Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DV3-1075US 13.3-Inch Laptop (2.10 GHz AMD Turion X2 RM-72 Dual-Core Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium) Bronze/Chrome

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I originally looked at all of the netbook options -not notebook or laptop- on the market today (Samsung, Asus, Sony, Dell, HP, Lenovo) and could not find one with a comfortable keyboard. Also, netbooks do not offer an internal disc drive, another major drawback.

I decided to go with this 13.3" HP Laptop for school/business and I think it was the right decision. This laptop comes with a powerful AMD Turion chip @2.1GHz with 4GB RAM (standard) vs. the Intel Atom @1.6GHz with 512 MB RAM (typical in any netbook, currently); a huge benefit if you are using large applications like MS Office software, Open Office, etc. Also, you have 3" of additional screen room for the application windows. The keyboard is awesome, great tactile quality. Wireless connectivity is a snap and it comes with the 802.11n standard for much faster access. Ethernet is 10/100/1000 capable.

All in all, a great buy and a solid mobile laptop computer. I was really hard pressed to find a better deal in the market today that comes pre-loaded with this many features and performance.

I used it on a plane trip last week and it's easily the best performing and least invasive laptop I've used on a trip.

Positives:
-Great mobility, light
-Plenty of ports (3 USB), outputs (HDMI), and jacks(headphone/micro)
-Plenty of space with 320GB hard drive
-Speedy performance (ran MS Access, MapPoint, and Excel simultaneously without a hitch)
-Excellent new look and not overbearing (bronze/chrome vs. black or white)
-Superb sound, not a tin can speaker

Downsides:
-Would rather have Vista Business or Ultimate instead of Home Premium

I have had this laptop for a little over a month and it has finally been optimized for stable solid performance. If it weren't for all the trouble I've gone through, I would give it 5 star. I was almost ready to return it because it froze on me sometimes and was dropping internet connection every few minutes. Then I found out almost all the trouble during the first 2 weeks was caused by software or OS. I never needed to call HP support. After some tweaking, uninstalling and reinstalling, now it is working like a good old little workhorse.

The keyboard has a butter smooth finish to the touch and doesn't seem to have any compromise for its 13.3" small footprint. However, there is no backlit feature on this keyboard. I went to the Keyboard folder in control panel and couldn't find any option for backlit. It is well designed, very modern and sleek. There are some nice little features, such as the HP logo lighting up when the laptop is on... All indicators are well positioned and easy to see and one doesn't have to struggle to go back or under to find the switches or sockets...

I noticed this HP is quieter than any other laptop I used before. I have to really listen to hear it. As far as heat goes, it has been mostly lukewarm around the fan. It mostly sits on a glass surface or wood surface in airy location. In my recent 2 day trip, I forgot to take the AC adaptor with me so it totally relied on battery. I was careful to preserve battery power and didn't test its limits so I don't have much to testify about its battery life. I was able to check my emails, weather and news with no problems at all. I am most happy about the wireless internet connection stability at home and hotel. It got fired up effortlessly and stays on. It works perfectly with my dual-N band wireless router, a major improvement over my old retired laptop. It seems like they all deteriate after 2 or 3 years of daily use.

I conneted this laptop to a large Samsung monitor for home use with HDMI cable. Using a DVI cable to hook it up with the same monitor I was not able to achieve a full screen picture. There was about 2" wide blank band on each side of the monitor. The HDMI connection enabled me to have a full screen image. This HDMI was a major selling point to me because it allows me to use the technology available from larger monitors.

That being said, with 4 GB ram and 2.10 GHz AMD dual-core processor, I honestly don't feel a significant difference in speed of streaming or loading performed by my old (now retired) laptops of smaller specs in their prime times. Maybe it's our old DSL or the giant Vista?

Another gripe is that the pictures above depict the CD/DVD drive as a pop-out tray (tray loading) whereas what I received from Amazon is a CD/DVD insertion slot (slot loading) like that in an iMac, which works just fine except sometimes it ejects the CD/DVD faster than I can catch it. The remote I received in the box is also different from the picture above. It is a simple 2.25" x 1.25" rectangular piece with a dozen buttons on. Too tiny to hold and press with one hand comfortably.

Anyway this HP has been working like it's supposed to for days. I will give an update if there is major change.

I purchased this on HP shopping site for less than 800 with discount (150 instant + 250 coupon).

The specs is a lot better:

- AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-86 (2.4 GHz)
- With Bluetooth
- Full Size Backlit Keyboard
- 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

Update:

I'm using now the notebook for more than 2 weeks and compare to the 3 previous notebook I had, this is far better.

Positive:
- Vibrant LCD even under sun light
- Tactile Keyboard feeling is impressive
- My 9 cell battery last for 5 hours (the amazon model only has 6 cell)
- Colder compare to my old tx1000 which also has AMD Turion X2.
- Price

Negative:
- If you have DVD slot loading, its noisy during disc loading and ejecting.

I upgraded my hard drive to 60 Gig SSD and currently running Windows 7 RC. Everything works fine.

Great computer. Works great with no glitches at all. The fingerprint reader and webcam work perfectly. It is light and very portable. Priced right.

Got the HP laptop for my wife's birthday. Express mail in. Turned it on, a window's massage showed up saying that windows has encountered a problem and Needs to be reinstalled. Called HP. Wasted an hour on the phone. Was told to insert the installation CD. I told them there's no installation CD came with the laptop! HP said they'll sent one to me. Got tired of waiting. Call Amazon and asked for an exchange. Got the new laptop in in two days. Turned it on, another windows error msg pupped up! Called HP again and was told I'll have to purchase a installation CD! Laughed out laud and called Amazon and returned the laptop.
I'll have to say that the Amazon service and support were superb!

I did not buy this laptop from Amazon, I bought it from BestBuy. I paid $[...] plus 8.5% tax bringing the total to $[...].

I looked at all the laptops BB had, and the only one that compared to this was a Dell. The dell was not as sharp looking, the keyboard looked cheap and the black keys would get oily looking in no time flat. The HP sure looked and felt bomber in construction quality (indestructible). The dell was a 2.4GHz, (20% faster) though you would only feel it when running programs with heavy processing like photoshop.

By the way, the BB versions has Intel processors that run at 2.0GHz. The Amazon version runs AMD processors at 2.1GHz. (5% speed difference).

Well, this was the only Laptop that had 3 USBs. I love the way the keyboard lights up in low light conditions. I installed Firefox on both this laptop and compared it side to side with my Dell desktop P700Mhz. The FF install took about 3 seconds. The Dell desktop took about 30 seconds.

You cant hear this laptop running unless you really stop and concentrate and listen.

Here is one problem I came across. When doing the recommended backup using DVDs, the laptop was writing away. I grabbed the laptop with one hand by the screen (a bad habit of mine) to pick it up and set it on the floor. I thought I was gentle with it and I got a write error. I had to start the whole process again. So what I am saying is this machine might be a little sensitive to movement when the DVD is writing.

Most of my time was spent installing my personal software and locating Vista 64Bit drivers for older HW/SW components. Then you will want to back up your system up again after everything is confirmed working. But guess what, the version of Vista that comes with this laptop does not include software that you can do a complete system backup. This version of Vista only allows you to make one backup of your system and once you do it, you can never do it again. It is pretty cheap of MSFT to do this to us. I have a backup disk made by ClickFree I used for this. Else, why burn 8 DVDs plus buying additional software to handle the task.

Other than this, I am liking this machine more and more every day. It has been 4 days already and now I can say I really love this thing. So as long as you don't mind AMD over Intel buy it here and save $[...] bucks over Best Buy.

Superficially, this is a nice machine - the size and weight are just right, the screen looks great, and the case is not bad. Unfortunately, this thing has some serious performance issues. Open more than a couple of browser windows and things get choppy; response will get sluggish, which is beyond annoying. Even YouTube videos seem to slow it down. I bought the Windows 7 upgrade for it, but it's only a small improvement to performance.

And just as bad is the pathetic battery life. You'll be lucky to get two hours with moderate tasks, usually it dies sooner than that. It's completely unacceptable for a laptop that's supposed to be highly portable.

Last but not least, this laptop gets hot, and the fan runs very, very loud - the thing sounds like it's getting ready for takeoff. Without earplugs, I found it very distracting.

Oh, and I almost forgot - the frame around the LCD is coming unglued. Not my idea of quality.

Two stars because the hardware finish, keyboard, screen etc are great.

Only two stars because the performance sucks, big time. Forget about multi-tasking excel, powerpoint, 15 browser tabs etc. And I'm not even thinking about games. Vista sucks and so does the processor (Turion X2) on this laptop. Mostly runs at full CPU usage (sometimes the culprit is the sound drivers, sometimes svchost.exe).

I am a software professional and have not been able to tweak this enough to get decent performance i.e comparable to an old ACER laptop that had XP Pro. Did I say Vista sucks? It's pretty sad that a professional has to consider getting a gaming laptop to get decent application performance.

I have just resigned to using this as a glorified netbook because it is portable, has HDMI out for watching something on the TV and has enough storage.

Stay away, I bet your time is precious.

I will rate this product 3.5 star in overall.
overall, I am happy with this AMD-inside HP box. many good designs.
however, there are just two things reflect the HP needs more attention in the customer experience and insight...
1. the fan is so noisy - you can only work on it in StarBucks (noise around) but only at quiet place.
2. the CD/DVD is also noisy as putting/ejecting the disc - people somehow will be worry or shock if it is broken.

i would not recommend this product to people who cares about "Quality of customer experience" at all.

I was looking at the netbooks but I could hardly see the font on the screen. I also needed it to do school work while on vacations so I needed Word on it and the netbooks have no disk drive. After doing research I found this one to have the best reviews and I liked the fact that the screen was only 13.3 inches. The set up was very easy and within minutes I was using it. The bottom right does get a bit warm but I would think that's rather common with a slim-line laptop. I can't wait to use it on vacation. My older Dell was so large, heavy, and clumsy, which is why I wanted a smaller one. To me it was well worth the $$. I do wish the keyboard was lit because the letter are hard to see if you do not have the correct lighting.