HP Pavilion DM1 Now Just $399, Sports AMD E-series

Thursday HP indicated that it's business as usual with the Personal Systems Group by announcing that the highly-popular and ultra-portable HP Pavilion dm1 laptop has been updated and reduced in price. The portable rig now features a charcoal gloss finish or HP's ash-black Soft-touch Imprint design, HP Beats Audio, and HP's Premier Experience which delivers a streamlined Windows experience.

According to HP, the laptop now runs on AMD's dual-core E-Series APUs – the 1.3 GHz E-300 and the 1.65 GHz E-450 – and Intel's second-generation Core processors (including the low-voltage Core i3), depending on your wallet. A new six-cell battery – promising a life of around 11.5 hours – now resides within the chassis like the previous cylindrical version which bulged out from the bottom. The taskbar and start menu in Windows 7 has also been tweaked to make programs easier to locate.

"Part of the HP Premier Experience, HP Launch Box allows applications to be better organized by grouping them for quick access on the Windows 7 taskbar," the company said. "A simple mouse-over and click launches an application directly from the taskbar, freeing up screen real estate on the PC’s desktop. Including the dm1, HP Launch Box is available on 70 percent of consumer notebook models."

As of this writing, an official product page doesn't seem to be up and running, but the company claims that the revamped HP Pavilion dm1 laptop will start at $399.99 USD. Currently specs aren't available either, but one sheet (pdf) does list a model sporting AMD's E450 APU, revealing 4 GB of DDR3 memory, a 7200RPM 320 GB HDD, a 11.6-inch HD BrightView LED-backlit display, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, Bluetooth, an HP TrueVision webcam, and various external notebook ports.

HP is also boasting the laptop's Premier Experience feature which provides quicker boot-up, shutdown (29-percent faster), sleep and resume (25-percent faster) times. It's also boasting the HP CoolSense technology which uses "advanced hardware and intelligent software to automatically adjust performance and internal fan settings for a noticeably cooler PC." Other select models will include HP QuickWeb, HP ProtectSmart and HP SimplePass.

The HP Pavilion dm1 with AMD processors is expected to be available in charcoal on September 21 with a starting price of $399.99.  The soft-touch ash black model will be available this fall. The HP Pavilion dm1 with Intel processors is expected to be available in charcoal on October 30 with an external optical drive included and a starting price of $599.99.  The soft-touch ash black model will be available this fall.