A while ago, the HP Pavilion dv6000 series made a soft entrance into the dual-core laptop market by going with AMD's dual-core processor, but that left people wondering where the Intel versions were. With Intel's processor launch this week, the Pavilion dv6000t will get the Intel Core 2 Duo (code-named "Merom") upgrade, skipping the previous Core Duo processors (code-named "Yonah"). You can think of the dv6000t as the larger version of the HP Pavilion dv2000z, except that the new model carries a much faster processor and a larger, 15.4-inch screen. It's aimed at media fanatics with a thirst for speed but who don't plan on taking the speed demon on the road—the dv6000t offers only meager battery life.

The dv6000t is part of HP's chassis redesign and is draped with imprints that are unique to the company's Pavilion and Compaq lines. The subtle, wavy lines are inspired by Japanese rock gardens, and the piano-black finish captures your attention (as well as fingerprints and smudges). The 120GB hard drive is essential for storing video and MP3 downloads. You can burn them directly to DVD using the dual-layer DVD drive. The unit has three USB ports, the same number as on the smaller dv2000z.

We were however, a touch disappointed by the dv6000's display. While its native resolution of 1280x800 will get the job done admirably enough, we found the viewing angles to be less than ideal, while the screen's glossy surface reflects badly under direct lighting. On the plus side, the screen is naturally quite bright and colours appear sharp and vibrant.

The dv6000t sports the Intel 945PM chipset, and is equipped with the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 PCI-E graphics card. Built on a 90nm process with 4 pixel pipelines and 3 vertex pipelines, and core clock and memory speeds both at 450MHz, the GeForce Go 7400 is in the lower-middle class of notebook video cards, ranking slightly lower than an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. Dont expect a hi-res gaming experience with all the eye candy enabled on the dv6000t, but you should be able to play most of the recent games at greatly reduced settings.

On the memory front, the dv6000t is outfitted with 1GB dual-channel DDR2-667 and 2GB is the maximum amount of RAM that is supported.

Our dv6000t came with a 120GB 5400RPM 8MB SATA hard drive. Hard drive performance seemed to be average, and it operated at near silence.

As this laptop is marketed towards the mobile entertainment/multimedia market, HP includes a nice TV tuner that plugs into the ExpressCard slot on the right of the unit. The TV tuner worked very well with Windows XP Media Center Edition, and I was up and running with my local cable channels within minutes. Recorded and live TV quality looked great and the included full size remote worked flawlessly.

I found that the dv6000t's touchpad was a little too sensitive for my liking, and my right hand in particular kept accidentally brushing against the touchpad, sending the cursor flying across the screen or making certain windows lose focus. For the remainder of the testing I plugged in my trusty Microsoft Intellimouse and just bypassed the touchpad altogether.

The dv6000t is equipped with a Conexant HD Audio processor which provides pretty decent sound for a laptop. There is a strip located above the keyboard that houses two Altec Lansing-branded speakers. HP included headphones with the laptop, which came in handy late at night watching SportsCenter while the wife was asleep, and they were of surprisingly good quality.

Battery life is mediocre, if not disappointing, at a mere 2 hours 27 minutes on MobileMark 2005 tests. The results are understandable, given the laptop's 43-Wh battery. (HP plans to offer extended-battery options in the near future.) On a more positive note, the system controls heat emissions very well. The temperature at the base of the system, which I measured with an infrared thermometer, came in at a relatively cool 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit. In contrast, the high-end Alienware Area-51 m5550 (which had a 2.33-GHz mobile Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 CPU) reached 114 degrees, and the WinBook T231 ran at up to 120 degrees.