HP Pavilion DV7 1260US 17 0 Inch Laptop 2 2 GHz AMD Turion X2 RM 74 Dual Core Processor 4 GB RAM 400 GB Hard Drive Blu ray Drive Vista Premium
With a striking, liquid metallic industrial design on the outside and powerful entertainment capabilities on the inside, this 17-inch notebook is the perfect partner for fun, communication and productivity.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Great all Round Laptop / Media System
I have several HP laptops with 17″ screens (dv9910us as well as this dv7-1270us). The screen size is great, but I could see that trying to carry these in a backpack for school use could be a load. The displays are fantastic and the NVidia graphics card is super. The speed for boot-up, network connectivity and multi-tasking of applications is also fabulous.
This has fantastic sound for music with the Altec Lansing dual speakers on top and subwoofer on the bottom. Of course it can be hooked to a media center via the built-in HDMI or USB ports for impressive sound and Blue-ray DVD play.
Battery life is about 3 – 4 hours with the power management default settings out of the box.
All round this is a great package, with the few cons noted below.
Cons:
1. Bluetooth headsets / headphones don’t work for listening to music. I’ve written to HP and visited forums, and it seems that there is some issue with MS Vista that Microsoft hasn’t fixed. This is a bit disappointing, however, if you are planning to run with XP (which I’m not sure will work with this 64 bit microprocessor) it may be ok. I, as are many, awaiting a fix for this issue. Many have reported issues with Bluetooth Stack Service not working. I found that there is a Microsoft patch (something to do with ActiveX killbits), that causes this problem. After the Bluetooth stopped working correctly, and rebuilding my system I found that by not installing this “fix” the Bluetooth works for everything (phone, mp3 player, etc.), but not with the headphones – for listening to music. Headphones do work for skype and with the phone.
2. The built-in Intel 5100 AGN WiFi Network adapter always indicates that its running at 54.0Mbps, even though I have a Netgear 854T Wireless-N router that can run at 300.0Mbps. If I connect a Netgear WPN121T USB adapter the HP Networking status indicates 300.0Mbps for that adapter. However, both adapters seem equally as fast for loading of webpages and downloads, so I’m not sure if the build-in Intel 5100 adapter is really running at 300.0Mbps even though it indicates on 54.0Mbps. I’ve been working with HP on this issue and they have not been able to fix yet.
3. The touch pad (as on all of these HPs) can act bizarrely, in that the mouse will jump to some other place when you touch the pad. It doesn’t happen all of the time, but can be rather annoying. I’m not sure if it has to do with the way the notebook is leveled, but I do notice that if the keyboard is not on a stable table top or work space, the mouse jumping seems to happen more frequently. The synaptic touch pad driver sw provides some settings which seem to help.
4. Finally, the built-in cooling fan is noticably louder in the dv7-1270us than in the dv9910us models I have. Fortunately, in the BIOS it can be set to turn-on/off as needed, and not run continuously, so it’s not too bad, but it pitch is at a frequency that causes my ears to ring if it runs very long.
1 Star Do not buy an HP Laptop
My HP Pavilion quit working after 3 weeks. The sound card went out and I was unable to connect to the internet. I contacted the tech serice & after their suggestions the computer would not function at all. I lost all applications and a weeks worth of work, almost lost a client. I contacted customer service, the customer service rep was not interested in my complaint and was rude. I can not believe the behavior of the HP company and THEY LIKE OTHER COMPANIES will fall by the wayside if they forget how important the customer is. I did a little research and found that most HP laptops do not last a year. I am buying a macintosh & selling my HP Pavilion DV7!
5 Stars Good laptop
A beautiful machine.
If you are not used to type without looking at the keyboard, be advised that the key labels are hard to read if you do not have an extra light close to your machine.
The glossy screen is a lot brighter than my older 17″ laptop’s. I like this one better.
HDMI port is the best interface to take advantage of the Blu-ray ROM drive. I have been enjoying movies on my TV using this laptop as player.
A good value for the price!
4 Stars great laptop, it is windows you have to be aware
So I got my state of art Notebook PC today. What a beauty!
It was very easy to do the initial set up, and I got online ASAP – wireless router was @ ready.
I started loading simple programs & softwares, such as skype, mozilla, google chrome, and it was pretty much a smooth ride, Itunes however could not be loaded properly, because the latest version of Itunes does not work with 64-bit windows. Easy to solve – you have to upload Itunes, 7.6 on the apple website.
I’ve also loaded free antivirus software that I use on my other, older (much older laptops) instead of Norton.
After 5 hours and many updates, the laptop did not restart – it simply crashed. Heartbroken I called HP (since I did not burn my 2 or 3 DVD recovery – which now I highly recommend), who were very professional, very caring, and even though the whole process lasted 3 hours (the testing of the BIOS, and the hard drive) – I was doing other stuff, and HP customer service called at the time they said they would. Hard drive was OK (but they said that if it wouldn’t they would replace it charge free; did I mention that HP provides customer service 24/7 no charge as well). Because it was the error of the software I was installing I believe and recommend that if you do it, please do install one at a time, making sure it actually did go through…
Other than that I am not anticipating any more problems. The sound, and the visual effects are awesome.
As far as keyboard goes, yes it is a bit different, but not that hard to read as some suggested, but then again we are all very different…
I highly recommend it:)
2 Stars poor choice for color of keyboard
Great laptop, but would be a lot better if you could see the keyboard. where can I get a black keyboard to replace this one? I found the answer to the problem of not being able to see the keys, keyboard stickers,[...].