Anyone know if the display is good? I have bought a new Dell 17" every year for last 5-6 years. Never had a problem. I usually stick with the Studio line or other ones that are more expensive than the base laptops, but I recently bought an Inspiron 1764 and the screen is bright and detailed, but the display is too contrasty and the colors are a little off. Not bad, but needs to be more accurate for photo editing. Yes, I have corresponded with tech support, and made all availible adjustments, the verdict is it's just a cheap LCD and what do I expect for $800.

Mescalero wrote:You're on your laptop for 16-18 hours a day? How is that even possible?

Yes, because that's pretty much how much time I spend, as I'm homebound nursing an injury. Even when I watch TV, cook, etc, the laptop is on in front of me. I use it to monitor patients, the lab, email, entertainment, research, etc. I sleep about 6 hrs a night.

Pathetic, huh?

Quentin2 wrote:I have a year old DV7 but mine has an Intel 2.26 dual core, and a radeon HD 4650, which is about the minimum for gaming, which it handles quite well. It's a bit difficult to find a laptop under a grand with a decent video card.

The Acer Aspire AS7745G-6572 17.3-Inch Laptop ($995.36 & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime) has similar specs to the HP and has an HD 5650 video card. I'd wait for Black Friday if I was looking for something like that.

stripe2006 wrote:Anyone know if the display is good? I have bought a new Dell 17" every year for last 5-6 years. Never had a problem. I usually stick with the Studio line or other ones that are more expensive than the base laptops, but I recently bought an Inspiron 1764 and the screen is bright and detailed, but the display is too contrasty and the colors are a little off. Not bad, but needs to be more accurate for photo editing. Yes, I have corresponded with tech support, and made all availible adjustments, the verdict is it's just a cheap LCD and what do I expect for $800.

I have an older version of this with a weaker CPU but the screen, keyboard, ports, etc appear identical. I'm not a photographer or even a videophile but I'm very happy with the screen. It's one of the best I've used. Contrast and brightness are very nice and BluRay discs look great. The worst thing is the limited vertical viewing angle but I'm told that it's the same for all laptops. It looks just fine for all normal sitting angles, regardless of height but being injured, I sometimes have to view lying on my side. If that's not your situation, the vertical angle should be fine.

buffaloed wrote:The Acer Aspire AS7745G-6572 17.3-Inch Laptop ($995.36 & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime) has similar specs to the HP and has an HD 5650 video card. I'd wait for Black Friday if I was looking for something like that.

HP's are known for having more frills and ports than other laptops and this laptop is no exceptions. Although $100 less than the Acer in your link, this HP has 2gb more RAM, a 140 gb larger HD, a remote control, and an eSATA port.

Can I play starcraft 2 on this???

My daughter and I both bought DV7's off of woot back in April (this one: http://www.woot.com/blog/viewentry.aspx?id=12693) and we both love them. Neither of us has had any problems with either of them.

Just an FYI.

NEW YORK BUYERS BEWARE

Since being acquired by Amazon, Woot has been collecting sales tax on all purchases. For cheaper items, it may not matter but the tax on this laptop for NY City residents is $79.79. That may affect your purchase decision.

ps - For a $5 refund on shipping if you pay sales tax, put in this code: "TAXSUCKS"

pps - it's not Amazon or Woot's fault. NY State is forcing them to do it and Amazon has filed a lawsuit which will likely to reach the Supreme Court.

yeah customer service stinks with HP they charge you extra for help on a their product

Not a bad price... but the graphics will hold you back. Why not get something a bit smaller but with better graphics, for the same price?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115789

Does anyone know if this comes with MSN Toolbar or eBay?

Also, is Microsoft Portal better than the one from Valve?

Thanks!

TheGreenHornetVsKato wrote:Can I play starcraft 2 on this???

Yes - but not as well as you might hope... probably on Medium/High settings.

johnbitzer wrote:Just FYI, all core7s scale in speed this way. You don't overclock anything, the processor does it automatically, it's called turbo boost.

Also, lower clocked multicore processors don't run worse than higher clocked ones with fewer processors, and farmville is not a processing powerhouse, it's a piece of crap, so I doubt her chugging is due to the processor, it's more likely bad zynga programming.

Saying all i7's scale this way is incorrect, what you are referring to is a bios setting, and if you ever bothered to watch what the setting did, it automatically increases processor specs and voltage. Which is the same thing as over clocking. Just because it is a bios feature does not mean it should be done or is safe to use without adverse effects. Read the warning it gives, it's not just there for decoration.

As to your comment about higher clocked lower cores, they most certainly do when the application that is being used is not optimized to take advantage of multiple cores.

As to the farmville bit, I know for a fact that is what it is, it is not merely a "guess".

atmotto wrote:Ever since you guys sold out to Amazon, I haven't seen those terrific low priced deals that made me love you for all these years. Where are those wacky items I can't live without for those unbelievable prices I can't find anywhere else?

Agreed. I haven't actually pulled the trigger on a purchase in a long time. Missing the old Woot....

I have this machine except with 4 GB of RAM, a 7200 rpm 500 GB HD and no Blu-Ray and I must say I'm quite satisfied with it. Woot's model has a 5400 rpm hard disk, so you can expect a slight loss in performance when loading and copying large files; I'd upgrade it to a 7200 rpm model so as not to slow down the system as a whole.

The processor is blazing fast and does get blazing hot at times, so beware of that if you like to use the computer on your lap; you're better off using it on a desk with a cooling plate. The screen in this thing is otterific, although not the 1080i you'd want for Blu-Ray, with crystal clear images, bright light and plenty of work space. Though not too portable, it actually seems lighter than the 17" HP DV8000 I owned previously, and can be carried in a Targus backpack that looks (and is) huge. Also huge is the AC adapter, about the size of a small brick at 120W, which makes my friends' 14" or 15" powerpacks look like children toys.

You absolutely must listen to the sound on this thing to believe just how loud it gets for a laptop, all while keeping a decent sound quality with the subwoofer. The internal stereo mic is great for voice calls and IDT audio config can very effectively cancel background noise and echo.

The greatest downside for me is the glossy finish, which gets first slippery and then sticky with any palm sweat, just like fancy mobiles. If you can live with constantly cleaning your own grease, it's not too bad, though.

All in all, I'd give my machine a solid 9, the 10 not being achieved due to the glossy finish and high temperatures (which some have said could even melt parts of the video sub-system and render the computer useless; Everest tells me the GPU diode gets to 75C (167F) when running full screen video or games).

I've also had a laptop in this series and the fan overworked itself constantly until it burned out, taking the sound card and parts of the motherboard with it. All conveniently a few weeks after my warranty expired. Not sure that I would go back to an HP.

I got an email today that TigerDirect is offering a Toshiba Satellite A665-S6065 for the same $899. price. Both machines are Core i7, but the TigerDirect laptop only has 4 GB of RAM (vs 6 GB here), only 16" screen (vs 17.3" here), only standard DVD (vs Blu-Ray here), and only 500 GB Hard Drive (vs 640 GB here).

So based on specs along, this HP Pavilion is a better deal than today's email special deal from TigerDirect. Funniest part is that Amazon.com is offering the TigerDirect deal at http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-A665-S6065-TruBrite-16-Inch/dp/B003MVZ8UG

I would like a Core i7 laptop to replace my Dell X1 ultralight Centrino laptop, but my old laptop is only 2.5 lbs and this one weighs a ton by comparision.

I bought this computer over a year ago, and love it :-) However, I've had two problems. 1)The left mouse button broke very quickly. It's still useable, but kind of annoying when you want to click efficiently. 2) the sound has always been terrible. I've tried various drivers and other troubleshooting procedures, without luck. The sound works, but it sounds garbled.

RidgeChris wrote:I'm not a frequent commenter but have bought about 20 things from this website over the last couple of years.

I have a question for the Woot Staff.

What is up with all of these super expensive Woots? I don't come here to buy laptops and deskop computers every day and certainly not for refurb Phillips TVs.

Woot seems to have lost it's way as to what made it great.

Sorry to see that this website has decided to move in this direction.

It is a shame.....

I have come to this website every day for the last 2 years. Now I'm thinking about removing this bookmark from my laptop.

Something for everyone. When Woot offers low-end items, such as the HDTVs they sold yesterday, some folks like them, and others complain. When they offer high-end items, such as today's laptop or knives, some folks...

Well, you get the picture.

sdc100 wrote:HP's are known for having more frills and ports than other laptops and this laptop is no exceptions. Although $100 less than the Acer in your link, this HP has 2gb more RAM, a 140 gb larger HD, a remote control, and an eSATA port.

Well, I could always use more frills.

mikehsk wrote:Why does no one ever discuss the battery life on these over powered laptops? I'm guessing it is about five minutes on a full charge.

If I have to plug it in to use it, I'll stick with a desktop.

According to PCMag, "Rarely does a laptop measure up to its manufacturer's battery life claims. The HP Pavilion dv7-3180us is one of the few exceptions. HP claims you'll get up to 4 hours 15 minutes of battery life from the 8-cell (73WHr) battery; we got 4 hours 3 minutes on MobileMark 2007. That's an impressive time for a big, power-hungry desktop replacement."

jjj611 wrote:I recently had my first experience with HP customer support. I had been given a pair of HP wireless mice and neither worked. I called in, did the troubleshooting and during the call probably spent half an hour on silent holds for an unknown reason. Overall the call took an hour and fifteen minutes.

They decided to replace one to make sure it wasn't the computer and then replace the second after I had tested the first. When I called in again I got the pleasure of spending over an hour again while I did the exact same troubleshooting/silent holding.

Obviously this may not be the case with their laptops but I will no longer purchase any HP products based on this experience.

I have had similar experiences with HP customer service myself in the past. My most frustrating one where I called for a
minor driver issue with a built in fingerprint reader and when customer service got to the point in his flip cards where he said "we are now going to reformat the hard drive and restore it to factory settings"... of course the reply was "no, WE are not". I got a ticket #, backed up my stuff and reformatted and restored and wound up sending it in under a warranty repair.

That being said, I am in for one.

A decent deal. Even better than the 899 quad core Toshiba that Tigerdirect is selling today... unless you want a smaller form factor of 16". The Toshiba has the 330M vid card which is slightly better but it doesn't have blueray or bluetooth for that matter.

For a multi-media machine they really could've done better on this graphics card though.

BigRedDogATL wrote:I got an email today that TigerDirect is offering a Toshiba Satellite A665-S6065 for the same $899. price. Both machines are Core i7, but the TigerDirect laptop only has 4 GB of RAM (vs 6 GB here), only 16" screen (vs 17.3" here), only standard DVD (vs Blu-Ray here), and only 500 GB Hard Drive (vs 640 GB here).

The Toshiba is, arguably, a better brand though. And a lot of people want a smaller form factor, though 16" isn't very small It has a slightly better video card with the 330M, but yeah, it falls down on the blueray etc.

Holy bloatware Batman!

Can HP shove more CRAP onto this system? Wild Tangent crap games, a horrible AV program, and eBay? What, can't people type 'ebay.com' into a browser?

You'll spend the greater part of a day uninstalling all that crap.

I just wanted to tell you good luck. We're all counting on you.

blueflamingo wrote:The problem with a laptop this size is you can't find a carrying case for it that does not cost 25% of the price you paid for the computer. Size doesn't matter.

You say you can't find a carring case for this size laptop, at a reasonable cost???
Say What! where have you been looking?
As far a Good Thin Soft case,
Swiss brand makes them
Walmart $30
Best Buy $40
Full Size add $30-70

blueflamingo wrote:The problem with a laptop this size is you can't find a carrying case for it that does not cost 25% of the price you paid for the computer. Size doesn't matter.

I have a 17" hp. I got my case at best buy for 50$, and still have a front pocket for all my junk. GOOD JOB WOOT! Great laptop,wish i needed another.

oldcqr wrote:Holy bloatware Batman!

Can HP shove more CRAP onto this system? Wild Tangent crap games, a horrible AV program, and eBay? What, can't people type 'ebay.com' into a browser?

You'll spend the greater part of a day uninstalling all that crap.

I just wanted to tell you good luck. We're all counting on you.

So what, you spend an hour or two taking off the things you don't want. This computer will last you a long time. Small price to pay.

I have the 18.4" version of this. First off it's a great laptop. Even better if you do what I did and reformat it right away and reinstall windows 7 without the HP crapware. The Nvidia 230m isn't the most powerful graphics card, but you can overclock it fairly easily and get it to speeds of the GT 240M. Mine runs starcraft 2 fine at 1080p resolution with medium graphic settings.

Every computer now a days comes with alot of bloatware, any enthusiast will do a clean reinstall. Right now Gateway is doing the best in the least amount of bloatware.

funnylookinhat wrote:Not a bad price... but the graphics will hold you back. Why not get something a bit smaller but with better graphics, for the same price?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115789

The 330M isn't that much better, it's practically the same gpu. Plus no blu ray 2gb less ram lower resolution screen. Way too many trade offs for a gpu that is just a smidgen better.

NightGhost wrote:Here's a video review (not too exciting).

Thrilling!!

Wow, I have this exact model and love it!. I use it as a desktop replacement so I don't carry it around. It would be very big and heavy if I did that regularly. I have read comments here and elsewhere and can say that I have not had any of the problems others have complained about. Bought mine from Amazon last fall and paid around $1300. I would buy again if I needed another one, especially at the $899 price. As I mentioned, I bought as a desktop replacement, so I intended to have external keyboard monitor etc, with the laptop in a drawer below the desk. What I found was that I liked the keyboard so well, I have the laptop on top of the desk with a second monitor. No complaints, 10 months in. Hope yours works as well.

oldcqr wrote:Holy bloatware Batman!

Can HP shove more CRAP onto this system? Wild Tangent crap games, a horrible AV program, and eBay? What, can't people type 'ebay.com' into a browser?

You'll spend the greater part of a day uninstalling all that crap.

I just wanted to tell you good luck. We're all counting on you.

How-To: Get Rid of Bloatware on Your New Laptop

KidKobun wrote:What are your thoughts on the Samsung's R580 with the Intel i5 430?
Or, as a bit of a cheaper alternative, Best Buy has the R580 with an i3, 500GB HDD and 4GB memory for $749.99.

Anyone have any thoughts, or experience with Samsung?

Where do you people live Hell my house has an A/C unit that keeps my house cool along with all my electronics. Quit watching corn under the covers & your stuff won’t overheat. HP has been around a while and for a problem to be as big as everyone on here suggest that would prompt a recall of merchandise and I have yet to see that happen.

NightGhost wrote:Here's a video review (not too exciting).

I laughed, I cried, I died a little inside.

My Woot! finger is twitching, so I'll probably go in for one of these to replace my current laptop which is having "issues".

biggiebird wrote:Where do you people live Hell my house has an A/C unit that keeps my house cool along with all my electronics. Quit watching corn under the covers & your stuff won’t overheat. HP has been around a while and for a problem to be as big as everyone on here suggest that would prompt a recall of merchandise and I have yet to see that happen.

Out here on the farm, there isn't much else to do but watch corn. I mean, it's no fun at all watching wheat.

Seriously, laptop coolers are cheap, and they really work.

$580
New: Refurb HP AMD Dual Core 2.5GHz 17" Laptop w/ Blu-ray for $580 + free shipping
JR.com offers the factory-refurbished, 7.69-lb. HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx AMD Turion II 2.5GHz 17.3" Widescreen Notebook, model no. WA794UA#ABA, for $589.99. Coupon code "GEICO10" cuts it to $579.99. With free shipping, that's $25 below our August mention and the lowest total price we could find by $59. (It's also one of the least expensive laptops we've seen with a Blu-ray player.) It features an AMD Turion II Ultra M620 2.5GHz dual-core processor, 17.3" 1600x900 LED-backlit widescreen LCD, 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200 rpm hard drive, combo Blu-ray ROM player / dual-layer DVD burner with LightScribe, 802.11n wireless, webcam, media card reader, 8-cell battery, HDMI output, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. A 90-day HP warranty applies

RidgeChris wrote:I'm not a frequent commenter but have bought about 20 things from this website over the last couple of years.

I have a question for the Woot Staff.

What is up with all of these super expensive Woots? I don't come here to buy laptops and deskop computers every day and certainly not for refurb Phillips TVs.

Woot seems to have lost it's way as to what made it great.

Sorry to see that this website has decided to move in this direction.

It is a shame.....

I have come to this website every day for the last 2 years. Now I'm thinking about removing this bookmark from my laptop.

Not to be rude, but I don't think they care about you. Since they still sell this expensive stuff.

Woot has gone high dollar. There are plenty of low dollar sites.
You don't make money selling $5 earbuds, when you can pump out a few hundred $900 computers or $300 TV's.

Personally I like the new Woot, gives me an alternative to WallyWorld.

Mehhhh.... same deal available from about 5 other online tech vendors (and Amazon most likely). What's happening to my precious Woot!?

Does this deal include the CDs for the software, ex. Windows 7 run disk.....