Hewlett Packard (HP) Pavilion DV3505EA / Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5800 2 GHz / 2GB / 160GB / DVD-SM / 13.3 inch / Vista Home Premium

Er does the title say it all or what.
Firstly, this is an excellent laptop for general computing, low end gaming, DVD movie playing (esp. with remote control), also excells at DVD creation burning a full dvd in less than 10min or so.

Secondly, the overall stature of this lappy will amaze you at just over 2 kg is very light almost netbookesk.

Thirdly, the look will make other envious if your the kind to flaunt it at uni or the like. A bronze finish with a pattern etching just makes the lappy ooze quality. With touch sensitive media control buttons that dissapear when lappy is turned off.

Anyhow lets get the nitty and gritty of why you should buy this little baby. The lappy has an amazing display using LED backlight technology with means longer battery life and 720 High Deffinition resolution. Back this up with a dedicated graphics card with 512 dedicated ram makes this a formidable choice. I am not new to lappy ownaship and have realised long ago that the graphics card makes the lappy good or bad. this one is good. At this moment I am playing fallout 3 on my DV3505, ok with details on the low side I am up to level 13 with no sign of stopping.

To date I have had no problems with this lappy but unlike a lot of people i treat my lappy with care as I expect it to last me at least 5 years or more. As far as bloatware I am only annoyed by the office trial and norton anti-virus software that as soon as the trial periods are up will be getting deleted off the HDD.

The only downside I can see with this lappy is the hard to see keys on the keyboard although this can be remedied by putting small letter stickers on each key untill a time that an 3600 keyboard can be sourced. For these letters speak to any crafty orientated person and would only cost a couple of quid.

I love this lappy and would recomend it to anyone

Hardware-wise this notebook is excellent, very high build/materials quality and the screen is beautiful. I was a bit unsure about the bronze finish based on the pictures but in the flesh it looks fantastic and is very fingerprint resistant considering how shiny the finish is. It's very quiet aswell, usually on notebooks the CPU fan is fully off until the CPU gets hot enough to need cooling, then the fan turns on quite loudly, then off fully again when cool enough. With this notebook the fan is on constantly but at a very low level, so you don't get the annoying noise of the fan going on and off all the time.

A couple of niggles with the notebook - the trackpad coating is quite grippy, combined with being very sensitive to tap clicking you can end up clicking accidentally. Also the keyboard on the 3500 series has bronze keys with black characters, which makes it a bit hard to see in very bright light (due to reflection from the shiny finish on the keys) and plain invisible in very low light! This has been addressed on the 3600's by having a backlit keyboard, the 3600 keyboards are physically the same as the 3500 though so one could be fitted once HP start selling them seperately. These are minor niggles however and if you use a mouse and normal indoor lighting they won't effect you.

Finally; as the notebook ships it is full of HP 'crapware' you don't need, make the backup DVD's and put a flat copy of windows on :) All the drivers you need are in 'c:\SWSetup\' as the notebook ships, back these up!

Overall I'm very happy with mine, the graphics chip can even handle a bit of gaming - HL2 is about it's limit though, forget anything DX10 unless you want to watch a powerpoint presentation.

9/10 for the notebook itself, -1 for all the rubbish HP install.