1. Introduction

When HP sent us their monster HDX 9000 notebook in September, we knew we had to pull another group of media laptops together to provide some kind of a basis for comparison. If we’d deliberately set out to find four notebooks as different from each other as possible, media capabilities notwithstanding, we couldn’t have done a better job of assembling this group. As it is, we found interesting things to like and dislike about each and every one of them, which made this collection more diverse and far-ranging that we ever expected.

Here’s our line-up for this round-up (or should we say "grab-bag?")

The brand-new HP Pavilion HDX 9000, a $4,000-plus, top-of-the-line, notebook-cum-desktop replacement with a snazzy, hinged 20.1" display, that weighs in at nearly 18 pounds, including brick and power cords. The equally new but much more svelte Toshiba Qosmio F45-AV12, itself a departure from other Qosmio units we’ve reviewed. This one has a 15.4" screen, weighs only 6.7 pounds (not terribly light per se, but a lot less heavy than the other, larger Qosmio models), and costs a mere $1,400 and up. The relatively new MSI PR200-029LA, a truly tiny media notebook with 12.1" screen, that weighs in at 4.52 pounds, and costs $1,150 and up. The surprisingly-stunning Sony VAIO VGN-AR630, which features a 17" screen, tips the scales at 8.0 pounds and costs $1,700 and up.

Hopefully, just this brief description confirms our contention that these notebooks are more different than they are alike. Certainly, one can argue that their size, cost and weight put them into different areas of the notebook spectrum, from what we’d call "reasonably light and compact" to "unbelievably massive." As earlier Qosmio and current "big" Qosmio models attest, there appears to be a big enough market for large entertainment notebook PCs that HP is throwing its hat into that ring with considerable gusto, judging from the dimensions and capabilities of its HDX 9000.

Meet The Lineup

In the next four sections that follow, we’ll introduce each of the four notebook PCs, along with some photos to give you some idea about what they look like. We’ll conclude this section with a comprehensive table that sums up all four machines side-by-side, so you can compare speeds and feeds, port, connectors, adapters, and so forth, to your heart’s content. For no better reason than consistency’s sake, we cover the four notebooks in the same order in which they appear in the preceding section, starting with the massive and mighty HP HDX 9000 PC.

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