Rating: 
Summary: Great family notebook PC
Review: Just bought this notebook for my wife, who wanted a notebook PC for the desk in our kitchen. Great specs for the price (got a great deal on a floor model at an office supplies store), especially the 512MB of RAM. Wireless works perfect on my home LAN. Installed MS Office for the kids' homework assignments and it runs really well. Haven't tried to run any cutting edge games, but that's not the purpose. Can't understand why other people have knocked this system, especially those that don't actually own it.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful & economical notebook
Review: This computer works terrific even with demanding applications like the music production tools I use. Altough it is not designed for that kind of work, the processor works pretty good and has enough RAM for almost any application.I am happy with my purchase, no problems at all: silent, powerful & fast (not the best PC of course), not heavy, well made, clean screen, nice touchpad and keyboard, great connectivity (WiFi, VGA, Ethernet, USB, FireWire, you name it!) and super value. Bad points: a weird noise sometimes when reads CD's, and the speakers... well as a music professional I wasn't expecting much anyway from those tiny things; I use a PCMCIA pro audio card instead and works terrific.
Rating: 
Summary: A four for great but not perfect
Review: This is my own first personal laptop. I used to use my family Compaq 1690 but it was very slow and I really did not like it because I did not choose it ;P. I chose this one and im very happy with it. The sound is great but I really would like to have more options adjusting it other than the options in the Dvd players and the basic sound options. The specs are great but I wish I could find 512MB modules to replace the ram here but they are hard to find. I love it because the screen is just the right size for portable and home use, this laptop became both for me. Its very simple and it looks great from all angles. It has the latest ports and some old ones in case. Now after a few months, all the windows updates work perfectly with my laptop overall, I am real happy with this purchase and I probably will be using this computer for a long time. I wish they had a 15 inch screen Centrino laptop instead of the 15.4 inch screen though because I really want a longer battery life on this. Overall I am very happy with this purchase and I hope to use this laptop for many years. A great investment.
Rating:
Summary: First Laptop
Review: This laptop is absolute dream. Previous reviews list this laptop to have a video card with "shared memory." What they mean is that it's an integrated video card. This is NOT true. The video card is not integrated. I am very satisfied with this laptop, installing the drivers from the windows update site actually took away from my display capabilities (use the drivers at hp.com). I have had no problems with the touchpad or the keyboard. Convenient and best of all: MOBILE ATHLON- It is a step-by-step processor and only allocates as much speed as required to perform tasks (conserves battery power). Played Unreal Tournament on this while my friend was on his HP Intel 4 laptop, mine lasted 25 more minutes on a full charge than his while running a very demanding game. Great computer, a must have.
Rating:
Summary: First Laptop
Review: This laptop is absolute dream. Previous reviews list this laptop to have a video card with "shared memory." What they mean is that it's an integrated video card. This is NOT true. The video card is not integrated. I am very satisfied with this laptop, installing the drivers from the windows update site actually took away from my display capabilities (use the drivers at hp.com). I have had no problems with the touchpad or the keyboard. Convenient and best of all: MOBILE ATHLON- It is a step-by-step processor and only allocates as much speed as required to perform tasks (conserves battery power). Played Unreal Tournament on this while my friend was on his HP Intel 4 laptop, mine lasted 25 more minutes on a full charge than his while running a very demanding game. Great computer, a must have.
Rating: 
Summary: Good specs, bad Design
Review: This notebook has great specs and features but the packaged shell is cheap and poorly designed. The keypad is not as smooth as Dell or Toshiba. One has to apply more force per keystroke that reminds me of old manual typewriters. The result is A LOT more typos - some keystrokes register, some don't. This goes for all keys, touchpad, and switches.
The choices and placement of characters on keypad could be better. The placement of the non-alphabet keys are not intuitive. These Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, delete, Pause, Print Screen keys seem crammed into the upper right hand corner, very closely packed next to each other such that accidental mis-strikes are also common.
The screen is big, but that means loss of resolution. The XGA screen on my other notebook is smaller, but sharper than this HP Pavilion's XGA screen.
The wireless G card on this notebook seems to be weak because it keeps dropping connections. The wireless B on my other notebook seems to perform better - connections do not drop.
Finally, despite the width of the notebook, ports most often used are crammed next to each other. The power adapter plug is VERY snug against the USB ports. And for some strange reason, the USB ports are horizontally stacked so this makes for a tightly fitted trio of wires.
While the HP Pavilion has some desirable internal qualities, it's physical qualities are irksome. I would not recommend this notebook because it's poor design will always be a source of irritation. If I didn't own another notebook as a comparison, I'd never know the difference, but being the owner of a Toshiba and past user of Dell I have to say that HP's can use some improvement.
Rating:
Summary: Good specs, bad Design
Review: This notebook has great specs and features but the packaged shell is cheap and poorly designed. The keypad is not as smooth as Dell or Toshiba. One has to apply more force per keystroke that reminds me of old manual typewriters. The result is A LOT more typos - some keystrokes register, some don't. This goes for all keys, touchpad, and switches.
The choices and placement of characters on keypad could be better. The placement of the non-alphabet keys are not intuitive. These Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, delete, Pause, Print Screen keys seem crammed into the upper right hand corner, very closely packed next to each other such that accidental mis-strikes are also common.
The screen is big, but that means loss of resolution. The XGA screen on my other notebook is smaller, but sharper than this HP Pavilion's XGA screen.
The wireless G card on this notebook seems to be weak because it keeps dropping connections. The wireless B on my other notebook seems to perform better - connections do not drop.
Finally, despite the width of the notebook, ports most often used are crammed next to each other. The power adapter plug is VERY snug against the USB ports. And for some strange reason, the USB ports are horizontally stacked so this makes for a tightly fitted trio of wires.
While the HP Pavilion has some desirable internal qualities, it's physical qualities are irksome. I would not recommend this notebook because it's poor design will always be a source of irritation. If I didn't own another notebook as a comparison, I'd never know the difference, but being the owner of a Toshiba and past user of Dell I have to say that HP's can use some improvement.
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