HP Store Online

HP Pavilion dv2911us or HP Pavilion dv2945se?

I'm looking into buying one of these HP laptops. It will be used for school, watching movies, music, pictures, internet, etc. Which one is the better buy? First I was sold on the dv2945 because it was on sale for $699 but its back up to original price now and the dv2911 is on sale at Office Depot for $549. Thanks!

Public Comments

1. its a tough call due to mismatched features the dv2945 had a crappy cpu more memory better video card and better wireless it makes it the better of the two even with the crappy cpu
2. You should have got the dv2945se when you got the chance. The specs are much better on it than on the dv2911us. Comparison: dv2945se | dv2911us 2.00 GHz AMD Turion X2 TL-60 Dual-Core Mobile < 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 (I forgot about the Turions versus C2Ds...) 1MB L2 Cache < 2MB L2 Cache 4096MB RAM > 3072MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M > Intel GMA X3100 up to 1071MB Video RAM > up to 358MB Video RAM 320GB Hard drive > 250GB Hard drive Lightscribe burner > regular DVD burner None < One HDMI port Tradeoff: Vista 64-bit (powerful, allows 4GB of memory) or Vista 32-bit (compatible with your existing devices) Practically everything else is the same Now tell yourself if you can justify the price difference now. CNET says ~$900 from Best Buy for the dv2945se as of now. The dv2911us says ~$850 regular price on Office Depot's website. You're still paying ~$735 and receiving back $185 in rebates instead of getting the features listed above. Then again, tell yourself if it's overkill or not; most mid-range laptops are perfectly fine for your purposes. Keep looking for deals on the dv2945se if you get the chance. (I'm kinda biased towards Fry's Electronics --- I used to work there.) (Oh, and I hate it when they say $699 when it's pretty much $700 minus a dollar. Heh, retail.)
3. Go with the HP Pavilion dv2842se at circuit city. It uses an Intel DUO Core 2 processor at 1.83GHz. Has 12 cell battery, 4GB RAM, Vista Premium 64 bit, bluetooth, lightscribe technology and it's 749.99. The HP dv2911us at office depot is good too, it's identical to the dv2910us at circuit city minus the lightscribe technology. My dad picked up a dv2910us at circuit city yesterday and as soon as we got home we heard about the dv2911us at office depot; however, the dv2910us has lightscribe. That is the only difference. If your just using it for school and entertainment the dv2911us would be good since you get a 185 dollar rebate. However, if you want a 64 bit Vista, bigger 12 cell battey, 4GB RAM compared to 3GB RAM, bluetooth, you might want to invest 749.99 on the dv2842se.