Customer Reviews
Relieved and Extremely Pleased
I bought this HP for my wife to replace her 3 year old Toshiba. It's 100% her computer but she places everything technical in our lives on me and then holds me accountable for its performance. My wife is brutal on electronics and her laptop is no exception. The Toshiba had a VERY hard life and ticked along perfectly until the past few months. After wasting $200 on a failed repair (hard drive) I decided it was cheaper to replace it than to nurse it along. I initially went shopping for another Toshiba and frankly, I feel like I would be writing a 5 star review for a Toshiba if it hadn't come down to a $150 price difference. I was able to use the competing Toshiba at a retailer, but when I went to Amazon I found this HP. Nearly identical in performance and appearance; aside from a couple of keyboard control features they were the same.
I bought the HP, Amazon shipped it FedEX and it arrived to Fairbanks Alaska in less than 48 hours (used standard shipping, nothing special). She loves it, charged it up and it performs flawlessly and much better than my 8 month old Dell XPS (Argh, never again...long story). I have not attempted to load Office 2007 yet, but suspect from my research on 64 bit systems, it will work fine. Neither one of us cares for the bubble scheme and thinks it detracts from the professional look of the rest of the finish (petty, I know).
The mouse pad works perfectly and I particularly like the keyboard layout and feel of the keys. I REALLY like the number pad without having to buy a 17+ inch system which is of course standard now.
4 USB ports, 1 HDMI output, a great LCD screen and Graphics card...zero to complain about. Oh, and Windows 7 works very well.
I'll report back if it doesn't hold up to the flagrant neglect my wife typically inflicts on her electronics, but as of for now she is rightfully treating like a shiny new sports car!
Excellent Midrange Laptop with power, speed, and flexibility; perfect!
Alright, so I'm 26 and a student, and I had been making due with a old Dell Dimension for the last 3 years, so hopelessly out of date that I wont spare you the details. I needed an upgrade and wanted a laptop in the $600-800 range that had a speedy processor, ability to handle videos of all types smoothly (esp. HD), enough RAM to multi-task with heavy programs and not break a sweat, lots of slots USB and otherwise and 500 gigs of space. When I saw the specs on this Pavillion it met all my qualifications, with good battery life for my traveling (I go from FL to NY often) and a nice look and smooth functionality/keyboard to boot.
Obviously, buying a laptop is not a light consideration, especially when you have been working toward it for a while like me. So naturally upon booting up I immediately put it through the ringer. I loaded a printer, scanner and second monitor into the USBs, then used Nero to burn a DVD while watching Futurama on the monitor and Inglorious Basterds playing in 1080p on the main screen. Additionally I had iTunes doing a mass conversion while scanning some images in the background, with BitTorrent and Limerwire downloading and WinAVI converter making a .VOB as well. I had NO problems whatsoever = no lag, no image interlacing, no errors or delays in the converting/burning, no internet problems, no scanning issues or anything. That immediately sold it for me; if it can handle all the tasks I use most frequently all at once and look terrific doing it, who am I to complain?
4 GB of RAM is plenty, and though I prefer AMD in general the Intel i3 chipset is powerful and well worth it over Core Duo processors. Everything looks gorgeous, especially vivid colors in HD - South Park is a good example. The HDMI exporting is wonderful and looks great on my big screen. I'm never a big fan of proprietary software, but HP has a number of useful programs on here. The Mediasmart app is really good for HD, much better than Media Player in my estimation. The IDT sound options are terrific, especially for creating an artificial depth of field out of tiny Altec Lansing speakers - not bad themselves, by the way. The pad is great, with a scroll bar built in, the keyboard is big and has a number pad, a mic jack and two headphone jacks are in the front, and it's not too heavy either - I mean I could go on and on but you get the point. The only thing remotely disappointing was the webcam but honestly I don't care about it one iota.
This machine is sleek, speedy and strong with lots of options and will definitely be in use for a long time for me at least. Highly recommended.
My desktop replacement
I picked this up at another store, the dv6-2155dx, and I was a little unsure of getting the i3 processor instead of a model with the i5 or i7. I'm sure those are even faster but I can say for sure, this laptop is the quickest, most responsive, of any laptop I've had and I go through a lot by frequently upgrading and selling or loaning my previous.
In this case I wanted to get a machine built with Windows 7 instead of trying to install it on my previous Vista system.
Standout features for me so far:
* Very solid and comfortable (and quiet) keyboard with lots of space, very ergonomic.
* The fact that it has a number pad area like a desktop keyboard.
* The widescreen performance and look. It just totally feels like a 17" screen even though its not.
* Speed, as I mentioned.
* Startup time is excellent. I can open and use an application in < 30-secs. I can also start many applications at once without it skipping a beat.
* Quiet and speedy CD-rom.
* Nice 500GB hard drive
Potential drawbacks.
* The i3 is very new but also the bottom of the tier of this generation of intel processors. It might become dated or bog down after I add a lot more data/programs to the system. The 4GB of RAM is a big help in keeping things moving.
Overall I am very pleased with what I got. It's very solid feeling and very quiet and doesn't get hot at all.
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Edit 6/18/2010 to add: When I said "*I can open and use an application in <> all before 30 secs have passed.
And I've now added photoshop over 10,000 large jpg's and RAW image files, large iTunes library, etc., and it's performance hasn't noticeably declined. Just takes a bit more time for maintenance (more files to scan and defrag).
Still no heat, even when running photoshop & iTunes, Firefox & Chrome browsers, all together.
And it's so quiet I do not hear it unless I hold it up to my ear and I've got normal hearing still (thankfully).
And Win 7 has been a pleasure. You can customize the desktop, start menu, and taskbar to your preferences and make them like XP, which I did at first. But I went back to the original Win 7 theme and love it. Explore the jumplist features.
Also, the 'Live taskbar previews' (when you hover over the icon or bar and get a small window) is more interactive than with Vista(Aero). You can turn it off if you don't like it of course. I did with my previous Vista laptop because it was sluggish but this laptop has no trouble with the enhanced appearance tools.
So still quite happy.
Built-in HP Webcam
