While the primary purpose of this review is to take a look at AMD's Turion X2 TL-66 and their mobile platform, we also wanted to take a brief look at the HP 6515b. There's nothing truly revolutionary about this laptop, but it's a reasonably affordable business offering that would be equally useful in a home or student environment. It comes with all of the standard features users would expect to find in a modern notebook, so here's a quick summary as well as some pictures.
| HP 6515b Features Overview | |
| Processor | AMD Turion X2 TL-50/52/56/58/60/64 |
| Chipset | ATI RS690M/SB600 |
| FSB Speeds | 800MHz HyperTransport |
| Memory Speeds | DDR2-533, DDR2-667 |
| Memory Slots | (2) x SO-DIMM, up to 2GB DDR2, Dual Channel supported |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1250 |
| Display | 14" WXGA (1280x800) |
| Expansion Slots | 1x PC Card Type II/III |
| Hard Drive | 80/120/160GB 5400RPM, 80/120GB 7200RPM |
| Optical Drive | 8X DVD-ROM 8X DVDROM/CD-RW Combo Drive 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with LightScribe |
| Networking/Communications | Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet and V.90 56K Modem Broadcom ABG or ABGN Mini PCI Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 |
| Audio | 24-bit High Definition Audio with 2.1 Speakers |
| Left Ports | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x mini-Firewire PC Card type II/III Headphone/Mic Power socket |
| Right Ports | Flash reader (SD, MS/Pro, MMC, XD) 2 x USB2.0 Optical Drive<.br>RJ-11 Modem |
| Front Ports | None |
| Back Ports | 1 x VGA TV-Out RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Keyboard | 87 Key QWERTY (US) |
| Extras | Fingerprint Reader |
| Battery Options | 6-Cell 55WHr |
| Dimensions | 13.03"x9.57"x1.33" (WxDxH) 5.0 lbs. (6-cell battery) |
| Power Adapter | 90W |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Business 32-bit Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP2 |
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The 6515b is a good midsized laptop offering. The 14" chassis allows for a slightly less cramped keyboard layout relative to 12" laptops, but it still manages to maintain a lightweight profile. Besides all of the standard features - four USB ports, FireWire, PC Card, DVDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem - there are only a couple of somewhat noteworthy additions. A fingerprint scanner provides for potentially enhanced (or at least more convenient) security, and the Broadcom wireless adapter provides draft 802.11n support in addition to the usual A/B/G WiFi options. We still don't feel that 802.11n is fully ready for widespread use, but the Broadcom chipset appears to work better with our NETGEAR router, connecting at speeds up to 277 Mbps and achieving actual throughput of more than 11 MBps. That puts this particular wireless configuration roughly at the same level of performance as a 100 Mb network. That may not sound particularly stellar, but it's still more than three times as fast as any 802.11g adapters that we've used (at least under ideal test conditions).
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