Hewlett-Packard or HP, arguably the world's second largest PC vendor, has launched the Stream series for those who like to do things on-the-go with affordable devices. The main focus of the company was to include mobile broadband on the system to increase productivity. Here is an analysis of the Stream 11 notebook which is priced at Rs.20,490:
Design: The Stream 11 has a very colourful look to it and is thin as well compared to other laptops. With dimensions of 0.78 x 11.81 x 8.10 inches, the Stream 11 weighs around 1.27 kg. The laptop comes with a smooth matte finish with the HP logo on top of the lid and 'Hewlett-Packard' on the hinge edge of the notebook. The other half, housing the keyboard and trackpad, has a dotted design that is visually appealing. The keys are big and well-spaced. Also, typing on the keyboard is comfortable. The trackpad has a smooth finish with no left and right click distinction. A webcam is also available for video calls and works perfectly. It also has a card reader and SIM-slot on the left and two USB ports and a HDMI port on the right.
Hardware and performance: Due to its compact size and also the focus on increasing battery life, HP has used the Intel Celeron N2840 2.16 GHz processor with a burst frequency up to 2.58 GHz with 1 MB of L2 cache memory. The N2840 is a low category but budget priced processor which is widely adopted among affordable devices. It comes with enhanced SpeedStep Technology, an advanced method of enabling very high performance while also meeting the power-conservation needs of mobile systems. By stepping voltage up and down in small increments, the processor is able to reduce periods of downtime that could occur frequently. The system is then able to transition between voltage and frequency changes more often, improving the balance between power and performance. The notebook comes with an on-board 2 GB DDR3 RAM unit that allows casual and mid-heavy games and software applications on-the-go.
The most interesting part of the laptop is the SIM-card slot which supports wireless wide area network (WWAN) cellular services. WWAN connectivity allows a user with a laptop and a WWAN card to surf the web, check email, or connect to a virtual private network (VPN) from anywhere within the boundaries of cellular service. Hence, the user doesn't need to carry a dongle or connect the phone for surfing the net.
Display, sound and storage: The device comes with a 11.6" (29.46cm) widescreen anti-glare LED display which supports 200 nits of brightness, 1,366 x 768 HD (720p) resolution and a 16:9 true wide aspect ratio, which means images are sharper, closer to HD and wider. As it comes with an Intel chip, Intel HD graphics drivers are pre-installed. The device also comes with DTS Studio sound which is quite clear. The real difference can be experienced with a good pair of headphones. The laptop comes with 32 GB eMMC storage and the user can expand to 128 GB with the card slot. HP is also giving out 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage free for a year.
Operating system, battery and connectivity: The HP Stream 11 comes with Windows 8.1 upgradeable to Windows 10, MS Office 365 Personal for a year. In terms of connectivity, the device has WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 support. The battery is a 3-cell lithium ion pack which doles out at least eight hours of work time after a single charge.
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Verdict: If you want hassle-free productivity on-the-go, the laptop is a must buy as it has a solid performing battery, a mobile broadband modem in the form of the WWAN SIM-card slot and a great display with a spaced out keyboard.
(Anirban Ghoshal can be contacted at anirban.g@ians.in)