.com/delloutlet

Conclusion

Some people really like to have something that is entirely new and never used by somebody else before, but if you’re not such a person and also really like to save money then the Dell Outlet is a great option.  Chances are the laptop you’ll get is as good as new in its looks and it will definitely function as well as any new laptop.  Also consider the fact you get the same warranty and support treatment as you do with a new laptop, and you’ll see there’s little downside to ordering from the Dell Outlet to save money.

Apple has always been huge in the education market, but over the past couple of years they’ve become even more dominant as the favorite choice of students on campuses across the U.S.  And so you’ll be interested to hear that Apple has released a new batch of MacBooks that will most certainly be a hot item for students looking for a new laptop.

The new 13.3″ MacBook is built of all aluminum and starts at a price of $1,299.  With the $1,299 price you get the following configuration:

• Screen: 13.3” LED-backlit display
• Processor: 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (3MB L2 Cache)
• Memory: 2 GB 1066MHz DDR3
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForice 9400M Integrated Graphics
• Storage: 160GB hard drive
• Optical drive: Slot-loading SuperDrive

If you spend $1,599 you get a bump up to the 2.4Ghz processor, 250GB hard drive and a backlit keyboard that does not come standard on the $1,299 version.

Some unique features of this new MacBook include a “button-less” touchpad in which you simply tap the touchpad to register a left-click, tap twice for a right click and use features such as “squeezing” to zoom-in on the screen.

The screen is also updated, it uses an LED backlit display and has a glass cover on the front to provide for a glossy look that brings with it brighter colors.

Apple is using an all aluminum body for the case on the MacBook.  The look is very nice and it of course makes the MacBook more durable so it will last 4-years being dragged around campus.

The MacBook also now offers better graphics performance thanks to the inclusion of the nVidia 9400m graphics card.  Couple this with the new line of Intel processors dubbed “Montevina” and the MacBook will bring more than enough performance, and possibly help you to get some of that homework done faster!

The HP Pavilion dv4t is a 14.1-inch notebook targeted towards those that need to be on the go some of the time, but also need a notebook with a large enough screen to provide for comfortable viewing while at a desk.  In other words, the dv4t size is perfectly suited as a student laptop.

The dv4t comes equipped with the latest powerful Intel Centrino 2 (Core 2 Duo Montevina) processor and can also be configured with dedicated graphics in the form of the Nvidia 9200M graphics card.  As you would expect from HP the dv4t can be configured with a wide range options, varying from a budget level PC at $649 or tricked out with all the bells and whistles at a price of around $1,500.

My HP Pavilion dv4t notebook has the following specifications:

HP Pavilion dv4t Entertainment Notebook

• Intel Core2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.4 GHz)
• Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Business with Service Pack 1 (32-bit)
• 14.1″ diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• 3GB DDR2 System Memory
• Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
• Graphics: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS
• Hard Drive: 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• Wireless: Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN and Bluetooth
• Battery: High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• Optical Drive: SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support

The total price after discounts, including a $500 off coupon code active at the time of purchase, came to $949.  This is a very good price for such a nicely configured dv4t, it’s certainly worth keeping your eye on HP offers and coupon codes.

Design

The design of the dv4t is fantastic.  It’s very sleek and modern looking.  Everything about the design appears extremely integrated and it’s obvious the design team put thought into every little detail.  While many manufacturers are offering colored lids and snazzy inlaid design patterns, nobody is offering anything quite as nice HP at this price point.  For instance, the sides of the dv4t have a liquid metal look to complement the rest of the notebooks case color.  Often times manufacturers just forget about the side areas where the ports and optical drive are and make it a standard black color.

While silver and black aren’t revolutionary colors for a notebook, the way HP uses a glossy metallic finish on the dv4t makes it eye catching.  All of the surfaces have a glossy and reflective look that is appealing when viewed from just about any angle.  Though a glossy finish usually equates to fingerprint magnet, the silver areas actually do not suffer this trait as much as I thought.  The black colored lid does however pick up any greasy finger prints, HP provided a microfiber cloth in the box to combat this issue.

Notice how from a distance the lid looks all black

But close up you can see a mesh pattern inlaid design

There are no sharp edges on the dv4t, it’s as sleek as a sports car with rounded edges.  There are various accents that also contribute to the good looks, such as an HP logo on the lid that lights up and inlaid design pattern called Mesh.

Size and Weight

The size and weight of a laptop are very important components if you’re a student looking to tote it around campus.  The dv4t has a thickness ranging from 1.34″ to 1.57″.  It’s not super sleek and thin, but that’s not too bad and certainly not as thick as a bulky textbook.  The total width of the dv4t comes to 13.15″ while the depth is 9.45″, just a bit larger than a standard 8 x 11 piece of paper.  Weighing the dv4t on the kitchen scales with its high-capacity 6-cell battery in showed a weight of 5.63 lbs.  Adding the power cord and adapter to the mix added an extra 1lb, so the total travel weight is around 6.6lbs.  Slightly heavy for a 14″ notebook.

Build Quality

The Pavilion dv4t is a consumer laptop and as you would expect mostly constructed of plastic.  The plastic is rigid and durable, you won’t find any flex on the notebook, top or bottom.  The thick and durable plastic construction does make the laptop heavy, but better that than a flimsy feel.

The paint finish of the laptop also seems fairly durable and resistant to scuffs and scratches.

Screen

One of the most important aspects of a laptop is indeed the screen, the dv4t comes with three different screen options:

• 14.1″ diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• 14.1″ diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• 14.1″ diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP LED Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)

All the screen options have the same resolution.  It would have been nice to see a higher resolution available such as WXGA+ so you could fit more information on the 14.1″ screen, but WXGA is fairly standard resolution and the option most people find comfortable viewing.

I got the HP BrightView Infinity Widescreen display non-LED version.  The LED option was a $100 upgrade, while nice to have because it is thinner and more power efficient than a standard CCFL backlit display, I didn’t think it was worth the cost.  The “Infinity” finish means there’s a clear plastic overlay on the screen that makes it look frameless, it’s a very slick look that is worth the $50 upgrade if you’re a sucker for refined design touches.  The BrightView simply indicates a glossy finish on the screen that provides brighter and bolder colors.

HP dv4t Infinity view screen

The screen is more than bright enough and colors appear really gorgeous.  The contrast and clarity are excellent.  Running the Astra32 program indicates this as being an LG made display.

Performance

With a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and dedicated Nvidia 9200M graphics the dv4t is no slouch.  There is definitely more than enough power here to do typical web surfing and word processing.  Having the Nvidia card also helps with faster performance overall, even with things like long web pages you’ll get a boost with rendering performance.

You can also do some light gaming with the Nvidia 9200m, nothing serious mind you, but enough to get by on low to medium settings for games such as FEAR or Call of Duty.  There will be zero problems playing sports games such as Madden ‘09 or Fifa ‘09.

Below are some benchmark scores for those that like to see some numbers attached to performance analysis:

PCMark05: 4,013

3DMark06: 1,535

Windows Performance Index: 3.5

PC Wizard: 489.33

Audio Speakers

HP includes Altec Lansing branded speakers on the dv4.  The audio is pretty good as far as notebooks go, though mid and high sounds are reproduced much better than low bass sounds.  This is typical of laptops since they rarely have a built-in subwoofer to accommodate decent bass.

HP includes two headphone ports on the front side.  Listening to audio through headphones is a better choice if you want a higher quality audio experience.

Heat and Fan Noise

The Pavilion dv4t does get hotter than I would have expected.  Granted, this configuration has a very fast processor and dedicated Nvidia graphics, which contribute to heat buildup, but the bottom side becomes uncomfortably after you do any intensive processor work or leave the laptop on for a long period of time.  When simply idling the Core temperature rested at 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) and the graphics card at 44C (111F).  After running a benchmark application on the dv4t the processor temperature went up to 40 degrees Celsius (103 Fahrenheit) and the graphics card went to 51C (103F).

Processor heat under normal usage:

Processor heat after running benchmark:

When things get hot the fan really kicks in hard to try and cool things down.  The fan blows hot air out of the back of the notebook, and at its highest setting it is annoyingly loud.  Even when the fan is spinning at its medium setting it will be rather loud, enough to easily be heard throughout a quiet classroom.  Strangely, I found that whenever you put the dv4t into sleep mode and wake it up the fan will constantly run at its loud medium setting, even if the laptop is cool.  However, bootup or bring it back from hibernate and the fan will only spin at a low setting.  There’s obviously something odd in the bios settings that control the fan.

Overall, the amount of heat and fan noise the dv4t generates is disappointing.

Keyboard, Touchpad and Media Buttons

The HP dv4t keyboard is unique in that the keys blend right in with the case and they also have a somewhat glossy look.  The good news is that the keyboard does not pick up fingerprints, despite the gloss.  The key travel and smoothness is very nice and there is no spongy feeling or flex to the keyboard.

The touchpad is nice and wide, the only complaint here is the fact it has a shiny metallic gloss and unfortunately picks up fingerprints.  I also find that it is not as easy to glide the finger across the touchpad as your standard textured touchpad.  On the right hand side of the touchpad is a vertical scroll zone.  The mouse buttons do not have much travel or feedback from them.  The other really annoying thing is that the buttons only register taps on the inside part, if you hit toward the outside edge of the mouse buttons it will often fail to register a click.

At the top of the keyboard is a nice array of touch sensitive multimedia buttons.  These buttons allow you to launch the QuickPlay application used for playing various types of media, mute the sound, adjust the volume, skip forward / back and play or stop media.  The buttons are all brightly lit and respond to touch — most of the time at least.  Sometimes I found it was a little tough to register a push on one of the media buttons if the dv4t was busy doing other things in the background.  Overall the touch button implementation is very nice though.

Input and Output Ports

The Pavilion dv4t has a great selection of ports, especially for its size.  Everything you could really ask for in this form factor is included.  The HDMI port is especially nice to have as it can output high definition video and audio to a larger screen TV.  Having the Nvidia card on board makes video output from HDMI a better experience.

Front view:

Two headphone ports and microphone port on the front

Right side:

Optical drive, two USB ports, power jack

Back view:

No ports here, just the hinge

Left side:

Monitor out port, docking station connector, Ethernet, HDMI, eSATA/USB combo port, SD/MS/MMC/XD card reader slot, ExpressCard 54 slot.

Notice that on the right side the modem is blocked off, it’s actually a $10 upgrade to have that included.  For most peoples needs a modem is

Battery Life

The HP dv4t has three battery options: a regular 6-cell, high capacity 6-cell and 12-cell battery.  I chose the high capacity 6-cell battery.  It does not stick out like the 12-cell battery would and offers 16% more battery life than the standard 6-cell.

With the screen on mid-level brightness, the system idling and power settings set to “Power Saver” in Vista the dv4t achieved 2 hours and 48 minutes of battery life before hitting 6% charge remaining and going into hibernate.  That’s an optimistic amount of battery life to get as I wasn’t even doing anything on the laptop during this time.  In general you can expect around 2 hours and 15 minutes of battery on the 6-cell high capacity battery.  Not all that great, but remember I have the dedicated graphics and fastest processor option.  If you get integrated graphics and a slower processor you can certainly expect better battery life.

Conclusion

The design of the dv4t and very good price to performance ratio are what really have me sold on this notebook and liking it.  It’s not the lightest 14″ laptop out there and battery life could be better, I also found heat build up was a bit problematic with the dedicated graphics.  If you got integrated graphics and a slower processor I’m sure the heat and battery life issues would not be such a problem, so keep that in mind, even though there will always be an inner voice urging you to trick your laptop out with the highest possible configuration.

The selection of ports is excellent, the screen superb and overall build quality excellent for a consumer targeted laptop.

Overall rating: 8/10

Pros

• Very good price for what you get
• Superb sleek looking design
• Great build quality
• Excellent selection of ports such as HDMI and eSATA

Cons

• Runs quite hot with dedicated graphics and fast processor
• Lid picks up fingerprints so you need a cloth to wipe that off
• So-so battery life with dedicated graphics

Pricing and Where to buy

The HP Pavilion dv4t notebook is available configure to order at HP.com and varies in price depending on the promotions and marketing going on during any given week.  Right now the starting price is at $649, which is really great.  Don’t forget the student discount that HP offers.  And if you liked this review and it was helpful to you, we’d really appreciate you using this sponsored link to click through and buy this HP notebook so that HP knows you were here and found the review helpful

HP Student Discount Guide

HP makes a lot of great products that are essential to student productivity, from calculators to printers to laptops. In order to make these items more affordable to the penny pinched student HP offers an academic discount that they call the Academic Purchase Plan (APP). In general the student discount via HP is around 7% - 10% off of the regular price of products.

To get the HP student discount just click on the following link:

HP Student Discount Link (APP site)

You will then be asked what your affiliation is to an academic institution and go through a wizard style interface to select the school you are associated with. You can be K - 12 or higher education, and students, staff or administrators are eligible for the academic discount.

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