Mark Budgell, My bloggy partner in crime, and I had a mission: See how much mileage we can get out of the dm1 (and the Envy 17 3D) while making the annual Mecca to Las Vegas for the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. I like to call it Nerdvana (tm).
The original plan:
A day-trip stopping at random roadside oddities like the Alien Jerky Ranch (don’t ask how alien jerky tastes) and the home of the “The World’s Biggest Thermometer” in Baker, CA. The only problem: Life intervenes. You know how it goes – that “one more email” has to get dealt with or that last-minute meeting pops up. Sooo we left a little later than planned. Time for pre-flight checklist.
The gear:
The in-flight entertainment:
Mark’s tastes vary from AC/DC and The Rolling Stones to The Arcade Fire.
Me: I’m all over the map with Al Green, A Tribe Called Quest, Metallica and Sinatra (Hey, it’s Vegas!). One thing we both agreed upon: Girl Talk. This artist regularly performs masterful mashups of rock, rap, soul…and you get the idea. His latest Album, All Day, is FREE and LEGAL at illegal-art.net. Download it and thank me later.
Next up: Downloading a couple movies onto the dm1’s hard drive (legally, of course). In this case, HD content off iTunes as well as flick from the HP MovieStore (using the BestBuy CinemaNow service) that comes on the dm1.
I then proceeded to download a gang of games: A bunch of things ranging from Left 4 Dead 2 and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit to World of WarCraft: Cataclysm.
On the road (FINALLY!):
Breaking free of the office and making for the open road, we step on it to beat commuter traffic. Of course, we’re navigating the trip with one Pre, using the other to join conference calls while answering emails. Multitask-tastical!
That’s about when the wife calls to ask if I checked the road conditions. Huh? In all my efforts to pack a car full of new computer gear, I kinda neglected to factor in…the drive. Courtesy of a 3G mobile broadband connection – and the SkyHook software on-board the dm1 – I was able to locate where we were and scout ahead for trouble. There were reports of flooding in some areas and snowed over roads in others. Nothing worse than a couple nerds without coats, gloves or tire chains getting stuck up in a mountain pass. So we modified our trip route on-the-fly. And a steak break in the middle of the trip. And missed an exit at one point – USER ERROR.
As we’re going on this drive, I’m thinking that the on-again, off-again mobile 3G connectivity is great. But you know how it goes – you want more, faster. Well, here’s a good a place as any to tell you that the Pavilion dm1 (and the Compaq Mini CQ10 4G) will take advantage of Verizon’s 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network that just launched back in December. In the 4G coverage areas, these laptops could hit download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps. In case you’re curious how it works, you’ll have to wait a little longer. The 4G connectivity wasn’t enabled in the dm1 test unit I snagged. Maybe then, I’ll be able to Skype call my wife before I get into too much trouble.
Grooving to music will only get you so far on a road trip. You need to break it up. In my case, I gave Mark a taste of The A-Team in 1080p. I mean, who doesn’t like it when a plan comes together? Running at the “HP Recommended” power level, the flick fired up and needed a couple seconds to right itself (a slight stutter during the studio credit). Other than that, it ran cleanly and clearly. Until the battery finally gave out. You see, between listening to music, jumping on-and-offline and especially watching HD content, your battery mileage will vary. In my case, our machine lasted a little over eight hours with prolonged real-world usage. Not shabby by any standard. But that left us with a little more time to kill before getting into Vegas. Time to pull out the big guns.
A couple weeks back, ENVYCam (A.K.A. Cameron Duncan, an Envy product manager at HP) let us know about how you can use TriDef 3D Ignition software to get your 3D gaming on-the-go in the Envy 17 3D. He advised to start with first-person shooters and driving games to dip your feet into the 3D waters. Well, Mark wasn’t driving to my “standards” so I proceeded to fire up Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. My results…well, let’s just say there’s a reason I was mostly running entertainment and navigation duty.
With that, we pulled into Vegas and promptly checked into our rooms. Mark passed out while I checked into Azeroth – IN 3D! I have my priorities straight.
Anything you’re looking forward to hearing more about during the show? Anything you want us to look out for? Just let us know!
