I bought my DV6058cl from Costco 08/31/2006.

I own HP Pavilion Home PC (desktop computer), an HP monitor, and 2 HP printers (hp2100 and hp 7130). Never had a problem. Never had to call tech support. Always an excellent experience.

As for the HP Pavilion laptop (dv6058cl), I have invested at least 40 hours of my time trying to keep the laptop running.

It started about 1-2 months after I bought it. I received one of those notices to upgrade Windows Media Player. After the Media Player patch, I also went to the HP site and downloaded the latest drivers for the laptop. My fault? Perhaps. But even subsequent technicians said it was the hardware not the drivers.

It was 1-2 weeks later, the wireless local area network (WLAN) adapter stopped working. I called HP tech support and did the system recover. The WLAN worked intermittently for the next 2 months. For Christmas my son gave me a D-Link USB WLAN. Also worked great for about 2 months, then the laptop no longer recognized the hardware. Now I have to plug in with a cord to use the internet.

External speakers worked for about 4 months. My brother bought the same machine after he saw mine. He bought from another company (compusa or staples). After about 2 months his external speakers stopped working. He said he can get them to work if he does something with the speaker software, but it lasts one time for each fix. The good news is my head phones still worked.

Ok. From 09/06 to 04/07 I was working 14 hour days and could not do much except try to keep this thing going while I worked.

On 05/21/07 I took it to BestBuy (an HP service center) and they said they could not touch it since I did not buy it from BestBuy. BestBuy gave me a name of a local computer repair shop. One week after working on my computer, the repair shop said they could not fix the WLAN or speakers saying it was a hardware problem.

Back to Costco. Nope. You’re past the Costco exchange date (now 90 days). So I call HP tech rep. Worked with the rep. We tried different things and kept turning the laptop on and off to see if the system would refresh with the new settings we gave it. After 60 minutes, I had shut the computer off and went to turn it back on and it would not start. After 15 minutes of trying the on switch the rep said send it in to HP. “We’ve had some problems with the start button and have a back order for switches so the HP office won’t be able to take a look at it for 3-4 weeks.” “Also, since I took it to an independent repair shop, the HP warranty may be void.”

I was hoping this was an individual exception, but based on my and other people’s experience (external speakers and backlog for start switches), I’d recommend staying away and buying a Toshiba (which I beat to death for about 3 years without a problem).



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 1300.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50