Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion dv9330us 17" Entertainment Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5300, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, SuperMulti DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

I just bought this notebook yesterday so I can't say much about its long term durability or HP customer service yet, but I can say without hesitation that it is THE best deal out there for a 17" Core 2 Duo notebook with so many bells and whistles for its price. I had been researching for a suitable notebook for over a month and finally chose this over a comparable Sony Vaio (in terms of the specs, not the price, for the Vaio was several hundreds more). The screen is amazing and the dedicated NVidia graphics card makes a HUGE difference in the way the new Vista GUI operates. I highly recommend this. My advise to anyone planning to run Vista on a notebook is to have 2 GB ram and a separate graphics card.

Just bought this baby and am glad I did so. This is an awesome computer. It is THE BEST deal around. Amazon spec states one headphone plug - it comes with two. Built in microphone - there are two on either side of a webcam giving stereo field. It also features full size keyboard with separate numerical keys - just like on your desktop. Vista looks georgeous on this screen.

Best looking/functioning notebook I owned to date.

I use this laptop as a traveling IT project manager and business consultant. This machine is a great performer. The monitor is bright, crisp and color is great. Unfortunately, it didn't come with the option of bundling Office 2007 products with. So, budget for an extra $300 once you have purchased Office and Antivirus, etc.

Now for the good part, when I am not using the laptop for work, game on! World of Warcraft is my recent addiction. With the settings almost maxed out, the frame rate is fluid with no flicker or freezing. Just dont try this with a power source. Gaming in High Performance mode will suck the battery dry in a skinny minute. The nvidia 7600 graphics card is an important option for anyone who intends to game or anything that requires intense video.

Used the bundled software to burn mpeg movies to DVD. Worked perfectly at 2x.

Wish HP had included on-board bluetooth. I had to buy a Kingston bluetooth dongle for $30.

HP Pavilion dv9330us 17" Entertainment Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5300, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, SuperMulti DVD Drive, Vista Premium) Once you buy from Elecsurf, you will never hear from them again. Their initial service was excellent, but do not buy their extended warranty because they will not respond to you if there is a problem. I had an issue with my item and tried to contact them through endless emails, and even Amazon could not get any response from them to reply. I ended up paying to have my item repaired, and now I am out of $129.99 which I paid to Elecsurf. I think what bothers me most is that I have purchased countless items from Amazon and this is the only company that has soiled their reputation. The rating applies to the product, Elecsurf gets a 0.

I bought my DV9xxx near the end of 2007. Bought it as a game system (which when running does a very good job). But then in Jan of 08 the power supply just died out for no reason.. so called HP and after 2 hrs on the phone (really folks taking out the Ram dosent affect the PS.) little did i know then what I know now is that the GPU over heated so much it killed the PS. So send it to HP and got it back (alas the wiped everything off the HD etc etc).. So ok.. system working fine.. decided to buy a fan system to put the laptop on it to keep it cool. Then in Sept of this year ('09) i get a grey/smokey colors on my screen. Called Hp and of course system is out of warrenty and they wanted 400.00 to fix it. So since I live here in Vegas took it to a local PC store and the guy there took my to the back and had ALOT of hp laptops, 9 of them was just like min the DV9xxx series. He then told me of the Defect with the Nvidia GPU. So did more digging online and was amazed at how many people with the Nvidia GPU laptops was having a HIGH failure rate (HP so called band aid fix was to release a new bios that kept the Fan runnign on the laptop which drains the battery life so fast it is not funny).

There is now a Lawsuit against Nvidia and HP on the know failure rate of the GPU. Sony, Apply, Dell also have had the same problems yet they did a recall and treated their consumers with respect. HP has dodged/has not yet did a recall of a known issue and to top it all off if you do send it in and pay the 400.00 you will get the same mobo with the same GPU which will turn around and fail.. So for now I have a 1200.00 paper weigth just like 1,000's of others with the same known issue.

So beware of buying this laptop and any other HP laptops in the future