HP Pavilion ze4210 Notebook PC (1.60 GHz Celeron, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive)

Rating:
Summary: Nice screen but can shutdown unexpectedly
Review: I bought one of these laptops and was initially pleased with the performance, great LCD screen, and nice touches like the DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive. But I soon started having problems with the laptop when running programs like Photoshop or McAfee VirusScan -- the system would shutdown suddenly with no warning. At first, I thought it might be a Windows XP issue or a virus like MS Blaster. After trying many things out, I concluded that there was no virus on my laptop, and that XP probably wasn't the issue. I then tried to wipe the harddisk and restore the software to original factory state. I discovered that the laptop would also shutdown unexpected in the middle of restoring the system software to original factory state using the HP restore CDs. At that point, I called HP support to report a hardware problem and get warranty support. To make a long story short, HP phone support confirmed that I had some sort of hardware problem (most likely a bad motherboard or overheating issue) but they would not let me ship them my laptop for warranty repair because they could not confirm the date of purchase, despite the fact that I provided them copies of my receipts several times! I wound up taking the unit to a authorized HP service center - CompUSA - and they were able to get the unit fixed. BOTTOM LINE: I would not buy a HP laptop again.