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

I bought my laptop last year. So far the only problem i experienced was the noise from the fan.I send it to HP and they fix it without any problem. Last month, I upgrade my Windows Vista 64 bit to Windows 7 Professional 32bit and it works like a charm. With regards to landscape photography,the LCD screen doesn't display the accurate color because i calibrate mine several times using "eye-one monitor calibrator" and still doesn't display the right color compare with the prints. So,i'm using my laptop screen as my extended screen. If you're not very particular on how the monitor was calibrated, this laptop is good.

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.

I would give this 3.5 stars, but that's not an option. I have this laptop for about a month now, and paid $700 from JR with a mail-in rebate. Not bad.

Pros: It looks AWESOME. The picture displayed above doesn't really do justice. Everything is shiny and beautiful. Aside from the sleek chrome look of the keyboard, there's a litup touch pad control for the volume and DVD playing functions. Very stylish. The computer functions pretty well. I haven't had problems yet, although I plan to uninstall the 3-month trial of Norton and get AVG.

Cons: There are only 2 major downsides I have encountered so far: 1- there's this incessant, light yet high-pitched humming that comes out of the computer. It drives me CRAZY sometimes. It's very faint..so I dunno if my ears are just extra keen or something. I called tech support and troubleshooting did not take care of it. I think I've gotten somewhat used to it though. 2- The volume control really is SCHIZOPHRENIC. I'm talking about the cool-looking touchpad control. You can easily adjust volume through external speaker control, the mini icon in the bottom right corner of the screen or through the remote (nifty, yet cheap plastic) they give you. I'm going to try troubleshooting that by re-installing the touchpad software. The volume control is a problem maybe 20% of the time anyway. Really not a huge deal.

Overall I like this computer a lot. Serves its purpose and looks great. A few kinks here and there. I wouldn't pay $1000 for this though. Wait until it's listed for $750.

I had this computer for 14 months when suddenly went dead. I took it in to have it checked out and they said 'the system board is broken' and wanted $500 to be repaired. The computer shop said that he this model in "all the time' for repairs.
I called Hewlitt Packard and they wanted even more than that to 'fix.'
Not only did I lose my data, but I am out a $1,000 laptop. I would not recommend any one buy a Hewlitt Packard.

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)