*HP dm3 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

[Wanderermy]

well i really wanted to like this laptop, but i just got it today and am not thrilled. for starters, those trackpad rumors are right... there's something not right with it. something about the surface really does make my fingers skip and not glide as smoothly as they do on my dell or my wife's macbook pro. i especially notice this when scrolling up. from an onscreen driver/software perspective, the responsiveness seems sluggish. two-finger scrolling is not nearly as slick as the macbook, quite often i find that my first attempt to scroll with both fingers is not recognized. when it does work, it doesn't scroll smoothly but jumps in small increments... again, just not as slick. lastly, to click you have to press down surprisingly hard on trackpad. when trying to select a block of text by holding the click and dragging, my finger had to exert much more force to keep the button depressed than on my other laptops.

i do like the design and the soft-touch surface, but i'm also a little bit disappointed with the construction quality. there is a noticeable crookedness in how the battery snaps into place on mine... nothing awful, but i wish it sat a bit more flush.

the computer also seems generally slower than i had anticipated, considering i sprung for the i3, ssd, and 4 gb ram... perhaps the intel video is the culprit, but i was expecting it to be snappier all around.

keyboards fine, screen looks nice... but i think i'm going to return it. the trackpad is such an integral part of a laptop, it's too bad HP hasn't spent more time refining theirs.

Try fresh install, mine pretty snappy.

[nikeseven]

Hi. Newbie here. On ebay, HP Pavilion Dm3-1044nr is listed for $399 buy it now. Is this a good deal? I just need something to surf the web and do word processing.

Can you post the specs? Or a link to which one your looking at

[Phil]

Hi. Newbie here. On ebay, HP Pavilion Dm3-1044nr is listed for $399 buy it now. Is this a good deal? I just need something to surf the web and do word processing.

Yes it's a good deal. They're open box though.

[Buzzhater]

Hey guys, what battery life do you get from these newborn Coolsense DM3s? Thought of ordering one but need at least 6.5-7 hours of web browsing

[gsenzer]

well i really wanted to like this laptop, but i just got it today and am not thrilled. for starters, those trackpad rumors are right... there's something not right with it. something about the surface really does make my fingers skip and not glide as smoothly as they do on my dell or my wife's macbook pro. i especially notice this when scrolling up. from an onscreen driver/software perspective, the responsiveness seems sluggish. two-finger scrolling is not nearly as slick as the macbook, quite often i find that my first attempt to scroll with both fingers is not recognized. when it does work, it doesn't scroll smoothly but jumps in small increments... again, just not as slick. lastly, to click you have to press down surprisingly hard on trackpad. when trying to select a block of text by holding the click and dragging, my finger had to exert much more force to keep the button depressed than on my other laptops.

i do like the design and the soft-touch surface, but i'm also a little bit disappointed with the construction quality. there is a noticeable crookedness in how the battery snaps into place on mine... nothing awful, but i wish it sat a bit more flush.

the computer also seems generally slower than i had anticipated, considering i sprung for the i3, ssd, and 4 gb ram... perhaps the intel video is the culprit, but i was expecting it to be snappier all around.

keyboards fine, screen looks nice... but i think i'm going to return it. the trackpad is such an integral part of a laptop, it's too bad HP hasn't spent more time refining theirs.

I have the SP9300/NvidiaG105, 4Gb RAM and it flies! I don't know about the i3UM chips - they don't look very powerful. One things for sure; removing the HP "Crap-ware" that comes preinstalled makes a big difference. You don't have to do a clean install but, count on a few hours of uninstalling, msiconfig, and general systems admin work. A clean install could be faster.

Don't know about the trackpads - have you updated the drivers and tuned the TP response with control panel? My DM3-1000 has the old TP and, after updating bios & drivers it works fine. I've used the new style tps on the DV6 and think its great.

If I was buying a new DM3, I'd probably wait for the i5 chips that are listed in the service manual.

Good luck.

[City Pig]

when it does work, it doesn't scroll smoothly but jumps in small increments... again, just not as slick.

That part can be easily fixed. By default, it's set to scroll three lines at a time. going into the touchpad settings and changing it to one line fixes that "issue" for the most part.

[tsanga]

Sure you can leave the recovery partition. When you choose 'custom setup' you can delete the primary partition and then select it to install windows.

When I did the clean install in the main partition, I left the recovery partition alone (D:\), as well as a small FAT "HP_Tools" partition at the very end.

However, after the clean install, hitting F11 no longer works to boot into the recovery partition. I'm guessing the clean install replaced the boot manager (BCD?) from the factory. Also, I cannot find the HP software on their website to re-install to enable creating recovery discs.

I did find out that by going into disk management and marking the recovery partition active, I can boot into it. But this wouldn't be very useful if my primary Windows partition is already corrupt.

Can someone point to me where I can re-install recovery manager, and re-enable the original boot manager?

[V_Chip]

Hey guys. Just recently purchased an HP portable simplesave (320gb). Looking for an ssd to install in my dm3t.

Any prospects? I'd like numerous suggestions ranging from high performance high ends to competitively priced lower end ssds. 60gb-80gb.

(Would I be able to squeeze my OS and primary applications on to a 30gb or 40gb ssd?)

[TSE]

yeah I bet you would be able to.... Check out Tiny Windows 7...

It's basically Windows 7 completely stripped down made by a third party. It isn't officially supported but as long as you have a valid license it isn't illegal.

[TSE]

By the way, does anyone know where I can find the old model HP DM3t with the nVidia 105M graphics card with either the SU7300 or SU4100 (not the SP9300)?

I love the DM3 so much that I think I might throw $200 to upgrade from the one I have to one of those because I need 5 hours of battery... I have been checking ebay and craigslist and none of the intel ones have the nvidia 105m.

Just to be sure I'm doing the right thing, what is the battery life on the SU7300 + 105M combo? Did this ever have switchable graphics?

I heard that the SP9300 + nvidia 105m combo provides about 5 hours max when you have the 4500MHD on, is that right?