Canceling my DV5000Z order, buying V4000t

I'm in a bit of a situation here. I ordered a DV5000Z a couple weeks ago with the 128mb 200M. I'm a pretty big gamer so I would be gaming on this machine a lot, but I've used a 200M before and I can deal with it. I had a very quick desktop but had to sell everything and get a cheap laptop due to some other circumstances. This is why I picked the DV5000z, for around $700 it's a decent machine with the 128mb 200M. Everything faster seemed to cost a lot more and I can't really spend over $750.

Now, my ship date is the 23rd on the dv5000z, and I was just looking on the HP site and saw that they have the V4000t with $300 instant savings. With the 128mb x700 it's a much better computer, and all in all it came out to $730.05. I have a gig of ram to put in there, and the crappy celeron really doesn't matter that much and I'll upgrade it later, the x700 more than makes up for it, especially in the long run.

I just called HP to cancel my dv5000z and they said that at this point it would be too close to the ship date to cancel it and I'd end up getting the machine and would have to send it back. So, I chose to keep my order because they gave me a $75 credit to keep it, and i'd have to send it back even if I decided to cancel right away.

What I'm wondering is, first, will they still have that $300 instant rebate a week from now when I get the dv5000z and need to decide if I want to send it back? Am I a collosol idiot for letting the sales person talk me into $75 off to keep my order on the dv5000z and not just cancel it straight up, even though I'd have to ship it back when I got it and than wait another week for the V4000t? How is HP with the returning thing, will it be quick or is it going to take forever?

 

Returning laptop to HP is no hassle at all... at least it wasn't when I returned one of the laptops that I ordered last year.

They even take care of the shipping. they will email you the RMA and Airbill # in a nice format, you print it, stick it o the box, and FedEx will pick it up.

And they credited my credit card back in 2-3 business days.

As for the V4000t sale... HP's sale normally run from Sunday to Satuday.

If you have the extra cash, might be better to order the V4000t right now, and just return the dv5000z when it arrives.

 

The $300 instant savings was there when I ordered my v4000t a month ago.

 

the 300 instant savings seems to turn on and off. sometimes its there sometimes its not.
but bonus..u got 75$ credit...i think everybody could order something and return it for the 75$ credit and get a better system!! haha..

 

Well I don't get the $75 credit if I return it lol, they gave me that to keep the DV5000Z and not cancel my order.

Ugh..I dunno what to do, I have no computer at all right now and I'm so close to getting the DV5000Z, returning it would put me out of a machine for another 2 weeks, but I just don't know if it's worth passing up the x700 over the 200M for just a little bit more money. I really will be using it A LOT.

 

Well, HP has a 21-day return policy.

Morally it wouln't be right. but it's one of the possible options.

 

Semi-3D gaming vs. REAL 3D gaming.

One plays WoW semi-decently, the other plays WoW with full settings with no sweat. Your choice. Wasn't hard for me. (see sig)

 

Yeah, I'm well aware of the difference, I've had the latest and greatest in my desktop for years, I know what it's like. But, I had to sell all that and I was left with a small budget and a desktop wasn't practical anymore because I needed to take it with me.

I was about to order a v4000t but I got all excited about it and forgot to add that freaking tax on there Now the price spread between the discount I got on my dv5000z and this is a bit too great to wait 2 weeks for...so I think I'll keep the dv5000z (asuming the person I talked to on the phone didn't cancel it, I'm not quite sure if she understood what I wanted to do).

I think I'll be able to deal with the 200M.

 

Note to HP: we could have been spared all this drama if you'd just offer PROPER GPUs in your Turion notebooks!

On the bright side, the impressively tiny power brick is nice. A decent GPU probably wouldn't have allowed for that.

 

Wow, only $49 to upgrade from GMA900 to ATI x700!

Btw, on a deal site it noted the $300 discount should last at least until 03/18.

 

For me I do my gaming on consoles... Only time I play games on my PC is when there is a demo I wanna try out that's coming to the Xbox...

Would it be possible in the future to use an express video card?

 

I bought a dv5000z, had remorse - so tried to cancel, got convinced to keep it with the 75 rebate, received the laptop, and then in the end had to return it anyways. HP customer support is very nice and they didn't charge me for return shipping.

My advice is if you have some remorse now, cancel it and just order the v4000t. If you are a heavy gamer you'll be much happier in the long run. Otherwise, when the next batch of games come along, you won't be able to run them very well at all, while the x700 will at least still crank along.

 

You should receive some coupons from HP after your DV5000Z order. You may use that for the V4000T order and return the DV5000Z within 21-day. If you need to pay tax anyway and has a friend or yourself a Costco membership, you can order on costco.com. The price would be slightly cheaper or about the same, but you'll have a 6-month return period.

 

i'm unsatisfied with my latest v4000t.

i returned the last one which performed great, but had a touchpad that frequently stopped woring. it got replaced with a unit that is much noisier (bad cd/dvd drive placement or something), has a worse screen (horizontal lines), and performs worse despite the fact that I had upgraded the specs. battery life is about 30 mins less than the previous on average. on battery power there are strange static/beeping noises coming from the cpu area.

I'm returning it and am going to spend a little more and get something with a little better quality.

i would watch for some of these issues, as they are NOT normal.

 

guys guys, if you send back those dv5000s, you're gonna miss that 64bit processor. Dont get the dv4000, its a rubbish 32bit P-M processor that microsoft says is going to be obselete by the end of 2006

 

Meh, vista wont really be in full throttle for a couple more years anyway. Everything is still 32 bit, and the V4000t is a really good deal. If i really wanna run Vista i'll buy a new desktop and fiddle with it.

 

Taylor138,
To bad that you got a lemon. The only time my CD drive gets too loud is when I am running a program from a CD or when I first put a CD in. Also I think you are just hearing the hard drive. This stuff is natural. I think you can just hear it more because your closer to your laptop than say you would be to a desktop. These little noises should not be a deal breaker. Just my two cents.
Tim

 

My last laptop didn't make the noises. The cd/dvd noise is caused whenever it's accessing the drive. It causes the lower right portion of the case to make a very annoying and loud vibrating sound. It makes watching dvd's unenjoyable. The other static noises come from the upper left area. I guess they aren't THAT bad lol, but again, my last system didn't do this.

The screen looks a lot worse. The first thing I noticed when playing games is that anything with a greyish color showed horizontal lines on the lcd. My last laptop didn't do this.

Then I ran 3dmark 05. My last laptop got 2714. With the same drivers I was getting 2450. Battlefield 2, which ran great on my first system, has momentary pauses in gameplay, not to mention the horizontal lines noticable everywhere. After multiple reformats, driver trials, and dealing with tech support, I found no solution.

I thought about getting a replacement again, but then i'll probably get a dead pixel or another bad screen. After thinking about it a little longer, I decided to wait for more x1600 laptops to come out and drop in price.