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If you like the idea of playing music and DVDs on a notebook, then the Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Dv1000--available today--is the model you've been waiting for. With this laptop you can bypass booting up Windows and immediately watch a movie or enjoy some tunes.

HP makes circumventing Windows to play your discs supereasy. With the notebook turned off, you simply press either the DVD button or the Music button, located above the keyboard. This launches the Quick Play mode, which prompts you to load either a DVD or a CD. Once you pop in the disc, play begins instantly.

Blue-lit buttons positioned along the top of the keyboard help you navigate through tracks or adjust volume. Additional easy-to-use DVD menu controls reside at the bottom-right edge of the keyboard. During my tests of a $1500 preproduction model, I encountered no hitches while playing movies or music.

I did, however, find the reflective coating of the unit's 14-inch, 1280-by-768-resolution wide-screen display a bit distracting--particularly when viewing DVDs. The two built-in speakers were adequate, but if you really want to treat your ears, HP sells an optional $249 expansion base that includes a subwoofer and extra speakers for a richer listening experience.

Refined Design and Solid Performance

The Dv1000 has some nice design touches. All of the notebook's ports--including FireWire and S-Video--as well as a five-in-one media card reader and the DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive are located along the sides of the notebook (instead of the back) for easier access. And small icons placed along the edge of the keyboard identify each of the ports, so you don't have to hunt to find a USB port, for instance.

The notebook isn't terribly heavy--it weighs 5.5 pounds on its own and 6.4 pounds with its AC adapter--so it's well suited to those business trips where you can use a bit of cinema or music during your downtime. The Dv1000 lasted just over 4 hours in our battery tests, which means it should power through most movies without slowing down.

The unit offers decent computing performance, too. Using a 1.7-GHz Pentium M processor and 512MB of RAM, the Dv1000 scored 64 in our WorldBench 5 tests, placing it in line with other similarly configured notebooks we've reviewed. Our test model included an 80GB hard drive and 802.11g wireless.

Of course, when your everyday work beckons, you can leave the movie-enjoyment behind and return to Windows. You simply have to press the power button twice--once to exit the Quick Play mode, and again to launch Windows.

The biggest downside to the Dv1000: You'll enjoy watching movies so much, you might forget that you have work to do.

HP Pavilion Dv1000

Attractive notebook delivers multimedia playback without Windows, and you can even use it for work.
List: $1500
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