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Bought this laptop when it was on sale. Total cost is $383.11.

Performance:
Runs pretty fast and snappy once I have a fresh copy of Windows XP and an extra 1GB memory installed on it.

Noise & Heat:
Very quiet when idle. But for some reason, mine would have its CPU temperature heats up fast, and then the fan would periodically turn on to cool it down. That is even when the whole system is at idle!!! I think it is probably a bad thermal connection between my CPU and its heatsink. Have to open it to check it out...

The fan was not that loud when turned on. Can not hear it running when I was listening to music.

Ergonomic:
The ports are on both sides of this laptop, and NO ports on the front nor back of the laptop. So, if you have a lot of things connect to the laptop, then you will find your desk really messy to look at. For example, the wire that connects to my audio speaker and the USB wire that connects to my mouse, frequently get in the way when I am trying to open the DVD drive.

The keyboard feels OK, but I prefer to use a external keyboard via USB connection. The biggest quirk that I had with the built-in keyboard is the small directional keys and the OVERSIZED "SHIFT" key right above it. I frequently hit the wrong key. When I thought that I was hitting the "ENTER" key, very often that I found I was hitting the "SHIFT key." Very annoying. I wish they could fix this by either shrink the SHIFT key, or enlarge the ENTER key.

The built-in mouse track pad is OK. Scrolling up/down and left/right works without the need to install any more drivers in Windows XP. The mouse buttons have rubber pads on it, which I finds amusing. I can feel the mouse buttons immediately without looking at them, which is good for me. The button clicking sound is also very soft.


Mobility:
It looks thick, but when I close the whole laptop, it is actually thin enough to carry it comfortably. Weights a bit heavy at 6.6lbs. But I don't carry it often, so, it really doesn't bother me.


Wireless:
The Broadcom wireless 802.11b/g is excellent. I get a very strong signal with it, unlike my previous laptop (a Sony VAIO). It uses a button to turn on/off the wireless.

PROS
There are a lot of quality things about this laptop that I have found very surprising, for the price that I paid.
1) Very beautiful LCD screen, which is made by Samsung/Seiko
2) Good built-in speakers by Altec Lansing
3) Excellent Harddrive performance by Hitachi
4) The BroadCom wireless 802.11b/g
5) The Slimtype DVD drive that can burn CD-R, CD-RW, Single and Dual-layers DVD-R, DVD-RW
6) A single stick DDR2-667 memory that came with the laptop, even though the laptop only runs at DDR-533!
7) A thick plastic casing, which is good for rugged use, bad for thermal dissipation.

CONs
The biggest downside to this laptop is its ability for FUTURE expansion. So, basically that you will be stuck with the same configuration for the rest of this laptop's useful life.
1) Lousy ports locations, wires frequently gets in the way!
2) No PCMCIA, ExpressCard slots!
3) No flash card reader!
4) No Firewires 1934, no serial port, no parallel port!
5) BIOS configuration is very basic. Can't even change the size of shared video memory.
6) CPU upgrade is limited to Celeron lines. No Core Duo nor Core 2 Duo cpu upgrade in the future!

The benchmark scores for this laptop

3D Mark 2001 SE - 4418
3D Mark 2003 - 1164
3D Mark 2005 - 434
AquaMark 3 - GFX - 699, CPU 9470, TOTAL - 6752

Great lookign review thanks
Any pictures of the computer?

Pictures uploaded. Enjoy!

Wow i give credit to people who take apart their lappys wow
Id never take my laptop that far apart...
looks pretty sweet man

Great review and amazing photos!!!

There is a newer BIOS (F.24) available for the C555NR on the HP website. The flash utility saves a copy of the original BIOS into a BIOS.BAK file, so downgrading is possible. I wonder if HP has changed the fan behavior (i.e. the CPU temps. at which the fan is turned on and off) in the newer BIOS like they have with other laptop models.

How has applying Arctic Silver affected your CPU temp?

This HP DS-8AZP is actually a LiteOn SSM-8515S.
So you can use the 3rd party LiteOn utilities available to backup the firmware, disable the region protection, or convert the firmware to that of the LiteOn SSM-8515S. It is highly doubtful HP will be releasing any firmware updates for the DVD-RW, so converting it to the LiteOn SSM-8515S is a good way to keep the firmware up to date.

The Hitachi 5K160 (5400RPM, 8MB Cache Buffer, 80GB platters) is an excellent drive. And 80GB is the sweet spot since it keeps the drive at a single platter for quieter/cooler operation.

If you don't care for the noise the drive makes when going into Low Power Idle mode, you can use the Hitachi Feature Tool utility to change the Advanced Power Management setting. IIRC, you only save 0.1w going to Low Power Idle (0.6W) from Active Idle (0.7W) anyways.

This is definitely an improvement over the 4200rpm drives that used to come with almost all budget laptops.

I used ASTRA32 to determine the following info about the LCD:

Monitor Vendor: Seiko Epson
Monitor Model: Unknown (SEC 4545)
Internal Vendor: SAMSUNGLTN154X3-L01

This is a TFT Active Matrix screen with high-gloss anti-reflective polarizer.

The spec page for the Samsung LTN154X3:
http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTL...3/LTN154X3.htm

Beautiful looking screen. But the specs on laptop LCDs pale in comparison to that of desktop LCDs.

Has anyone had issues with the audio drivers? I am having a weird issues with my laptop when I hook up headphones to the laptop, the desktop speakers won't shut-off. I degraded the laptop with Win XP SP2.

damn that looks great..