Review of HP Pavilion dv6-3050us 15.6-Inch Laptop

Customer Ratings:

As an AMD fan, this laptop is perfect with its combination of a quad core CPU and Radeon 56xx series GPU. It has the best combination of aesthetic design, build quality, and components. It will be hard to find another laptop at a low price with these components and a 15.6" screen others are 17" which can be bulky to carry around. The 1366x768 screen is good for tasks such as videos and gaming, but it might not be enough for those used to and require higher resolutions. The only negatives about this laptop are the lack of a firewire port (for the video folks) and an ExpressCard slot, and weak sound. Also, a couple things that aren't listed in the product description is that the HP logo on the lid lights up when turned on and an integrated Radeon 4250.

The Graphics

I recommend staying away from laptops by Toshiba, Sony, and Panasonic to prospective buyers that plan on playing games and considering similarly spec'd laptops. AMD offered to release Catalyst drivers for Mobility Radeons several months ago and these companies chose to opt out. This means that if there's a problem with the laptop's graphics driver e.g. game glitches, you will have to wait/hope that these companies release updated drivers instead of downloading ones released regularly by AMD.

As far as the Radeon 5650, it's been great thus far. I've been running Battlefield: Bad Company 2 smoothly at 1080p on an external monitor with settings on high, and AA and AF off. It will easily play most games out for the PC today and many games coming out. For the programmers out there interested in OpenCL, the 5650 is compatible and only requires downloading the Stream SDK from AMD.

The addition of the integrated Radeon 4250 is also welcomed. It allows for PowerXpress for power savings when running on battery or just to cut down on the electric bill. For those wondering, PowerXpress is AMD's version of switchable graphics. The general difference being PowerXpress is the combination of integrated and dedicated Radeon graphics, while switchable graphics is the combination of Intel HD integrated and either Nvidia or AMD graphics. This is another driver update consideration because Intel doesn't give driver updates to AMD for their graphics users will have to rely on the company from which they buy their laptops.

The Processor

AMD mobile CPUs have gotten a bad reputation for running hot. It's my opinion that it's just laptop manufacturers choosing to pair cheap parts and poor cooling solutions with AMD CPUs because they're "cheap" processors. In fact, the areas that get hottest on the dv6 are the left palm rest where the hard drive resides underneath and the vent on the left side where the laptop fan shunts the heat produced by the CPU and GPU under full load. Rest assured that the dv6 will run as cool as laptops with the Core i processors.

Now, the N930 shouldn't be compared to the Core i7. This CPU is designed and priced to compete with the Core i5 and i3 CPUs. The caveat to comparing it to the i5 and i3 is that the i5 and i3 are dual core with the i5 able to trick Windows into thinking it has 4 cores through Intel's Hyperthreading technology. With Turbo Boost technology on both Core i3 and i5, the Intel processors will perform better on single threaded applications due to their ability to intelligently overclock while the N930 maxes out on its 2.0 GHz limit. The N930 shines with multithreaded programs where it matches or beats i5 processors. For most users, none of this matters since performance differences in everyday programs like web browsers and Microsoft Office are unnoticeable.

The Power Consumption

Because the N930 is a true quad core, actual battery life for the dv6 is 2.5-3 hours with wireless on, Radeon 4250 activated, and 60% screen brightness while doing light tasks like listening to music, web browsing, and typing documents. Laptops sporting CPUs with fewer cores will have longer battery life due to less cores needing power.

In any case, I highly recommend the dv6 to anyone looking for a laptop at a low price with its specifications. A solid processor with the combination of the Radeon 5650 and 4250 make this laptop an excellent purchase.

Error Corrections and Additions (2010-08-19):

The hard drive is not under the left palm rest, but under the touchpad.

The GPU is under the left palm rest, which is what is generating the heat there.

The dv6-3050us is a United States quickship model for the dv6z Select Edition that's customizable on HP's website.

This does not come with the backlit keyboard or touchscreen. It was mentioned in the comments, but I thought to add it here.

The battery is a standard capacity 6 cell 55Wh battery.

This does not come with recovery DVDs. HP has a utility pre-installed that allows users to make them, which requires 5 DVDs or a USB Flash drive of equal capacity. Dual layer and re-writables will not work. I recommend everyone make these recovery discs the first thing after Windows loads and store them somewhere safe. Make 2 sets if you want to be safe.

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This laptop is Amazing, it's fast' light weight and seems to be very well built.I got right at 4hrs on the battery while playing music, surfing the net and transferring files from my old laptop. The battery recharged in just about an hour.

The keyboard is solid all though it took a little getting use to, coming from my 17in Dell with a full size keyboard. The track pad is great with pinch to zoom and gestures.

The AMD quad core is powerful and hasn't missed a beat yet. The laptop stays cool and quiet the only time i hear a fan is when it's booting up.

This is a great laptop and i would buy this again in a heart beat

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I actually ordered this from HP Direct, since they had a good sale going on, which I heaped a coupon on top of. But, that's neither here nor there.

I'm glad I opted for this unit rather than one of the units with a dual-core Turion II Ultra and a 17.3" screen. Honestly, to me, the 15.6" screen seems utterly ginormous. The laptop is definitely large and relatively 'in charge'...

Pros:

Seemingly huge widescreen LCD.

2 GHz quad-core Phenom II mobile processor.

Fingerprint recognition (didn't think I'd use this much; now I wonder how I ever lived without it, as I never even type my password to log in to the system any more, since a simple swipe of the finger logs me in)

Dual ATI video chips for high-performance and power-saving uses.

Nearly every port, communication device and connector you'll ever need (Ethernet, WiFi B/G/N, Bluetooth, VGA out, HDMI out, SD card reader, several USB 2 ports)

Massive 640GB hard drive.

QuickWeb Instant-On environment (lets to power directly into a limited windowed environment to connect to the web, certain online e-mail systems, stream video, listen to your music library, access an event calendar and one or two other functions).

It looks nice. It has an aluminum (I think) outer body, with a pleasant but not overly elaborate design etched into it.

Cons:

HD is 5400 rather than 7200 RPM. Haven't decided yet whether this will be a bottleneck on the system. I hope not. Startup doesn't seem SIGNIFICANTLY faster than Windows XP. A few seconds shaved off here and there. Not sure whether that's a HD seek-time / read-time issue, or if Windows 7 just innately has more stuff to load up.

There is a lot of pre-loaded software that folks may want to take off.

Doesn't come with a hard copy of startup discs. You have to burn your own restore media to a DVD or flash drive. The system only lets you burn them once. So, if you lose them, you're SOL.

By default, the fingerprint reader only lets you set up 8 fingers, not all 10. It's unclear why this is so or how to fix it. A rather silly and arbitrary setting.

When going from wall power to battery power, the system will switch from a high-power video chip to a low-power video chip. The switch in hardware sometimes causes software to hang if it doesn't know how to deal with the change. Best to close as much software as possible before switching chips, or else leave the high-power chip running and deal with the reduced battery life.

The QuickWeb environment seems to not be as good at playing streaming video as Windows proper is, so if you maximize the video it sometimes becomes quite blocky or stuttery. Not sure why this should be so.

The left and right mouse buttons are built into the touchpad and are 'touchy' to say the least. If you tap-click either of them it only works as a left-click. I haven't found a way to set the right button to tap-click as a contextual menu right click. Since they're touch sensitive, if you try to push the buttons manually by pressing down on them, you will likely end up unintentionally moving the cursor off what you were trying to click in the first place before the button is fully depressed. This has become rather noisome. I haven't yet found an adequate software or hardware workaround/hack to make this function 'as-expected.'

Overall, I very much like this laptop. I can't really compare it to any other models out there, since I only need one laptop, really.

The QuickWeb environment is nifty for quickly powering in to a usable environment and surfing the web wirelessly from our WiFi router. Setup was pretty simple. Only take about 1-2 seconds to power into it and 3-5 seconds after you click the browser icon for it to hook up to the WiFi, on average (it's a bit odd that it doesn't hook up immediately, so you get a 'page not found' error, but as soon as it connects, it automatically refreshes the page and connects, so you're up and running).

The fingerprint scanner is a rather nice feature. I never log in manually anymore. Much easier to just swipe a random finger and let it figure out who's logging in, and have it load the appropriate desktop (I only have one desktop, but I'm quite certain that's how it works; it does the heavy lifting). It'll also let you set up website password storage where you can just swipe your finger as authentication. I actually somewhat prefer to type web passwords manually, so I can remember them. But I can see how some folks might be lazy enough to use it, and for them it probably would be handy.

I haven't started gaming on it yet, but with what appear to be some pretty decent video chips built-in, I have little doubt it should do pretty well on the gaming front.

The quad-core processor seems to power through Seti@Home computations like they were nothing. It seems BOINC can make use of the GPU for additional computing power, too. So things it predicts should take about 156 hours take about 54 hours. Things BOINC figures on being about 8 hours are done in about 4-5. At least that seems to be the case so far.

Unlike the one or two other reviewers, I have not encountered any problems with this unit, in terms of defective parts or hardware failures. One assumes they're simply one-offs and not a systemic problem. Granted, I did buy mine from HP, so there may be some additional room for jostling and breakage by buying retail where things get shipped from warehouse to warehouse, then by the Post Office or FedEx before arriving at the end-user's home or business. Not saying that's THE reason things break. Just one possibility. HP does warranty its new products for a full year. They also offer extended warranties for a little extra money if you're really worried about breakage and up-time.

So, in general, I find this to be pretty much everything I was expecting... Yay for a new laptop! :)

Honest reviews on HP Pavilion dv6-3050us 15.6-Inch Laptop

Came very quickly. Kudos to Amazon for shipping and packaging. Love this computer. It has in my opinion, the best array of features for a sub $1000 computer. I thought initially that a 15.6 inch screen might be a tad bit to big but it is perfect. Not too big and not too small either.I still feel like I have to be careful in handling this computer. Maybe because its my first, but it seems to be well built. I like the brushed aluminum finish versus the glossy finishes many laptops have had up till now. great thinking from HP. The combo Ati 4250 and 5650 video cards are awesome too. Now granted, it won't run the absolutely newest spankin brand new titles coming out, but if you are a light to moderate gamer who has mostly older titles (2-4 years old) or just needs a system with good graphics this system fits the bill. Flight Simulator X has issues when flying in new york. Not sure if that's a processor, video card or actaul game issue but then again, that game is hard to run on any system. Did run Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on this dv6 and it handles it like a dream. The 1 GB of DDR3 ram on the Ati Mobility Radeon HD5650 is good, but the best in line for gamers is GDDR5. But then again, I didn't buy this computer for gaming alone. I look forward to doing more with it as I've only had it for a couple of days, but so far it is excellent. It runs videos, even HD Videos (720P) very smoothly. A must buy...especially for those going to school.

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I purchased this computer last summer. I use it for work and play, and overall I've been happy with it.

Pros:

1. Big screen with nice graphics. Important for my work, which involves analyzing microscopy pictures.

2. Fast. Starts up fast (I usually set it to hibernate rather than turn it off, making start up even faster) and runs fast.

3. Decent memory (see above with all the microscopy...the images take a lot of disk space, and I'm not even close to filling up the memory. Not to mention tons of personal pictures)

4. Fingerprint log-in is fun, and keeps the computer slightly more secure.

5. Decent built in camera and microphone for video calls.

6. Quiet keyboard with decently spaced keys.

7. Touch pad can be turned on and off easily, and has that cool zoom in/out two finger motion.

8. Decent speakers (better than my last Dell)

9. Easy buttons for controlling sound/screen brightness/calculator/etc

10. Lots of input sources located on the side of the computer (USBs, video, headphones, etc).

11. Lightweight.

12. Windows 7 is much nicer than Windows XP or whatever that other version was that came in between XP and 7. It's fast and has few glitches.

Cons:

1. When trying to zoom into pictures or PDFs, it's easy to turn the image rather than zoom in/out.

2. Runs hot, thanks in part to the quality graphics. I'd recommend getting a fan to cool it off, or a lap desk so you don't overheat it. I haven't over-heated the computer yet, even though I run it all the time, but I definitely make sure I don't keep the computer on my lap (which I could do with my Dell). An easy fix is placing the computer on a book or binder rather than your lap.

3. I really wish it had a number pad. I do a lot of data entry, and it's easier to enter numbers in with a number pad.

4. Really short battery life. I'm lucky if I still get 2 hours on a charge (it started with just 3 hours) thanks to the fan that always runs.

5. The fan always runs.

6. Occasionally when the computer is switching between graphic cards (which it does when you switch from an AC source to the battery, to save on energy), the screen won't come back on until I hit the "increase brightness" button. Occasionally that doesn't work either, and I have to restart the computer. I haven't called HP customer services to ask about this yet.

7. If you run the lower-quality graphics card when the power is coming from the battery, the quality definitely decreases, which is a bummer.

All in all, I can work around the running fan and don't have too much of an issue keeping the computer plugged in. For the price, it's a decent deal. If you want decent memory and speed and can deal with the fan running and an occasional quirk, it's worth the savings.

UPDATE: Hard drive quit after 2.5 years. Bummer.

Discount Sony VAIO E Series SVE15112FXS 15.5-Inch Laptop (Aluminum Silver)

Customer Ratings:

As a loyal sony user who owns TV/blueray player/Walkman made by sony, I had high hopes for this machine, which is great, but the touchpad really really sucks. It's so hard to click on anything that it's pretty much useless. I've tweak every possible mouse config settings, to no avail.

Of course, the problem is easily solved by purchasing an external USB mouse, I just wonder how could a giant like sony produce such a dumb design and tout it as an innovation? sometimes we just need things that work, if you innovate by breaking existing functionality, it's only gonna frustrate users.

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and I love it. I have had many laptops, from just about every manufacturer, including HP / Compaq, Gateway, Apple, Dell, and Toshiba. I am hard on my laptops. I have high expectations for them... not only do I do basic computing on them, like web browsing and e-mail, but I also tend to play games on them. A lot.

This Vaio, even though it only has HD 3000 graphics, has run Guild Wars 2, Fallout New Vegas, World of Warcraft, and Skyrim very well. Granted, it will not perform like an i7 with 8 gigs of RAM backed up by a 1 gig Radeon HD 6770, but I maintain 30 fps on Guild Wars 2 in the larger battles.

Heat is rarely an issue. I have monitored the temperature of the laptop and it has reached a max. temp of 68 degrees Celsius thus far during heavy gaming.

The sleep ---> wake cycle is really fast, and I am happy with the battery life (~3 hours if I don't do anything crazy with it). I have gotten compliments on it (Mostly that it looks like a MacBook pro... At a fraction of the cost, LOL). The chiclet keyboard is very much like the keyboard on my old MBP, and I like it quite a lot. I can't speak to others' concerns about the trackpad as I always use a Micro USB wireless Darkfield mouse but the few times I have used the trackpad, it hasn't been something where I was like, "Oh man, this is horrible!" So... if a track pad is really that important to you, I guess you can look elsewhere?

Anyway, for the money, this is a solid performer that not only runs well, but also LOOKS good, and really, when it comes down to brass tacks... we all like a stylish product.

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Bought this laptop the week it came out. Works great for surfing the web or watching dvds. Not sure if the other guy got a bad one but i love the touchpad you dont even have to click it just hold one finger on the button and tap the other part of the touchpad. Works alot like my android phone pinch zoom in out.

Honest reviews on Sony VAIO E Series SVE15112FXS 15.5-Inch Laptop (Aluminum Silver)

I don't have problems. It helps me a lot! It's good for photoshop, indesign, movies, music... travel! take it ;)

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`+Previous laptop Toshiba Satellite 2.1ghz m305d 14" 2008

(1) Resolution is Gorgeous for Movies and Photos (I was worried B4 purchases b/c i use to have ATI Radeon graphics card)

(2) Not to heavy, Thin but lengthy so I can not slip it my Purse

(3) Keys feel great, Normal. The number pad on the side is heaven. But The keys sit on cheap plastic material. If i press down to hard i feel like ill break it. NO COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE MOUSE. Very Normal with option of clicking. (Loud clicker)

(4) Looks Gorgeous, Love the style

(5) Sounds good. I dont blast it, but music is good sound for me. wouldnt recommend it for musician. Very quiet machine and doesnt get hot in my lap.

Cons

(1) Might just be windows 7, but I keep getting pop-ups

(2) Comes with NO decent software and barely any Sony Software

(3) Start up time is nearly 1 Minute upon purchase.. hhhmmmm weird b/c I thought you were the competitor of MAC

(4) Loud mouse clicker, but other mouse settings are easily adjustable

I give it 3.5 stars just because its a bang for your buck 549.00

12/28/12

6 month later i am still pleased with this laptop. "student use daily" 3 stars is sufficient.

Review of Dell Vostro 1510 Notebook Computer

Customer Ratings:

Working as expected from the advertising. Shipping was prompt and punctual and I'm glad to have made the purchase. Thanks from the bottom of my attick.

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First the machine was advertised as a Vostro 1510 and in reality it is a 1520... Different animal... But it works for me. The touch pad is beat so using a mouse is a necessity which is OK too because I usually carry a mini mouse... all in all it's a good machine, I did upgrade it to WIN 7 Pro

I would use this vendor again...

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Customer Ratings:
List Price: $1,479.99
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The touch screen works flawlessly. I like the speed, the sound is marginal but the "beats system always is low quality. I use an external USB speaker and it is fine however a bit bulky when you travel. Besides the sound, it's a nice system.

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MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GE70 0ND-213US;9S7-175611-213 17.3-Inch Reviews

Customer Ratings:

The windows experience is as follows: cpu:7.9, Memory: 7.9 3D Graphics:6.9 Hard drive 5.9. I added a SSD windows experience is : 8.1 And 16 gig Ram: 8.1.This a incredible machine. Does not have a back-lit keyboard but the keyboard is very good. Reloaded and upgraded OS to Windows 8 pro since it comes with window 8. Very happy. Has slot for internal SSD also in addition to hard drive. Screen is good also.

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Pros:

* Fast, high-performance processor

* Multi-touch pad

* Good, loud speakers (4x)

* Full keyboard, easy to type

* Large screen, great for editing/watching videos

* HDMI, USB 3.0, Multi-card reader

Cons:

* Mine came with a dead pixel; eventually went away

* Large and heavy, but still somewhat portable

* Battery life is dismal -not even 2 hours

* No dedicated "home" and "end" keys

* Windows key positioned on the right (takes getting used to)

Description:

This is a superb sub $1,500 laptop. The video card (Nvidia GTX 660, 2GB) is better than the one in the 15" Macbook Pro w/Retina (Nvidia GT 650, 1GB) -shame on you Apple -and the processor is also amazing. The screen is also nice, but as other have pointed out, it's nothing special. Mine came with a dead pixel, which I was pretty upset about, but it eventually went away with the use of free software.

I am able to edit videos without any problem using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and editing photos is also a breeze. Using Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other programs for creating and publishing content also works very well. Frankly, this is a better buy over any Macbook.

The design isn't something I was too excited about when looking at the pictures but in person it's actually not that bad. I prefer the sleek look of the Macbook Pros, but the price tag and increased performance this laptop gives me is worth more than its looks.

Upgradeability is an important factor in this laptop. You can upgrade it from 8GB RAM to 16GB which I plan on doing, as well as adding a mSSD for caching purposes (for even faster performance) and, potentially, replacing the CD/DVD drive with a HDD bay. We'll see.

Bottom line:

Get this laptop if you want a large but powerful gaming/video editing laptop. Not for people who want ultra portability and long battery life.

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Has the mSATA slot, Full HD 1920X1080p screen and a WD Black 7200rpm HDD. When I was looking at buying a laptop I read a lot of reviews about this and other similar laptops. I couldn't find a definite answer whether this particular model had the mSATA or not. It does. The procedure to migrate is pretty simple. This comes with the MSI BurnRecovery software which makes recovery DVD's that restores your HDD image. I needed 5 DVD-R's to do this. After I made those I removed the stock HDD (Western Digital Black 7200rpm) and installed a Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) drive. Need to find a screw to secure the mSATA because the drive does not come with one and you cannot install without it. It's the same screw that would secure a mini card like a wireless card, modem or Bluetooth. Important!-Get into the bios by pressing Del when the MSI logo pops up and disable the secure boot option in the Bios. Booted from the recovery DVD's and restored the image to the mSATA drive. This puts 5 partitions onto that drive-EFI boot sector, Windows recovery, OS partition, Data partition and Recovery partition. Opened computer management after reboot and removed the data partition. I also removed the recovery partition which is about 17 GB because I have the backup DVD's. Extend the OS partition to the unallocated space. This gives you about 100GB for your OS. Get back into the Bios and enable the secure boot option again and boot into your OS. Shut down, reinstall the HDD and reboot. Go to Settings, Change PC Settings, General and select Advanced Startup. When it restarts get to the command prompt. Type in "DISKPART", enter, "list disk", enter. Find the disk that is 698GB (should be disk 0) then type in "select disk 0", enter, "clean", enter, "Y" because yes you are sure you want to wipe the drive. Reboot, get into computer management, activate disk and make the partitions you want. I moved all of the library file folders to the single "Data" partition I made on that drive. Music, Videos, Documents and Downloads. Installed 'most' programs on the OS drive and still have about 20GB left. Takes seconds to boot now with no stability issues at all.

A lot of reviews say this laptop is a little flimsy or fragile and does not seem durable. If you live your life with a broken screen on your cell phone I would not recommend this laptop for you. It is, however, thin and light which is why I chose this particular one. Take care of your stuff and it will last! If not, buy the extended warranty. You cannot set up the mSATA as a Cache drive on this laptop due to the Bios not being able to create a RAID array so a 32GB or 64GB mSATA purchase will result in nothing but hate and discontent because you will only get 32 or 64GB of additional storage out of it. Or, a compacted Windows install with the need to buy aftermarket file management software to store system and program files on the Data drive. If you do this and have to wait for the transfer rate of the spin drive what is point of going to mSATA in the first place?

I've had this for about a month now and love it. When I bought this I also bought the mSATA drive and 16GB of ram (this is manufacturers limit) G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model F3-1600C10D-16GSQ the entire process to do the upgrades took me about two weeks because there isn't much info on migrating the OS without an OEM Windows install disk or some software that doesn't work because of the EFI partitions. I refused to buy another OS when the laptop I just bought has one. There is very little bloatware on this laptop, MS Office setup, MSI BurnRecovery, Battery Calibration and SuperCharger. That's about it. No additional toolbars or ads as you would get with other manufacturers. If you duplicate my procedure the process should take you no more than an hour or two unless you have already put your own stuff on the laptop. In that case you just have to back up your files and then put them back on when you wipe the drive. If you don't want to wipe the drive you can just delete the OS partition but then you end up with dynamic instead of a basic partition because when you extend your Data partition you extend it to the left instead of the right. One last item-performance and graphics. I use this to play WoW and I have the graphics set to Ultra settings. The lowest frame rate I recall seeing is 27fps but definitely no performance issues even at the ultra setting.

Honest reviews on MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GE70 0ND-213US;9S7-175611-213 17.3-Inch

PROS:

screen; great colors and viewing angles

sound; I installed zune because of my phone the THX driver is great

noise level; only one fan but surprisingly it stays cool and the fan on "turbo" is audible but the speakers can easily overpower the noise otherwise its lower noise than similar laptops.

gpu; NVidia GTX 660m it runs crisis 2 at ultra(tested without aa on)

cpu; i7 nuf said

CONS:

multitouch pad; is rocker style and stiff seems to be breaking in after a solid day though

keyboards not backlit (not really a con; just would be nice)

no dedicated volume control; surprisingly a larger issue than I originally thought.. its fn+left/right or through software

notes:

it came with a corrupted wifi driver and usb ports didn't work properly:

the drivers disk it came with was also corrupted so I had to use a lifeline from my old laptop to get it working.

once I got the bios and drivers updated and working it was fine and it runs fast. I tested crysis the game wanted "gamer" specs for some reasion but it ran at 60fps (as the overclock drivers should) on "Ultra" and it was barley warm after 1 hour of game time.(i had the fan Turbo on)

worth mentioning:

windows score sets the gpu score at 5.4, however this is just a bug in how windows defaults the GPU on the i7 instead of the dedicated Nvidia GTX 660m.

supports 16gb ram upgrade and an empty mSATA bay(not to be confused with a SATA bay)

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This computer has all the specs of a real gaming laptop quad-core i7, nVidia 660m, 8 gb ram, etc.

So imagine my surprise and disappointment when I took it out of the box and it took 10-15 minutes to boot up, ran programs slowly, and continuously maxed out hard drive access. Not only that, windows update didn't work, system tools didn't work and it was 10-15 minutes to reboot or shut down.

After a few fits of rage about windows 8, the poor decisions of MSI engineers and a little soul-searching, I relented and actually began trying to solve the problem. A few hours of research later and I found the needle in the haystack thread that had my solution.

For those struggling with the GE70 or other similar MSI laptops, the holy grail can be found here: http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=167061.msg1231972#msg1231972

The thread also contains a number of other things you can try to correct performance problems or other issues with the Windows 8 preinstallation image. A key command to try in the command prompt is "sfc /scannow" without the quotes.

Three days and sleepless nights later, the laptop is now running "as it should," for a machine with its resume. Booting in just a few seconds, running games like the Witcher 2 at just about max settings, handling multi-tasking taboos like installing and running a game simultaneously, with ease.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this is going to be an awesome laptop that will last me several years, as I originally intended.

Had the laptop come out of the box as it is running now, this review would have been five stars all the way. I chose four stars even though it should have been three, because it is still awesome despite of all the heartburn and the fact that some users may not be able to figure out the problems with the machine.

Sony VAIO VPC-EB43FX/BJ 15.5-Inch Widescreen Entertainment Laptop Reviews

Customer Ratings:

I have this computer for just less than a month, so is not much I can say about it's reliability or some performance, but for this moment I love it: speed, keyboard, web cam, all auxiliary connection available .... But the only drawback I experience so far is sound, when you tune it all the way up, it is .... not great at all, and the "power" is a little bit lower than i was expected. But lets be serious, what can you expect from a build in speakers!?!?! If you really want to have a good sound, you should buy separate set of PC Speakers.

Today, I'd recommend this laptop to somebody else too.

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We have owned this laptop just slightly over one year, the hard drive is fried. The Vaio laptop is inoperable. Sony will not offer to replace it with a refurbished model or try to repair it. It is no wonder we had to go to 3 different locations to find a store that was still open.

We have been faithful Sony customers, having purchased 2 home theater systems, a large LCD screen tv, and 3 computers, as well as countless other Sony products (including the original Sony "Discman." It's a shame to see what this company has become.

Angela Holland Gross

Best Deals for Sony VAIO VPC-EB43FX/BJ 15.5-Inch Widescreen Entertainment Laptop

This is my ump-teenth Sony Vaio and I have loved them all. Not much left to say about laptops that has not already been said. Sony graphics are the best. This unit is lightweight and has a sleek design. If it is like my other Sonys, it will hold up for years to come.

For those of you interested in pure PC horsepower, look elsewhere. Sony laptops are for presentation and intense graphics and not for raw computing. I did load a SQL-Server 2008 app on this laptop and it performed fine, but most CPU intensive apps run a little slower on Sony than they do on Dell, HP and others.

Honest reviews on Sony VAIO VPC-EB43FX/BJ 15.5-Inch Widescreen Entertainment Laptop

One the best lap tops i ever own. Very fast and connects easy with wifi, for the price i would say am a winner.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Sony VAIO VPC-EB43FX/BJ 15.5-Inch Widescreen Entertainment Laptop

Item working as described. Was new with warranty....

Hope price olso normal for this laptop...

Amazon.com's all products are great +++++

Cheap Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5034 Notebook PC

Customer Ratings:

I had an HP laptop in the past. My office laptop is a dell laptop. I was sick of the quality of those laptops and looking for something that is reliable. I am hoping this one is better. This laptop has very good looks. The finish looks awesome. Extra keys on the keyboards for the numbers help. Media buttons (no one really uses them) are not given. I bought a 3 year warranty from squaretrade for just 80$ (3 years). Do no buy warranty from this website. I am loving this laptop for the price I paid (510 after 15% bing cashback bought on ) With windows 7 (4GB and i3 processor) the laptop boots very fast, detects the wireless network and is ready for surging in less than a minute. Cons: The only thing I have found (like everybody else) is the sound system. It is horrible.

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Review of HP Elitebook 6930P Intel Core 2 Duo 2400 MHz 160Gig Serial ATA HDD

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This worked out perfect for me as I didn't want to invest in a new laptop as this was a secondary PC to my iMac, so it worked out perfect as the price was low and so far the laptop has worked flawlessly. I'd buy from this seller again.

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Just what I wanted, accidently erased adobe reader, e-mailed seller and they were excellent in solving problem! Solid laptop for what it cost!

Review of Lenovo Z370 10252DU 13.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

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This has been a great laptop! No problems with it so far. I've traveled with it domestically and internationally. The power settings allow you to plug it in without charging the battery. This is great since I mostly use it at home or in hotels.

The sound and picture quality are amazing too!

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Review of HP ENVY TouchSmart 15t-j000 Quad Edition Windows 8 Professional 64

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $1,499.99
Sale Price: $1,288.88
Today's Bonus: 14% Off

with it's combination of CPU, large (and upgradeable) RAM, and latest generation of CPU core, is amazing, you don't need to pay extra for a professional laptop.

With this laptop you have the latest generation of CPU, very large RAM, a very good sound (the laptops are not generally characterized in this regard), Good Hybrid disk of 1TB, backlight keyboard and fingerprint reader with good software and good recognition. And it's touchscreen, is excellent for Windows 8. Very recommended.

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ViewSonic VNB132 13.3" Notebook Intel ULV Celeron SU2300 1.2GHz; Reviews

Customer Ratings:

I bought one of these for my daughter who needed a laptop that was very portable, but had a bigger screen than notebooks have. It proved to have a solid build quality, and setup was very easy. The keyboard is good, and the screen very crisp. Intel chipset is stated to be a GS40 but CPU-Z reports it is actually the better GS45 chip. Only found a few negatives to report on an otherwise nice unit.

Cons:

Internal Video camera has poor frame rate. Viewsonic does not provide a custom driver for the camera, so it uses a Windows 7 downloaded driver dated 2006. Switched to a entry level Logitech USB2 webcam, and that worked perfectly.

No latch to keep unit closed, but this is minor as the hinge is very firm and it takes a lot of pressure to open and close the laptop.

Noticed a slight lag on startup on some applications with the stock memory configuration of 2 Gigs. Probably due to the memory sharing of video card. Adding another 2 gigs of DDR3-8500 memory made this unit noticeably faster.

Depending on the actual price paid, this unit can be a great alternative to the heavy 15" screen choices typically found for under $500.00

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I needed a laptop that was portable and was initially drawn to the netbooks. But their screens and keyboards seemed too small to be useful. The Viewsonic VNB 132 fills the bill very nicely -its full-size keyboard is comfortable to use; it has a good display and so far seems to work very nicely. It comes with Windows 7 Home Premium instead of the starter edition. Pleased with the purchase.

Best Deals for ViewSonic VNB132 13.3" Notebook Intel ULV Celeron SU2300 1.2GHz;

This little computer is a great combination of netbook and notebook features! It's incredibly light and portable, but the dual core processor also means it runs surprisingly well! I rarely run cd's or dvd's on a laptop, so I don't miss it at all. I have an external dvd burner, so I can make a backup and restore disk -something I consider a necessity. It comes with minimal programs installed, which I like. Mine came with a trial version of Office 2007, which I uninstalled and never touched. It also came with MicroTrend Internet Security, which actually happens to be what my husband already runs with a subscription, so that's great. It has face recognition security option, which I don't like but think it's nifty. Also, be aware that the power cord uses a 3 prong grounded type, so if you only have 2 prong outlets you'll need an adapter.

I ordered this computer with a much lower processor than I originally wanted, intending to sacrifice power for light-weight and portable. I am delighted that I feel like I didn't sacrifice a thing! I may actually sell my other laptop as I am very happy with this one. Although I will upgrade the RAM if I sell my other laptop, for the moment I don't feel the need to.

I can stream Hulu and Netflix without any issues, so I'm very happy.

I also don't have any issues with the trackpad that I've seen others mention. Although be aware that the trackpad is level with the laptop instead of in a slightly lowered area like others.

Honest reviews on ViewSonic VNB132 13.3" Notebook Intel ULV Celeron SU2300 1.2GHz;

Bought this for college. Pros are only that it's lightweight and aesthetically pleasing.

Cons are through the roof. Though it worked okay for the first 6 months, then this POS took a face first dive. Excruciating load times, freezes constantly, unusable webcam, overheats, struggles in every aspect of computer performance. Lately I can't even have this run for more than 5 minutes until I have to do a hard shutdown after windows crashes.

I'm a tech savy guy, and I know what to put on my computer. This thing can't handle jack. I run no programs other than antivirus and it's become a struggling media holder for me.

Don't buy this.

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Great computer for anyone that is wanting a small, thin, light, portable laptop. Screen size has a great resolution everything looks good. typing on this laptop is also very easy. would recommend to anyone needing a smaller lighter laptop

Reviews of Samsung - ATIV Book 4 15.6" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $800.00
Sale Price: $752.50
Today's Bonus: 6% Off

I bought a new Samsung Series 3 NP350V5C-T01US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Titan Silver) for seven hundred bucks on sale new at adorama camera. It had ENDLESS WiFi disconnects, track pad fails, and blue screens of death.After 2 repairs that did NOTHING to fix these issues, Samsung offered to replace it. I refused the same model so they offered me this. I had offered to take a downgrade, and this IS a downgrade..... I was hesitant since I was losing that faster processor, the 2 MG Gaming Card, and DVD Burner. But I was getting instead, a bigger hard drive, lighter metal body with less weight.Being disabled, that weight is a BIG deal. I already own a new Samsung Series 7 Gaming Laptop for performance as well as a nice Acer Desktop with 23 inch screen for other tasks.I needed this for all day, in my lap, goofing around online.

So why just a 3 star rating? Well it IS slower, quite a bit slower. I hope as it caches more data it may speed up a bit? But with this slower processor and same slow hard drive as the last, it makes for a lazy experience. Factor in the seven hundred dollar list price (usually just six hundred best best buy) and you can simply find WAY better specked hardware elsewhere. But I am where I am so I have no way out. The other problem was right off the bat, the same nightmare WiFi issues from the old computer haunt this one as well, even with an entirely different Card! Luckily I knew this beforehand and thanks to a reviewer named dissed who reviews the big brother to this computer, the Samsung ATIV Book 6 15.6-Inch Full HD Touchscreen Laptop (Mineral Ash Black), I knew the fix. It goes as follows per HIS wonderful review:

getting rid of the "intel" driver and reverting to Microsoft driver.

1. Uninstall the Intel Proset wireless software/driver from the computer under control panel uninstall program. (not the blue tooth just the wireless)...after thats done..

2. Open device manager/network adapters

3. double click centrino advanced-n 6235

4.click driver tab

5. It should say driver provider Microsoft / 12/5/2011 / 14.8.8.75

6. click events tab to see if driver service added was (NETwNe64)

that will fix the drop problems.

then fine tune your adapter

1. click tab power management / uncheck allow computer to turn device off to save power

2. click tab advanced / make sure transmit power is set to highest

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So I tried this and it has been stable for 24 hours.I will update as ANY changes occur. The other reason for the 3 star rating is it only has 3 USB ports, only ONE 3.0 port. Also, you do NOT have a battery you can replace. It AND the hard drive are buried (NOT accessible for owner replacement as is normal on a laptop), build inside the case so good luck if you need a battery or if the hard drive fails. Just WAY too many negatives for me at this price to rate it higher.

I would recommend shopping around, reading reviews.Lots and lots of reviews. I see other brands with 1 TB hard drives, faster processors AND with optical drives for this price everywhere. On a positive note, this is a FAR more sturdy computer with a vastly nicer (more solid) keyboard as well. THE construction just oozes quality, UNLIKE THE ONE IN PLASTIC THIS REPLACES. As far as positives go, that is just about it. I hope this Samsung will not be another lemon. I have been a die hard Samsung computer fan boy. But I am sad to say that this will probably be mt LAST......

UPDATE:

After a month is has become a MUCH faster laptop thank goodness. It is also 100% rock solid stable. Nice change.....

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igot this laptop a month ago, its a great computer over all fast & smooth, i recommend it

from 1-10 i give it a 9 1/2, missing the 1080p only thing i found wrong

Review of ASUS N43SL-DH51 14-Inch HD Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Silver

Customer Ratings:

The laptop has great performance. The I5 processor and 6gb of RAM goes a long way. The screen and speakers are crisp. The only thing that I did not like was to use the bluray player you have to buy an update for the current software on it. I guess I'll have to find another program. All around good, a little big for my tastes.

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Best HP ProBook 4525s XT950UT 15.6" LED Notebook (2.2 GHz AMD Athlon II Deals

Customer Ratings:

If you're looking for a inexpensive laptop of this size then this is a perfect choice.

Initial Impressions:

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I've only had the laptop for a few days, but am quite happy with it. The number pad is great, island keys look nice and feel good. The track pad has a ton of settings and options so with a little fiddling you should be able to find the settings that work for you. The display is definitely widescreen but looks great. There wasn't too much bloatware installed mainly just a bunch of HP programs, but they were easily disabled/removed. Comes with McAffe 60 day trial which I uninstalled. Also comes with Office 2010 starter which provides Word & Excel limited versions. I love that this has a 7200 RPM harddrive as most laptops skimp with slower 5400 RPM options. Webcam works great and has a built-in light/flash. HP & Windows 7 even have face recognition for logging in, although that doesn't always work. The top has a matte finish with what I can best describe as a fine wood grain look that's somewhat grey/brown.

Update: one of the main reasons I bought this laptop was for the HDMI output so I could connect to my receiver and HD TV then play videos, Hulu, etc. from the laptop to the TV. After a little tweaking of the audio playback device both audio and video worked great over HDMI! I should note that the audio signal is not surround, but 'just' digital stereo.

Regarding Memory:

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I ordered another 2GB of RAM and after removing 7 screws I got to the memory location under the keyboard and the additional memory looked to be exactly the same as what I ordered. You can google to find the instructions for removing the keyboard on HP's website. However, I don't know that 4GB is absolutely necessary for this laptop. It depends on how many programs you'll have open at a time and how you plan to use it. Many people probably don't know that 4GB is the maximum amount that a 32 bit Operating System can reference.

Overall:

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Circuit City (owned by the same company as Tiger Direct) via Amazon had the best price for this laptop (400), even better than Newegg (420). I was surprised that shipping took only 3 days!

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My reference point is from the use of Thinkpads for 10 years (t-20, t-40, t-60) and the Dell Latitude series for another 3 (both brands are premium business laptops).

This is my take on this deal: This is a fantastic buy for $399! And stand-alone, not a bad computer!

The outstanding:

Great built in camera (2Mp most others have 1.3 or just 0.3)

Faster HDD than most other laptops (7200 rpm, most others have 5500)

Fantastic connectivity for this price class; HDMI, eSATA

Durable design using polished metal

The good:

Quite good speakers for this price

Processor is reasonably fast, graphic processing also

Keyboard is water proof, HDD has shock absorber function

The bad:

The touchpad buttons are part of the touchpad, making them difficult to use as the cursor will typically move when you click. I use an external mouse, so it is not really a problem.

I find myself mistyping more often when using the keyboard than on my Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude and my fingers are not particularly fat

The ugly:

Adding more ram was NOT a cakewalk dissembling the keyboard and top panel was easy putting it back together again was a nightmare, eventually had me using a kitchen knife to modify the plastic panels (if you do this be very gentle not to bend anything, so you don't have to bend it back like I had to...).

Would I buy it again? Definitely! I love this thing!

-----Additional observations added on August 1st, 2011 ------

The wireless antenna is awesome. In locations where my two-year-old Thinkpad achieves just one or two bars from the wireless network (or sometimes none), the HP achieves four.

The web-cam works extremely well in dim light, better than that of my Thinkpad and on par with that of my Latitude 4300.

I've had no issues whatsoever concerning stability after nearly 3 months of usage. No hang-ups, crashes or freezes! I think this is the most stable computer I've ever owned.

Best Deals for HP ProBook 4525s XT950UT 15.6" LED Notebook (2.2 GHz AMD Athlon II

This is a surprisingly good laptop for the money! Although I purchase nearly everything from Amazon, I caught a 24 hour special on another site that I just couldn't pass up.

After returning two other laptops from another company that did not meet my graphics expectations, I was a little concerned about this one you usually see these kinds of specs in much higher priced machines. Although the Microsoft Windows Experience Index is not a techie's dream, it does give a standard measurement that indicates how well the computer performs using Windows 7 (scale of 1 to 7.9).

After the first start-up, I ran the Index with the installed 2GB memory. Then I installed 4gigs and updated the Graphics and bios. Here's how the numbers came out:

Processor: 5.2, 5.3

Memory (RAM): 5.5, 5.5

Graphics: 3.3, 4.1

Gaming Graphics: 5.1, 5.2

Primary Hard Disk: 5.9, 5.9

These are very decent numbers.

x32 and x64 OPERATING SYSTEMS: I wanted x64. I called HP Customer Service and ordered the x64 at no cost. Within less than two days I received the disks via FedEx Express (good, responsive, customer service). Not one disk, but three Windows 7 disks arrived (x32, x64, and a recovery disk).

GRAPHICS: Although this is a business-field computer, I need good graphics nevertheless. If I lift this laptop up and put it next to my 24" desktop monitor (with an ATI Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD5770 video card that gives me an Index of 7.4), I can hardly tell the difference except the colors appear richer on the HP laptop!

KEYBOARD: Excellent. Generous sized keys. Nice border between the main keys and the ten-key area. Keys have a nice touch.

TRACK PAD: I find no fault with it.

ENCLOSEURE: A stylish black case and keyboard that looks very business professional. The finish shows finger prints easily, but I find that a Meguiar's Supreme Shine microfiber towel remove finger prints without a trace. I also use it on my black keyboard and tower.

PROBLEMS: Installing the memory modules was a bit of a chore, but I knew about it before I ever purchased this machine. Be aware that the screw threads are not small they're tiny. And the two rubber caps at the back are nothing more than two thin rubber caps with sticky on the backs. An Exacto blade makes them easy to remove.

I'm delighted with this laptop.

Honest reviews on HP ProBook 4525s XT950UT 15.6" LED Notebook (2.2 GHz AMD Athlon II

In preface, I'm a network engineer and used to toting about a $2500 Thinkpad issued from corporate. Build quality is important to me.

This model comes 'stripped down' with only 2gb of RAM, and a 'measly' 320gb HDD.

Another 2Gb is cheaper than dirt right now. 320GB units are SINGLE PLATTER right now, and very reliable in the mobile context for that reason.

Sacrificing these super cheap to upgrade things gets this unit down in to remarkable pricing territory. ( $ 4 5 0 )

The 2.2ghz processor has more moxie than those comparing it to the sister model 4520s (i-380 based) give credit for. Lets keep in mind not too long ago we had similar performance in Desktops... The advantage of the (still basic) Radeon 4250 shows in those silly games your kid will download. You know it will happen and choosing the Intel HD makes children cry. Also, I have seen no issues with my test 1080p content over HDMI (70-90% CPU). That said, the screen is x768 so 720p content is the max anyway and it plays fine.

The keyboard is good, having not much flex excepting the very center. Typing to the left is difficult for those not used to numpads on these units but humans adapt. Key travel is crisp and not 'cheap' feeling to me. In addition, the touchpad is centered on the spacebar (as it should be); but will take getting used to as it's not in the center either. This implies your instinctual left click might be a right for a couple days.

Speaking of the touchpad, people give this some guff in reviews. Go LOOK at the options panel. I set palm check to one notch from the top and haven't had a thumb/palm accidental drag once. Honestly, I think this is a good touchpad after setting sensitivity.

This is one of only a couple laptops in this price category that had both HDMI and eSATA. Bonus. No USB on the back; however two on each side is good (one doubled with eSATA). They are inset slightly, so the micro-usb most wireless mice come with now do not protrude at all.

Sound is 'ok' but at least it gets loud when you push it. I can hear the talking in youtube videos fine on 50%, but get an external speaker for $20 if you want to bump it up a notch. It seems optimized for the human speech range, which I'm pretty ok with.

Build quality is solid. No, really. Completely lacking in misshapen panels, snap-attached bezels, and the like. I took it apart and don't find any 'fail' moments in the process. This is very surprising at this price point. The consumer version of this HP cpu/featureset is rife with build quality issues so this is important to note. My wife's friends think we bought a very expensive unit (the only test that matters).

Do yourself a favor and buy this model if you're in that sub $500 crunch and don't want to pick up that plastic toshiba thing everybody says has wonky fans.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for HP ProBook 4525s XT950UT 15.6" LED Notebook (2.2 GHz AMD Athlon II

Bought this laptop as a Christmas gift and was pleased with the performance and features at the $399.00 I paid.

I was a little surprised by the size of the laptop. I guess I wasn't paying attention but the 15.6 inch diagonal results in a very large laptop.

I personally prefer a smaller machine (I own a 10" netbook" but the person who received it loves the laptop and thinks the size is a plus. You have plenty of real-estate on the screen for viewing content. The laptop ended up with an overall Windows Experience rating of 3.2 but that was only for the Aero graphics. Otherwise it would have been 5.2. Gaming graphics scored well. The machine has plenty of power and feels quite speedy.

Reviews of HP Pavilion dv7-4069wm 17.3" Laptop PC with AMD Phenom II N830

Customer Ratings:

I bought the AMD to compare it to my buddies i5 processor in the same model, plus I'm more of an AMD fan anyways. It seems to hold its own on the hardware side of the field. I'm not a huge fan of the illuminated "HP" logo on the cover(it never turns off, even in power saver). The lid cannot be opened with one hand which is also slightly annoying, due to the fact that you will have to pick it up almost every time you want to open it. I like windows 7 with it, good functionality, with more options. Upgrading to 7 Ultimate was tough. Most of the drivers didn't work after I reinstalled them and caused my left speaker to stop working. I would stick with the OS that comes with it(Home Premium x64), if I did it again. Other than that, the 640GB HD is a great size and eliminates the need to use external drives for at least a while. The casing is also pretty durable. I'm deployed and I've carried it all over Afghanistan with minimal cosmetic damage. The keyboard is nice and the large size of the screen leaves more room for the "10 key". I would recommend this laptop for anyone below "serious gamer" and above "internet junkie". Great for media, work, and general use.

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I was very excited to order and receive this laptop! It even came packaged very nicely when it arrived at my door via-UPS. Very easy set up and charged right away. Came with an informative booklet with instructions on how to work all the bells and whistles. Also received a free offer from EMusic to download 50 songs and 1 Audiobook. If you cancel within 14 days, you can keep the downloads free of charge. Pretty cool. The laptop itself works very smoothly and very quickly. The color is really pretty as well. It says it's 'Brushed Aluminum' but it looks slightly 'Champagne' in color. It has every feature that I've ever wanted in a laptop. It's a 640GB hard drive and I specifically got this one for college. It should hold everything and then some. It plays Blue ray movies, holds a ton of photos, plays videos, games, music, etc. The only thing I was confused about was when I checked to see the hard drive space and it only said 320GB. I contacted the seller that very same day and within 24 hrs they replied back and explained that the hard drive (for some odd reason) is split in two. Further research and digging into my computer, confirmed this. So overall very happy and satisfied with my laptop and I can't stay off now!

Best Deals for HP Pavilion dv7-4069wm 17.3" Laptop PC with AMD Phenom II N830

I will never buy another HP product again. Bought it hoping to get a computer that would get me through school and now I have a 800 dollar paper weight a year and a half later. There is a malfunction in the heat sync. Hp fixed the fans but failed to replace the motherboard. No computer that has been taken care of should burn up that fast .I am very disappointed in how they have handled the issue. Was told on the phone that they had to change the design and now they have figured out the problem. No help to me it ran out of warranty 4 months ago. The shop I took mine to said this the 5th one this month with the same problem. Good luck to anyone who buys one.

Honest reviews on HP Pavilion dv7-4069wm 17.3" Laptop PC with AMD Phenom II N830

I bought mine from Wal Mart a little over a year ago. Still works!

The screen display is great.

The keyboard is super easy to clean.

As for the sound it's not that great. What can you expect from small built in speaker boxes? But if you use some really good earbuds, head phones, OR seperate speakers, the sound gets even better!

The built in mike and web cam work good.

The processor is super fast.

Great for games, vidoes ect.

LOVE it!!!

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Well, first of all I was impressed when it came the very next day after I ordered it! Wow, that was fast!. Second, It came very well packed and with lots of helpful info. This laptop is huge huge huge and I LOVE IT! Omg, I really am glad that I read reviews on all different kinds and picked this one. Some people I noticed said they had a problem with the keyboard. I see what they are saying just because it is spread out more which I love! My fingers don't get in the way at all. This is really a great laptop, and I recommend it to anyone that loves facebook and games. So glad I bought this one!!