Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion zv6130us 15.4" Laptop (AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-R/RW and CD-RW Combo Drive)

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

 

 

I've found this to be a great notebook. It's completely replaced my desktop for work and for play, except for the most intensive 3D games.

Pros:
Easily fits in my normal sized backpack.
Very nice and bright display.
Great audio quality compared to most notebooks I've tried.
Resumes quickly from standby and hibernation, even with upgraded RAM.
Touchpad can be easily disabled, handy in cases where your wrist may brush against it while typing.
Very reasonably priced.
Quiet, except for when the CDROM spins at full speed.

Cons:
Comes with two 256MB sticks. One is under the keyboard and requires significant work to get out. Documentation on the process is poor.
Pricing is hidden on Amazon, without going through hoops.

I'm a full time student and working professional. Six months after plopping down the full retail value for this box, here's the pros, and here's the kinks:

Pros-

Great screen. No dull spots. Does video and even some high end games really well. Sometimes we just put it on top of the TV and watch videos straight off the box.

Sound system rocks. I've completely abandoned any portable speakers. There's no need. It will fill a room by itself. The bass is low in these circumstances, but I mean, it works.

Keyboard and layout works well. Sometimes you accidentally brush the touch pad, but you can turn it off with a thumb. You don't even have to stop the keystrokes.

Processing capability turns back flips. I do media editing on it regularly. Handles Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver like a pro.

The wireless assistant is probably the best stock wireless searching program ever. This is probably on all the new XP installs, but it's worth talking about.

It looks really cool and it fits everywhere.

Side mounted everything is really convenient. My brother got a Gateway at about the same time and is really jealous of those.

Cons:

It's a chunk. This sucker gets heavy hauling it around all day.

The trim along the lower right corner busted off about three weeks after I got it.

It's loud. Almost too loud to use in class. Also, the CD drive rattles.

I've gotten several CD's stuck in mine.

The batteries are crap. Even on max battery, I only got about 2 hours battery life.

It gets too hot. Sometimes it even shuts down. It straight up needs more heat sinks.

The harddrive is slow and it slows down the rest of the machine when you're hitting it hard.

It's too big to use on an airplane.

The sticky keys function annoys me sometimes.

Overall:

Ass kicking box. Great value, great performance. I don't see how you could be disappointed. The core components of the system are all first rate.

Ths notebook is great overall but has a few fixers
Lets start with the pro's
Pro's
Fast(after bootup)
Looks great(not as great as a Viao)Love the blue LEDs
Cheap!!!
Stable
Every feature on a desktop is on this!
Keeps Cool!
ITS AN AMD!

Now to the not so great stuff!
Slow Boot(takes 5 mins,onces it up its great thought)
The HD slows the rest down(thats right ur AMD 64 and ram will be slower then most computers with the same specs because of the slow RPM's{only 4200} of the hard drive!
The Ati graphics card suxs!(It makes intergraded graphics look good)
Display isnt as good as most LCD's
lil loud


BUT FOR THE PRICE ITS 100% WORTH IT!

Yeah! Really, I bought the predecessor (HP Pavilion ZV5410US) about fifteen months ago. It is now (March 2007) available mainly as a used laptop for which you should not pay over $500. Try eBay for availability. No hardware problems. Just a few dead pixels - that's average, I understand. 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.

Now, to the point: I bought the HP Pavilion ZV6130US, the model under review, about seven months later on sale at Staples for only $900, $50 less the my first one, so that I could have another laptop for a different room of the house or to take somewhere. And you know what? It's even better that the other one! The keyboard is better and it has a nifty light to the left of the caps lock key so you can't mistake how it is toggled. The ATI video card has twice as much memory as the other (128MB) and I've run the iTunes 'visualizer' which showed it was producing up to 60 frames per second. Not too shoddy for a reasonably priced laptop. Additionally, the optical drive is a DVD rw, which means you can store over eight GB of data on one disk. Create DVD videos yourself. The CPU is a little faster than the one in my first HP.

It also can accept the new Express Card 54 and 34 as well as the older PC card standard. 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 ATA100 80 GB unit which has scored well in a hard drive tuneup program I ran on it. The screen is bright and after six months has no dead pixels. The sound system is fine 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 year I have had this HP Pavilion ZV6130US 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 on my previous HP! 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.

NOTE: THE CORE MEMORY UPGRADE AND HARD DRIVE UPGRADE MENTIONED BELOW SHOULDN'T COST YOU MORE THAN $100 EACH FOR THE PARTS REQUIRED.

Update as of 1 September 06: installed 1GB core memory card upgrade into the slot under the base. First shutdown the laptop, unplug the power cord and remove the battery (of course replace it when you are done), (you should have backed up an image of your laptop to an external hard drive if you don't want to spend a day or two reinstalling your software). Just remove the small cover plate with a 00 phillips screwdriver, ground yourself by touching a radiator, sink spout, electrical outlet cover screw, or such, so that your static electric charge won't damage the static sensitive chips, lift up the memory card, unlatch two side latches, pull out the old one and reverse the process with the new 1 gigabyte laptop memory card (go to memory card manufacturer's websites for advice as to the exact specs of the card you need - as I recall, it is 133mhz DDR PC2700 100 pin type). The one gigabyte core memory cards now cost under $100. This core memory upgrade will give you 1280 megabytes of core memory which will allow you to surf the internet opening all the tabs or windows you could possibly want, or alternatively, run many more programs sumultaneously. It should allow your laptop to run faster. It is the second most valuable upgrade in terms of speed. See the hard drive upgrade update of 31 March 07 for the most valuable easy upgrade - a faster HD.

Update as of 16 November 06: the mouse pad failed after one year of use. I got a USB mouse to use. I am disappointed in this development. It's just beyone the 1 yr waranty period, too; isn't that always the way it happens!

Update as of 31 March 07: upgraded the hard disk from the original 4200 rpm ATA100 (also called ATA6) to a new Hitachi Travelstar ATA100 80GB 7400 rpm 2.5" internal drive. The key specification is the large increase in the drive speed (rpm). It turns faster. Thus it loads Windows XP faster on boot up (you may be amazed how much faster) and on shutdown it takes care of file management faster. This single upgrade is the most powerful easy upgrade you can do for this machine. First shutdown the laptop, unplug the power cord, and remove the battery (of course replace it when you are done), (you should have backed up an image of your laptop to an external hard drive if you don't want to spend a day or two reinstalling your software). Then just get a 00 philips head screwdriver, remove the drive from the bottom of the laptop (you really should know which of the removable panels it is!), remove four screws holding the drive to the back cover panel, pull off the drive. Then just reverse what you did, plugging in the new 7400 rpm drive of course, and turn it on with your Windows XP installation disk in the optical (CD or DVD) drive. Install XP, check that your drivers work (if they don't go to the HP website and select drivers to download drivers for your WiFi, sound card, etc that are not installed. (alternatively use your included driver CD to look for these). Now, crank up your external hard drive on which you should have backed up the entire old internal hard drive before removing it for replacement. Voila. See how much faster your HP laptop is with a much faster drive speed.

I bought this notebook when it was available locally with $250 in rebates....it was an amazingly good buy. Great screen, very quick for office work/internet. The ATI graphics xpress 200 doesn't impress me, however....don't expect much performance for games unless you run at low resolution. Card reader is a great feature. I use this computer usually plugged in so I haven't really tested battery life. Very pleased with my purchase for under seven hundred bucks!

This laptop is a great laptop. I recently graduated for InterActive Media Design. And it's been a great help for me. I'm using Adobe softwares and Dreamweaver softwares and the processor speed is pretty faast. Although the battery life doesnt last that long, it's still pretty good for design softwares and for movies too because of its widescreen. And its not bad for playing games too. It has a lot of hard drive. Great graphics. great laptop.

the quality of tech support is not good.
Very slow...

There is not support really after 2 years - the charge you a lot of money.


I just bought a Dell - its much better.

Excellent product, as evidenced by its short supply. This is the ideal desktop replacement. You get a lot of bang for your buck. I purchased three already for friends and am going to get a fourth one next week.

This HP "clunkster" has been reliable for the nearly two years since we purchased it. I have had no hardware issues and only repairable software issues which I don't mind fixing myself. It is stable and performs admirably with whatever I try to do. It even works well with memory hogs such as Adobe software packages (ie. Premiere Pro, CS2).

The only real issues I had with it were when I had the original factory install (Win XP Home, Norton Antivirus etc). Once I upgraded to XP Pro and loaded my own software, it worked great. It got better once I upgraded its memory to over a gig.

Pros:
Overall pretty fast
Stable
Bright display
Nice sound from its speakers
Dual Layer DVD+RW drive
Withstands my abuse (I'm not always gentle with it)
HP Support (hours after emailing HP about an issue, I recieved a solution. She kept emailing me until I replied back to give feedback. In that particular case, the solution worked.)

Cons:
Power hog...battery lasts only 2 hours because its processor wasn't designed for a notebook
Fan is loud (because it gets too hot)
Gets extraordinarily hot
Slow spinning HD (4200 RPM)... I use external HDs when I need faster performance
Only expandable to 2 gig RAM (due to change in industry standard)

Overall, this computer is great. I won't get a new PC because of its cons. And despite its size and weight, I still travel with it.

If or when I do get a new computer, it will be a Mac.

I love my HP

**UPDATE April 2009**
Upgraded laptop to 2GB RAM & a 250GB WD hard drive. No hardware problems, no dead pixels, touchpad still works, battery life still about 2 hours. Most realiable computer & oldest of my 5 computers.

**UPDATE March 2010**
Still working great. Battery life just under 2 hours. Will support Windows 7. :)

I ordered my HP Pavilion 6130US refurbished (like new) for $820.00. It came as described above except that it included Windows XP Professional instead of the Home edition.
While I am seeing laptop deals coming down in price, I remain satisfied with my choice. It is fast and beautiful.
The extra weight is, for me, a good trade off for the larger screen and increased functionality.
The zv6130US is not today's state of the art for sure, but it is all I need - and as much computer as I could hope for at this price.
Actually, I am astonished. In 1982 I spent $1,000. for a 64 Kilobyte Radio Shack Model 100 laptop that used 16 kilobytes for B.A.S.I.C. And I had to write my own software.