Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion ze4610us Laptop (AMD Athlon XP Processor 2500+, 256MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive)

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

 

 

This machine has been VERY disappointing. When it runs, it's fine. It just doesn't run very often. Machine has been to HP for repair 3 times in the first 10 months I have owned it. Overheats and turns itself off, screen will go black if it is moved, mouse constantly freezes and locks and machine has to be rebooted. I've raised enough stink with HP they are replacing it with a higher end model a ZV. If you buy this machine due to it's attractive price, buy an extended warranty and be prepared to be without it often.

Ok, I am a past Thinkpad R30 owner, it was refurbished system with a lot of problems later on, I had bought it for ... and just sold it for .... Basically, I wanted a new Thinkpad but they are expensive, so I got this for ... after rebate from Circuit City, I recommend Circuit City becz of their return policy, no restocking fee like the others such as BestBuy and CompUSA.

PROS
Beautiful machine at a great price, the specs are great.

Cons
Has XP Home and the freaking touchpad, I hate the touchpad, I love the trackpoints and wish it was on this, that is the only reason dwelling in my head to return this machine, but for $700, ehh, I can buy two these for the same price as a Thinkpad. Lastly, no built in wireless, I am looking in to finding a wifi mini card so I can install it, otherwise would have to use pcmcia card.

There is a review on the following website in more detail about the specs.

...

Overall, buy it for the price and value, if you have the extra $$$ then get a Thinkpad or something. This is perfect for college students and home users, its a good for somewhat mobile users, but not really a corporate/business machine.

Bottom Line - Five Stars for the price and value compared to others.

I just bought this notebook these are the + Battery power 4 hours, Fast processor, nice illuminated fast launch keys WEB-MAIL-LOCK. Good ALtec lansing Speakers.

These are the -
A little bit too heavy, A/C cable disconects very easy if moving notebook,and connector to electricity is a (3) difficult to find in my house Outlet Other than that this is a Perfect deal if you find it on sale or after rebates. Nice product

The HP Pavilion ze4610us is my 3rd HP/Compaq laptop. I've been generally pleased with their products (before and after the merger). The performance and features of this ze4600-series laptop have met or exceeded my expectations. System benchmarks were very good, the fan is well designed, system noise is very low, and battery life is excellent. HOWEVER: THE KEYBOARD IS CRAP! The keys are so incredibly stiff that every sentence I type has several missing characters. I've never seen anything like this. I have to *pound* on the keys to get them to work, and even then they're not reliable. I'm still getting missing characters or character doubling due to key bounce. The crappy HP keyboard on the ze4610us is simply unacceptable, and completely ruins an otherwise excellent notebook computer with great benchmark numbers and very long battery life. Now I know why Circuit City and other retailers were blowing out these units on rock bottom mega-sale. If you are a ham-fisted typist who relies upon spell checking for everything, you might be OK with this notebook. If you type normally or prefer light-action keyboards, and expect the keys that you type to always work reliably, avoid this notebook and get an IBM Thinkpad or Toshiba Satellite.

I'v had my HP Pavilion ze4610us about a month now and I'm very satisfied with it. It was my first ever laptop purchase (I've been thru four or five desktop systems). I probably would have waited even longer to finally get a laptop, but the 400 dollars of rebates that were available at the time of purchase made it impossible to resist.
I'm not a heavy gamer or media user; I use it mostly for light business and personal use and as a portable DVD player when I'm on the road. (I love the DVD player software with the screen capture feature; I save pic's from my favorite films and use them as wallpaper and screensavers. Cool!)

No real complaints so far for what I use it for. (I did buy an extended warranty, having heard that laptops in general have some reliability issues. The warranty is cancellable at a prorated amount depending on how long I keep it. If you have any experience/comments on that, you can e-mail me.)
I've gotten over 3 hours of battery life with the way I use the laptop, which I think is reasonable.
My only minor irritations so far are things which may be perfectly normal for laptops in general (with my limited experience, I wouldn't know.)They are: sound level is OK at home or in a quiet environment, but road noise while traveling makes listening very difficult. I've tried my old headphones; maybe I just need better ones. Also, the screen can be difficult to see, depending on lighting conditions. (Again, that may be normal.)
In any case, although I've only had my HP Pavilion ze4610us a short time yet, for those whose usage is similar to mine I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, especially if you can get a good discount and/or rebates.
P.S. - I've just purchased a wireless card and router which I will try to install soon. If I can, I'll update this review after I see how that goes.

I tried this notebook at Circuit City, it is very fast at running Office applications, noticeably faster than my P4 2.4GHz Inspiron 8500. The unit looked good, and was light enough. The screen was ok but did not shine really, it would only be sharp when looking at a 90 degree angle.

However, given that you need to add another 256MB of RAM and a wireless card, the current price does not make it a good value.

P.S. The Amazon description is totally off, it corresponds to another system (probably the ze4420).

I bought mine at Circuit City for 700 and I absolutely love mine. Had no problems with it so far. It is a little big compared to the ibook i used to have, but overall its a great computer. The 1.8ghz is fast enough and the computer does have a kind of velocity engine to speed up your applications so it is just as fast as a p4 compatible. Overall great laptop. Good for college students, not for really serious users. Not good for games either.

I have owned this exact computer for 3 years now. The HD has gone bad once, and the onboard network card has died also. The HD crash on a laptop is understandable on something transported, and it was only $15 for a PMCIA network card, so not a big loss. Use the extra RAM slot add at least another 512 MB of ram, and as long as you aren't using this to play graphics heavy games you will be happy. I can play unreal 2004, quake 3, and call of duty, but not at great graphics level. Then again, if you want great graphics, you might as well buy a good desktop for games and a decent laptop for on the go work

I don't know who would buy such a low cost laptop and then complain about shared video! Nice feature set and fast for the money. It is even internal wireless card "ready" with a slot next to the RAM on the bottom of the unit. This feature was not advertised. Add RAM! The 256MB it comes with does make it seem slower than it should. Adding 256MB more makes it really wake up and run well. I've had mine 2-1/2 yrs. Normal wear and tear and bumps cause hard disks to fail in any laptop, mine occurred just before 2 years. Glad my extended warrantee came in handy, but I've learned how easy it is to swap out hard disks and how easily they fail after a couple yrs, so I won't buy another extended warrantee again. Instead save the money for the repair you will have to do later. I like the quality of HP products and this is no let down as all the keys and mouse still work. I highly recommend finding low cost laptops like this one and test it at a store to see if it fits you. I did and I've been happy. Now my kid will get this handed down as I shop for my next HP laptop.

I have been using it for more than 1 year, it never gave me any problem, everything is great, runs fast and quiet. I upgraded it to 512ram memory, then it is quite amazing. Overall, it is great.