HP Pavillion zv5000z Review

i so can't wait for mine to come... 3-4 weeks now!

 

My bad its actually the canon that have the cheap ink not epson.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

brianstretch,

I havent tried the fedora core yet because of school, but i am hoping to soon and its good to know it runs well. What was the original resolution of the screen that you ordered--was it meant to handle the resolution you have it at? I am just curious, since I don't know if it is possible to up the resolution when I do get a chance to install linux.

Regarding the whole pc3200 and pc2700 stuff that I keep hearing about, I dont think their is any guarantee that pc3200 will work since I originally had 2x512mb pc3200 sodimms that wouldn't work in my R3000z, but when I tried my Corsair 512mb pc3200 it worked fine. I'm still at a loss to explain it all, but guess its a crap shoot.

~beast

 

I ordered my zv5000z with the 1680x1050 screen upgrade (+$100). Most people would probably want to bump up the font size at this res, but I've found that ClearType (font antialiasing) works so well at high pixel densities like this that standard size fonts are fine. GNOME's antialiasing works pretty good too.

What brand of chips did the nonworking PC3200 SODIMMs use? AFAIK who makes the chip dermines whether it'll work at a given speed grade. Micron PC2700 and Corsair PC3200 are known good in 512MB pairs, can anyone add to this list? Corsair PC2700 and Infineon PC2700 are known bad (because I tried). 256MB SODIMMs are more forgiving than 512MB but can break too.

 

Before I bought my Corsair pc3200 dimm, I had Geil 2x512mb pc3200 sodimms which my R3000z didnt like at all. But i'm happy now that it's stable iwth the Corsair 512mb sodimm.

With regards to the screen resolution, I guess the max I'll get is the 1200x800 that i bought it with which is fine since as u were saying the font size can be small with the higher resolution. I woulda loved to buy that screen, but was looking for a relatively budget system since i am student...but i'm sure it'll get the job done until i get outta school...

~beast

 

beast - im a junior math major at fresno pacific university. 2 and a half weeks (counting finals) til schools out... just in time for the laptop to come (i got the middle-road screen, $$). Good thing it's coming after school, i'd flunk all my finals playing with it otherwise

glad to hear Fedora is working well on it. i don't remember if i'd mentioned in earlier posts that I had Fedora Core 2 Test 1 and it was pretty bad... hope test 2 is better, but yeah, im gonna wait til test 3 to use. On my HP i'll probably install mandrake 10 community, im using that now and liking it alright, but still prefer Red hat-based stuff.

 

Hi, I have a few questions about this model.

As far as upgrades, can the AGP or CD drives be upgraded?

The other question is, Ive only seen the 3200+ listed in this thread. Has anyone tried the A64 or XP-M 3000+ for this model yet or has anyone heard anything about them?

 

Maranello,

When we talked about the 3000, 3200, or 3400 we are referring to the Athlon 64 bit set. I don't know anyone who has bought the Athlon-M in the model since the whole buying point of this laptop is the A64 processor. With regards to upgradability, the video card is not upgradeable, though there have been rumors it is, but based upon everything I've read and seen it is not. As far as the cdrom drive, I would think it would be interchangeable, but it may be harder than other laptops with the just removeable drive bays. THis laptop is not designed with easily removeable components.

~beast

 

Ditto what smilingbeast said. The video chip is not on a separate card so it's not upgradable. The 3400+ and DVD burner options were not available when I placed my order, if they had been I'd have bought them (though, when I think about it, buying an external Pioneer 8x USB2.0/FireWire burner and sticking with the cheap DVD-ROM/CD-RW notebook drive makes a lot of sense).

The primary reasons to buy this notebook over other Athlon 64 notebooks are the 1680x1050 screen, Bluetooth, 3400+ CPU, and quadspeed DVD burner options. If 1280x800 res, 2x DVD-RW, 3200+ CPU, and no Bluetooth are sufficient for you, the eMachines M6809 with its high-end Radeon 9600 GPU is probably a better bet (though ATI chips aren't quite as Linux-friendly as nVidia). I saw one at Best Buy today but they're not on the BB website and I didn't ask whether they had any in inventory (I assume they did?).

FWIW, with the exception of the weak GeForce 440 I'm happy with my zv5000z, especially the 1680x1050 res screen. Well, ok, I'm mad at Broadcom because they're Linux-hostile but just about everyone uses their WiFi chips (hey HP, switch to Atheros!).

 

Thanks. Im going with one of the A64 CPU's myself if I choose this model. Until I configured an HP system I had no idea AMD was even making 32bit 754pin CPUs.

Ill keep my eyes open then about the AGP. I was surprised with this CPU why HP wouldnt offer the mobility 9600 or even the 9200 as an option. I have no plans for gaming on a laptop... I have a desktop and 9800 pro for that. My thoughts were more geared toward the age of the 440 card.

Thanks again [ ]

 

Newegg was out of stock on 7200RPM Hitachi notebook drives last I checked (I bought my 60GB 7200RPM drive for my zv5000z there), but MWave has them:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/ProdHARDDRIVE-IDE-NOTEBOOK.hmx?updepts=HD-IDE&DNAME=Hard+Drives%2DIDE

They also have the new 40GB 7200RPM drive and it's quite a bit cheaper than the 60GB model. MWave and Newegg are my two favorite toy stores.

 

I think we all agree that we would've paid the extra $50-100 dollars for the DirectX 9 compatibility with the radeon 9600 which I would have loved. If you're looking at something like that then I would get the Emachine Athlon 64 version, but it doesnt look like u'r looking for that. When I was looking I wanted an awesome system at a budget (since i'm a student) price, so I got the R3000z from compaq. I love it, but the only uprgade I still really need is that 7200 rpm drive which I will get during the summer so I dont waste my time during school. I cant wait

Enjoy u'r new system when ya get it.

~beast

 

Speaking about disk drives, Toshiba has just announced a 100 GB 2.5-inch drive too bad it is only a 4200 rpm drive.

link

Bill

 

Actually, I may go with a ze5602us instead of something from the zv5000 line, despite the fact the ze5601 has a 15" screen. the resolution is 1400X1050, and it has a parallel port as well as 2 open RAM slots (not that this is a real big feature for me, since I'm technically inclinced enough to realize that if I want more memory, it's best to have a professional technician do the work for me [ ] ). The only two hitches with this model are: (a) I've only seen it available online, at sears.com and microcenter.com, and I really want to get a hands-on look at it; and (b) no documentation I've seen makes any reference to the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM speed. I'm guessing the CD-ROM speed is 24X, and the DVD-ROM is 8X, since about every other model I've researched has these speeds, but I won't assume it. Anyone out there hear anything about the ze5602? There's zero reviews on it on this site.

 

Hey guys!

Anyone who is looking for an A64 Laptop...Bestbuy has the emachines on sale again for 1500-250 in MIR=1250 + (tax on 1500). Too me seems like a good deal, hopefully others think so too.

~beast

 

who was it that installed FC1 on it? Did you have to use fips for the WinXp partition or can FC split it's own partition. last time i installed linux on the same drive as Windows was... 1999... I've had two drives for quite a while. Any feedback? thanks... i really can't stand this Windows stuff much

-brandon
brandonfpu at yahoo.com

 

I did. I swapped in a 7200RPM HD while I was at it, so I did a full Windows reinstall. I don't think FC can split partitions.

FC2 Test 3 was released today. You might want to try that. It runs on this notebook without the idle=poll workaround that FC1 requires. Getting nVidia's drivers to run on FC2 is a bit of work (see http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=26353&page=1&pp=15) but this notebook isn't good for gaming anyhow and the x.org nv driver works fine.

 

I must take exception to the person (singular, so far as I can tell) who says this notebood is not good for gaming. This notebook is fine for gaming. Better than my old zd7000 with a Pentium 4 3.06 and 128 Nvidia card. If you are thinking of buying one for gaming go ahead.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by whomever

 

Yeah, I must agree with Slat. If you look earlier in this long thread, you will see that 2 of us compared bench marks, and although your cpu is faster I can get 2x the score with no problems. The 440 chip is just not current enough to do much of anything with the newer games like far cry and other high end games. If you want a true test of your graphic capability, as Far Cry can bring screaming desktops almost to their knees let alone an old mobile graphics chip from nVidia.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

Yeah, but thats not an option on the zv5000z [ ]

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Quikster

 

This forum has been incredibly helpful. Think I will order the zv5000z tomorrow.

A couple questions for whoever can assist a little more:

1. I have a Dell 20" monitor. Will this zv5000z with the 4xxx graphics card drive this 20" monitor for dual monitor operations?

2. Is it worth it to go to the 3400 A64 over the 3200? Will mainly be running a lot of database programs doing research and the just the basics of spreadsheets, word processing, web research, etc..

3. Will probably follow your leads on upgrading memory myself & probably the disk drive at some point so am considering limited memory & small drive for the order. Any updates on thinking in this arena?

Appreciate all you work, research & testing. Will try to give to this forum if I can add anything..

 

Found this document for how to resize the NTFS partition and install FC:
http://www.hut.fi/~tkarvine/linux-windows-dual-boot-resing-ntfs.html

So will do that this weekend, but finals are coming up for me, time will be much better a week from now.

So far love the laptop!! Now, I got the 1GB from HP preinstalled... is there something I need to worry about there? I think it was 2 dimms, is that cool? 80GB harddrive, i'll repartition it and stuff tonight... thanks!

 

Brian Stretch:

I greatly appreciate your input. Thank you for the assist.

gdl

 

1) You can do dual monitors. I briefly tested it.

2) If your database research is CPU-bound, by all means get the 3400+. If it's disk I/O bound, the extra CPU power won't make a difference and your other tasks sound pretty lightweight. That said, it's not all that expensive an upgrade, so it's almost a "Why not?" expense if you have the cash. If it had been available I'd have bought it.

3) If you can find a reliable supplier of Micron PC2700 or PC3200 memory and are comfortable taking your notebook apart to get to the internal SODIMM slot, sure, do your own RAM upgrade. If you want to use 1GB SODIMMs you'll save lots of money doing your own upgrade (databases like lots of RAM). Otherwise, given how picky this notebook is about memory I advise getting the right amount preconfigured (probably a pair of 512MB sticks). If Crucial hadn't started shipping Infineon memory at random then the do-it-yourself route would make much more sense, but Crucial does guarantee its memory will work when you buy what their memory selector advises... up to you.

HD upgrades are easy though. I swapped in a 60GB 7200RPM Hitachi drive. You'll want one if your databases are going to be stored on your notebook. There's a fairly inexpensive 40GB model now too. See mwave.com, newegg.com.

There's a new 1920x1200 res screen option. I'm very happy with my 1680x1050 res screen but that new option does full HDTV res. That's got to be impressive.

Definitely get 802.11g and Bluetooth. At some point you're going to want Bluetooth and you can't add it later. Microsoft's Bluetooth keyboard/mouse kit works very well with this notebook, HP will have already installed the necessary drivers for you.

The DVD-ROM/CD-RW option is probably best, then buy an external Pioneer 8x USB2.0/FireWire burner if you need it.

Definitely get the 12 cell battery option.

 

gdl: You're welcome!

brandonfpu: To be thorough, run MemTest86+ from http://www.memtest.org on your notebook for at least half an hour. If it says your memory is OK, and you can run Aquamark without crashing (it's my favorite stress test), you're good. BTW, what BIOS revision did you get? Mine is F.03.

 

Just briefly add to the dual monitor part:
Under WinXP, (not sure about Linux yet), you can set the secondary monitor as addition to LCD, or as a duplicate. When it is a duplicate, you can switch to turn anyone of them on or both on by hold the "Fn" key and press the screen key (I remember it is on F4).

For a newcommer to notebook, I think that is very cool.

I an thinking about get a USB sound card to setup a small theater arround me. [ ]

 

brianstretch

Is there any way to get memtest to run also at full clock speed?

Great suggestions for gdl. I agree completely.

Bill

 

wgehrke: someone figured it out, IIRC the trick is to set Windows power management to "Always On" mode, reboot into Windows, then reboot into Memtest.

 

Brian, I'm downloading FC2Test3 x86-64 right now to install tonight... have you tried it yet? Everything work outta the box? (sound, touchpad?, screen, no ide=poll, etc?)

 

The touchpad doesn't work, and you'll need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you have a 1680x1050 screen as described here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=121148

Start with 1024x768 res if the right resolution isn't offered to you.

But sound works, idle=poll isn't needed anymore, Ethernet works... there's a patched version of nVidia's driver at http://www.minion.de/nvidia.html that works (you'll have to add a line to /etc/modprobe.conf, see the nVidia README) if you want that. I haven't tried to get Bluetooth working yet. Wireless is, of course, hopeless (Broadcom won't release the Linux drivers they've already written and HP's BIOS actually REJECTS non-HP wireless cards, which HP gave me an obviously bogus excuse for), so you'll have to buy a PCMCIA card (doesn't D-Link use Atheros chips? That's what you want) if you want that. Anyhow, grab a USB mouse and away you go.

 

HOT Price again!

Best Buy has $250 off the custom configured zv5000z this week again. ($100 from HP and $150 from Best Buy.) They are featuring the Athlon 64 3400+ with the 2x DVD+RW/R and CD-RW drive, 512MB RAM, 802.11g wireless LAN, 60 GB hard drive for a net $1499.99. Of course you have your own choice of options at the "Computer Creation Station" with the same rebates. Anyone see any rebates yet?

Bill
zv5000z :: 3200+ :: 1GB :: 40GB 4200rpm :: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) :: XP Pro

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by wgehrke

 

It is in todays Sunday newspaper flier. It says "Prices and offers good May 2-8, 2004". I did look at the web site but found no way to custom configure there, unless it is really hidden. Call them tomorrow and see if it can be done.

Bill
zv5000z :: 3200+ :: 1GB :: 40GB 4200rpm :: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) :: XP Pro

 

To customize from best buy you have to go into the store and use their machine that is set up to customize and order machines through them.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Quikster

 

Hmm... the Dell has an inferior CPU but better video chip, and it's more expensive. Everything else looks comparable. If you need a high-end video chip check the eMachines M6800 line, but they don't offer any upgrade options. If all you want is a 1280x800 res widescreen then the eMachines M6805 or M6809 are probably good choices for you. I wanted the upgrades so I went with HP.

 

Same here, also though I've had better reliablility and service from HP than eMachines (eMachine desktop but never dealt the laptops).

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

I saw that rebate in the Best Buy ad, too. I wonder if it's also good on customizable zv5000 (as opposed to zv5000Z) . . .

Guess I'll be making another round of calls!

- Silver Rose

 

Slat, others,
I had a zd7000 and my zv5000 side by side for awhile before I returned the zd7000. Sorry, but benchmarks aside, the zv looked better and played games better (playability, like smoothness, lack of stuttering, etc.) than the zd with its 128mb card. I'm talking specifically about Halo and UT2004 demo at highest settings. Somebody in another forum said that the video card in the zv was updated for the zv or something, I don't know. If you are actually trying to play games and having trouble, maybe there is a problem with your computer or settings or something. Or maybe they sent me a lemon zd and a race zv. Whatever, all I can say is this computer plays the latest games very well.

 

One thing though about the video, at the point you returned your zd7000 they had not yet added the option of a nVidia 5700 which would tear up the 9200. However, if you are satisfied it doesn't really matter too much, for you now does it.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 21,862

 

Quikster,
The zd7000 had, I believe, an nVidia 5600. Anyway, you are right: as long as I'm satisfied it doesn't really matter to me, just as it doesn't really matter to people who are not satisfied. But people who are using this forum for information will benefit from hearing from all of us.

 

I just received my ZD7000 this week.

Specs are 3.2HT, 256RAM, 40GB HD, 128 Go5700

Aquamark 19315

One thing I found out is that you can set the go5700 video card to use a lower performance setting to save energy when on battery. I will post those scores tonight.

 

JOE, I suspect that having only 256MB of RAM is holding back your Aquamark score. Once you add more memory your score should improve a bit.

I just received a report from someone who successfully added a Micron 512MB SODIMM to his HP-supplied Infineon 256MB SODIMM in his HP zv5000z. MemTest86+ confirmed it. Score another point for Micron memory.

 

I just received my ZD7000 this week.

Specs are 3.2HT, 256RAM, 40GB HD, 128 Go5700

Video set to best performance on battery, Aquamark 19315
Video set to balanced perf on battery, aquamark 11677
Video set to max power savings on battery, aquamark 5779

 

Just got my Best Buy $150 rebate on my zv5000z!

Bill
zv5000z :: 3200+ :: 1GB :: 40GB 4200rpm :: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) :: XP Pro

 

Hey everyone

I'm wondering if you can do molti monitoring with the HP zv5000z, and if so how.

thanks

 

Yes you can. There are some liimitations. If you have the 1680 x 1050 resolution screen and are running it at that resolution, here are your options for the second monitor:

1600 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 800
1024 x 768
800 x 600

As you can see you cannot use 1280 x 1024, therefore it probably would not work well with a native 1280 x 1024 LCD screen


Bill
zv5000z :: 3200+ :: 1GB :: 40GB 4200rpm :: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) :: XP Pro

 

Hi,
I wanna buy a HP zv5000z with the AMD 3400=. Is there anybody who got that Laptop before and what kind of experience you got so far??? And is it worth $100 to get a WVA WUXGA (1920x1200)instead of a WVA WSXGA+ (1680x1050). I anyway only using a 1024x768 resolution