HP dv9000t Review
I got my HP dv9000t notebook in today! A week early. It was a complete surprise. Here are my initial thoughts on the system. I will update more when I have time.
Set up was very easy. When booting for the first time one has to set up Windows properly. In all of my time setting up new machines it always wants to connect to the internet and it never does. How is a notebook supposed to do that without proper config first? At any rate it booted up just fine. After connecting to the internet I promptly went to the MS site to download the latest updates and get my machine up to date. 61 updates later (166MB) it is all set. That included IE 7. The system wanted to register itself with HP and MS. However I wasn't able to get online at that point, so I am not sure if it was a success or not.
The machine is plenty fast. My wireless works well and the ethernet card is good for gigabit traffic (I wish). I got the ultra brightview screen and it really really is bright. Looks great so far. I played a bit with some dvds. I first put in Lord of the Rings Two Towers. HP's quickplay kicked in and immediately said I had the wrong location (it was set to us/canada). When I confirmed I was indeed in the US it ejected the DVD. After a few attempts I used Media Center instead and it played right away. No idea why it didn't like the dvd. I chalk it up to over protective DRM stuff. The dvd was legitimate unless Best Buy is selling scetchy dvd's these days.
The movie played well and looked great. I was surprised to see that the widescreen layout still left some black bars at the top / bottom. I figured the widescreen display would be the same ratio, but apparently not. There was very little wasted space though and it showed well at full width. Interestingly the Fifth Element showed at full width in Media Center, but with Media Player I couldn't get it to be full width. There was always a black border around the whole movie. I had to delete a few things (vongo, aol, etc) but overall not as much as I expected. I am sure I will find more as i go along. At bootup without removing anything the system took up 360MB ram approximately.
The keyboard layout is great except the right shift key which is half the normal width so I keep hitting the arrow key on accident. Something I can adjust to pretty quickly I think. The touchpad feels funny at first, but I have gotten used to it and am now moving and typing at near normal rates. One thing I was worried about with the touchpad is begin able to scroll up/down. I found myself missing it. Then I noticed on the right side of the pad is a couple vertical lines. Sure enough if I run my finger up or down them it scrolls up or down. Very handy.
I went to nvida site to download the latest graphics driver. In their choice it isn't clear which to chose from so I opted for the default geForce driver first. ~40MB later it turns out that wouldn't work, so I download the 7 go series. That is also a no go. Looks like I need special drivers from HP? Need to investigate that more. The system came default with Netscape, but not Firefox which I found odd. Also I didn't buy office, but it comes preinstalled anyway (just not functioning). It would have been great to have an option for openOffice instead.
The media center worked well. I just plugged in the TV tuner and then my coax cable from the wall. Presto instant DVR. I set it to record The Simpson's, Family Guy, CSI, Heros, and Law and Order. I only have basic cable, so no movie recording for me. I plan on installing World Of Warcraft soon, and also connecting my tv tuner and trying that out. I will blog more later. If anyone has any specific questions, let me know.
Update: I had scheduled all kinds of recordings for Media Center. I moved the notebook to the bedroom to watch Futurama. I then realized I couldn't just turn off the monitor and go to bed. I wasn't sure how to turn off the display and still have it record so I gave up and closed the top which put it in standby mode. Sure enough at 11:30 it turned on and started recording Family Guy. Very slick.
Update 2: I just bought a 32" LCD TV/monitor. Inputs for PC, Composit, HDMI, etc. I decided to connect my notebook to the TV. Just plugged in HDMI and then FN F4 to toggle and presto! It looks very very good. Audio automatically goes to the tv and the volume is now controlled by the tv. I can work, surf, play games and watch tv with media center / dvd's easily now. I expected this to be much more work than it was.
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Thanks!
Can you use the analog tuner with a broadband wireless ExpressCard at same time?
There is only one slot for the express card. Though I think you could probably just use an USB2 tv tuner. Just make sure it is listed as working with media center 2005 (learned that the hard way with an old machine).
You would think the docking station would have a tv tuner, but no. A big bummer in my book.
You mention in the review you were going to install Warcrack, and since I'm considering upgrading to this machine and am a Warcrack addict I thought I'd ask your feedback on that in particular, but also for a quick update after the first month with the machine.
Thanks in advance!
Anyway I actually just started looking at it. Do i have to buy it again? Or can I install the trial version and then use my main account? So without answers I didn't move forward. Then December hit and I have a rule that I don't buy stuff for myself in December. ;-)
That said my wife got Sims 2 for the machine and it worked very well. My big suggestion for any gaming on the machine is an external mouse and keyboard. The built in works fine for basic stuff, but games need the mouse way too much. If you go wireless you will replace a lot of batteries (my mouse anyway).
Movies have been great. I have been fiddling with the power settings to figure out how to have it turn the monitor off but not power off so I can record properly. It looks like you can close the case and it will hibernate and wake up to record. But if it is already recording it doesn't hibernate after that recording, it has a prompt to ask you to confirm you want to log off or hibernate and stop recording. No real loss but kind of annoying. So now I have it power off the screen after 15 minutes of no use, and the screen saver pops up a black screen pretty quickly. So this way after watching tv at night we can just leave it alone and it turns mostly off pretty quick. It isn't perfect, but I haven't had time to research other options.
I also recommend 20 days after your purchase check the price of the machine. I found mine had dropped $50 and they refunded it to me without any hastle when I called them.
I am very happy with my purchase. My big wish really is that I could find a docking station for it that was a) inexpensive and b) supported tv tuner.
Also the built in speakers are not too bad for one person sitting right in front if the room is quiet, but you will need external speakers for any real entertainment. I found some small nice Sony ones for $50 with subwoofer that work well.
Finally I got the fast 100mb HD. I am thinking now maybe I should have gotten two to start. I don't think you can add a second HD after the fact. It is another thing to investigate or confirm before purchase. I plan on doing an external HD anyway so not a big deal, but to others it might be.
Oh, and it comes with a free upgrade to Vista. Vista needs extra ram, so I went with 2GB ram. I will probably upgrade at some point, but I am waiting a bit to see more reviews. Especially of the media center experience.
Actually that is the whole reason which drives me to either Dell or Thinkpads.
What has been your experience ?
I've also heard that you cannot wipe out the hard-drive and do a re-install and somehow make the stand-alone media center [run-DVD-without-computer-start] to work. This is a big concern, I expected it to lie on its own partition, and not mess with the OS.
All who have bought stuff from HP are welcome to comment on their customer service.
As for service the only call I have had to make so far was for a refund because the price dropped. The guy was really funny and nice and it was no hassle at all.
I have had Dell, HP and Toshiba in the past and honestly I haven't had to call tech support much at all. I have no reason to not go to any of those companies due to support.
I did order directly from HP. They had models at Circuit City and Best Buy, but I don't trust any of the people there to know what they are talking about. One guy at Best Buy was trying to tell me the TV tuner was wireless! I pressed for more information and he just explained that you didn't need to plug it in and it just works.
Thought I would give you the "up and up" on the black bars during DVD playback.
There are actually 3 widescreen formats. 1.78, 1.85, and 2.33. The choice is entirely up to the director of the movie. you will see little or no bars with 1.78 and 1.85, but noticeable bars with 2.33.
Nice review.
Next I want to find a way to stream my music from my desktop MCE 2004. So far no luck, but still have some options to try.
Joshua, are you going to get this game? If so, I would like to hear your results since I am interested in getting this Laptop with the 512 Card
This is my dream machine. As soon as it hits the Middle East I'm getting my hands on one. What do you think about the UltraBirghtView though? Is it worth not getting the higher resolutin screen which only comes in BrightView?
You can make windows ignore closing the laptop screen from Control Panel pwer options. In "What to do when I close the Led of my leaptop" choose nothing. This will trun off the screen but the laptop is still working fully.
As for closing the top, I have it hibernate now, which is nice because it comes out of hibernation to record tv, then back in. The only catch is that if it is already recording something and you close the lid it causes a prompt to appear asking to confirm (since hibernation would cancel the recording) and so basically it closes the lid but doesn't turn any thing off in that case.
Sorry for not responding sooner. Hope you are enjoying your new machine!
I continue to love my notebook. At some point I hope to install the Lord of the Rings beta on it, but unexpectedly my main computer died and I had to replace it. So I have spent most of my computer time playing with my new desktop machine rather than my notebook.
My latest dvd needs are to burn my dvd collection to my external hd. This way I can play any dvd with my remote on my notebook without having to track down the disk and insert it. The ultimate in lazy! If I could find a good tool to burn to avi that would be ideal, but even burning as a dvd file set is ok. I found one tool but it isn't very consistent in what it burns.
I just got a dv9000t. Awesome laptop. I got the 512 MB option for video and the dual 7200 RPM drives. It was pre-loaded with Vista Ultimate 64. So far I have had only 1 problem with software loading and it turned out to be a vendor problem. I'm going to load up supreme commander and CNC3 this week. This thing is 100 times faster then my old HP (dv8130us).
@ Jasaon - Not a clue. I didn't order office. Actually, office is often preinstalled on new machines, but you need to pay for a key to use it after 30 days. I haven't check ed my notebook though as I don't use office.