HP Pavilion Notebook PC (zv5430us) Wideload is the Future!
Written: Jan 13 '05 (Updated Jan 13 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Bright display, Widescreen, Athlon64, Great Speakers, lots of connections available, ability to switch off touchpad.
Cons: Big screen, weight, slow (4200 RPM) hard drive, clunky power adaptor
The Bottom Line: If you're going to college or need a good at home laptop/desktop replacement; get it! If you travel a lot, I'd shop for a lighter laptop.
|
|
|
| kappaknight's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion zv5000 (559158) PC Notebo... |
Buying a laptop (on a budget) out of need instead of desire is very different from shopping for high end machines. Unfortunately, this was where I placed myself a year after buying a Dell lemon. My old laptop from Dell had great specs (Pent4 2.8Ghz, 40Gigs, 512RAM, CD Burner/DVD Player) I loved everything about it other than the fact that it overheats and have killed 2 harddrives in less than a year. The first one died in less than 2 weeks! Unfortunately, Dell customer service leaves much to be desired and now they've lost another customer due to poor support.
So with much of my critical data lost, I started shopping for a new work replacement. While much of the specs on my old Dell are years from being outdated, I was surprised at some of the features that the new systems now offer. Maybe it's because I started shopping for consumer/college laptops instead of business/travel laptops; either way, the shopping experience really opened my eyes.
I first turned towards a Sony Vaio since I had owned one prior to the Dell, however much to my dismay, Sony has not fixed any of its battery problems for the low to mid end Vaios (K33). You'd think battery life would be improved after 3 years to allow even the most basic machines to work for 2-4 four hours, but it seems that battery life is still crappy for the Vaio.
Sitting next to the Vaio in Circuit City was an HP laptop, which I used to own (in desktops). Granted, being a media centric company, HP has always packed their machines with fun stuff, but would it be good quality? I asked the clerk about the ZV5430US laptop, which surprisingly had a lot of nice features packed in.
The first thing I noticed was that the laptop had a widescreen display at 15.4 inches (WXGA). While I do not need a widescreen laptop (check out my Samsung DLP review) nor have I ever desired one, I'm starting to like the benefits of having one. I work as a web developer at times and reviewing "code" all the way across the screen with MSDN help and/or other open windows has always caused problems. Also, things such as keeping a buddy list on your screen or viewing correctly formatted emails with the email headers not compacted in Outlook 2003 all take away from the horizontal real estate; this computer has really helped remedy many of those problems. The default resolution for the monitor is 1280x800 which is great if you like to do side by side comparison of websites while shopping. You can even add a couple of toolbars in your browser without losing too much vertically!
The only thing I didn't like about the screen is that it gives off a glare with the reflective surface. If you ever take this big monster out, sitting in coffee shops with lights above may pose a problem. (Is there a reason for glare surfaces? Maybe there is...)
After talking with the sales rep a bit, I found out some other specs about this machine; including the fact it has an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512 MB RAM, 64 MB dedicated video RAM. I've always been a user of Intel products so I'm not really sure what this means, but I was told that 64 bit processors are good for future programs and that it clocks better/cooler than Intel Pentium 4's. A 2Ghz Athlon is compariable to a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4. Alright, as great as this mumbo jumbo may be, after using the system for a couple of days, it still feels a lot slower than my Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz Dell. Although I'm quick to blame the chip, I think what it actually may be is the slow 4200 RPM hard drive. While no programs have locked up and choked during use, the system does sometime take its sweet time thinking and accessing the HD. I love the 80 gigs and all, but a faster RPM unit would have been preferred. Hopefully this delay will only occur during the software installation process when much reading and writing is needed. (I guess it's good that I'm not planning on playing games on this machine.)
The DVD drive that came with the system plays DVD's well. I've only tested this feature briefly and I wasn't too impressed with the video quality of the display. While the screen can produce fonts and graphics better than my previous Dell, the video for the DVD was only mediocre. Maybe it was the DVD or the software, but I'm not really sure at this point. I also ran into a problem with the drive recognizing foreign discs. I bought the Asian version of Office 2003 and the drive could not recognize the files the install the application while every other desktop/laptop I've owned can read that disc. I had to do some network install using another computer to host the CD. That was a bit annoying.
I've gotten reports that the included battery is a 12 cell Lithium Ion but it could very well be an 8 cell. I'm not really sure since the battery itself doesn't distinguish itself but I am hoping that HP made the effort to include the better battery in the package.
Other things I like about this laptop includes the improved touchpad with the scrollbar but more importantly, the ability to turn the touchpad off with the switch of a button. What annoyed me most from previous laptops were that I would be typing along in one application and with the "wave" of my thumb, my focus would be thrown into another open application. I swear I never touch the touchpads but it sends me to weird places. This laptop fixes that and for that, I am grateful.
The laptop also includes a "turn off wireless" feature button which I'm not too sure what it's really for. It's great not to have Windows pop up messages saying that it's finding new wireless networks when you're not using it but at the moment, that's not how I've set it up. I wiped my HD clean and installed XP Pro when I bought the machine and right now to prevent difficulties, I am just having Windows manage my wireless connections. (Note: I also reinstalled the drivers from HP that would make the button work but the two software sometimes compete for domination so I had to turn the manufacturer app off.) One thing I have noticed about the included wireless G card compared with the Dell 1350 card is that this card picked up more networks than my previous Dell. My old Dell saw about 3-4 connections in my building where as my current laptop saw about 8-9 possible connections.
One thing I do like about the Dell that most other laptops seems to do wrong at is the placement of the Delete key on the integrated keyboard. I'm not sure why they all throw it in the upper right corner when it should be somewhere near the space bar... but that's my personal preference I guess.
Besides for what's mentioned above, I like the fact that there is an extra USB 2.0 port (3 compared to 2) on this machine. Now I can use an external mouse, charge the ipod and plug my USB memory key without having to play switch-a-roo. Also, since this has a firewire connection, I can now learn to use that; (Dell did not have this).
Overall, this laptop is good to use and it's a great replacement for a desktop. It was kind of heavy to lug around and packing the laptop up along with its incredibly gi-normous power adaptor, it actually hurt my shoulder a bit just walking to work. The laptop runs really cool and I am pretty confident it will not experience overheating issues that my Dell has experienced several times throughout the year.
While this computer does come with MS Works (and it seems that Works has come a long way then just being MS Word's lil brother), I still wiped it clean and replaced it with Office 2003. The factory restore drivers/software CD was great in replacing 98% the necessary drivers with a few simple clicks. There are however, some drivers you still need to pick up from the Windows Update website or HP drivers website after everything is restored from the CD.
Overall, I think this computer will be great in doing what I need it to do without too much problems. The casing is pretty sturdy and there are enough connections to hook up a number of devices. I did notice the demo model at Circuit City had a loose power cord connection which can cause problems if your laptop doesn't charge correctly. However, I'm not sure what caused that particular mishap and I hope it's not through normal use.
I will update this post if anything major develops with the laptop, in the meantime, if you're interested in the specs, please check out this URL: http://www.exactchoice.com/ProductProfile.aspx?id=3276
Also shopped:
Sony Vaio K33
Sony Vaio K35
Dell Inspirion (wait, their service sucks)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1149
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
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
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kappaknight
|
|
Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.