Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DV7-1240US 17.0-Inch Laptop

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I first saw this computer at Sam's Club (eventually where I bought it too) and was completely infatuated. This laptop delivers amazing value for the price. HP has definately brought their 'A' game on this model. There are a couple things you *need* to know before you buy this laptop.

First, the model I bought advertised a 500 GB hard drive. This is true, however it is 2 x 250 GB hard drives. Not that big of a deal, but I cannot believe it is not listed as such.

Second, the laptop comes preloaded with a ton of junk and is heavily integrated with Windows Live stuff. Messenger, Live toolbar, etc. It comes with a trial of Norton Internet Security and a trial of Office 2007. My advice: Get Norton off the computer ASAP and install another anti-virus product.

Third, no operating system CD's come with the package. There is a "Recovery" partition that contains about 12 GB of stuff (not 100% sure what exactly is on there). I do know that when setting up the computer it tells you you should create recovery CD's. I went through the setup to create the discs and here's the kicker - they want 21 CD's or 3 DVD's to create the recovery discs. Talk about stupid.

As of now, I have wiped the OS partition and loaded Windows 7 Beta. The driver recognition is fantastic on Windows 7 - both my wired and wireless ethernet drivers were install out-of-the-box.

The look and feel of this model is gorgeous. The 17" HD screen is amazing and the whole laptop has this slick look and feel to it. The bronze color scheme really stands out.

All in all, you cannot beat the price of this laptop. For what it comes with, a comparable model from another vendor would cost $600-700 more than what I bought mine for ($898 + tax).

Last, this is just my opinion and should be taken as such. Please do yourself a favor and do not install XP on this. This laptop is too great to go back to XP. AERO does look nice and this laptop should be able to run anything you throw at it. Even a clean install of Vista should not give you any problems. While XP works great for most people, do not fight change and try to give Vista/7 a fair chance. Hell, even try the newest Ubuntu (I think 8.10) because that should look great on this too.

I just received my very cool HP Pavilion DV7-1240US, but I can't see the letters & numbers on the keyboard. The whole laptop is bronze, including the keyboard, and the keyboard letters & numbers appear to be gray. I tried moving my reading lamp as close as possible to the laptop & I still can't make out the letters & numbers properly. I have to keep moving my head around from different angles just to see. I can't believe HP would release a product with this obvious problem...
If only the letters & numbers were white against the bronze this notebook would have gotten 5 stars!

Anyone out there with this issue, and if so is there any solution besides returning it?
Everything else seems to be very good.

EDIT!!! February 28th, 2009
I returned this & purchased the DV7-1150US, very similar features in silver-gray. The keyboard is legible, black letters & numbers on silver-gray. Very nice.

I got this at Best Buy for $700 and this is an excellent machine for its price. You are getting an HD monitor, built in webcam and microphone, silent keyboard which is perfectly sized for an adult, a beautiful interface, a lovely touchpad to turn up your volume, mute, play, fast forward and rewind... a 64 bit system with 4 GB of RAM capable of holding 8 GB of RAM... amazing. the mouse touchpad has a scroll function on its side. this computer has state of the art audio, (the speakers of this brand are very costly), a dedicated video graphics card, and a very powerful processor. coupled with its sleek design you cannot go wrong. its versatile, and it is very easy to set up networking. I have it set up in my home network. bought it 2 days ago and its fully functional. all laptops are more delicate than desktops and not a replacement. i got a service plan through BB in the case of hardware damage such as the monitor. this is always wise. anyway, take care of it and you have a great machine with great graphics capability and i already have an HP desktop and i'd say its comparable if not better.

I have several HP laptops with 17" screens (dv9910us as well as this dv7-1270us). The screen size is great, but I could see that trying to carry these in a backpack for school use could be a load. The displays are fantastic and the NVidia graphics card is super. The speed for boot-up, network connectivity and multi-tasking of applications is also fabulous.

This has fantastic sound for music with the Altec Lansing dual speakers on top and subwoofer on the bottom. Of course it can be hooked to a media center via the built-in HDMI or USB ports for impressive sound and Blue-ray DVD play.

Battery life is about 3 - 4 hours with the power management default settings out of the box.

All round this is a great package, with the few cons noted below.

Cons:
1. Bluetooth headsets / headphones don't work for listening to music. I've written to HP and visited forums, and it seems that there is some issue with MS Vista that Microsoft hasn't fixed. This is a bit disappointing, however, if you are planning to run with XP (which I'm not sure will work with this 64 bit microprocessor) it may be ok. I, as are many, awaiting a fix for this issue. Many have reported issues with Bluetooth Stack Service not working. I found that there is a Microsoft patch (something to do with ActiveX killbits), that causes this problem. After the Bluetooth stopped working correctly, and rebuilding my system I found that by not installing this "fix" the Bluetooth works for everything (phone, mp3 player, etc.), but not with the headphones - for listening to music. Headphones do work for skype and with the phone.

2. The built-in Intel 5100 AGN WiFi Network adapter always indicates that its running at 54.0Mbps, even though I have a Netgear 854T Wireless-N router that can run at 300.0Mbps. If I connect a Netgear WPN121T USB adapter the HP Networking status indicates 300.0Mbps for that adapter. However, both adapters seem equally as fast for loading of webpages and downloads, so I'm not sure if the build-in Intel 5100 adapter is really running at 300.0Mbps even though it indicates on 54.0Mbps. I've been working with HP on this issue and they have not been able to fix yet.

3. The touch pad (as on all of these HPs) can act bizarrely, in that the mouse will jump to some other place when you touch the pad. It doesn't happen all of the time, but can be rather annoying. I'm not sure if it has to do with the way the notebook is leveled, but I do notice that if the keyboard is not on a stable table top or work space, the mouse jumping seems to happen more frequently. The synaptic touch pad driver sw provides some settings which seem to help.

4. Finally, the built-in cooling fan is noticably louder in the dv7-1270us than in the dv9910us models I have. Fortunately, in the BIOS it can be set to turn-on/off as needed, and not run continuously, so it's not too bad, but it pitch is at a frequency that causes my ears to ring if it runs very long.

I will start this review by saying that my old laptop was beyond slow and well past its prime, so just about anything would have been a huge improvement. I did a fair amount of research and this laptop was by far the most feature-packed for the price. The same specs with a different brand name would have cost me $700-$900 more, easily.

The laptop is loaded with entertainment features like webcam, bluray, HDMI port, 4 USB ports, TWO headphone jacks and lightscribe! I will admit, the lightscribe was a huge plus. If you don't know, it's a way to laser etch artwork/words onto burned CDs/DVDs instead of using sticker labels or writing on them with permanent markers. I have no complaints with any of this stuff because these are all features I've not had until now and I'm just excited to have them at all. The laptop is blazingly fast compared to my old one (but that's not saying much). It has a neat touch bar above the keyboard that lets you quickly: mute/unmute, control volume, play, pause, forward, rewind, stop, and even turn off the wifi. It's a huge laptop, you may have a hard time finding a bag it will fit in (seriously), but it's not an issue for me. I love having such a large screen and I don't move the laptop around much (I would not have purchased a laptop this large for heavy travel). I also love that it has a full sized keyboard (YAY!) and a separate number keypad off to the right for super speedy number crunching! It has a cute little remote control so you can hook the laptop up to your TV and use it as a sometimes bluray/DVD player, it even stores in the side of the laptop when not in use. I also like that this machine doesn't seem to get hot at all...my old laptop you could fry eggs on that thing for how hot it ran!

The not so great stuff:

It comes with Vista and I don't like it, but it's not the laptop's fault, they all come with Vista now, don't they.

It has a lot of bloatware (a lot of preinstalled software that you probably don't need and just having it there takes up space and hogs memory/resources) and no easy way to remove it without doing a wipe/reinstall

...and it does not come with Vista CDs to do that which complicates things a bit.

I read a lot of reviews talking about the keys being almost unreadable, for everything else that came with this machine for this price...I was willing to paint them on myself if it was really that bad! I'm not sure if HP fixed the problem or if I'm not using the laptop in the same conditions as those with the complaints, but I can see/read them fine (I use the laptop indoors with ambient/indirect sun lighting for the most part). The keys and laptop are a metallic bronze color, so it has a bit of a mirror like finish that I could certainly do without...but it is not nearly as obnoxious/annoying/blinding as the laptops with that chrome/silver mirror finish. That's all with the aesthetics; not the important stuff (not to me anyway).

For the price and being chock full of features, I can't justify taking off a star for any of the very minor flaws. I've had this for almost a month now and I love it. I will update this review once I've had it longer should anything change or need mentioning.

This is a great laptop, for almost any application. The major flaw was that design trumped function...the color coordinated keyboard featured black letters on bronze keys, and I could not read them accurately in any light at all.

I had to return it to HP who replaced the keyboard with a white on bronze keyboard I could read. (no cost, no shipping charges. It was gone less than 10 days.

Unless you are a complete touch typist who never needs to see a key, you may want to avoid this model.

I am now completely satisfied.

The flaw is not, as some people have suggested, in the keyboard. It's in the chrome strip on which the power button rests, along with a volume control, and the single, only, solitary, absolutely-no-other-way-to-do-this, wireless switch. The wireless switch isn't a positive contact mechanical switch like the power button--it's a capacitance "touch" location which ceases to function if the chrome strip happens to short against something. This not only turns off the wireless and makes turning it back on virtually impossible, it also causes the audio volume slide area to short, which makes the audio volume dialog strobe on and off repeatedly, accompanied by a cascade of annoying clicks.

We are returning the laptop to HP for warranty repairs on the hardware, and hoping that the unit comes back completely fixed.

I think that making the wireless functional only through a single, highly-suspect switch is a bad design. I've expressed this view to HP already.

Beyond that issue (and we have the chrome, not the bronze finish), I think the laptop excels in all other ways. I'll be happy to see it back and functioning in about...oh, maybe 10 days from now.

I have had my HP Pavilion dv1260us for 7 months now. At first, I was totally jazzed by the unit - a great 17" screen, which I love, along with many other great features. It was fast and worked great. But then, after 5 or 6 months of fairly heavy use, I began having problems.

Before I get into those, let me say that I took very good care of the laptop - using it only at home - not taking it anywhere or abusing it in any way. (Due to severe space constraints, I choose to use a laptop rather than a desktop computer.) Since I use an added wireless keyboard, I do not have an issue with the laptop's keyboard as expressed in other comments.

Without going into long, tedious details, the main problems consisted of the DVD player failing. I contacted HP tech support, which I personally think is very good - I got e-mail replies within a couple of hours and they continued to try to work with me. Bottom line, I never did get the DVD player to work, which in many ways makes the computer useless as you cannot play your movies or music on disk and you cannot download the software programs that come with new hardware items such as printers, etc.

The other major thing that started to happen was the computer just began shutting down for no apparent reason. I contacted HP tech support and tried many interventions without fixing the problem. The most recent thing (disaster!) which happened was all of a sudden I got a blue screen with the dreaded message: "Fatal System Failure." I have no formal training with computers; however, I have used them for years and have sort of learned along the way. So, I tried everything that I could think of and finally got the laptop to boot up. Everything looked okay, except as I checked things out further, I discovered that I had lost all of my files! I was so grateful that just 3 weeks before I had subscribed to a back-up service which daily scans and stores the contents of your computer, so I was able to successfully restore everything. (By the way, I highly recommend getting a reputable back-up service. It can prevent disaster!)

So, now everything is restored (at least for the moment) and I haven't had a shut-down in a while, but the DVD unit still does not work. Plus, I have "lost faith" in the computer. With the kind of work that I do, which includes being a webmaster, I MUST have a reliable machine that I can trust.

Rather than return the computer and go thru whatever delays that may entail, I have decided to try a different brand. I had poor luck with my last HP Pavilion, so I am ready for a brand change. The other computer also had problems with the DVD unit. In my opinion, HP does not produce the high-quality computers that they used to a while back.

My very first computer many years ago was an Acer, which I had good luck with, so I have decided to go back and give that brand a re-try. I will return this HP unit for whatever repair or replacement HP may give, but I will not use it as my primary computer.

I hope this review has been useful. I think many times a review is done before the "honeymoon" for a given product is over and in my opinion many of those early reviews are skewed towards the positive. Since I have had this computer for over 6 months, I do think this review might be a bit more accurate than those done after just a few weeks or less of product use. Wishing you the best of luck with your computer search!

I agree with most of the good and the bad reviews the others wrote and I am not going to repeat what they said. I just want to bring up a couple of points nobody seems to have mentioned. This computer has all the USB's on the Left and Right sides, plugging any USB cable will be in your way especially if you need a clear area for a mouse. you can't place any documents or books on either side because it will damage or bend the USB jack etc. Another thing that they don't mention except if you dig deep into HP's site, you can not use Windows XP as a second OS although they make it sound that dual boot is a piece of cake. You can only upgrade but not downgrade! You are stuck with Vista or W7.

So I got my state of art Notebook PC today. What a beauty!
It was very easy to do the initial set up, and I got online ASAP - wireless router was @ ready.
I started loading simple programs & softwares, such as skype, mozilla, google chrome, and it was pretty much a smooth ride, Itunes however could not be loaded properly, because the latest version of Itunes does not work with 64-bit windows. Easy to solve - you have to upload Itunes, 7.6 on the apple website.
I've also loaded free antivirus software that I use on my other, older (much older laptops) instead of Norton.
After 5 hours and many updates, the laptop did not restart - it simply crashed. Heartbroken I called HP (since I did not burn my 2 or 3 DVD recovery - which now I highly recommend), who were very professional, very caring, and even though the whole process lasted 3 hours (the testing of the BIOS, and the hard drive) - I was doing other stuff, and HP customer service called at the time they said they would. Hard drive was OK (but they said that if it wouldn't they would replace it charge free; did I mention that HP provides customer service 24/7 no charge as well). Because it was the error of the software I was installing I believe and recommend that if you do it, please do install one at a time, making sure it actually did go through...
Other than that I am not anticipating any more problems. The sound, and the visual effects are awesome.
As far as keyboard goes, yes it is a bit different, but not that hard to read as some suggested, but then again we are all very different...
I highly recommend it:)