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Customer Reviews: Average Rating:  Rating :  - I really wanted to like it...
Summary
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If you want to web browse, do easy word or photo processing, or watch DVD's, then this laptop will work for you. And it does look nice. If you have any kind of real-time intensive application, do not expect the 4GB of RAM and dual-core RM-70 processors to save you -- it's a pig. If you can stomach the expert effort to get XP to run, you'll love it (wow, fast, even with the system-limited addressing of only 3GB of the RAM) but the audio drivers will not work, plus you will waste a week of your life. I rushed to buy it and did not realize certain deficiencies due to my own haste, but still, both HP and Microsoft came up short on this one. A friend of mine had the previous generation of this laptop -- a dv8000 with XP Pro with a devoted graphics card. I used both the dv7-1130us and the older dv8000 for two weeks, and just fell in love with the dv8000. I wanted to like the dv7, I really did, but honestly and truly, I have to advise scrutizing users against it. Buy an XP-capable machine, and/or wait for Vista's replacement in the 2010 timeframe.
There are a lot of vitriolic reviews and opinions on the internet today, but this isn't one of them. I really wanted to like this emergency replacement laptop for my 5 1/2 year old, recently dead HP ze5400. I now wish I spent a little more money or looked around more. But's let's first try to be positive:
The Good
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* Laptop looks sexy. Mine is silver, but this or the bronze color scheme look pretty glitzy. The glowing HP logo on the back looks cool too.
* Beautiful display for rendering photos, movies, etc.
* Light for a 17" laptop, around 6 lbs. Also quite skinny, relieving wrist fatigue for long periods of typing.
* 4GB of fast DDR2 RAM. Also, a second hard drive slot is available for additional HDD, although there's a demerit to this (see The Bad).
The Bad
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* The second hard drive position does not include a carrier/bracket to mount it. Online price for these between $40 and 60 -- if you can find them. I predict these will soon become a commodity, but until then, you have to suffer. Not even HP sells them, although the part number is available on the website and in the laptop manual.
* No 1394 firewire support. It does have an eSATA port, but my video camera only has a firewire port -- you have to buy adapters or a new video camera.
* No XP downgrade support. I bought a new, faster 7200 RPM hard drive and managed to load it with my old XP Pro, plus most drivers. However, HP does not yet have a driver for the internal laptop speakers. You can hear audio via the headphone jack, but it's annoying to always have to have headphones to hear any audio. And the effort it takes to do this -- I've been working on computers since 1979 and this was a real pain to get XP to run. This is not for the faint of heart. HP's support website quite unequivocally says they do not support XP downgrades on laptops with OneTouch buttons like the dv5 and dv7, although I cannot help wondering if this may one day change. Currently, I'm using the Vista HDD (and do NOT try a dual boot -- you WILL corrupt at least the Vista if you do -- see more in The Ugly).
* Vista really and truly does have some problems. I don't hate Microsoft. I love Office, and have generally liked XP and Win2000 more than Apple or free Unix OS's. But Vista, my goodness, even with the 4GB of RAM and a dual core runs more slowly on this machine than XP Pro did with 1GB and a Pentium 4 on my old machine. There are lags in typing and mouse clicks. There are program crashes with relatively modern 32 bit programs that won't run on this 64 bit Vista Home Premium OS. I just bought a 2 year, 3 PC license from ZoneAlarms and it won't run on this!! Yes, yes, I know, you can argue that's ZA fault, but believe me, just you wait and buy this machine, you'll see what I mean with your existing software and if you have them, utilities. You can turn off most of the warning messages (thank goodness) but there are still numerable dialog boxes that will not resize, or tell you things you learned 20 years ago. I actually had a dialog box loop, flashing two contentious boxes several hundred times per minute, throttling the CPU's real time. The next time you hear a bunch of geeks putting Vista down, understand it's not just all an anti-Microsoft kick.
* Native screen resolution for the 17" screen is only 1440 x 900, WXGA. My old boat-anchor laptop had a 1680 x 1050 with only a 15" screen. Things don't seem to have progressed much. Indeed, the old laptop was SXGA+, and you can get the dv7-1130us with a WSXGA+ screen, but you must go to the HP website and configure it -- you'll never see a ready-made one with this. I wish store and website merchandisers had some education and would learn to offer these things. Again, you can say this is my fault for not researching enough. But the old laptop could show two, full pages in MS Word at a small but razor-sharp 75% zoom, with it's 15" screen. This new laptop can only show two full pages on MS Word at a virtually unreadable 63%, and it has a 17" screen.
* It can be very hard to read the silkscreened characters on the keyboard, particularly the function keys. When it's dim, you better be a good typer, because the key lettering is unreadable. Also, previous and even certain current HP laptops have slightly roughed key surfaces. The glossy smooth keys on this seemed nice on day 1, but it starts to get annoying. Your opinion may differ.
The Ugly
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* BIOS - HP specially designed the startup bios to work with Vista on this machine. Booting from dual drives, even if connected via USB or network interfaces, will interfere with the installed SATA HDD. It is not a flexible bios, depending on what you want to do. For those of you wanting to do an XP reversion, look out. Actually, just entering the bios was a horror. Because there was no delay on the bootup, I had to just continuously hit "F2" a few times....this corrupted Vista!! The corruption was so bad, I needed to use the recovery partition, not just the backup DVD-ROM (which you must make yourself when you take the laptop of the box -- please, please, please do this). I've never seen an OS get corrupt just by having to hit a key a few times to enter the bios. Hey Mr Ballmer, can you say "regression test"?
* The trackpad and/or its driver is out of alignment. I am ALWAYS inadvertently closing programs, scrolling, etc when I don't want to be. I will have to disable this. I am closely watching my hand and finger placement every time this happens, thinking that I'm still just getting used to the computer, but for example, after I inadvertently scroll to the top of a large html page and lose my place, I immediately look down to see my fingers approx 3/4 inch from the scroll bar, yet it was scrolling. I see this as an HP issue. I've been typing on this laptop for almost two months now and am still not used to it. It has never taken this long to get used to a different keyboard.
* No PCMCIA support. There is an ExpressCard port, the modern equivalent and replacement port for PCMCIA. But I had a Verizon Wireless PCMCIA modem/phone card and another type of adapter, both now useless. I just bought another parallel port adapter for ExpressCard to use with this laptop, but it unseats all the time. The locking mechanism seems broken. I'm very disappointed in this. For my use, this would have been a deal-killer if I had been aware of it. I know it's kind of fun in a voyeuristic way to see someone buy something without having researched it properly, but I run a small home-based business and needed a new laptop fast. It just never dawned on me that a new laptop wouldn't have PCMCIA slot.
Well, the review is getting pretty long, and there's more I could say, but I think you get the idea. It's a nice laptop to look at, and depending on what you want to do or what software you already own, it may work just fine for you. I know what it's like to read an Amazon review and see some poor soul describe his or her's misfortune with some product, and because you're disconnected from their reality, it all amounts to just some level of interesting reading. All I can say is think carefully before buying this series of laptop. If I've offended any of you who rated it 5 stars, well, that's the purpose of reviews. You rate 5, I rate 2, and somewhere out of it all we get an average score.
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