Pros: - A lot of bang for the buck - Aesthetically pleasing - Great desktop replacement option
Cons: - Colour of keyboard letters difficult to view - Slower than expected due to Vista
The Bottom Line: I recommend this system for those seeking a good performance desktop replacement for basic entertainment and business functions at a low cost.
cestvrai's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv7-1240us (NB230UA) PC N...
Overview When the hard drive of my four-year-old Dell Inspiron finally died, I vowed not to ever buy another Dell. I did a lot of research on various brands, including Apple Macbook, Gateway, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony, and HP. Since I had a modest budget and wanted something that was as aesthetically pleasing as it was functional, I finally settled on the HP DV7-1240US as Circuit City (prior to their liquidation announcement) offered it for $720 after rebates. So far, while I'm generally happy with it, there are some significant pros and cons. As someone who has relatively little knowledge of the technical aspects of computers, my disclaimer is that this review won't be as technical as some may want.
Reason for Purchase I had a few basic requirements when researching which model to purchase. I knew I wanted a 17" screen, at least 2Ghz processor speed, 4GB of RAM, at least 320GB of hard drive, more than 2 USB ports, and weigh under 8lbs (which this system barely makes the cut at around 7.75lbs). All of these requirements were based on how I use my system, as well as knowing that it would be a few months before I would buy an external hard drive to store my media files. I also wanted to keep the cost under $900. While many websites offered this or similar models, I chose to purchase this at Circuit City for $720.
Features I Love - The 17" screen is gorgeous! For someone without a television, it's big enough to watch movies and shows to a reasonable degree of satisfaction. If you're viewing something streamed in full screen mode and don't have an N wireless connection, the picture quality is sometimes a bit pixelated. DVD's play reasonably well on full screen, but you may want to spring for a better media card for better picture quality (don't know enough about media cards to recommend which ones). - I love the bronze shell and keyboard. It's a really pretty colour that's a nice alternative to the boring black, white, or silver options. - The numerical keypad on the right hand side is fantastic! For numerical entry, it's a dream, especially since the keyboard being slightly off the normal key placement from a standard board makes, I've found, numerical entry a little awkward. The placement of the page up and down keys above the numerical keyboard is also a little awkward if you're more accustomed to using your keyboard to tab through spreadsheets, but you get used to it pretty quickly. - The volumn control at the top of the keyboard is really nice and works infinitely better than my old Dell. I thought the wireless connectivity status light on the same row is a nice touch so that I could remove that icon from my system tray and have one less item showing on my toolbar. Just a personal preference, but it's the little features like this that I really like about this system. - There's also a button directly below the spacebar that disables the touchpad that's very nice. I found the touchpad rather sensitive, even after making adjustments in the control panel, and having the mouse jump around while typing, even from just slightly hovering over it was annoying. That was probably the reason for the button, but again, a nice detail. - I like that there are 2 USB ports on both the right and left side (one of which is dual SATA/USB port) of the laptop. I always found USB ports on the back of laptops annoying since the things you plug into them are usually not permanent, so the easier access is much more convenient. - The center top placement of the webcam is really great. It's completely unobtrusive and takes decent pictures. It also makes sending Facebook video messages a lot of fun.
Features That Could Be Improved - I hate hate hate the colour of the letters/numbers/symbols on the keyboard. It's a light black (or perhaps dark grey) colour that makes it almost impossible to see well unless you are looking down from directly over the keyboard. I purchased keyboard stickers with white letters to alleviate the problem, which did work but not as well as I'd like since it's not as pretty as having them properly on the keys already out of the box. Also, If you're like me and have no patience to stick nearly 40 little stickers onto each (reasonably sized) key and be able to get them on without them going crooked, it's a total pain-in-the-neck. - The battery plug is on the top right side of the keyboard. With the battery plug, DVD drive, and the 2 powerful USB drives on the right side, It is a total pain trying to keep things from getting over-corded. When the mouse and Ipod charger are plugged in, the right side of the laptop has less space than I'd like to navigate my mouse around. Also, because the left side USB ports aren't as powerful as the right side, you will not, for instance, be able to sync your Blackberry as well. So despite the 4 total USB ports, find what devices are energy-efficient enough to make the left-side USB ports useful. - Since it's been a while since I've purchased a new computer, I'm not sure if this is standard these days, but there were no backup disks for the original configuration. It's a total pain to have to back up everything onto disks before you even start using your system. - This is probably less to do with HP laptops specifically than a drawback to Windows Vista, but even with the powerful specs, Vista is a total power drain. I thought with the RAM and processor speed, it would make this system lightning fast, but I found this not to be the case. It's still pretty fast, but compared to a similarly spec'ed Macbook, for instance, it sort of paled in comparison. I considered taking off Vista completely and installing XP, but I was told that with some systems, XP would not make all the features work well or at all. Given that I'm not a sophisticated user, I've decided to suck it up and deal.
Summary All in all, I'd recommend the HP DV7-1240US to someone who's looking for a value desktop replacement. It has enough sexy features to make it worthwhile and enough resources to act as an entertainment laptop that handles most media functions pretty well. However, it is not nearly powerful enough for anything beyond basic gaming or any heavy-duty programming functions. I'd also highly recommend an external hard drive for music files or photos because there was a marked difference in performance from before I stored my music files and photos. Still, for under or around $800, it's one of the better laptops available on the market.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 720 Operating System: Windows Processor: AMD K-2 Processor speed: 201-300 Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches RAM: More than 256 Internal Storage: SuperDisk Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
2.1 GHz AMD Turion X2 RM-72 dual-core processor 4 GB RAM (8 GB max) 320 GB hard drive, LightScribe dual-layer DVD Drive Windows Vista Home Premium wit...More at Amazon Marketplace
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