( 15 reviews )
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Posted: 04-08-2009
Bought this sytem from Circuit City a couple of years ago for about $440, including an upgraded to a gig of ram. It came with Vista Basic, but at that time Vista was not listed as a supported OS for this notebook, and I had chronic blue screens of death for about six months, but constant Vista patches were being supplied by Microsoft/HP, and the patches finally made the system rock solid (this may have been why the system was so cheap initially). System ran fine, but hot, for the next 18 months or so, then a few weeks ago the Wifi died, called HP support, and they said that there was a motherboard issue that caused certain symptoms, one of which I had, and that they had extended the 1 year warranty for those symptoms. They replaced my motherboard, added a thermal plate, and fixed my screen, which had developed 3 subtle 1" vertical lines in the middle, all for free and with overnight shipping included. Now my system is whisper quiet, the fan hardly ever comes on, and the system runs ice cold. I am not sure who was responsible for shipping an unsuitable OS initially (CC or HP), but cudos to HP for eventually getting the OS right and for standing by their products when the motherboard began to show some serious issues out of warranty. I will buy HP again.
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Posted: 02-27-2009
I bought this laptop about 18 months ago, and was pretty pleased with it, especially after I upgraded the memory. Unfortunately, just before the laptop's first anniversary with me the WiFi suddenly stopped working. Shortly after that, I began to have trouble getting it to boot. I was just barely within the warranty period, so I shipped it back to HP for service. They were very quick in getting the unit back to me, with a new motherboard installed. Within 4 or 5 months however, the display developed a permanent green vertical line about an inch in from the right edge of the screen. Then one of the USB ports stopped working. Then the other two ports died. It's still usable, as long as you don't need to connect any USB devices, and don't mind the flawed display, but if I had it to do over again, I'd buy something else!
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Posted: 05-03-2008
I purchased this computer for $350 after rebates from Fry's a few months ago. For basic browsing and office needs, this computer works just fine. However, I have some definite problems with this computer: * 3 USB ports are not enough. Adding a hub will slow down your rate of copying large files back and forth to an external drive, so you will need to attach IO devices directly to the computer. * The DVD burner takes a long time to burn a DVD, compared to my Compaq Presario desktop. * The nVidia video card has a bug with an external monitor. Unless you turn off the monitor, if you let is automatically shut off, the cursor may disappear when using this screen. The workaround is to turn on cursor trails, but this makes the cursor less smooth to use. * The hardware is 32-bit. I upgraded the memory to 4GB, but, due to the hardware limitation of the laptop, the amount of memory recognized is less than 3GB. But, again, considering that this laptop sells at half the price of other laptops, it's a very good price, despite my irritations with it.
