Entertainment notebooks are popular with all age groups these days-and not without reason. They're offering a fair amount of style and performance, and that too at prices that won't break the bank. HP's new dv3005TX is a 13.3-inch laptop with features quite similar to Dell's popular XPS M1330. For starters, the unique lid (this one has a glossy mesh design) , the aluminum palm rest, backlit feathertouch media control buttons, fingerprint reader, HDMI out, multimedia remote control in the Express card slot, dual headphone sockets and NVidia 8400M GS graphics. The keyboard is one of the best I've seen though, and the nifty on/off button for the trackpad is a nice touch. With HDMI out, you can connect directly to a large flat screen TV or supply DVI out to a large LCD monitor. A big advantage that the dv3000 has is the addition of the hybrid eSATA/USB port. eSATA can provide a really fast bus for data transfer between a compatible external hard drive. Otherwise, it functions just like a normal USB port (there are two additional USB ports, just in case).

The 13.3-inch glossy widescreen has the webcam and mic on top. We ran our usual software benchmarks on it; with PCMark 05, it managed 3940, which is good. With 3DMark, it returned a figure of 1644, somewhat better than the 1422 3D Marks that the XPS M1330 managed. The higher score can probably be attributed to the fact that the dv3000 has an NVidia 8400M GS with 256 MB RAM as opposed to 128 MB on the XPS. Save for really intensive games like Crysis, it'll manage to pull off decent frame rates with games like Bioshock and Unreal Tournament 3. The only real drawbacks were the 1.5 hour battery life (increases to 2.5 hours in power saver mode) and that the lid was a fingerprint magnet. But overall, a very commendable effort.

HP Pavilion dv3005TX Rs 53,990 + taxes	Performance Coolness
Pros Looks, lots of features, bright display Cons Poor battery, fingerprint magnet Sold by HP India www.hp.com/in	Specs Intel C2D T5550 (1.83 GHz), 2 GB RAM, 250GB HDD, NVIDIA 8400M GS, Vista Home Premium, DVD R/W, HDMI, 13.3-inch WXGA, VGA webcam, fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, 2.3 kgs Verdict