 This laptop is a DREAM! |
| Review Date: November 13, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Almost Sixty!, United States |
| I was looking for a laptop that would have the graphics features and speed of a desktop PC, and this is it! It handles my Adobe CS4 products and web design software beautifully. I bought the three-year warranty...expensive but I was told I'd be disappointed in support the first year otherwise. I plan to have this product a long time. It is sleek and beautiful. Finding a carrying case was a challenge, but the Toshiba 18.4" does the job. After much research and reading many reviews, I can see why there are very few complaints against this HP Pavilion! |
Strong Laptop
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| Review Date: January 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Robert Jordan, Midwest USA |
I have experience as an I.T. dept. supervisor (over 200 PC's and laptops on site), and bought this laptop for personal use @ home, wanted a quad core laptop because I am also a private pilot and like to use MS Flight Simulator X, which after the most recent update will utilize all available CPU threads (i.e. all four cores on a quad machine). I spent some time researching which laptop videocards had decent 3D performance and found that the ATI HD4650 was roughly equivalent in most 3D benchmarks to between a nVidia 240M and a 250M, but 250M's and above I could only find on higher end dual core machines and some high end Core i7 quad machines both of which I could not find models that fit my budget for the purchase, which was to spend no more than $1050. I first saw this HP DV7-2270us laptop on one of Amazon's competitor's sites, and it had numerous good reviews. The Core i7 machines being beyond what I wanted to spend, I knew a Core 2 Quad Q9000 based laptop would need to be it, and when I found this model and then researched the performance of the ATI HD4650 video card I knew this was the one. Just had to find the best deal on it and that was where Amazon came through as the clear the winner. At time of this review I see the price has increased on it, but I paid $[...] a week and a half ago, making it $[...] after the $[...] mail in rebate kicks in. A win for staying on budget, too.
This laptop benchmarks strong using Passmark Performance Test 7.0. I ran the trial version of Passmark on it and the scores were as follows:
Rating (overall): 1084.65
CPU score: 3271
2D video score: 223
3D video score: 508
RAM memory score: 874
Disk score: 680
CD/DVD RW score: 0
As you can see, I ganked the CD/DVDRW score-- I didn't have any CD media in the drive when the test suite was ran. I did re-run the suite with a CD in and the CD Score was 208, which brought the Rating up from 1084.65 to 1117. But you can only upload your scores once to Passmark's online database and I had already uploaded the first time, so the scores listed above for my DV7-2270us are the ones in their database, date/time stamped as 08/January/2010 3:26pm. Most of the Core i7 machines (720q) in their database were scoring around 3600 for the CPU score, so the Q9000 quad is not too far behind in this benchmark. Passmark is a multi threaded benchmark so it uses all available cores.
A couple things to address what i have read as common 'cons' against this laptop in assorted buyer reviews:
Screen not brought enough even on highest setting: can be made much brighter by going into Advanced Power Settings. Once there you will see that by default screen brightness is set to 50% while on battery BUT ALSO while on AC power. So it can be set higher here. You have to poke around in Battery and Power settings section of Control Panel until you find the screen with Advanced Power Settings in small blue underlined font near bottom of the page as a hyperlink and click on that to access a bunch of hidden settings for how the laptop behaves on either battery or AC power.
Speaker sound is flat and tin-like: In the task bar tray there is an icon for the IDT Audio Settings. Once opened, under the tab for Speakers and Dual Headphones there is a group of settings for SRS Premium. One of the settings is for SRS Trubass Speaker Size. It is set to Large by default. Setting it to Small significantly richened or deepened the sound sound fidelty on my DV7-2270us. I know that seems like the inverse of what should happen, but it certainly did significantly improve sound quality out of the laptop speakers by selecting Small as the speaker size for that setting. I listened to several MP3 files after adjusting the SRS sound in this applet and they sounded pretty good for laptop speakers. But for full fidelity obviously a good external speaker set would be needed since these are after all tiny laptop speakers, I'm just detailing how I made a noticeable improvement to the out-of-the-box default sound quality this laptop is set to when it ships.
All in all, I am very happy with this purchase. This is a strong laptop and highly recommended. It has been working perfectly so far. Very fast, fan runs all the time (necessary to cool the quad core Q9000 CPU) but its pretty quiet and I don't find it bothersome at all.
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What a sleek and fast laptop... and for this price!
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| Review Date: January 19, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Pierre Huguet, San Diego, CA United States |
This is a beautiful laptop. Very fast and the screen is resolution and contrast is goregeous. I use it for software development and presentations. It is well above my performance expectations as far as speed.
The video card is very fast, and supports dual screens very nicely.
For estetics purpose I suggest you get a Wireless mobile mouse 6000 which looks very well assorted with the laptop and has a tiny receiver you can leave in the laptop at all times.
Processor and memory ops rate a 7, Graphics 6.6 and disks 5.9 (over a max of 7.9). a very good score.
The keyboard is big and offers a numeric pad too. Overall I am very pleased with this laptop.
One thing I regret is that there is no free slots to upgrade it to 8gb of ram. You'll have to throw the memory and buy 2x4gb dimms if you want to do this.... too bad. |
Great "home" computer
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| Review Date: January 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Gulsah Metinoz, Miami, FL |
| I've been very satisfied with the HP Pavilion 17.3". Ok, it's not a very mobile laptop, but that's not what to expect with a 17", it's a home computer that you can use at the desk, on the coach, at the dinning table,... The pre-loaded HP software, including the HP "docking station" is fine to use, of course you don't need it. The graphics and CPU performance are great. In the end, this was the best price for high-end performance, without going into super high-end gaming setups. As a plus, the external case (with in-mold decoration from Nissha) is super cool. |
Incredible computer, wow performance.
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| Review Date: January 31, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Gerardo Ramirez Duran, |
This is the best computer I ever have bought.
Is a full desktop replacement. The keyboard is really comfortable.
I use it with all kind of applications, even with intensive graphic applications and the performance is outstanding.
I fully recommend this product to everybody who be interested in a powerful machine. |
Fantastic
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| Review Date: February 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Julian Hoxha, |
| I don't want to make it long, it's great, fantastic, quick response in every click, very good tool for a very good price and very stylish looking. |
Great computer!
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| Review Date: January 1, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Diego Ross, Phoenix AZ |
When i first ordered this computer, i was very excited to get it. After waiting a few days it finally arrived, althought it was late in the day, i would've prefered to get it in the morning. Much to my disappointment it was DOA (dead on arival). After a quick phone call to amazon's customer support, another was sent to me the next day. Worked right out of the box! I do a lot of 3d modelling using Maya 2009 and zbrush and both worked flawlessly, although rendering with Renderman can quickly eat up the battery life. Other than that, no complaints, a very powerful and surprisingly cool computer. It has two exhaust ports, the one in the back gets a little warm, but is definately a lot cooler than any other laptops. i rate a 5 out of 5.
Included Programs:
-60 Day trial of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student.
-Adobe Acrobat Reader
-Microsoft Works
-60 Day trial Norton Internet Security 2009
-HP MediaSmart Suite
-CyberLink DVD Suite
-Corel Paint Shop Pro X2
-Corel VideoStudio 12
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Great Laptop
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| Review Date: December 5, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Bradley S. Bakalyar, |
| very good piture only thing I would have done different was to have 8 gis ram installed grafics card eats up 1024mb of ram |
Great function but lacking form at $1000
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| Review Date: November 15, 2009 |
| Reviewer: F. Khan, Trinidad. And Tobago |
The cons:
1) No roll back of OS as drivers are scarce for XP
2) Finish is easily tarnished leading to pseudo-professional look. Gateways 'fingerprint resistant' finish around for years.
3) Most jacks are to the sides leading to an untidy setup. Some newer standard jacks not labelled .
4) Blu-ray ROM should have been included for price
5) No Installation/Driver Disk included in case hard drive files are unuseable.
6) keys are easily mistaken as it difficult to feel the boundaries of keys.
7) Screen is somewhat dimmer than expected for this class of machine
8) Alternate function keys are difficult to discern as they are all in WHITE
9) backlit keys would be a lot more useful than the backlit HP logo
The Pros:
1) meets performance specifications. 3D rendering in Autodesk Revit is brisk.
2) wide screen for those doing Arch/Engineering drawings.
3) temperature is lower than i would expect for 7200rpm HDD and quad core processor i.e. cool to hands
4) relatively quiet fan sounds more like ambient noise
5) no latches to break during open and close process
6) Full keyboard is a plus to those using programs for Accounting, Engineering,
7) Relatively slim and average 8+lbs weight considering size.
8) built-in camera has a built in light
9) sound is crisp and full of depth with subwoofer built-in
10)Crome looking accents add aesthetics are compensate for 'dust and sweat magnet' finish
11)Screen is crisp although I still believe additional brightness would welcomed by most users
12) although I believe keys should be better constructed as they are the primary input they are adequately firm to the touch to compensate for the lack in chamfered or indented or dished keys.
Verdict: great machine that requires greater thought into the ergonomics, appearance and overall form.
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