Rating: 
Summary: Nice for the money, but...
Review: after a couple rebates, i effectively paid about [money] for this machine, and at the price, i'm not sure you can find a better box. part of me is wishing i'd blown another [money] for a beefier dell -- would've gotten a bigger hard drive than 20gb, a faster video card, s-video out, and stuff like that. but if you can live without the bells and whistles, this is a fine little machine.out of the box, you get a 15" monitor, a dvd-cdrw drive, 256mb ram, and a 20gb hard drive. in words, it comes with pretty much everything you need to get started. contrary to what a lot of people are saying, the computer is fast, particularly in floating point calculations. this may or may not be applicable to most users, but for me, i run mathematica, cubase, and logic predominantly, and the athlon is simply a better processor for these sorts of applications. the video performance is really lacking. i didn't anticipate this would be a problem, but getting blocky dvd output can be annoying. it only happens occasionally, but when it does it's very irritating. and don't even think of playing any 3-d games on this; it will give you a grand three frames per second for most new titles. that is worse than bad. essentially, you get what you pay for. hp skimps on the hard drive and video card, but the bottom line is that this is probably the cheapest laptop with a 15" screen out there. all told, if you can deal with its shortcomings, i would definitely recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: A powerful well priced machine, great for work or travel
Review: I am a mathematics/computer science student planning on studying abroad this year. After shopping around for notebooks, I settled on the HP ZE1230 as the best priced machine satisfying my needs. So far, I am not disappointed! For the serious computer user, the machine is powerful and fast (I upgraded the RAM to 512 MB, but for most uses 256 MB should be sufficient). For the movie watcher, the DVD/CD-RW and 15" monitor should be sufficient to satisfy your needs. For the traveler, the machine is light and portable (approx 7 lbs). The battery life is decent but not great...I got about 3 hours of continuous usage before having to plug it in. All in all, this is a great machine for the home, office, or student. Serious gamers might want to consider a machine with a better graphics card.
Rating: 
Summary: just say no
Review: I have had this computer for over a year and I have had nothing but problems. It locks up the whole time I use it, it shuts down with no warning (and does not automatically save your work). It is nice that it has a wireless card slot, but can barely use it ~ the heat sinc gets to hot and shuts off the wireless card. I am sure that there is more! I would recommend this system!
Rating: 
Summary: The PC is obviously slow. Everything else is good.
Review: I purchased this one from best buy with a price mistake. No fret about the good price. I like the whole design and it is very neat. The screen is sharp and big enough. XP is running fast and smoothly when it was opened. After playing it for a while, I found a big problem. The machine seems running too slow at the processor speed it marked. If I open the XP control panel -> system, I found the speed sometimes shows 1.3G but most of the time it shows a smaller value such as 745M or 450M, etc. I learned from Internet that HP would attribute that as XP glitch. So I downloaded prime95, 3DMark and Performancetest (from download.com) to test the machine. All tests shows the CPU performance is very good or right at its true level, but the 2D and 3D image/animation test result is very bad. Also memory and hard drive speed are slow. The overall performance is compatitable only to a PIII 800M laptop in the 'baseline' those program provides. Then I tested DVD, real player and windows media player. All worked smoothly. I guess this is absolutely not a game PC. I am not playing games any way. I believe this is because the bad design and (low quality) video chips that HP uses on this model. Not really a quality problem. Then the big trouble came. I started the preinstalled MSN messenger, trying to talk with my dad overseas. We talked a minute or two. Then I lost the sound. I open other program which would use sound function, the PC is frozen. I have to reset it back. However, when I open the MSN messenger after that, the sound system won't work and PC would often freeze if I open another sound application such as windows media player. Then I installed the yahoo messenger and hook up my logitech web cam (which I purchased 3 years ago. the XP recognized it immediately). The PC freezes every time when I launched cam on Yahoo messenger. The voice problem also happens on yahoo messenger. Then I tried the same web cam on my old IBM Win98 machine, it ran for 3 hours without problem. I chatted with HP tech support and they told me this would probably a software problem. So I reinstalled the whole XP and downloaded new XP driver from logitech web site. The same problem still happens.The next step is to install a Win2k OS on this one and see if the same problem happens. With this problem, I don't think HP is doing a good job: 1. Hardware desgin is too cheap (because of the low price?)
2. Tech support is not very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad laptop
Review: I've had all the same problems. My laptop kept shutting down, but I soon discovered why. First, I had mixed memory. For some reason, the two memory sticks didn't work well together and it caused my computer to lock up. If you buy this laptop, be sure to upgrade your memory with the same manufacturer. Also, laptops are not able to cool themselves off as easily as a desktop can. There is too much equipment in too confined a space. Mine shut off when it was too hot. You should be glad rather than angry. I'd rather lose a bit of information than lose my computer. Anyway, this problem was easily solved as well. You can go to any Target and purchase a platform that has two little fans in it. Your laptop sits right on top of it and it will not overheat again. All things considered, this is a decent laptop. If you really want to do some gaming, however, you may want to shop around a bit more. I suggest alienware.
Rating:
Summary: Cheap, light, 15" notebook, but with unimpressive components
Review: There are not many 15" notebooks in this price range, but HP has achieved this by using second-class components. The 15" display is a low quality 1024x768 pixel display with a well over 45ms response time. A 15" LCD should have 1280x1024 pixels in order to provide a sharp image. You need at least a 25ms response time to avoid "trails" in games and other high frame rate applications. 1024x768 should be for 14" LCDs only. Not that you could play newer games with the Via ProSavage graphics chipset. The now defunct S3 graphics company designed it years ago. Via bought up the graphics division, and is probably selling this ancient chipset for next to nothing. This is fine for card games but don't get your hopes too high. At this price range you can get a 14" laptop with a superior graphics system, faster CPU, and faster memory (this computer is equipped with slower SDRAM not the twice as fast Double Data Rate SDRAM that is standard on 90% of the notebooks sold today). I suggest the HP xt125. Dell, and Gateway have good offerings in this price range as well. On the good side you get a 15" screen very cheap, and the DVD drive is a little faster than most notebook offerings (16x vs. 8x). It is also very light for a 15" notebook.
Rating:
Summary: Cheap, light, 15" notebook, but with unimpressive components
Review: There are not many 15" notebooks in this price range, but HP has achieved this by using second-class components. The 15" display is a low quality 1024x768 pixel display with a well over 45ms response time. A 15" LCD should have 1280x1024 pixels in order to provide a sharp image. You need at least a 25ms response time to avoid "trails" in games and other high frame rate applications. 1024x768 should be for 14" LCDs only. Not that you could play newer games with the Via ProSavage graphics chipset. The now defunct S3 graphics company designed it years ago. Via bought up the graphics division, and is probably selling this ancient chipset for next to nothing. This is fine for card games but don't get your hopes too high. At this price range you can get a 14" laptop with a superior graphics system, faster CPU, and faster memory (this computer is equipped with slower SDRAM not the twice as fast Double Data Rate SDRAM that is standard on 90% of the notebooks sold today). I suggest the HP xt125. Dell, and Gateway have good offerings in this price range as well. On the good side you get a 15" screen very cheap, and the DVD drive is a little faster than most notebook offerings (16x vs. 8x). It is also very light for a 15" notebook.
Rating:
Summary: arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgg!!!
Review: This computer locks up on me all the time!! Multiple- we're talking more than 5 on bad days- times a day. I don't know if it is just my computer that has a problem or what, but it is really frustrating. Today it has locked up over and over again. It has also happened (not today, but sometimes) that the computer will just turn itself off. Just like that. No goodbyes. No kiss on the cheek. Nothing. Kaput. I want to smash my computer.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: This machine has a large variety of problems since we purchased it 18 months ago. It freezes often, and the dvd player stopped working about 3 months after we got it. The power input jack came loose, and while wiggling around the cord in an attempt to mak a connection, teh computer suffered a small internal fire. DO not purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Great Value for Right Buyer
Review: Used 18 mos. without problems. Lightweight and compact for a 15" screen = easy travel/moving around house. Battery life average, occasional lock-ups due to ISP. Usage 50/50 wifi surfing vs. business(word/PP/excel). For someone with similar needs this computer is a 5 star great buy. Like any product it's only a great buy for the right applications. Lack of dedicated video ram, inexpensive video components, basic 256K ram, processor speed, 1024 screen make this a bad "2 star" fit/value for the wrong buyer. For business, surfing, carrying-around its great. Those with game, design, and video focus should look elsewhere.
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