After six weeks of rather tedious to and fro, I picked up a brand new replacement for my HP nx7010 (1.6Ghz/512Mb/60Gb/15.4” WSXGA) last Thursday. It works fine and has no busted pixels (that I have noticed) either. I didn’t leave the store before I checked.
Here’s a quick way to test a machine for broken pixels. Create a little HTML file like this with notepad:
Save it as ‘test.html’ on the desktop, then open it up in Internet Explorer. Press F11 to get full screen mode. You should be able to see any bright pixels over most of the screen. Then change the bgcolor to white and look for dark pixels.
The store kindly1 loaned me a Fujitsu Lifebook C2220 off their display stand when my first HP had to be returned. The machine worked fine and I was able to develop the database layer of my new blogging software.
However, the experience confirmed my choice of the HP. The HP has a bigger screen and a longer battery life, as well as being smaller, lighter and faster. How much faster? A test that consistently took 12 seconds for a thousand iterations on the Fujitsu takes 4 seconds on the HP. Other tests also show a 2.5x – 3.0x speed up.
1 I say kindly, but if they hadn’t, I probably would have taken a refund instead of waiting for the replacement.
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