Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DV7-3080US 17.3-Inch Espresso Laptop - Up to 4.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have owened this laptop for over a month now. Its extremely quick and never lags no matter what I have open. I can burn a dvd, download a large file, and play a game all at the same time. It will run crysis well at full resolution as well as modern warfare 2. I have read bad revews about the display and honestly its not bad. I think it may be slightly different from the dells because of the type of glossy film they use. Remember this is susposed to be an entertainment pc and for that it is AWSOME. I can watch movies via hdmi in full 1080, just simply plug it in and your ready to go. Battery life is decent for a computer with a quad core. Intel uses turbo boost and I think this helps to keep power down a bit. The touch controls at the top of the keyboard work great and I like them alot. Remember this is a quad core 1.6ghz but with turbo boost it will go up to 2.8ghz. Shows up as 8 cores total. Very efficient processor. Hp's bloatware is really not that bad either. Audio is quite good. The speakers on this laptop sound great and get decent volume as well. Wireless n works great and is very fast. Fan is fairly quiet and it runs very cool.... if its on ur lap it will run hotter but still much cooler then many dual core laptops i have used. Keyboard has a great feel and is quiet. Mouse pad buttons feel great and people seem to complain about the glossy finish on the pad but i think it feels good and works well. The scroll bar on the right of the mousepad also works awsome. Also big plus this has a second drive bay so you could add a solid state boot drive or a standard drive for storage if you like. I think you have to buy a hard drive cradle or something but its a great added bonus. Also this fits well in the Wenger, SwissGear 17 inch back pack.

A few things i dont like is that the power brick is really large, wish it had a lit keybord although this is really not a problem and the screen is really bright so its easy to see the keys plus it uses slightly less power without it. Glossy finish attracts finger prints like crazy but its still pretty. Hp's media smart software could use some work , it takes a long time to open and too much bling just for browsing photos. I made windows picture viewer my default viewer to solve this. I do wish it was full 1080 but its close and i dont think its a big enough difference to notice... blue ray movies still look great!. ... all in all great computer ... makes a great desktop replacement. All the negatives i stated are minor. I very much recommend this laptop. The prices are dropping as well and its just becoming more affordable.

Was a loyal HP customer, but not anymore.

We have two HP DV7's in our household. One was purchased Nov 2008 from Circuit City, the other was purchased as a customized laptop directy from HP in March 2009. Both have BluRay players, but the Circuit City laptop plays through Media Player and the customized laptop plays through MediaSmart. With both players, we have noticed a tendancy of the BluRays to lockup, but with the new coding now on the BluRay disks, the problem has become much worse.

Also downloading the new software and getting the Blu-Rays to play the newer discs is not intuitive and HP support in a word "Sucks". Went to the HP website for the downloads and it is not as straight forward as it should be.

For one thing, don't click the update now button when it pops up within the media players. It will take you into a black hole. For MediaSmart go into tools and select the update on the Update tab. I am not sure where my husband went to download the updates into Media Player.

After the updates where installed on the customized laptop, the BluRays would play just fine until it was connected via HDMI to our HD TV. There we received picture, but no sound. We went to tech support on that one. Their basic response was that the coding on the discs prevented them from being played with the HD TV connected, so if that was the only thing we used the computers for then we had nothing but $1,000+ paperweights.

Finally without the help of Tech Support, we were able to get the picture on the HD TV with sound once we hooked up laptop speakers to the computer and played the sound from the computer. But the picture quality is no longer what it once was.

This brings up another problem that we have with the headphone jacks. If you research on the web, you will find that this is quite prevalent with HPs. The connection within the computer is not secured very well and you have basically three options in order to use the headphone jacks. 1) physically hold the jack about 1/2 way in to get sound. 2)lightly coat the jack connection with oil before plugging in. Or 3) have the laptop opened up and the connections soldered down.

Other than these flaws, the computers work as advertised. But there are also other computers out there that do the same for less money.

Great laptop. Does everything I want exceptionaly well. I've owned numerous computers
(both laptop and desktops, Apples and PCs), and this one is the best. The only minor
negative is I wish the ac input was in the rear.

John

I have just bought this Laptop and there are no negative points to mention. It is powerful and has a nice and clear appearance. The Nvidia video card 230M is extremely good for games and blue-ray films. I just could not find a software already installed to run Blue-ray disks. A bluetooth device is also missing.

Overall this would be a good machine. Plenty of power and features. The one big problem I have with it is it has to have one of the worst displays I have ever used, and I've used a lot. It is kind of fuzzy and the contrast is terrible. I have a 4 year old Dell laptop with a 17" display that looks much better and I have a MacBook Pro that looks fantastic. Because of the display I can not recommend this machine and it has soured me on HP Laptops a bit.

I bought this computer in December, and the touch-pad is discoloring. It also gets very very hot, and when it occurs, the computer gets blocked, so it's important to use something to cool it externally. It would be great with a sealed keyboard and a better quality paint.

Well this computer worked 2 weeks for me.
I bought it in November 2009 and was really happy about it... for 2 weeks.

Then the computer started to freeze randomly. I sent it back to HP, who sent me back the computer around 6 weeks after... saying it was fixed (they basically changed the RAM).
Well, once again it worked for 1 week and started freezing again with no other option than hard rebooting it. That was 9 months ago, and since then the computer freezes at least once a day. I tried everything (updates, reseting the RAM, cleaning the computer, anti-virus ...) but nothing seems to work and I can't afford to wait 6 weeks without my computer (thank you HP customer service?). I use my computers a lot...

Besides that we can constantly hear a little bit of noise through the headphone jacks. This sounds like hard drive interference because it is fast patterns and intermittent. This can be extremely annoying after 10-15min of continual use...

In summary, this computer would be good if it wouldn't freeze every time I use it. But I will NEVER EVER buy HP laptops / products anymore!

First and foremost, the large remote control pictured in the Amazon product listing is incorrect. This large remote might actually be comfortable (as it looks ergonomically designed to fit in your hand). Instead, this one ships with the ultra-thin (and therefore really difficult to use) remote that also slides into the expansion PCMCIA bay. Convenient to carry the remote around, but useless to use because the buttons are all just mere tiny bubbles on the flat remote - fine if you use it twice a year to start and stop a presentation, but don't expect this to be your primary media center remote.

Now, to the PC itself: After removing the typical bloatware the thing is actually very fast. DVD authoring and other processes fly by. Wireless network seems strong and it will happily connect to my N-router from the far end of the house without ever dropping down to my G-repeater that is farther down the line. The bad parts about the design (and I consider most to be unforgivable): 1) the HP logo on the outside of the cover is always lit up when the device is awake. EVEN if the screen turns off, the logo stays on. You can forget about leaving your laptop on in a dark room. Another lighting problem, the status lights for charge, wifi, and disk usage are on the FRONT of the unit and shine right at you and they are BRIGHT. Like 1W LED bright. Seriously, you cannot watch a movie with these three lights shinging at you (and of course, they stay on even when the screen goes dark). Lastly, I can hear a bit of noise on the headphone jack even after a song stops. This sounds like either wifi or drive interference because it is fast patterns and intermittent.

Update - Aug 2010: Having now lived with this for 8 months I can say that I hate this laptop. In addition to the design flaws mentioned earlier I can only say that over time the weight and heat of this laptop have really started to bug me. If anyone reading this is (like I was) thinking that bigger is better from a screen perspective, and "how often do I really travel anyway" then think again. This is really, absolutely and truly, just a desktop replacement. Think of it as a desktop machine that is easy to move from your home office to kitchen or living room. It is such a beast that the AC adapter shorts out the in-flight power supply on all Airbus (including A380) and Boeing planes that I have flow on (and there is no way it gets more than 2.5 hours of battery life.

Even if this laptop was half the price I would not buy it again.

I bought my dv7 (dv7 2180) last summer off Amazon and since using it often have found a major issue with it that I want to bring to prospective buyers attention. Monday morning I will be contacting HP regarding this.

I had read not long ago a reviewers post regarding spyware intentionally placed on all HPs manufactured in China by ne'er-do-well chinese employees working in the manufacturing plants. The reviewer was Chinese and spoke very poor english. Everybody kind of gave him a hard time regarding his review because of his bad english. He was trying to forewarn people of something that HE knew as a first hand witness (since he lives in China and is more aware of what goes on over there), but unfortunately not many people seemed to want to heed his advice. I can't find the review anymore, I think either he or Amazon deleted it.

Well, this morning I've found that what he said could very well be true, and it's somewhat scary. I use my dv7 for just about everything, from gaming to watching movies, to internet banking/bill paying. One thing that I DON'T do on it is browse the web beyond a select few sites I know are safe and virus free. I also do not open up spam email or any email from unknown entities. I keep my dv7 as clean and uninfected as physically possible and I run antivirus, antispyware tools consistently.

This morning I found that somehow a Chinese person using the alias name of Jun (surname unknown) had not only managed to remotely extract banking information from my dv7, but had also attempted to hijack my account, and also sent a fake phishing email to one of my email accounts (the email looked VERY legit and looked like it had come from one of my banks...the only thing that sent off a red flag was the link it contained requesting me to click on) in an attempt to gain my banking account password when his hacking attempts failed. Fortunately my bank has a 24 hr hotline and added security measures were placed on my account so now everything's okay, but still...that pissed me off.

I ran several more antispyware, antiviral scans. Nothing. Yet somehow that jerk managed to do what he did. Then I remembered the advise that Chinese reviewer had given and put two and two together. Could his words be true? I'm beginning to think so. There's no other way that info could have been gleaned other than hidden, malicious spyware code being intentionally place on the laptop prior to it's shipment to me. Every HP dv7 laptop is manufactured in China. Who knows how many could be infected, every one of them could be and us consumers wouldn't know it until it was too late, or almost too late as in my case.

So my advice is, dv7s are great for gaming and stuff but I would be very wary using it for any kind of sensitive internet use, such as banking. I'm no longer doing any banking or bill paying from mine because of what happened to me. Now I use it strictly for everything BUT banking.

When I bought mine I had wondered why HP was giving us so much for so little, because the price for what you get really can't be beat....but now I know, we could all very well end up paying dearly for it in the long run.

My next laptop will not be an HP or any other brand built in China. Never again will I buy a Chinese made computer, laptop OR desktop!