Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DV9650US 17-inch Entertainment Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5250, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Let's get the negative out of the way.

CON:
- Yes, the right shift button is small. Is that annoying? Sure. Is it a deal breaker? Not in the least. You get used to it after a while.
- The battery life is some 2.5-3 hours. Not horrendous, but you will definitely want to invest in an extra, longer lasting battery.
- There are cooling vents on the bottom of the laptop. The "feet" on the laptop raise the case and allow for proper ventilation. If, like me, you are fond of working with the laptop directly on the bed, that can quickly lead to overheating since you cover the vents. Always use this laptop on a flat surface, even when in bed. A $20 cushioned laptop desk can make your experience more comfortable and pleasant all the way around.
- The TV Tuner heats up quickly.
- Vista. Oy! This not a problem with the laptop itself so much as its a problem in general. Vista is a memory hog. Even when you strip it down to basics and ditch the heavy GUI, Vista still consumes more system resources than XP. Sadly, at the time of this writing, HP doesn't provide a downgrade strategy for this model. Their support site does have _some_ XP drivers for the dv9650us, but none for the SCSI/RAID hard disk controllers. That makes manual downgrading nearly impossible.

Okay. Those are the major negatives to the dv9650us. You might be wondering how I came up to a 5/5 score then. Surely, I must be mistaken. Stay with me.

PRO:
- 17" 1440x900 Widescreen: First of all, the screen is crisp, clear, bright, and utterly gorgeous. Best of all, you can manually turn down the brightness
- 2GB RAM: Naturally, Vista is a bit of a hog, but 2GB is a great deal for this price. Many laptops in this price range still only offer 1GB; some less. Better yet you can upgrade to 4GB if you need the extra RAM. As someone who does a lot of graphics and video work, that's great.
- Core2Duo: Some of you may scream that it's only a T5250 1.5GHz and not a 2.0GHz. Believe me, that is REALLY not a big issue. In fact, the 1.5GHz actually performs nearly as well as my Pentium4 3GHz (HT) and PentiumD 3.4GHz (Dual Core) desktop machines. The multi-threaded performance is very solid, which is great if you use 3D software that takes advantage of the multiple cores.
- 320GB Hard Drive Space: You may be thinking, "Well, I've got a TB on my PC. What's the big deal?" 320GB on a laptop, at this sub-$1,500 price is a wonderful bargain. Very roomy. Some people might find it annoying that the 320GB is actually 2 separate 160GB hard drives, but I prefer it. Keeping your data away from the applications is a smart move though. This way, if the OS somehow gets corrupted, your data stays safe. Plus, if you use Photoshop, keeping your scratch files on a separate drive (not partition) improves performance.
- NVidia GeForce 8600M GS: It's not the top of the line GeForce 8 model, but it is definitely more than powerful enough to handle current games. Desktop 3D performance on a laptop is hard to find, especially at this price. Most sub-$1,500 laptops resort to integrated video. A dedicated 3D card with its own, separate 256MB of RAM pretty sweet.
- HD DVD: Okay, I haven't used this feature yet. I'll admit it. My movie collection is still old school DVD. Still, it's a nice option to have. Most laptops don't include next gen DVD players. Those that do, such as the Sony Vaio models, include Blu-Ray and often cost more if you try to match overall feature sets.
- Hybrid Analog/HD TV Tuner: I am a sucker for this one. The include antenna does a decent, albeit predictable, job of picking up analog signals. However, it really shines with HD signals. I was not even aware that my area was already broadcasting HD over the air yet. This tuner & antenna pick up the HD signals perfectly every time - cable quality reception every time. As an added bonus, the dv9650us includes TWO media center remote controls. The first one is a much more standard sized remote with external USB IR receiver. That's nice and all, but you don't always want to lug around that setup. The second option is the included portable remote, which conveniently stores in the expansion slot and communicates with the built-in IR port.
- ON/OFF button for the touch pad. Such a small feature. So convenient. If you use an external mouse, you can just turn off the touch pad and never worry about accidentally moving the cursor when typing.
- TWO (2) Headphone ports: Great for those long trips where you want to watch a movie with a friend, but don't want to bother everybody else around you.
- Integrated web cam. Some people may gripe that external web cams would provide crisper video. However, as a portable solution for teleconferencing, you could do much worse. It's not meant for creating your next Youtube masterpiece. Why should you expect it to so? I'm in the camp that favors bang for the buck.
- Solid construction: Unlike the Sony Vaio laptops, the HP Pavillion doesn't feel fragile to the touch. You'll still have to treat it with the same respect that you would any other non-rugged laptop, but it doesn't feel at all like a toy. While 7.7lbs might seem heavy for an average portable, remember that we're talking about a 17" widescreen machine that's brimming with desktop level features. In that regard, it's a very manageable weight.
- Attractive design: The smooth, glass-like exterior with its embedded ripple design makes this one of the prettiest laptops to behold, even when closed and turned off. Your friends and colleagues will want to dump their stocky, utilitarian looking laptops in a heartbeat. If fingerprints or smudges easily annoy you then you may want to invest in a handkerchief. However, if you're an iPod or Playstation Portable owner you're probably used to this non-issue already. The sleek, futuristic design is more than worth the occasional fingerprint.

The HP Pavilion DV9650US is not just a steal at this price, but also a miracle. Desktop features and performance without the scary laptop price. I must have researched a couple of dozen laptops before settling on the DV9650US. At the time of this writing, you simply will NOT find a more feature rich laptop for the price. I usually steer far away from HP desktops, but they have done a bang up job on this laptop. In a word, "Wow!"

This is my 4th laptop and by far the best one I've had yet. The only reason that it received 4 out of 5 stars is the size of it is sometimes too bulky and it is quite a bit heavier then any of my previous laptops so be prepared to have some sort of stand or table to set it on while you are working or your knees will pay for it. This computer came with everything you need to do some serious Video to DVD creations. If you don't plan on packing this computer around much, then you will absolutley love it!

One of the reasons I chose this model was the technology to use this laptop as a digital tv tuner, DVR, and HD DVD player, hooked up to a big flat panel LCD TV display, via HDmi, component video cables, etc. Well -- when play a HD DVD it only fills up about 1/3 of the screen in hp's "quickplay" program. No apparent way to use the full screen for the movie. So much for 17"! Okay, well -- it should be viewed on the big LCD TV anyway, so I hook it up via HDMI. "Cannot display in this [two screen or other screen] display configuration" blocks image! DRM-evil strikes to rip off the consumer again! What a waste! Why buy an HD DVD drive (or sony blu-ray) if it won't export image to the TV? Save your money - get a similar model without an HD DVD (or blu-ray) drive. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but it appears quite pointess at this time.
This package is otherwise nice. Though - yes, the tiny shift key is witless, given the giant 17" keyboard!

I bought this computer 2 weeks ago. You get more for the price you pay.
I read the reviews and people complained about the keyboard been hot. Is not annyoing you can get use to it.
Reminder: Uninstall and stop services from the bunch of trash applications that come with Vista and HP tools.

I purchased this laptop for general family use in a household with several desktop computers. It's use is wide spectrum - applications, photo editing, DVD play, music encoding and "medium grade" gaming (World of Warcraft).

I doubt that I would buy the same model again, even if it were still being sold as an Amazon Prime item. The primary drawback to this machine is the poor sound quality that emanates from the speakers. My previous laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, had great sound.

To make matters worse, headphones suffer from a "hum" that obviously comes from inadequately shielded circuitry within the case. I don't know if this comes from the sound chip, the case assembly or just a defective port, but it renders headphones almost unusable.

These are the most significant drawbacks, and unfortunately for a machine used mostly for games, music and DVD's, they matter a lot.

The display is bright and sharp, but suffers from having an extremely narrow viewing angle. If you set the screen to a good angle for a moving picture image, then simply lean back in your chair, you have to adjust the angle again.

The nVidia graphics card does a good job with World of Warcraft and Mechwarrior 4. World of Warcraft at 1440x900 run smoothly at 50fps (frames per second); I am actually quite pleased with the performance here. I have no idea how it would handle newer games with higher graphics requirements.

The keyboard is quite good for a laptop; on desktops I use an ergonomic keyboard, but I am surprised by the ease of typing on this unit. The much-discussed small right shift key seems a non-issue to me, but may affect hardcore touch typists.

The touchpad works very well for a touchpad, but I installed an optical mouse quickly.

One reviewer talked about not testing the HD DVD feature. That's good, as this laptop doesn't come with HD DVD, or at least it doesn't anymore. It has a standard CD/DVD burner. One feature is that the drive does have LightScribe technology. That means with special media you can burn labels onto the disks. I like the LightScribe feature, although it is very slow (about three to 30 minutes to burn a label).

The wireless is good, connecting well with my existing 801.11g network, and promising compatibility should I (when I) upgrade to 801.11n. No Bluetooth, though, which was a disappointment.

The media player controls are nice to look at (bright blue LED) but being integrated with a smooth plastic cover not as nice to use. I would have liked something with at least a little tactile feedback, and I have to rub the volume control repeatedly to get the sound turned up or down enough.
The software package is unimpressive. I added a wide variety of open source and freeware for my personal use, although I do use the enclosed Roxio Media Creator Basic to burn disks. If you like LightScribe, Roxio bundles with SureThing CD labeler which can be upgraded for something silly, like $12. That was a good deal.

To my surprise I like Vista quite a lot. There have been no hardware conflicts that I have found with the machine and Vista. I assume all the drivers have been tested enough to work well. Vista looks good and works well; folks, it's just another version of Windows, for better or worse. But it isn't super-fantastic, and it isn't horrible. It's Windows.

To be frank, the machine has a lot of video features I don't use yet and can't critique. It comes with a clever little remote control that hides in a PC card slot when not in use; it also shipped with a full size remote if you want to use this laptop's TV Tuner. Look to other reviews for this information.

For the price, this notebook had a lot going for it - 2GB of RAM, the hard drive space, the big screen. But with the poor speaker sound and defective headphone hardware I knocked off a star. For the skimpy software bundle and miscellaneous design flaws, as well as the screen angle issues, knock off another star.

I'm not going to return it, but like I said, I wouldn't buy it again.

This is my third and final update of my review of this laptop (I swear!). After a year of nothing but trouble with Vista Home Premium it is now running very well on Windows XP MCE 2005. It runs 10x faster now, eventhough I lost a GB of RAM in the changeover (XP can only use 3 GB of the 4 GB I installed). I still get an occasional BSOD but nothing like the "unexpected problems," driver issues and CPU overload I had with Vista. Clearly this is an XP laptop that was kludged into a Vista machine. If you're having any problems with Vista at all I strongly suggest a downgrade to XP MCE. You'll need to install drivers for your SATA hard drives that don't come with XP, but they're readily available, and there are plenty of instructions on the Web on how to do the change (including on HP's own forums - do you think they know this laptop is c--p running Vista?). I wish I had done this a year ago instead of trying to make Vista work, it's hopeless. With XP this laptop is a perfectly good, very powerful machine. Grab it at a deep discount, install XP MCE and enjoy.

Nice laptop, but I purchased it new and it had Microsoft Office pre-installed. I don't have a product key and it will not accept the 25 digit Product Key on the UPC sticker at the bottom of the laptop. (Help me anybody!!!) Basically, I can't use Microsoft Office after I use up the 25 free times without registering it, but i was NOT given a password to register it with.
Also, my power cord burned out quickly (within 2 months). I'm currently in the middle east and had to but a 'local' type until I get back to the states. This is an incredible inconvenience. The 'local' one has a noisy fan in the condenser and cost me $40.
Too many programs loading, which boggs down performance at start-up.
Otherwise, a nice looking laptop and good for watching movies.

I bought this unit for work and let me tell you I could not be more happy.The shift key is smaller than my old one,but I will adapt.That is why it gets 4 stars.You game? I play a few and it runs fairly well.I recomend it for the performance and the beauty.

These machines look like great buys but they are often deceptive in what they sell. For instance, HP will often market their graphics cards as having more memory than what they really have. I bought one of the dv9600 series that has 383M of video memory only to find that it has 128M. They say it is ok since their cards share system RAM. (don't all graphics cards??) There are many little things like this in the HP machines.

They have a great price point but in the end you get what you pay for. It will not perform to what you expect for what they list as their features. Dell and others are a bit more honest and as such look more expensive. If you are just looking for cheap and decent quality then HP may work for you.

Overall, I like the 9620. The display looks better than previous iterations of this machine, and applications run smoothly with the default 2 GB of RAM. There aren't a lot of excess factory-installed applications, and I got the operating system to where I wanted it within an hour.

The serious problem? The right shift key is tiny - you can see it in the photos. There is also a second set of cursor keys next to the shift key, so I often hit them by accident while typing. I've never seen this setup before - it's an ergonomic nightmare, and almost worth returning the computer.