Last month I finally broke down and replaced my old Fujitsu Lifebook laptop with a spanking new HP dv3 series one. It’s a little bigger and a good bit heavier than my trusty old one I had carried near and far, but it’s about 10 times faster and has literally 10 times the storage as my outdated former sidekick. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of tech specs, but here are the ones that mattered to me: 3GB of Ram, 300 GB hard drive, slot CD/DVD burner, built-in wireless, lighted keyboard, remote-controlled media center, good Altec Lansing speakers, built-in webcam, and fingerprint reader.

All this came in a nice little 13.3-inch screen package for the price of $782 including shipping, with a machine that was customized to my requests and had Windows loaded. This deal benefited from some promotions going on at the HP site that gave me free shipping and a hard drive upgrade, but no matter what particular upgrades are on offer any particular week, this is one of the best values you can get from any laptop in this class.

Note the word is “Laptop” too, not “netbook.” HP makes a line of netbooks too in their mini series line and you can get them from a lot of companies now for under $400. If I were just playing around from the road instead of working, that’s what I would probably carry around. They’re not so hot for processing-intensive tasks, however, such as graphics, video, photo editing, and the like. They also don’t have a CD/DVD drive, which is a deal-killer for me. I like to be able to pop in a DVD to play—often purchased that day on the streets—or to burn songs from a CD, which would mean carrying an external drive. Plus time is money when you’re working from the road instead of just surfing the web and staying in touch with friends.

So how does this HP dv3 laptop perform? Well, it’s not perfect, but for what I paid, I’m quite happy with it. It’s a good road workhorse that enables me to take my office with me and the annoyances are not all that numerous. Battery life is just s0-so even though I bought the 9-cell one, but roughly 3 hours going full-tilt with Wi-Fi and audio running, so reasonable.

Pros: Optional lighted keyboard is great on a plane or in a dark room. Great speakers for a laptop. Super-fast response even with 6 or 8 tasks running. Great media center with remote control and lighted controls above the keyboard for volume, mute, and skip/ff/rewind/stop. Three USB ports and an array of other ports and slots including HDMI. Multi-card media card reader. Built-in webcam works well for a built-in. Not too many craplets to delete during setup. Fingerprint reader works well and makes for fewer passwords to remember. Keyboard is full-size and comfortable.

Cons: Fan can get noisy, though apparently not nearly as noisy as with HP’s tablet PCs. Battery life is just fair considering it sticks out a bit in the back instead of lying flat. Delete button is tiny and is hidden at the top right of the keyboard. Touch-style built-in mouse is a royal pain, constantly resizing the page and doing other odd zooming effects every time you hit it by accident—which is easy since it’s right where your hands rest while typing. Somehow I need to find the magic mouse setting that will eliminate this. Overall size is bigger than most 13-inch laptops; it’s about the same size as a 14-inch MacBook. The 4.8 pound weight (with the 9-cell battery) is just so-so for this size. The screen is glossy, which is great for watching a movie in the dark, not so great for working by a window or outside.

Overall, I would give this a solid 8 out of 10. The pros more than make up for the cons and with a price under $800 for this much power and memory, the HP dv3 laptops are a great deal.

By the way, I shopped around a lot and prices at the HP direct site were better than I found anywhere else, even on eBay, so follow one of the links in this review to score the best deal.

Buy the HP Pavilion Entertainment dv3z Customizable Notebook PC