Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion ze4560us Laptop (1.87-GHz Athlon XP-M 2500+, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive)

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

 

 

4 friends bought notebooks at the same time Dell, Sony, (2)Toshibas all of theirs had P4 chips, and this HP simply outclasses them- 3 my friends admitit! And they paid $500-$900 more! Their notebooks weigh a full pound more, they are thicker, and the P4's are much louder requiring a loud cooling fan.

The S video, Firewire, serial ports are awesome features. Made several videos already with the firewire. Screen resolution is beautiful! Graphics card is good- handles computer games well.
Best feature- touch pad w/scroll wheel. I'll never buy a notebook again without one.
Cons- Sound is average for notebooks (not like the new Mac power books). If it had USB 2 it would be my dream come true. Good Job HP- fantastic machine

I bought this laptop about 3 months ago, and I've been pretty happy with it. The only problem I've had in 3 months is some minor skipping on the DVD/CD drive (good thing it's still under warranty...) I chose to buy a laptop with an AMD processor because I've been extremely impressed with AMD processors I've bought for my desktops in the past. If I had it to do again, however, I might choose to buy a P4 because the Athalon still tends to run a little hot, although I haven't had a problem with it running _too_ hot.

This laptop is fine for watching DVD's, and I've been able to do all of my work on it (including some image-analysis work), but it's not a good machine for gaming because the 64 MB video memory is shared memory. If you're looking for a laptop to use for gaming in your spare time, this isn't the one. The wireless technology has been absolutely terrific, and it has consistently maintained a better connection with my router than my stationary desktop. The hp ze4560 laptop is a bit on the bulky side, but I personally don't mind the extra weight because I love the screen size and the price.

I've had my system about 3 years with few complaints. By today's standard's its probably underpowered. I was able to get another system with far more features for less than I paid for this one.

The one problem it has now is the connector for the a/c power. I use it as a regular system, always plugged in, rarely using the battery. Recently, it's started cycling whether it thinks the a/c cord is plugged in (so it goes on battery, dims the screen, and runs the batter down - even when plugged in). Wigging the cord generally helps. I got this diagnosed as a problem with a pin on the mother board being loose and needing resoldering. This isn't cheap to fix. I like the system, but this may eventually make it unsuable...

I purchased this computer in November of 2003 from Amazon.com. I am not particularly hard on my computers. Since I've bought this computer, I've been extremely busy, and haven't had the free time to do much more than check my email. As a resuly, the computer has essentially been sitting on a desk since I've gotten it.

This Saturday, I had to send it in for a repair. The screen completely died. I've only had this computer for five months, and it isn't as though I've been hauling it around, abusing it, or even using it a whole lot. While I'm not saying this is a bad computer--after all, I've only tried this one--I feel obligated to post this problem. The computer has to be sent out to Texas; I'm in Illinois. I'm going to be without a computer for over a month. I like this computer--I really do. Aside from this, it's been a great little notebook. This incident, however, doesn't bode well for its reliability.

This laptop is absolute dream. Previous reviews list this laptop to have a video card with "shared memory." What they mean is that it's an integrated video card. This is NOT true. The video card is not integrated. I am very satisfied with this laptop, installing the drivers from the windows update site actually took away from my display capabilities (use the drivers at hp.com). I have had no problems with the touchpad or the keyboard. Convenient and best of all: MOBILE ATHLON- It is a step-by-step processor and only allocates as much speed as required to perform tasks (conserves battery power). Played Unreal Tournament on this while my friend was on his HP Intel 4 laptop, mine lasted 25 more minutes on a full charge than his while running a very demanding game. Great computer, a must have.

I've had this computer for 6 months. The system works well, but the mousepad is a disaster and makes all use of it frustrating. It's not responsive - I have to press the left-click button 1-3 times to get it to work. It is also not an ergonomic key pad. Think about this before you buy, the buttons are ineffective, and positioned for elf hands - I've never had hand strain in 15 years of computing until this HP! My wife's Dell is the opposite - easy buttons and ergonomic. I only use my HP with a different mouse in the USB port.
It has shut down once or twice for no reason, and sometimes won't start without pressing the "reset" button, but otherwise it's been smooth riding with the system itself.

I needed a laptop and wanted an AMD based laptop for around $1100, this is my first laptop, the quality is excellent, screen is good, and I like the glowing blue keys. Feel of the keyboard is great too. What can you say, great price, great look, etc. and its AMD. The best part was formatting the hard-disk and installing Linux. I laughed with glee as I threw the HP Microsoft XP install disks into my wood-burning fireplace.

Just bought this notebook for my wife, who wanted a notebook PC for the desk in our kitchen. Great specs for the price (got a great deal on a floor model at an office supplies store), especially the 512MB of RAM. Wireless works perfect on my home LAN. Installed MS Office for the kids' homework assignments and it runs really well. Haven't tried to run any cutting edge games, but that's not the purpose. Can't understand why other people have knocked this system, especially those that don't actually own it.

Sadly, my ze4560us died mid-last year. I bought it at Best Buy for a great deal back in December 2003. I was moving from Houston to Dallas for work and didn't want to haul along a huge PC to stick in my small, temporary, apartment. The ze4560us seemed like a great idea at the time.

I did get quite a bit of use out of during the time it lasted. I must say that it was a bit slow at first, being that I like to watch DVD's on it and play the occasional game. After bumping it up to 1GB memory I was extremely happy.

Sadly, though, it died. I know it's the motherboard and did I buy the extended warranty you ask, the answer again, sadly, is no. But, that's my fault. I had an opportunity to buy it and didn't and regret that decision as it would have still been under the 2 year warranty when it died.

If I take one thing from this experience it is that I will never again buy an HP as I am concerned about their reliability. If you are looking at purchasing a laptop, make sure you do your homework on the warranty and reliability of the item. Buy an extended warranty if you can and look at IBM (now Lenovo) or Dell as they highly reliable laptops. Even Toshiba and Gateway products fare much better. And for overall product and customer support, Alienware can't be beaten if you want a good gaming machine.

But, do yourself a favor and stay away from HP/Compaq laptops.

This notebook has great specs and features but the packaged shell is cheap and poorly designed. The keypad is not as smooth as Dell or Toshiba. One has to apply more force per keystroke that reminds me of old manual typewriters. The result is A LOT more typos - some keystrokes register, some don't.

This goes for all keys, touchpad, and switches.
The choices and placement of characters on keypad could be better. The placement of the non-alphabet keys are not intuitive. These Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, delete, Pause, Print Screen keys seem crammed into the upper right hand corner, very closely packed next to each other such that accidental mis-strikes are also common.
The screen is big, but that means loss of resolution. The XGA screen on my other notebook is smaller, but sharper than this HP Pavilion's XGA screen.
The wireless G card on this notebook seems to be weak because it keeps dropping connections. The wireless B on my other notebook seems to perform better - connections do not drop.
Finally, despite the width of the notebook, ports most often used are crammed next to each other. The power adapter plug is VERY snug against the USB ports. And for some strange reason, the USB ports are horizontally stacked so this makes for a tightly fitted trio of wires.
While the HP Pavilion has some desirable internal qualities, it's physical qualities are irksome. I would not recommend this notebook because it's poor design will always be a source of irritation. If I didn't own another notebook as a comparison, I'd never know the difference, but being the owner of a Toshiba and past user of Dell I have to say that HP's can use some improvement.