Hewlett-Packard Pavilion ZD8000 Review

Hewlett-Packard's zd8000 sits firmly between the "too cool for school" and the kitchen-sink style of laptop. This Media Center monster weighs in at 10.5 pounds and has just about everything under the sun stuffed into its 11 x 15-inch body. There is a DVD burner, a six-in-one card reader, four USB 2.0 ports, and a FireWire port. The system uses a Harman Kardon speaker system and has a beautiful 17-inch LCD. HP has begun using brighter and clearer screens, resulting in better viewing angles and great DVD playback.

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 scored the highest multimedia ratings we've seen on any notebook. It also has a gorgeous BrightView 17-inch widescreen display and an external HP USB Dual TV tuner, which lets you watch one show while recording another. Its Harman Kardon speakers had impressive sound.
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.

HP Pavilion ZD8000 Specifications:
Mobile Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz, with Hyper-Threading1GB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz(512x1) from MicronToshiba 80GB hard drive 5400 RPMLG GWA-4080N DVD+/-RW Drive - CD-ROM (40x); CD-R (40x write); CD-RW (24x write); DVD-ROM (16x); DVD-R (8x write); DVD-RW (4x write); DVD+R (16x write); DVD+RW (4x write); DVD+R Dual Layer (2.4x write)ATI Mobility Radeon X600 with 256MB dedicated RAM17.0" WXGA TFT LCD ViewBright display 1440 x 900 resolutionIntegrated V.92/56K modemRealtek RTL8193 10/100 Ethernet LANBroadcom 802.11b/g Wireless LANBuilt-in Harman/Kardon stereo speakersIntel ICH6 AC97 Sound Card5-in-1 Media Reader (Secure Digital, Memory Stick/Pro, MMC, xD Picture Card)

The star of the Media Center is an external dual TV/FM radio tuner manufactured by Adaptec. This dual tuner let us bring in two shows at once and record one show while watching another. The hp pavilion zd8000 series battery runs Windows Media Center 2005, which looks incredibly rich and full on the huge screen. We were able to record TV and burn it to CD or DVD with Sonic Solution's embedded Media Center burner.
To add TV or video to our DVD, all we had to do was select "Other Programs" from the Main Menu, insert a disk, select the video with HP's new slimmed-down remote, and sit back and wait. The zd8000's 4X DVD-R burner did the rest.
For the geeks out there, however, the zd8000's motherboard includes PCI Express and a PCI Express(otherwise known as ExpressCard/54) slot on the side. HP has chosen a PCI Express-enabled graphics card, the ATI Radeon Mobility X600 with 256MB of memory for high-end game playing. The card isn't much faster than a standard AGP card, but it's still powerful enough to pump out 11152 3DMarks.
In fact, PCI Express is almost overkill in this system. The technology is a super-fast variant of the PCI standard, and is just beginning to appear on desktop motherboards. The fact that the technology is actually appearing simultaneously on laptops and desktops speaks to the popularity of portable PCs.
What does PCI Express give you right now? Not much. ExpressCards are not widely available and any speed increases offered by, say, an ExpressCard USB card are obviously offset by the slower speeds offered even by USB 2.0. In the zd8000's case, HP is basically future-proofing an already steep investment.
The pavilion zd8000 series battery also includes 1GB of 400-MHz memory and a USB digital drive bay, which is a USB flash or hard drive that pops into the side of the laptop. We long for the day when the optical drive is a relic of the past and we simply carry around a full complement of flash drives containing all our software.
Generally, this laptop performs admirably when stacked up next to other media notebooks, and the next-generation hardware adds to the general ?gWow?h quotient. The case is standard, with an off-center trackpad with raised scroll surface, a full keyboard with a numeric keypad, and volume and wireless controls below the screen.
Unsurprisingly, with great power come great big fans. This laptop sounds like it's ready to take flight. As a result, we were lulled to sleep while watching TV, thanks to the white noise emanating from the zd8000.
All in all, PCI Express is not yet all it's cracked up to be. But as it is, the zd8000 is definitely a step into the future.