Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion zv5410us 15.4" Laptop (AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+ (PowerNow), 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just picked up the last model of this (actually the display model) from my local staples for $989 + the extended warrenty and this has got to be one of the best notebooks I've purchased.

The widescreen adds alot more viewage than you'd expect and is very nice to have for the money. The fans are ultra-quiet, a huge thing coming from a user of the super-loud ze4200 series of pavilions. The processor is outstanding, and is 64-bit instead of the intel 32-bit, which is ALOT nicer for more heavy-duty appliactions.

For the money, this is probably the best you can get. Some upgrades that you might look into:

-DVD Burner. Burn gigabytes instead of megabytes.

-1024 MB RAM. RAM is fairly cheap, and easily accessable. All you'd need is 2 sticks of 512 RAM that are compatible with this notebook and thats a sweet upgrade.

-80-120+ GB hard drive. 60 GB is more than enough for the average user. However, if you download movies, music, or if you dual-boot with more than one operating system (linux, other versions of windows, bsd..) Even external USB drives, although dual booting OS's on them is probably not the route to go, you can get a fairly cheap and pocketsized 80 GB harddrive now a days.

However, this notebook is outstanding standalone. Another plus is for Linux users, the graphics chipset is nvidia, so you get direct rendering kernel modules from nvidia themself.

I purchased this computer almost a year ago from Circuit City. I bought it on special for $980! I think it's the best laptop for the money. This is my third laptop and by far the best. It's fast, bright and quite. Everything you can want in a mobile laptop. What sold me was the speakers. Harman/ Kardon are the BOSE system for the common laptop. Wait til you hear one of your MP3's on the system...it ROCKS! The base, the treble, the surround sound. Go to Best Buy and take a listen. ;0)

The only things I would change are:

1. Volume controls are small and on the lip of the laptop. They should be higher and easily accessible.

2. Add more memory. 512 MB is good, but more is always better. Another 512 MB stick should do the trick.

3. I don't recommend it for people that frequently travel, because this computer's screen is a bit to wide, unless the seat next to you is empty. :) Remember you have to buy the larger carrying case, the one that fits a 15'4 inch laptop. It will cost you a little more, but worth the price for this steal of a computer.

Yours Truly,

Moses W.

I bought this HP Pavilion ZV5410US about twenty-two months ago. No hardware problems. I play a few DVD's on it weekly. I've used some demanding video editing, photo editing, CAD programs, drawing programs, games... you get the picture; it doesn't choke on anything. I paid $950 for it at Staples on sale. Very happy with it.

I use a Sprint AirCard 580 WAN which lets me surf the web anywhere! At DSL speeds of 500 to 1000 Kbps! The battery life suffers, though, while using the PC WAN card. The Athlon 64 is a powerful CPU which needs, guess what? a lot of power! This machine is best suited for desktop replacement. Otherwise, bring the brick along with you and sit near an outlet at Star*bucks or the library. You need long battery life? - spend twice as much for a So*ny. One can, however, buy a high capacity battery for this laptop. Better to invest in adapter cables to use on airplanes and cars.

The hard drive is a Serial ATA 60 GB unit which has scored well in a hard drive tuneup program I ran on it. The screen is bright. The sound system is excellent for a laptop, but I usually use earphones to listen to my several gigabytes of songs in iTunes. Few speaker systems under a $1000 do justice to most recordings, but many earphones sound super.

In the time I have had this HP Pavilion ZV5410US I have had zero hardware problems with it. As with any Win*dows computer, you have to keep your startup list of programs short, keep your hard drive defragmented, run a good registry tuneup program such as Regis*try Mech*anic (which found over 950 registry errors the first time I ran it! and that was after having to reload the operating system after Win*dows refused to boot - no problems since then because I run it weekly now). If you hear any complaints about this machine, you are probably listening to someone who, like Pogo of comic strip fame, could say, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" One has to understand that Win*dows is the buggiest major microcomputer operating system in existence. Don't blame the hardware.

HP has an excellent website where you can download updates to the BIOS or the video card. HP computers come loaded with an excellent help system. When I was a professional business computer programmer/analyst on HP's 3000 series minicomputers in another life, we had a saying: HP stood for 'High Priced' - not any more! This series using the Athlon 64 CPU and the wide screen display is, as the French say: bon marche, cheap in price. But high in value. Frankly, I don't know how they make a machine this good and still manage to sell it as such a reasonable price. You don't need to pay $1500 or $2000 for a dependable laptop that has enough processing power for anyone but a hardcore gamer or a nuclear weapons designer.

The Athlon 64 processor runs cooler and much more efficient than the Pentium 4. A plus is extended battery life. You will be prepared for the future with the new 64 bit processor. A best buy in my opinion.

Is a great laptop, excellent size, clear sound, great performance, I'm very happy with this buy. Things that I might add: Less heavy.

I purchased this computer after my senior year in high school. I'm now a junior in college and it's still running fine. The only thing I have done is updated to Windows Vista. I recommed you upgrade the ram. I'm still looking doing so myself. Notebook ram is expensive. Regardless, if you find one of these feel comfortable purchasing. It's a quality PC.

Excellent upgrade from a 98 desktop. Everything I could ever want in a multi task computer, including all of the preinstalled software. I am very happy with this choice.