Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion DV5-1000US 15.4-inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium) Black

This notebook rocks! It is powerful, runs really cool and will likely be an excellent choice for many. Setup was a snap and I had no problem connecting the unit to a wireless network. However, I must say, I wish HP provided more documentation with the computer or at least had a complete user manual available online. I generally know my way around computers, yet it took me some time to figure out what made everything work.

If you are considering a notebook in the $600 - $700 range, I would recommend you check this system out. For a few more dollars, you get a lot more technology. This is a computer you can easily keep for several years.

While I like doing business with Amazon, I found the laptop for 849.99 at another retailer. Often you will find chain retailers offering hefty discounts on computers. Of course, they are hoping you purchase other product along with your computer.

Bottom-line is this, I think the DV5-1000 is an excellent computer, Well, worth taking a close look at!

Purchased this laptop for my fiance's daughter. I will be taking it back to Puerto Rico with me on 10/10 so here is my problem. I love this laptop so much I almost want to keep it(which I know I can't because she truly needs it for school)or purchase another one. I currently own a Dell Inspiron. I honestly feel like selling my Dell and purchasing another DV5-1000US. From the dual-core processor the list goes on....4gb memory, 3mb cache, 250gb hard drive and to boot....a built-in webcam/microphone. Before receiving this laptop, I told my fiance not to expect much from the built-in webcam. I had to eat my words as I used it that same night while we chatted on instant messenger. Not only that but I called her computer and spoke with her just as well as if I was on the telephone. I will support another reviewer who stated there were many updates to download and install for Windows. I believe there were about 25 or 26 updates which took some time to download and install. That would be the only complaint I had which to me is not much of a complaint. The laptop itself is simply beautiful!!!! I look at my Dell now in disgust. Another reviewer mentioned experiencing trouble with his volume control. I tested the volume control on this one and it worked flawlessly...even the mute button worked at the touch of my finger. Another kudos I will give to HP....the memory card reader on the left side of the pc not only excepts SD cards but also Memory Stick cards. That is a huge plus in my book. There is an HDMI out on the left side of the pc. Another issue for some people will be the fact this little sucker does not come with any supporting software. You have to create your own recovery discs and I highly advise using dvd and not cds. When you go into creating your recovery discs it tells you how many discs you will need. I used dvd-r and only needed three discs. Obviously if one uses cd-r you will be needing many more discs due to the lack of storage available in comparison to dvd. $899.99 minus a $50.00 rebate...what a steal!!!! I would have purchased it even without the rebate. Amazon had a list price of $1375...not sure how accurate that is but with all the features on this pc....it would easily list over $1000.00 most places you look. I know my future step-daughter is going to love this laptop. She is excited and cannot wait to see it. I hate to part with it and I have only played around with it for a couple of days. I would highly recommend this laptop to anyone. Selected one day shipping on a weekend purchase and it was shipped that Monday and delivered Tuesday. The one day shipping rate thru Amazon was very reasonable at $18.00 or so. Anyone purchasing this laptop will not regret it.

To be completely honest with you, this Notebook looks awesome, from the liquid metal finish to the white lighted buttons and HP logo on the top monitor cover, the only bad thing about the look of this notebook is that it gets really dusty real quick and the fingerprint marks will fill every inch.

Some other reviewer mention that the quickplay buttons are buggy and don't work, all I can say about mine is that after I press it takes a second or two to execute the action require.

The battery gets very hot when charging even when the notebook is barely warm. I also notice that the battery life is very short, I only get a couple hours running on the power saver option.

The screen is really bright, with great picture quality, and high definition. the integrated web cam is the best I have seen so far and it came with a software that allow you to use some simple but fun effects in your videos.

Keyboard and touch pad and very good. But beware "this model does not come with the fingerprint reader" the product description never say it does but amazon put a picture of this notebook with the fingerprint reader. I think this is an omission and is not in bad faith but you can easily be misled by it.

As the performance of this notebook I'm not very impress because it took me a couple hours of fine tuning to get similar performance as my 1 year old HP Pavilion DV6660SE AMD Turion 64X2 TL 58 1.9GHZ, 2GB Ram. HP as usual sell this PC's loaded with useless software that takes tons of space and resources form you machine, my advice is to google by name every software install in you PC and then uninstall the ones you don't need or use.

**********UPDATE 31 JULY 2009**********

After a couple weeks of use I was able to update most of the drives. That solve some of the issues I have experience with the quick play buttons, graphic card, and webcam. So my advice to any possible buyer or owner is to go ahead and update every driver directly from the HP website. Thats if you have any noticeable problems with your hardware if you don't just let the HP update software do its job and update the drivers by itself.

Windows vista home premium continue to give everyone and his mother all kind of problems. I experience so many windows explorer crashes that I end up feeling soar after LOL other problems include really slow start ups and shutdowns, sometimes hangs up when punting to sleep or waking up the laptop. It also crash most of the times when copying or moving large files.

**********WINDOWS 7 COMPATIBLE**********

After 6 months of use I decided to clean format and reinstall Vista since my OS was slow as hell. So I backup all my data and go ahead with the factory reinstall tool using the hard drive partition. Much to my surprise it dint work. The program close and restart but my Vista OS fail to boot. So I try again using the DVD recovery disc I create when I got the laptop. That fail too the recovery tool give me an error that dint appear on the data base in the HP website. So when I was trying not to freak out I remember that a couple weeks ago I downloaded the new Windows 7 RC (release candidate) since my computer fail to boot from the OS and dint performed the recovery due to some weird error I have nothing to lose. So what the hell I may as well try to install Windows 7 in order to at least have a working OS.

Amazing enough Windows 7 install really easy and around 25 minutes later I have a working OS. Not everything works right out of the box though. You will need to carefully check your hardware and see what's working and what's not. The good news is that most drivers that work on vista 64 bit will also work on Windows 7 64 bit. Eventually I manage to install quite a few of the original Vista 64 bit drivers on Windows 7 64 bit. Some others drivers fail to install but when that happened I just use the Vista 32 bit drivers and presto..... now works like a charmed!!!

I found Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit edition to be a really good OS much better than Vista for sure. If you already own this laptop and your planing to keep it for a couple of years it will be a very smart decision to pay the $54 for the upgrade to Windows 7 or try to get the release candidate version for free and try it for yourself first. If your planing on getting this laptop be aware that for the same money you can now get a better one (this is pretty good though)

I needed this notebook next day, and Amazon's reasonable charge for next day delivery (under $20 on a $900 item) allowed me to order it this way. Unfortunately, the confirmation had delivery estimated in 5 days (over a weekend). I called to complain, and was told they were having supply problems. I said the item was in stock when I ordered it, and they offered to refund my shipping. That was nice, but I wanted it the next day. Well, imagine my surprise when it arrived the next day. Nice.

The notebook is beautiful. It's supposed to come with a P7350 2.0 Ghz processor, but instead, it came with a P8400 2.26Ghz processor. Really nice! It does everything you'd want, and it's as fast as Vista allows it to.

Problems:

Of course, the notebook is loaded with trials, and the IE home page set to eBay (of all places). Easy enough to fix, though. Windows update installed a bunch of updates, and HP had updates for the BIOS and most of the drivers. All these updates for a brand new computer?

But even after all those updates, the very cool looking volume slider doesn't work well. It's very choppy and slow to respond. The updates fixed the problem with it not working after sleep, but it's still choppy and slow. HP support couldn't help either.

And Vista. XP is far faster (try copying some files across the network with Vista) and far less annoying (it almost forces you to turn off UAC).

HP does us a disservice by not providing XP drivers for this notebook. I suppose most of the drivers could be located via the internet (not sure about that video camera, though), but how inconvenient. So much so that I'll stick with Vista unless it gets too annoying.

But these problems are few, and none of it distracts from the enjoyment of the notebook. It's a great notebook, and a really good value.

I've had this computer for two years, and I do not feel like I need an upgrade - which is saying a lot. When I first had mine delivered, it crashed consistently enough for it to be clear there was a hardware problem and it went back the next day. Two days later the replacement arrived and I've been happy ever since!

I use this computer between four and ten hours every day, so it definitely gets used. But, it doesn't feel used at all. It is very pretty, the webcam is decent, and it is fast enough to handle Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and multiple browsers running at the same time. It does get goopy with fingerprints very easily, so I find myself wiping it down several times a week, but when shined up it looks like new.

I have to say, though, that with Windows 7RC it is like having a brand-new computer. I've been running Windows 7 for about 5 months now and it has been an extremely smooth, stable transition. The operating system is smaller, faster, and less likely to crash. The only problem that I have had is that the mute button doesn't change between blue and orange when turning on and off, although it still works just fine.

If you get this computer, it's worth upgrading to Windows 7. I know I won't be trading in this computer any time soon.