The first thing you notice about the HP DV3 is its eye catching design. Gone is the plain black body found on so many notebooks. Instead you have a design minded motif, not only spicing up the outer lid but also the space below the keyboard.

What’s on offer?
So what does the DV3 have on offer? First off, it carries a very decent 320GB of hard disk space, enough to store a number of series, movies and music onboard, without having to worry about hooking up your portable hard drive. Add to this an Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6400 (2.0 GHz) and a very decent 3072MB RAM and you have a PC not only able to handle your entertainment requirements, but also pulling its weight in the work department. Speaking of weight, the DV3 is a little bit smaller than standard laptop size. It weighs about 2.2 kg, so it’s not a bother to carry around. The 13.4\" screen is decent, although with a resolution of 1366 x 768, it doesn’t qualify as full HD.

Connectivity
The DV3 is tops with connectivity, and includes an HDMI port to hook it up to an HD screen, as well as an eSATA connection for faster data transfer. You’ll also find a PC Express Slot, a data card reader, as well as Wi-Fi onboard. HP includes a stock standard webcam and a fingerprint reader for biometric security. Finally your DVD requirements are fulfilled by a LightScribe Super Multi 8x DVD optical drive. The power cord is a little bit longer than the standard length,but one minor niggle is that the power cord plugs in at the side, and not the back, which means having to deal with a protruding cable all the time.

Remote Control
We really enjoyed the included mini remote. It’s just a shame that some functions only works with Windows Media Player (WMP), as WMP doesn’t support some video codecs. Add to this the Altec-Lansing speakers,which at least make listening to movies possible without having to call on external speakers, and you have a very respectable multimedia set-up.

The glossy keyboard you’ll either love or hate. Personally we did not like the feel and the tactile feedback, although we’re sure we could have gotten used to it in time. The touchpad left us unimpressed and made an accompanying mouse a must.

As a multimedia notebook, the DV3 sure looks the part. It\'s a decent size with excellent specs, and retails for R12 999 from www.hpshop.co.za.