For those with an appreciation for fine art and technology, the HP Pavilion dv2800t Artist Edition ($1,049 direct) offers the best of both worlds in the form of an affordable 14-inch laptop. The laptop's skin, designed by Portuguese artist Joao Oliveira, was picked from more than 8,000 submissions in a worldwide competition cosponsored by HP. The dv2800t is a head-turner, and an inexpensive one at that. What's even better is its underlying feature set and Intel parts, which will help aspiring graphic artists, illustrators, and soon-to-be graduates become success stories. For all this, it earns an Editors' Choice in the budget category.

Among the dv2800t's design elements are the bonsai tree, a Chinese dragon head, samurai warriors, and the yin-yang symbol. As an Asian-American, I was ready to roll my eyes from the overuse of all these stereotypes I grew up with—but the more time I spent with this laptop, the more I appreciated its look as a whole. While the bits and pieces of Asian culture are blatant, the details are subtle, so they work off the background without interfering with the overall design. The use of warm colors—brown, orange, and a soft blue—tied everything together, giving it a vintage look. Even the included laptop messenger bag, decorated with the same motif, looks like an accessory from a vintage clothing shop. If this unique look is not your cup of tea, the Pavilion dv2700t is the same laptop minus the artistry, for $150 less.

The illustrations are permanently infused into the lid —rather than spray-painted on—and are extended into the interior, including the palm rest area and the edges of the keyboard. In keeping with the earthy theme, the comfortable keyboard and the edges of the screen are covered in a chocolate brown color. The dv2800t's 5.3-pound frame is nearly as portable as the 4.9-pound Apple MacBook 13-inch (Penryn), a delight when you're cruising around town or across campus.

The 14-inch screen is about an inch larger than the MacBook's and the Toshiba Satellite U405-S2830's 13.3-inch screens, which accounts for the dv2800t's slightly heavier frame. Although the cinematic experience you get with the glossy screen is worth applauding, the screen's extra glare might get in the way of word processing and spreadsheet work. Above the keyboard is a river of LED-backlit control keys, but the interior artwork overshadows the LEDs' intensity.

You won't find a richer feature set on a 14-inch laptop than you'll find here. The only hiccup is that the dv2800t comes with only two USB ports. A previous HP budget laptop, the dv6500t, had three of them, but one was sacrificed to make room for an HDMI port. Any port that streams digital video and audio is a welcome addition, but is it necessary to have both an S-Video-out and a VGA-out port? (HP could have substituted a third USB port for the S-Video.) A FireWire port, two headphone jacks, and a five-in-one card reader, plus the dual-layer DVD burner, come standard. You have a multitude of hard-drive options—mine came with a 250GB, 5,400-rpm drive.

Performance is dependent on how much you want to spend. Thankfully, HP is well known for offering a wide variety of performance options. My configuration came with a 2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, though I would recommend upgrading to one of the current "Penryn"-core processors (HP offers the T8100, T8300, or T9300). That way, you'll enjoy faster speeds and better battery life at a small premium. An nVidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics card and 2GB RAM are standard features on the dv2800t, one of the few 14-inch laptops to offer discrete graphics. (The Dell Inspiron 1420 is another.) As a result, your Windows Vista experience is optimized, and light 3D gaming is actually possible on something this portable.

The dv2800t's SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall score of 113 is better than those of the Dell 1420, Toshiba U405, Apple MacBook 13-inch (Penryn), and Gateway T-6828. The laptop also chalked up top scores in our video-encoding tests and Photoshop CS3 tests among the budget laptops I've seen so far. The dv2800t turned in impressive gaming scores for a budget laptop, as befitting its discrete graphics solution. Battery life was middling, with a score of 3 hours 13 minutes on MobileMark 2007. It can be improved either by upgrading to a Penryn processor, spending an extra $79 for a 12-cell battery, or both.

The HP Pavilion dv2800t Artist Edition is truly a work of art, a winning design carefully chosen from among thousands of submissions by talented artists. What's more, it has an abundance of processing options and up-to-date features. At a price of $1,049, it'll be a starving artist's favorite for a long time to come.

Check out the HP Pavilion dv2800t's test scores.

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