Hewlett Packard Pavilion zv5000 (559158) PC Notebook

Pros: Good power, great display, nice innovations, decent battery
Cons: Big n' bulky

It came as no surprise that Best Buy gave me a new laptop following what I refer to as “the incident.” Basically, I dropped my laptop purchased in December 2002 (a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301) on the floor and both the LCD screen and PCMCIA ...

Pros: Wide screen, large keyboard, fairly fast, solid construction.
Cons: Poor instructions, poor (bad) web site registration

I will start with the good things. The wide screen is beautiful, clear and crisp. With the wide body design, typing is a pleasure on this one, no cramped fingers. The Radeon 9000 graphics card helps a lot. The wireless 802.11g network support is ...

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

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, ...

Pros: runs fast, looks really nice (except when crumbs get stuck in the speaker panels)
Cons: power supply dislodges easily; short battery life; not exactly portable

When I first bought my laptop, I was eighteen and remained an inexperienced consumer when it came to higher end products, like technology and cars (I bought the first car that my parents agreed to cosign on..."no, dad! we don't need to research it! i ...

Pros: Big screen, ample processing power. Good customer support via email or chat.
Cons: not enough memory,poor battery. Powercord falls out. paint wears out

I thought I would write this article about how they hold up after the "new" is gone. I have had mine since July 04. It's a zv5160 2.8ghz(no ht) no flash media slots, or firewire. I am a soldier deployed in Iraq and it is holding up pretty good. Mind you ...

Pros: Good sound, good graphics, durability, price.
Cons: WEIGHT, battery life, power consumption

I've had this computer since 2004 only problem was the DVD drive quit replaced it myself for $53. It is heavy and cumbersome if you do any traveling I would suggest a lighter computer. Never had a power cord problem, and after 4 years the battery ...

Pros: Works great until warranty expires
Cons: Supposed to be "powerful" machine, but powers down for no reason

Power problem is THE problem in this machine. And it starts exactly after the warranty expires. You call HP and talk to them - they would gently and politely say "Your warranty has expired, and therefore, if we need to talk further, we will charge your ...

Pros: Very quick startup and overall speed, quality feel and construction.
Cons: Battery life is average, probably better performance with a mobile processor option. (higher price)

I define average user as; word processing, e-mail, internet surfing, occasional game, photo editing. I normally love to buy things I simply do not need, I like overkill just in case I may need it later. However when I was pondering the purchase of a 17" ...

Pros: Strong construction, sturdy keyboard.
Cons: Heavy.
The common power connector issue.

Its the end of 2009, and I'm reviewing this notebook I bought 5 years ago. I'm doing this because this notebook has been a total workhorse, and has literally taken a beating. In 2005, I bought this notebook in the U.S. and took it with me when ...

Pros: Fast, easy to upgrade, dependable, great screen
Cons: Poor battery life

After using various different laptops, and purchasing my HP zv5000 for $800 as a refurbished unit, it has been my main computer, outlasting (and outshining) the others. I have not had the power jack problems others have mentioned, and only had the ...

Pros: Processor Performance
Cons: **^^SEE ABOVE^^**

I bought this laptop in August 2004 and have had NOTHING but problems with it. Although it was very powerful with a Pentium 4 processor, it was nothing better then ANY of HP's products. It ran VERY hot, the battery, power supply and fans caused 1st and ...

Pros: widescreen, decent number of ports(firewire, media card, s-video apart from USBs)
Cons: Lousy power jack, warranty, hard drive, software, display, build quality.

This was my first HP laptop and will probably be my last.

It was heavy, the display had blank spots after a while, the power jack was a joke and battery life sucked.

Oh, it is heavy, did I mention that?

The hard disk died after exactly 18 months of use and even SpinRite could do little to recover data from this.

The biggest downer was the power jack. After about 2-3 months of use, it became an adventure to connect the laptop to a power source reliably. You'll have to wiggle the jack just right, put it under the desk and so on.

A horror story, stay away

Pros: nice widescreen, media connector (lifesaver for bad AC jack), & 3 USB jacks
Cons: Touchpad too far right, fans cannot breath, AC adapter jack wears out, & horrible support.

I sincerely hope HP goes out of business. Their support the past few years has been ok, but now they expect you to pay for it. I spoke to someone from India about my bad power jack on my zv5000, and the whole time he pressured me to pay for a support specialist. Furthermore, they no longer offer an extended warranty for this PC. I have fixed the jack once (one month after the warranty expired). The tech told me then to get an extended warranty. I waited too long, and now they don't offer one....and get this....the only thing they offer is a telephone support program for one year for $99. Are you kidding??? I read where the XC1000 media cable is the perfect fix for the problem. Once again, HP does not offer the cable any more. surprise surprise. This is absolutely the last HP product I'll ever buy!

Pros: Sound, graphics, wide screen, many ports
Cons: Power cord falls out too easily

I purchased my HP zv5000 in May 2004 and have gotten a lot of great use out of it. It has a lot of connections i.e. USB ports, good sound quality, and great graphics/screen. I prefer using this laptop to watch DVDs than I do my flat screen TV! It's fast and sturdy. I'm pretty rough with my laptop and it's stood up to lots of carrying without a case, swinging, plopping, etc.

The only issue I have is that the power cord falls out of the laptop easily, so I'm always checking to make sure it's plugged in.

Pros: Great graphics great sound easy to use if you have basic knowledge of computers.
Cons: Battery life not as expected. Heavy.

This laptop is great for watching DVD's. Only problem is that you have to have it hooked up to AC adaptor in order to watch the entire movie. Battery seems to not last as long as advertised. Batteries are just too expensive to have to have a backup. I really enjoy my laptop and love playing games on them. One other thing I have a real problem with is saving images. When I right click and choose "save picture as", I can save it as an ART or BMP image. When I go to look at it later, there is nothing there. I can apparently only save JPGs. Another problem is the use of the mousepad on the keyboard. If it is activated and you accidentally brush across it while typing, your cursor is moved. Very aggravating when you are typing something important. That is why I have taken to using a mouse with this computer.

Pros: Looks good, worked well for a while.
Cons: Died after 2 years of careful use, £500 a year, not value for money.

I bought this laptop to be a desktop replacement, fast, powerful, great sounds, excellent screen although could have used a bit more memory. I have used it indoors for the past 2 years and it has only travelled occasionally in a descent bag and its now dead. First the power supply started playing up, then it would not charge unless switched off and wouldn't run off the mains at all. And now all it can do it click click click click, unable to either charge or power up!!! Check the forums on this model, nothing but power issues worldwide, don't touch with a barge pole or anything shorter than an extremely long stick.

Pros: dependability, screen size. power jack
Cons: size, overheating

This computer has yet to let me down. I once knocked it off my desk open and it didn't even shut off. Overheating is a bit of a problem and of course it weighs a metric ton. No power jack problem though many of my comrades do not share my luck. Ample memory space for my college use. Usb ports very handy. Over all a muy bueno computer

Pros: Very Solid, Reliable, Fast and Very Feature Laden!
Cons: AC Cord Falls Out, Battery Life less than most, A bit Cumbersome at times.

Purchased Laptop in Summer of 2004 to use for college. So far Laptop has been great and has met all my needs. Laptop is very feature laden and makes a great desktop replacement. I find it kind of funny that it is actually faster than my comparably equipped desktop computer. Laptop has overall been a very good, reliable, computer that is very reasonably priced ($1200) and very feature laden. Laptop could be perfect except for its few minor flaws (AC Cord Falls out too easily, Battery Drains Faster than most, and it is a bit cumbersome at times) but I was able to easily overlook these flaws and enjoy the many features that this laptop offers!

Pros: Great screen, great size
Cons: I wish it came with more RAM installed.

I got my zv5000 after a horrible experience with a Toshiba laptop (avoid Toshiba laptops! they are noisy and overheat!). I have had my hp laptop for about a year now, and I have had NO problems with it. The screen is gorgeous-- great resolution, clear, widescreen. The keyboard is great. The speakers are nice and loud. The fan isn't noisy and the laptop doesn't get too hot. It is a larger laptop, but I still carry it around day after day without any difficulty. Who needs one of those miniscule micro-laptops?

I would highly recommend this laptop. It is a solid choice. If you go to BestBuy, buy HP and avoid Toshiba like the plague.

Pros: Excellent features. Reasonable price. Good quality. Powerful
Cons: Big, heavy, low battery life, CD-Rom should be on the right side of Laptop.

How good is this laptop? I bought my 5405US off of the demo shelf at Best Buy and it works great!! The 15.4" wide screen is amazingly clear. DVDs look simply awesome on it. The integrated wireless works great...very good range and surprisingly stable. The speakers are quite simply the best I've heard on a laptop. Very loud and crisp. The entire machine has a very solid feel. Keys are large and have a nice feel to them. The processor is powerful enough to run anything and will function nicely with the next version of Windows. All of this power comes at a bit of a cost though. The laptop is quite big and heavy and battery life is basically irrelevant. I have yet to get two hours out of mine, and havent been able to charge it above 97%. It also gets quite warm and you'll usually have a fan blowing on ya. Thus the reason I refer to it as a portable desktop. It could easily replace a desktop, but like a desktop you wouldnt want to lug it everywhere with you and youll usually have it plugged in.

Pros: big screen
Cons: heavy, low battery life, power jack

I've had the laptop for only 1.5 years and have been dealing with a power supply issue to the jack almost from the beginning. Yeah, the jack is sloppy, but then the ac power adapter failed to link up and supply power. It's been to the 'mechanic' three times with same depressing results. Temporary fix lasts 15 minutes if I'm lucky.
For the price I paid...not worth it!

Pros: Reliability, ease of upgrades, good quality video/sound.
Cons: Weight, tech. support unable to answer some engineering type questions, some what pricey.

I am a computer consultant, who writes, and debugs software for several Fortune 500 companies. I have upgraded the memory to 2GB. from 1GB. I have also upgraded the HD to a 7200 rpm 160GB. All the upgrades were a snap, I run XPSP2 HE, for my base OS. I have 7 languages/and compilers loaded on the HD, Plus many programs, I am always modifying, writing, compiling, etc. I have owned 2 HP laptops, and have never had a hardware problem on either one; despite moving them often, and running test programs, compiles, etc. My experience with HP is that they are a solid, easily up-graded machine. Since I am a retired IBM mainframe engineer, I know good hardware, and so far HP has sold me exactly what I needed. My next purchase will be my 3rd HP.

Pros: Nothing really, it's just a run of the mill laptop - nothing special.
Cons: Defective design, short battery life.

Do some research on this piece of junk and you'll find that the power port (where the cord plugs into the laptop in back)eventually goes out and the laptop will either not charge at all, or completely at random. It seems to run fine other that that. The battery never did last very long, just FYI. Get a Dell - this is a product defect and HP will do nothing to help you out.

Pros: Hasn't exploded...
Cons: HORRIBLE service plan, more problems to come I'm sure...

I cannot believe what I have gone through with this purchase. I bought the Pavilion zv5000 in November, since then:

Internal Power supply went down
Mother board went out
Wireless card slot came out of the computer (!?!)

I have had to return this thing to HP 4 times (they reassembled the Wireless card slot and left the contacts out-now they claim that I broke it.

Of the four times I have had to return it, they failed to call Fed EX 3 of the times (I had to call them and ask them to set it up again).

I've been working in Tech for 12 years and I have never been through something like this. I can not recommend HP or any of their product after this experience. I suggest you try another company...

Pros: GREAT SCREEN
Cons: POWER PORT PROBLEM, HEAVY

Bad AC power connector! My unit is only 3 years old and they want to replace the motherboard became of a poor solder job at the factory $295 !! After doing some research on the internet it is a big problem with HP laptops and HP is not willing to help is it is out of warranty!

Pros: Was ok for like 6 to 10 months
Cons: Crappy power jack design, stay away from HP, they will do nothing to help

My laptop did same thing as others, soon after purchase power jack came lose, cant keep power on or charge

Pros: when power plug breaks you don't get electrocuted
Cons: power plug
power plug
power plug

If you use this laptop in any laptop like capacity, you will dislodge the power connector from the motherboard with in a years time. You will end up fixing/restoring it every few months until you find out about a media cable(xc1000) that HP stopped making an selling, and now can only be bought for around $250 from third party vendors that stock it, Good Luck

WORST POWER JACK DESIGN EVER