HP 6715b

In a bizarre series of events, I ended up stumbling across this very high-end business class notebook, that is going for quite a low price of only GBP 550 including taxes! The reason that it's so cheap is because HP UK is doing a cash back deal on this notebook and they're giving you 100 quid back for the purchase!

The machine is a fairly high end business machine. It comes with an AMD TL-60 X2 processor, 2Gb of PC-5300 RAM, 160 Gb 5400 rpm HDD. However, it only sports a ATi X1250 graphics chip with unified memory in it. So, it's certainly not for gaming. I've read reviews that say that the X1250 can do Doom3 at the lowest possible settings with everything turned off. Like I said, it's a business class notebook, which isn't meant for game playing. It's certainly powerful enough for watching DVDs and serious work.

As expected for a high-end 15" notebook, it comes with all the bells and whistles that any other high-end business notebook comes with. This includes a fingerprint scanner and TPM 2.5, which is the bit that worries me. I don't like the idea of having any machine dictate my web of trust. Hopefully, it's a feature that can be turned off.

Anyway, it's just another alternative consideration. For 550 quid, it's really quite a good notebook. The cash-back deal ends on 31 July 2007 though. So, I'll have about 2 months to consider if I really want to get this one. In the mean time, it would be nice to see what other Santa Rosa notebooks come out the door. All the new notebooks are expected to hit us by July anyway.

PS. I could possibly buy it in July, and claim the VAT if I return home in September, which will make this notebook, only 450 quid!!