Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion DV7-1170US 17.0-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Blu-Ray and DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

I bought this notebook in the middle of November 2008. I spent several months trying to find a 17-inch laptop within my budget. I looked at all the major (and some minor) brands, and this was the best value for money. I am a software engineer, website developer, graphic designer, amateur musician, and gamer. I use the notebook for all these things, and this is the perspective from which I will write this review.

PROS:
Good value for money. Just look at the specs then look at the price.

Lots of memory. It comes with 4GB of memory installed and is upgradable to 8GB.

The screen is bright and crisp. It isn't too glossy like other machines where you can see the waves across the screen used for diffusing the glare.

Good battery life for it's class. When performing basic functions that are not graphics intensive, such as browsing the internet, creating documents, etc I get up to 3 hours battery life. If I'm playing a graphics intensive game I get about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Media Remote. I don't use this most of the time. But it comes in handy if I want to control music or movies in Windows Media Player or iTunes from a distance.

Built in microphones are super sensitive.

...so are the touch sensitive buttons. They work as desired.

It's a very beautiful machine. Probably too beautiful. You may get obsessed with keeping it looking shiny, or just totally give up like me.

Enough ports to keep you connected to all your peripherals, and bluetooth to connect to other peripherals wirelessly.

Best speakers I've ever heard on a laptop. That being said, they're still just laptop speakers. The subwoofer produces enough bass to be noticable, which is more than I can say for many other laptop speakers. They are also really loud. If you are watching a movie, you won't need to attach them to external speakers to get good volume.

I can play most games on the highest settings. There are only very view games that I can only play on the next-to-highest settings. There is zero delay when manipulating even extremely large vector graphics in my graphic design software.

I have never run out of memory. For the first time in my life I can truly ignore memory. I open as much applications as I want. Of course, memory is still finite. But I routinely have my browser open, while a virus scan is running in the background, my instant messaging programs open along with other utilities, and playing a graphic intensive game, plus it's running Vista Premium (memory hog). And if the day ever comes when I need more memory, I can double the memory if I wish.

When using music production software like FL Studio or Pro Tools. I get no latency with the sound.

CONS:

The screen is very sensitive to grease and dust. It seems to scratch easily. I am afraid to clean of the screen with ordinary materials because of this. So my screen stays smudgy until I can get some screen cleaner.

There is no direct microphone to speaker output with this sound card and it's drivers (and currently no driver updates that solve this). So you cannot rout you're mic through is if you plan to do some DJ-ing, for example. Also this means that I cannot use it to amplify my guitar as I do with my desktop computer. And programs that do facilitate direct mic to speaker output usually cannot operate without latency. This was a big disappointment for me.

'Dual Independent Headphones' are simply just two headphone jacks with a fancy name. Being able to plug in two headphones or have two outputs is cool. But the word 'Independent' misled me to believe that I could have separate sounds go through each of the jacks - for example, I could have Media Player play through one, while have iTunes play through the other. But I can't.

Hard drive makes horrible clicking noise sometimes. It isn't loud, or noticeable if playing sound from the notebook. But the hard drive should be silent - which it is most of the time - but I find that sometimes, especially after running the notebook for long hours, the hard drive starts to make a clicking noise.

The keyboard isn't backlit. Also, the contrast between the letters on the keys and the colours of the keys may not be sufficient with the glare coming from the screen, or if you have poor eyesight, or are using the laptop in dim light.

It's hard to get a second 320GB hard drive (with mounting bracket) or 4GB memory cards from HP. The last time I checked was about January of this year. However you can get the 320GB hard drive, and get the mounting bracket (required to install it in the second hard drive slot) from a third party vendor.

That's all I have to say for now. Hope this was helpful.

Great computer but like someone else mentioned, the color of the letters/numbers on the keys is so close to the color of the keys that they are very difficult to read. I had to add a USB light to even see them in dim light. I'm surprised HP did this...white would have contrasted much better. The bronze color is very attractive otherwise.

I have been very pleased with this laptop. I knew what I was getting when I ordered it. This is not a laptop to travel or commute frequently with due to its size and weight. But easy enough for me to haul around the house or to the local wifi spots. Plenty of speed and power to run my apps. Love the picture and sound quality when watching DVDs.

Only gripe probably has more to do with Vista than HP. My old Dell running XP took under a minute to wake up from sleep. This beast takes a lot longer. This is ok when I can take the dog out and make tea while it's starting up in the morning. But it's a pain if you just want to check the weather or movie times. Guess I'll have to use my phone for fast web access.

This laptop was a great deal for the price. I use this laptop when I am not at my desktop and often play tf2. TF2 runs pretty well considering the slower cpu. I run at max settings, native res and get an avg of about 30fps. Sometimes I hook this up to my tvs as well. This is a great feature (hdmi or vga) I just wish the cpu was faster. It's also a beautiful laptop. The 17 inch screen is really huge.

In less than 30 days of use, this HP suddenly would not connect to the internet. In checking with a local computer dealer, he said HP was having huge problems with this issue. I am returning this one and will try one replacement. If it does this again, I will move on to another company for my computer needs