HP Pavilion Laptops - Decent?

As I mentioned in this thread, my school has an HP Pavilion DV6 available online through the bookstore. Do any of you have any experience with HP Pavilion laptops, and would you recommend them?

I’ve had an HP Pavilion – don’t recall the models, but older, with AMD 1.8GHz processors (IIRC). It was a fine computer, battery was amazingly good, and the AC connection didn’t fail. The DVD drive failed, and would have needed a new motherboard or some mad soldering skillz to fit a new one in.

I liked it fine – I replaced the LCD and it wasn’t too hard to open up the case to try to fix the drive, swap in a friends hard drive to crib some data.

My sister had about the same model and her AC connection failed, but that’s not exactly unusual for notebooks, from what I understand.

Go for it, if you like the keyboard, I’d say, but I have no inside knowledge.

Have to say that my HP Pavilion was the best laptop I ever owned. Sadly the power port where the AC adaptor plugs into failed and it has been collecting dust ever since. I had the laptop about 3 years when that happened. It is a pretty expensive repair, but I am going to try to do it myself.

I had no complaints about the speed or anything. What I liked so much about it was the price, the huge screen and for some reason the layout of the case. The area where you rest your palms was large and the case itself was very pleasing to the touch. Other than that I can’t quite put into words why I liked it so much, but my wife agrees as well. We currently have an Acer (that I am typing this on) and an IBM Thinkpad. We would gladly trade either of those to have our HP working again.

Well said. If you happen to think about it, if you’re successful at replacing the AC connector on the motherboard (or possibly just resoldering the existing one) could you check back in? I’ve seen some demonstrations online, but it’s never clicked for me.

I’d like to repair my sister’s computer and give it to a family member who really needs to learn how to use a computer, but it’s damned expensive to fix, as you said, by the pros.

I agree with your praises, also – big screen, and, main reason, I loved the keyboard. It was also cheap for notebooks at the time and seemed to handle all the music synthesizing software I could throw at it just fine, despite having 292MB of RAM (IIRC). XP ran perfectly on it, as well, and I think I learned a lot by fiddling with the guts of the OS and tweaking it (although that knowledge is absolutely useless now!).

I will post an update when I finally get around to fixing it. The repair shop wanted $250 to fix and almost all of that was labor. The part is $35. I figure if I can fix it I have my laptop back and if not I am in no worse shape than now. I usually am successful at repairs of this sort, so I will give it a shot. What’s the worse that could happen? :smiley:

Also, the one that I got had 2gig of memory and I upgraded to 4 gig (although only 3 show up) with a memory stick I got on Ebay for almost nothing. The only real problem I have had is the DVD burner. It still burns, but it had a feature that would “etch” a picture or text on the DVD face. You had to purchase a specific DVD to do this, but it was great. No more paper labels or sharpies! However for some reason this feature doesn’t work correctly any longer. Nothing major, but the only trouble I had with it.

Oh, and not to go on and on I will say that my sister purchased a Mac Pro roughly the same time that I got my HP. I paid about $800 for mine she paid about $2400 for hers. After using both I couldn’t believe that she paid $1200 more. I really didn’t see anything superior with the Mac. I will tell you that I was slightly envious of the lighted keyboard the Mac had. The letters were backlit so you could see them in the dark.

I have exclusively owned HP laptops for the past 8 years. Current one is a DV7

Bad issue: They run hot. As in melt the world hot unless you use a cooling pad, or only use it in a room cool enough to hang beef. I gave one of my old ones to a buddy after I got a new one, and he used it without a cooling pad in a non airconditioned room [Bucharest in July] and more or less caused the classic for the HP DV series motherboard meltdown.

The 17 inch diagonal screen and internals make it fairly heavy. Get a wheely computer case.

Stupid touchbar controlling the DVD play/audio system is sensitive and very easy to accidentally swipe something and start the DVD player up. Deadly if you are fighting something and all of a sudden your screen goes into DVD mode:mad: Well, I also detest touchpads, I always use a trackman laser trackball. Many people like the touchpads. YMMV. You can use a mechanical button to turn off the touchpad so it doesnt accidentally FUBAR something.

Yes, the socket for the power plug is a damage point, and it is a pain in the arse because it loosens up and if you do not keep the battery out of the machine when you are plugged in you can kill the battery until it will not hold a charge, then if you unplug you end up doing an improper shutdown which can damage your HDD. I wish it screwed in, or had some sort of retaining clip.

Good points - zippy enough to run 2 instances of EVE Online and mine, though if I am going ganking and there is going to be a fair number of ships in system fighting I have to fall back to only 1 instance. I can also play WoW, or LOTRO, and pretty much any game I have recently beta’d.

Good screen clarity, good clicky feel on the keyboard, full size keyboard with number pad. Good for people with large hands. I would love a backlit keyboard though :smiley:

Speaker system is altec lansing, OK but a bit tinny, I use earphones if I want music fidelity.

WiFi is nice, I rarely have issues with connectivity.

And they can be cheap - I picked up this DV7 for $400 on UBID.

Careful. HP notebooks rank dead last among major manufacturers for reliability and service.