HP/Compaq AMD Athlon 64 Notebooks

HP is offering an AMD64 notebook called the ZV5000Z. It is a future proof notebook with its AMD64 3400+ DTR chip. Problem is they have downgraded it significantly by only offering it with a GeForce 4 440 64mb non-replicable graphics card. They even have the nerve to offer the GeForce 4 for $50 more. Otherwise you are stuck with a 420 32mb card. The GeForce 4 card came out back in 2002 and is not even DirectX 9.0 compatible! How's that for future proof?!! They market it as a gaming/high end alternative to Intel that is future proof.

Conversely, they offer an Intel gaming/high end notebook dubbed the ZD7000 series. The casing is identical besides the option for a 17 inch display. The difference is that the Intel machine has a 32bit chip at a time when things are beginning to move to the 64 bit era...with the upcoming XP64. The Intel's benefit is that it doesn't suffer from a terrible GPU that the AMD64 does. Instead it gets 3 different flavors of the GeForce FX Go. And get this...they offer the GeForce FX 5700 Go for a $50 upgrade! The AMD64 notebooks have to pay the same upgrade price for an inferior product.

This raises the question as to who is making the payoff. HP is a smart company, and it would be ludicrous to think that they didn't know what they were doing. They know that if they had a better GPU in the AMD notebook, they would sell far more. Instead they sacrifice sales for some strange reason. The only answer is that Intel must be paying HP and other companies to showcase their product in the best light possible. Do you think Intel had some say in HP's terrible GPU offering in the AMD64 notebook? I do.

Hopefully HP will get the picture that there are many angry customers and people such as I that continue to wait for an update of their notebook line to have a DirectX 9 compatible AMD64 notebook available this month. If you are just as angry as I am about this situation, let the Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina know what you want and how you feel about this blunder. You can email Carly here:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/fiorina/index.html

Hewlett-Packard, this petition is demanding that the zv5000z/AMD64 notebook line be refitted with a DirectX 9.0 compatible GPU. We want to have the option to customize a notebook with a GPU that is equal or better than the offering in the ZD7000. Currently, a GeForce FX 5700 Go 128mb would suffice. Please refresh you notebooks ASAP or before schools are back in session (mid-end of August).