Thursday, November 4, 2004
PC Magazine Reviews the HP zd8000
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 11:15 PM
"The HP Pavilion zd8000 is a terrific multimedia notebook that's packed with new technologies like Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005, PCI Express graphics, and an ExpressCard slot...the zd8000 comes with the new ExpressCard/54 PC Card slot—which offers high-speed transfers of 250 Mbps each way—and PCI Express graphics from the 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X600 card. But its gaming test scores were average, because of its basic X600 GPU."
I should have known that the reason why there was a price drop on the zd7280us I bought three weeks ago was because there was a new model coming out. :roll: Oh well - the only real difference between the zd8000 series and the zd7000 is that the zd8000 comes with Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (which I've managed to install myself anyway), has a dual-tuner USB box, and the juiced-up PCI express video card. I'm not a hard-core gamer, so the loss of the X600 doesn't bother me. Technology marches ever onward, although it will likely be 6+ months before I see the zd8000 available in Canada. If you're looking for a mobile video editing workstation, the zd8000 should be a strong contender.
I should have known that the reason why there was a price drop on the zd7280us I bought three weeks ago was because there was a new model coming out. :roll: Oh well - the only real difference between the zd8000 series and the zd7000 is that the zd8000 comes with Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (which I've managed to install myself anyway), has a dual-tuner USB box, and the juiced-up PCI express video card. I'm not a hard-core gamer, so the loss of the X600 doesn't bother me. Technology marches ever onward, although it will likely be 6+ months before I see the zd8000 available in Canada. If you're looking for a mobile video editing workstation, the zd8000 should be a strong contender.
