mbs1960 wrote:Yikes! this one gets hotter than a runaway Japanese Nuclear Reactor Core...Get thee a cooling pad!

I am not sure if I should laugh at this or not. Would it be wrong to laugh at this?

riocobra wrote:90 day warranty. It was a refurbished machine from Woot.

Oh that sucks. I'm sorry.

no internal webcam and mic?

I have had a nearly identical Pavilion dv7 for about six months, and i thought I would note a few things.
I paid $1200 for mine new (vs. this is refurbished), but mine also has several significant upgrades:
- 2 x 500gb 7200 rpm hard drives
- i7 (720Q) processor (quad, up to 2.8 GHz)
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (1GB DDR3 dedicated)
- 6GB DDR3 memory
At the time there was a deal for a cheap warranty, so I saved almost $200 on a three year accident forgiveness plan.
The purchase has worked out great for me. But based on what I paid for an upgraded version, how good of a deal is $500 for this less powerful, less well equipped, refurbished model?
I do love this laptop and would recommend it, since I haven't found more than minor issues.
Some things I want to note:
- It doesn't clarify anywhere, but it is worth noting that the 9-cell battery is oversized. When I first tested it, I got over three hours of constant use with full back-light, so this model with smaller parts and only one hard drive should be better. It raises the back almost an inch, which I like because it provides a better typing angle and improved airflow. It also, however, makes it a bit awkward on some cooling pads and in some cases/backpacks.
- The touchpad is easy to get used to, but definitely not the best out there. The left/right click buttons are integrated, so leaving a finger on the button while moving the mouse doesnt work- but none of this is an issue if you buy a mouse, and its fine for short usage.
- The "subwoofer" is half brilliant/ half gimmick. The sound quality is great, but its still only laptop speakers, and they aren't terribly loud.
- The fans are powerful, which unfortunately also means occasionally loud. I would recommend a cooling pad.

super slow hard drive

TTM77 wrote:no internal webcam and mic?

it has both integrated- i have one and they work great

This machine comes with Windows Home Premium. For those who do not know, Windows 7 also comes in Professional and Ultimate editions. The features that Home does not have that the others have are:

-Run many Windows XP business programs in Windows XP Mode (separate download).

-Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.

-In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions, you can back up to a home or business network.

-Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker. (Ultimate Version)

-Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages. (Ultimate Edition)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare?T1=tab15

For most people, you are not missing much. You can buy an Anytime upgrade from home to professional or home to ultimate

Home to Professional - $79.99 at newegg.com
Home to Ultimate - $129.99 at newegg.com

a8le wrote:super slow hard drive

They do come faster I agree, but it seems pretty standard. Even the $1,500 Macbook pro with an intel i7 core processor has a 5,400 RPM drive.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Apple&%23174%3B+-+MacBook&%23174%3B+Pro+/+Intel&%23174%3B+Core&%23153%3B+i7+Processor+/+13.3%22+Display/9755395.p?id=1218167391965&skuId=9755395&cmp=RMX&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=9755395

i24u wrote:Sorry better deals out there. Check Dell outlet. I scored at 15.6 studio 1558 with i-5 520m, 15.6 1080p screen, back light keyboard, 6gb memory, 5450 graphic card, bluetooth, for $625 with shipping and tax. Plus one year warranty.

Yeah, Lenovo outlet had a sale most of last month with outstanding deals like that. OTOH, Lenovo don't offer many 17" models under about 2 grand...

One thing on this, integrated graphics, I doubt it can game much, and not sure about upgrading.

On the bee link, I thought it was terrible - bunch of sociopaths.

When she said her son reacted well to it... then I saw they're in Texas. My guess.

I can't pass this one up... 17" laptop with a huge battery reserve for $500? Perfect replacement for my wife's pseudo desktop Acer laptop that is starting to shut down randomly, and battery that only lasts 45 minutes.

The webcam will be great to chat with the incoming college freshman daughter, and as an added bonus, I will now have a portable Blu-Ray player for the backyard projector for our summer movie nights. Another perfectly timed Woot!

i24u wrote:Sorry better deals out there. Check Dell outlet. I scored at 15.6 studio 1558 with i-5 520m, 15.6 1080p screen, back light keyboard, 6gb memory, 5450 graphic card, bluetooth, for $625 with shipping and tax. Plus one year warranty.

Not following you here.
Thats 20 percent more expensive.

And usage heavily dictates if its a good deal or not.
For example a standard home user who is going to sit this on a desk in a computer room is going to get more out of a 17 inch screen than a slightly faster cpu.
And that is the market this laptop is aimed for.
Its big and heavy and not something you want to carry around a lot. But so much neater and smaller than a desktop pc.

The full sized keyboard , again, reduces desktop foot print. A wireless mouse is all it needs to be a truly comfortable and viable desktop replacement.

500 bucks is a great pricepoint for the home user. I am going to tell my mother in law to get one so I don't have to hear her complain about her 5 year old desktop and she can't get the dogs to stop peeing on her cable nightmare under the desk.

[quote postid="4442728" user="classclownbrian"]Note that this laptop has both a Blu-ray Player and a subwoofer..![/quot

I guess that's better than a subray and a bloofer!

I have used a similar model.

if you are used to planting your thumb on the left mouse click button, be aware that this laptop can cause you a lot of aggravation, since you will accidentally trigger the multi-touch to zoom in and out a LOT.

this is because there are no discrete left or right buttons and its just part of the trackpad.

this is a dealbreaker for me. I had to get another laptop.

perhaps not as big a deal to others. just FYI

I purchased an HP pavilion laptop from amazon about 4 years ago for $1900. I can't complain enough about HP's laptops. if you google "hp laptop vertical lines" you will find repeated complaints about how the lcd monitor goes to Battlefield Earth (2000) and HP refused to issue a recall. i will never buy from HP again due to this, it's a design or hardware flaw and thousands of people were screwed like me. also, the laptop got extremely hot and crashed repeatedly. buy at your own risk!!

crashnburn wrote:I purchased an HP pavilion laptop from amazon about 4 years ago for $1900. I can't complain enough about HP's laptops. if you google "hp laptop vertical lines" you will find repeated complaints about how the lcd monitor goes to Battlefield Earth (2000) and HP refused to issue a recall. i will never buy from HP again due to this, it's a design or hardware flaw and thousands of people were screwed like me. also, the laptop got extremely hot and crashed repeatedly. buy at your own risk!!

I've been supporting HP laptops for the past 6 years. I have run into a few that burned up. Get the Square trade warranty please!!

richellelander wrote:I've been supporting HP laptops for the past 6 years. I have run into a few that burned up. Get the Square trade warranty please!!

yes i wish it was available (or it least commonly known)back when i bought mine
squaretrade is the stuff!

I recently bought a dm4t and am loving it.

Tips about the HP touchpad:

1. Only hover one hand over the touchpad when clicking. I found that if my other hand was close to the trackpad during clicking that the pad would detect it and the mouse cursor would jump. Other than that, you just need to be a little more careful when clicking.

2. On the upper left corner of the touchpad is a dot. If you tap the dot twice it turns off the touchpad. If you then tap it twice again, it turns it back on. I found that if I am doing a lot of typing that I need to turn the pad off as I have a tendency to move my wrists over the pad, which causes the cursor to jump.

3. Turn on swipe scrolling. I have mine turned on for the right side of the pad. If I swipe my finger up or down along the right edge, the web page will scroll. I also turned on continuous scrolling, which means that the page will continue to scroll until I tap on the pad again to stop it.

4. An alternative to clicking is to simply tap on the touchpad. I find this easier than clicking the button.

Thanks,

David

Up to 128 M or graphics RAM, for shame, not a game machine, even though the screen and stats aren't bad...

I'm sure the DV7 has been rectified but I refuse to buy an HP product ever again. In the summer of 2007 I bought a dv9400 for college and regretted it within six months. Power supply stopped charging, wireless dropped, video card drivers didn't load properly and the computer got insanely hot. HP released a very hushed up limited warranty program, and I sent mine in, but they refused to fix the power problem for some ungodly reason. This issue eventually led to a class action lawsuit, which you can read about here: http://www.sfmslaw.com/class-action-lawsuits/cases.php?id=300

Of course, I'm Canadian, so no dice for me. I'm stuck with an eight pound brick that needs to have a charger at all times. Just fair warning for you guys, HP is a decent company but they've put me through hell and back and I don't trust them enough to buy this laptop.

Just something to think about but I have run into software (often industry specific) that flat out will not (was not designed to) run on a triple core Phenom II processor. Not that this will hinder your normal web browsing facebook user but it is enough to scare me away.

I've read of successes unlocking the 4th core of AMD triple-core processors (triple being a quad-core with one core disabled, sometimes for performance issues, sometimes, perhaps more often, for triple-core price point availability).

Has anyone here tried this successfully with the N850?

Thanks

DreadThePillow wrote:Can it run Portal 2 well?

Yeah should run it decently. The bottleneck is the graphics card, but it should still run at an acceptable rate.

bglaszcz wrote:Yeah should run it decently. The bottleneck is the graphics card, but it should still run at an acceptable rate.

So then I should have no concerns about running the Humble Indie Bundle or anything like that?

My current laptop is chugging along and I couldn't even get the Trine demo running at an acceptable rate, so I'm convinced it's time to upgrade. I'm just wondering if this is a deal to jump at.

a8le wrote:super slow hard drive

NOT NECESSARILY TRUE!

This drive is super slow compared to which drive exactly?

How are you making this determination, do you know the make and model of the drive included?

The fact is, this drive is LIKELY MUCH FASTER than the 7200RPM 250GB/320GB drive in the old notebook you would be replacing.

Just because it is 5400 RPM doesn't necessarily mean it is slower than a 7200RPM drive, especially if that 7200RPM drive is smaller. Many 640gb 5400RPM drives perform well enough:

Samsung 2.5" 5400RPM @ 640GB

Passmark Score: 570

Compared to this:

Toshiba 2.5" 7200RPM 500GB

Passmark Score: 402

Many factors such as cache size, seek times, larger platter size (size of hd) etc., will make a big difference in the drive performance.

Stating it is a super slow hard drive based on the RPM, without knowing what make and model it is so we can look up other important statistics and possibly a benchmark, is just bad assumption and adds to the constant misinformation posted on the woot blogs when technical items appear.

-GG

P.S. My personal experience with HP is STAY AWAY, especially if their laptop refurbishing quality control is as bad as their desktops.

richellelander wrote:I wasn't to keen on the i3 processor tests. This AMD processor out paces the i3 processor.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html

On notebookcheck.net they ranked the processor below i3's and they made several benchmarks not just one.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-N850-Notebook-Processor.37496.0.html

By the way I work on a computer repair shop and aprox. 70% of motherboard failures are from HP laptops.

Mezquitic wrote:
By the way I work on a computer repair shop and aprox. 70% of motherboard failures are from HP laptops.

Been doing computer repair full time almost 9 years now, and that statistic is about the same for me...

-GG

glinness wrote:I've read of successes unlocking the 4th core of AMD triple-core processors (triple being a quad-core with one core disabled, sometimes for performance issues, sometimes, perhaps more often, for triple-core price point availability).

Has anyone here tried this successfully with the N850?

Thanks

I dont think you can do that on laptops, only on desktop motherboards because that option is in the bios

I might buy one if I knew they've fixed the crappy power plug. I know three owners with three different models that have broken off at the motherboard. My brother is now on his third motherboard. Could this be why they're going so cheap?

Mezquitic wrote:On notebookcheck.net they ranked the processor below i3's and they made several benchmarks not just one.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-N850-Notebook-Processor.37496.0.html

By the way I work on a computer repair shop and aprox. 70% of motherboard failures are from HP laptops.

I know, they have their systemboard failures. We have 12,000 PC's at our company and they are all HP's. Server's are HP too. We've had maybe 40 systemboard failures between the laptops and PC's over 6 years. The business desktop/laptops may use different parts then consumer pc/laptops. May be that's why there is such a big difference between my experiences and yours?

richellelander wrote:This machine comes with Windows Home Premium. For those who do not know, Windows 7 also comes in Professional and Ultimate editions. The features that Home does not have that the others have are:

-Run many Windows XP business programs in Windows XP Mode (separate download).

You can still run many XP based programs, just really old one that need a virtual machine will use this. Don't think that because you have a program you ran on XP that it will not work now...

richellelander wrote:

-Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.

Mainly for larger businesses. Most home users will just use homegroup anyway.

richellelander wrote:
-In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions, you can back up to a home or business network.

Windows backup is finicky enough, backing up over a network just makes it that much less likely it will work.

richellelander wrote:
-Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker. (Ultimate Version)

There are tons of free open source encryption programs out there to use, like TrueCrypt, AxCrypt, etc.

richellelander wrote:
-Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages. (Ultimate Edition)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare?T1=tab15

For most people, you are not missing much. You can buy an Anytime upgrade from home to professional or home to ultimate

Home to Professional - $79.99 at newegg.com
Home to Ultimate - $129.99 at newegg.com

95% of my home customers and even small business customers do not need to upgrade to any of those features. The OS version it comes with should be fine.

-GG

silent7seven wrote:The bees are a lie. Silly Winco.

im a bit saddened

http://www.webanswers.com/shopping/are-there-really-bees-inside-the-honey-boxes-at-winco-foods-14bffc

richellelander wrote:I know, they have their systemboard failures. We have 12,000 PC's at our company and they are all HP's. Server's are HP too. We've had maybe 40 systemboard failures between the laptops and PC's over 6 years. The business desktop/laptops may use different parts then consumer pc/laptops. May be that's why there is such a big difference between my experiences and yours?

You are right, Hp business is completely different than consumer laptops, we resell 2 to 4 years used thinkpads and HP business laptops and usually we don't have problems. but with regular consumer laptops and desktops using AMD processors and nvidia chipsets (ati chipset failure it high but not that high) are terrible. since 2006 with the first DV series HP is a different brand.

Mezquitic wrote:You are right, Hp business is completely different than consumer laptops, we resell 2 to 4 years used thinkpads and HP business laptops and usually we don't have problems.

I don't know any company who's consumer pc/laptops are better than HP's as far as having hardware problems. In the beginning of my career I worked for a computer repair company and we did small business and residential. They all had their quirks. I couldn't compare one to another really. That was about 12 years ago though. Since then it's been large enterprise and government so they didn’t use consumer grade. Things have changed.

theguruguys wrote:95% of my home customers and even small business customers do not need to upgrade to any of those features. The OS version it comes with should be fine.

-GG

I didn't say it to suggest they needed to. Just to give them information in case they didn't want the laptop because it had Home. Which is why I added, "For most people, you are not missing much".

I have Professional on my home PC. I never did care for Microsoft's home products (98/Me/XP home).

Mezquitic wrote:On notebookcheck.net they ranked the processor below i3's and they made several benchmarks not just one.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-N850-Notebook-Processor.37496.0.html

By the way I work on a computer repair shop and aprox. 70% of motherboard failures are from HP laptops.

Correct. The chart he pulled up doesn't pit it against the common i3-380m or even the i3-370m which both score marginally higher with passmark which of course is a overall user submitted rating system. The hardware around them will make a difference, but these processors rank so close most people won't notice a difference.

Its a good mid-range CPU for this price.

-GG

richellelander wrote:I didn't say it to suggest they needed to. Just to give them information in case they didn't want the laptop because it had Home. Which is why I added, "For most people, you are not missing much".

I have Professional on my home PC. I never did care for Microsoft's home products (98/Me/XP home).

I was just clarifying, I have had users worried that they can not run any programs they ran on XP when they read the feature comparisons, so I was just making a few points and adding some alternatives, not contradicting what you said.

-GG

But, does it run LISP? Is it good for a young, pretty9 AI, like myself?

theguruguys wrote:Correct. The chart he pulled up doesn't pit it against the common i3-380m or even the i3-370m which both score marginally higher with passmark which of course is a overall user submitted rating system. The hardware around them will make a difference, but these processors rank so close most people won't notice a difference.

Its a good mid-range CPU for this price.

-GG

Agreed on all points. Just mentioned it because the other guy said the Intel i3 was better. He wasn't specific enough.

i'm not thrilled with HP. i just recently had a laptop of theirs last LESS than a year and a half. the a/c power adaptor fried the D/C jack, which in turn fried my motherboard, making it completely useless and unrepairable. i was able to salvage the hard drive, but otherwise, i am out a complete pc because the warranty was only for 1 year. i will never by a HP again, after they informed me it was because i "used it on a soft surface" ie, my couch, bed...etc. i bought a samsung to replace and have been beyond happy with it so far.