Two HP Turion AMD notebooks tip up

RUNNING AROUND THE MICROSOFT Worldwide Partner Conference a few blocks from my house Friday, I found a bunch of goodies, which is surprising considering that I was so tired I had a really rough time forming complete sentences. While they are not all that new, I finally got a chance to see the two HP Turion notebooks up close, and they are first business class notebooks with AMD CPUs that I would put my own money down on.

This is not a slight against the flat out great Acer Ferrari, especially the lustworthy black one, but they are not 'corporate', more bling-bling. The HP ones are much more muted, but still look very good, and would not be out of place in a business setting.

The first of these is the HP nx6125, a Turion based version of the nc6220/6230. I have bought a bunch of the predecessor, the nc61xx and 62xx series, and had a lot of good luck with them, but only one of the new chassis that the 6125 shares with its Intel brethren. So far, it has only been two weeks, but no problems yet. My limited time with the PM version left me with a favorable impression.

The next one up is a little more odd, the Lance Armstrong themed L2000 that we told you about a few weeks ago. This is one very interesting but seriously odd looking notebook. It should pack a lot of power, the slowest one you can get is a Turion 1.6, and the screen looks good, but overall it is somewhat disproportionate.

What I mean by that is it is a widescreen 14-inch laptop, 1280*768 if it matters, so it fits in the thin and light category, almost. I have a 12-inch nc4010, and the height is about the same, but the L2000 is a lot wider and thicker. To me it just looks odd, in a woman's extreme bodybuilder kind of way.

The specs however are right, and with a double pun, it looks to be a smallish laptop on steroids at a starting price of a mere $899. My only worry is the standard one year warranty, that is a red flag for me with notebooks. If anyone reading this has one, let me know how it holds up in the real world.

Between these two and the Acer Ferraris, there are now enough Turion laptops out there to keep me happy, gaming, work and light. There will undoubtedly be more to follow, but these are a solid start. µ