*HP dv5t (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

^ Maybe it's just that it's down for them? Just give it some time.

 

I reported the error to HP already and they said its fine @.@

 

Do they have this laptop at best buy in canada, could they do like special orders or anything if they dont?

 

Did you compare the two screens? You don't find the fonts a bit too small at times?

regards
JohnG

 

Has anyone purchased one of the HP laptop bags?

If so, which one and what do you think of it?

JohnG

 

I checked out the WXGA screen at Best Buy and it seemed like there was nowhere near enough room for me. Screen real estate is important.

I'm used to using 1600x1200. I thought 1680x1050 on a 15.4 might have been a bit of a stretch but it's really not so bad at all.

Maybe I just have good eyes (hopefully it stays that way)

 

Hi everyone! I have been researching on what laptop to buy for some time now and I came across this forum. I saw the review made by chaz and it seems like the dv5t is a really great machine. I also found out about the discount coupons, so that really made my decision to buy this laptop. However, when i called HP to place my order the HP agent told me that the current coupon code that is in this website (NB2390) is no longer available. so my question is, does anyone know when new promos/discounts will be available? i am working on a budget here (around $1100-$1250) and it would be great to have some portion of that amount chipped off.
I would really appreciate any replies/ recommendations regarding my query. thank you all in advance!
This is the configuration i wanted for this laptop-- what do you guys think?
Operating system Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.4 GHz)
Display 15.4" diagonal WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)
Memory 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Graphics card 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
Hard drive FREE Upgrade to 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
Personalization Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
Keyboard HP Color Matching Keyboard
Networking Wireless-G Card with Bluetooth
Modem Port No Modem

 

very nice i have just about the same configuration but what i question is the fingerprint reader. I mean it have its perks but aside from not being a super secret agent the good old username and password will do right? Aside from that its a waste of moneytoo, could've saved $25.00 but hey thats just my two cents.

 

^ it's so worth it when you dont have to type in your name / password for every single website - you just swipe your finger.

to me, it was definitely worth the money. i use the fingerprint reader for logging into the following sites:

hotmail, amazon, my schools email, nbr, other forums im on, facebook, myspace, scottrade,

and so many other sites.

fwiw. i think it's definitely worth the $.

 

true give or take like i said it has its perks but i had the finger print for my tx2500z and found it to be quite annoying. maybe it was just in the way that the thing was position.

 

...i'm considering one myself. Unfortunately when i order my dv5t it was delayed so they offered me a $50 credit i figure i'd just use it to get me a bag instead. I'm still debating on weather to i should get the

- HP Notebook Courier Bag 69.99+tax-$50.00 = $33.00

-Targus Deluxe Nylon Case 59.99z+tax-$50.00 = $19.00

or should i just use it to get some kind of other accessory. What do you guys think any suggestion on what accessory is needed the most for the dv5t?

 

i also have 2 ibm's with the fingerprint reader but dont use it since the software for them (at the time, the machines are like 2 years old) did not support the fingerprint swiping into websites.

true, it may haev been the position of the reader. but i have found this thing to be sooo useful. at times, i find myself trying to swipe to log into hotmail when im at work - too bad my pc here doesnt have a fingerprint reader. l0l

 

Has anyone got a laptop sleeve for their dv5t? I want to get one since I travel a lot, even though I have a padded laptop bag I want to keep it as scratchless as possible.

Some sleeves come with quite a bit of padding, compared to my other 15" laptop the hp is bulkier so it might not fit very well with extra padding.

 

After all my complaining about their slow build time, they shipped it already over a week early. Estimated build date was oct 2 and I just got tracking information, it's in China now.

Super happy about that now. If this all goes well, I'm going to be a big fan of HP.

 

I think the reader's awesome just because I tend to use the same password for EVERYTHING. With the reader, I can just generate a completely ridiculous 20 character password for Windows and not have to worry about anything else. It's nice.

 

Again another really cool perk...i could agree to that, but if you're in a office room somewhere without laptop fingerprint reader try to log in to those accounts with those really long character and let me know how it turns out. hahaha....but nonetheless another really cool perk to consider when thinking about this feature.

 

I use this...

http://www.chromebags.com/products/bags/show/52/

simple, not bulky, plenty of padding

 

My laptop was supposed to ship yesterday (9/22)...Still no word from HP though and the my order status still says "Order in production (Estimated to ship on September 22, 2008)." Should I start calling? Which number do I call?

 

Thanks. Can you recall if it was either of these specific dimensions?

#4 14" x 11.5" x 2.13" fits 14" to 15" standard pc laptops.
#5 15.75" x 11.5" x 2.13" fits 15" to 17" large format PC laptops.

I'm never really sure whether to go for 14-15 or 15-17 styles...

 

Check it right now. My was shipped today. Just wonder If I will get it before weekend.

 

looks pretty slick do you put the adapter at the bottom or something.


it says this on the website but I don't see were you could put it.
"...neoprene padded liner, cord pocket, velcro closure, and optional shoulder strap."

 

I love the fingerprint reader, but I don't use IE. I don't seem to be able to get it to work in FF and I doubt Chrome has any support yet.

 

You could just get the basic memory config and purchase the RAM yourself for cheaper. Everyone seems to buy it from Newegg.

The fingerprint reader is a personal choice too. There seems to be people that like it. I'm a stickler for security and have different passwords for different sites. I'm also not a fan of storing my passwords anywhere. As mentioned before, if you don't have your laptop with you and you try to login to a site on another machine, good luck remembering your password(s). If your machine gets hosed, good luck remembering your password(s). If someone steals the database/file that holds all of your passwords tied to the fingerprint reader, good luck. Identity theft is not fun, so I've heard.

 

Wow. This 250gb hdd isn't going as far as I thought it would.

I'll never take you for granted again, oh multiple 500gb desktop drives.

 

^ LOL - factor in that you get like 10% less space off the bat in the first place AND HP has their recovery partition on the same drive... you're down below the 200gb mark to start off with. =(

on my 320 gig drive, i was at around 285 gigs to start off with. i have maybe 30gb remaining =(

im waiting on the price of the 500gb drives to come down to about $130 and im buying two of them. nothing like a terabyte of diskspace on your laptop to make people drop their jaws.

 

I think most folks remove the partition once they've made the recovery disks

 

I haven't get my lappy yet, but maybe you can try out one of those add-ons:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=fingerprint&cat=all

Let me know how it goes.

James

 

Do you think it's possible to buy 7200 RPM HD for DV5T??

 

^ absolutely, some people on this site have done so, so, yeah, it's doable.

i have seen them do it on a dv7t so i dont see why you would not be able to do the same on a dv5t.

someone on this thread that has done this should chime in.

 

I have the smaller #4 size for 14-15" .... fits perfectly

 

I was wondering what everyone's battery life is. With a P8600, 9600GT, and high capacity 6 cell, I'm getting about 2 hours just on the internet and 36 brightness. My battery also discharges like 7-10% a day, doesn't seem healthy.

 

There's a lot of power under the deck on that pup. 2 hours is all you're going to get with that battery. You should be happy with that.

JohnG

 

got my dv5t in the mail with the $500 off coupon, after i sold my original setup
got a chance to see the dv5t at sams club today and wasn't really im pressed with the looks,but that's not the reason why i got it, im not trying to impress anybody anyways,its whats inside that counts to me,and i m really looking forward to the dv5t,i think is of grate value what you get,for the price,i currently have a dv5000 refurbish for about 3yrs and its served my well until the screen developed a problem,do you guys think 3 yrs is normal for a laptop,im sure dropping it on my carpet floor from about 4 feet didn't help ether.

# Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (32-bit)
# Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.4 GHz)
# 15.4" diagonal WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)
# 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
# 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
# FREE Upgrade to 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
# Webcam Only
# HP Color Matching Keyboard
# 802.11b/g WLAN and Bluetooth
# Integrated 56K Modem
# LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
# High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

 

I get a little bit more than that, but probably not much. I'd say closer to 2.5 hours. I'm sure things like more RAM would keep the HD from spinning as much. I did a clean vLite install and I have 4gb of RAM, I don't know how much that would help. I still wanna undervolt this pig too, could probably squeeze a few more minutes out that way too.

 

I was just looking into the same thing...I've narrowed down my search to either the Zeroshock III or Tom Bihn's Brain Cell. I've heard nothing but good things about these two.

The Zeroshock is about $30 but it's been sold out for some time now at the only online retailer that sells them shinza.com (they're imported from Japan). I've found them on ebay in several different sizes including 15.4 Wide, but ebay is usually my last resort.
Here's a nice little review on it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=302364

Anyway, I'm leaning more towards the Brain Cell (Horizontal) by Tom Bihn. They're a bit pricey at $60 + $8 shipping, but they seem to offer the best protection for your laptop. I've read some great reviews about it. It has something like five layers of soft and hard protection, and it comes in 11 different sizes so they should have one that fits the dv5t. At almost $70 it is quite expensive, but I did get that $500 off my laptop, so I wouldn't feel too bad.

http://www.tombihn.com/page/001/PROD/300/TB0300

They finally shipped mine today too! My order status was updated late this afternoon, however, no email? Odd. Anyway, everyone seemed to have a good experience with FedEx shipping quickly so hopefully it'll arrive in 3 days, maybe?
Update: I did get that email from HP just now...8 hours later from the site update.

 

I was wondering, is there a way to make the media buttons dimmer? They are really bright white. Looks really nice, but does get annoying after a while. It's not in the BIOS, HP should definately consider doing this.

 

From my experience, they didnt even update my order online until fedex missed the ship date. So i had to wait until the next day, but TOTALLY worth it.

 

Awesome, thanks

I'll look into Brain Cell and Zeroshock too.

 

I hope everybody takes advantage of hp's 21 day price guarranty. Yesterday, I noticed that hp was offering 50% off of the 9200m gs card. I thought, 'hey, that's $50 less than what I got it for'. After configuring my system again on the website, it came up to $100 less than what I got. I called hp and they gave me $100 credit on my account. My $999 laptop ended up costing me only $599! ($999-100 instant rebate-200 stackable coupon-100 credit)

 

Woah, 599$ That's a deal right there. How was it 100$ cheaper though? What specs did you get? ... It seems you didn't actually reach the 999$ for the coupon after that credit :O. Still, how did the video card drop it 100$?

 

Ok, got your point with the fingerprint reader. But what can you say about the coupon issue? i know you might not know exactly when they will offer it the next time, but how often do they give promos like that?

 

Some guy in the dv5t review thread posted tht in Slovakia, DV5t is available with DDR3 GPU, is it true??

 

OK, so I order this Targus case:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B63KSM/ref=cm_sp_item

I'll post my comments when I get it.

regards
JohnG

 

I got a free bag with my purchase, i have 2 now, one HP orig and one Vaio orig

 

Had my dv5t for almost a month now and love it but I have a problem with the card reader. It reads SD and my MicroSD in an SD shell but with my MS Pro and Pro Duo I get nothing. It says it will do MS on the side and they go in right but I don't get anything. I've installed the JMicron Card Reader driver but still nothing. Any ideas?

Edit: As soon as I finally give in and post here I decided to redo the driver and now everything works. Lame. New question! What does everyone use for their tv tuner if they had it? I like to switch between my basic cable and the antennae (live in a dorm) but then Media Center has to redo everything. Any ideas on what to use for better switching and recording.

 

Woah, 599$ That's a deal right there. How was it 100$ cheaper though? What specs did you get? ... It seems you didn't actually reach the 999$ for the coupon after that credit :O. Still, how did the video card drop it 100$?
Today 05:49 AM

Chango99-

When I originally placed my order on the 8th it came to $999 before rebate and coupon which dropped it to $699. It wasn't until the 23rd that I noticed the difference in price on the same config. Hp decided to give me the $100 credit instead of reconfiguring a new laptop to take advantage of the price difference. I don't know where the extra $50 credit came from- it may have been a drop in the base price, I| don't know.

 

Using it right now at my school's library. After an hour of web browsing at the lowest brightness and listening to music I'm at 53%.

Bring on the 12 cell. >_>

I'm going to try some of those tweaks in the vista thread when I get home. I'd do it now but this WANs speed is an intense 30KBps

 

My Specs:

- HP Pavilion dv5t Entertainment Notebook
- Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (32-bit)
- Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P7350 (2.0GHz)
- 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- FREE Upgrade to 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 1GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS
- FREE Upgrade to 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
- Webcam Only
- HP Color Matching Keyboard
- 802.11b/g WLAN
- No Modem
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- Microsoft(R) Works 9.0

 

I've never actually tested mine but so far I'd say the battery life is just under decent for me. I have the 9400 which I'm sure doesn't help my cause with the 9600. I'd like a 9 cell battery that didn't stick out but that's a long shot dream.

 

Following the clean install guide, I have successfully reinstalled Vista Home Premium on my new dv5t notebook.

However, during the reinstalling/updating of drivers from the backup DVD of swsetup folder, I was unable to get the mediacard reader to update. Drivers for JMB38X xD Host Controller failed to install. I also went to the HP site (on my desktop), grabbed the package for the media card reader, placed it on a flashdrive, plugged that into the notebook, ran the .exe file, and it still failed to install.

Has anyone had similar problems? Any recommendations on a next step? I reinstalled HP Software Update so am thinking of using that utility to connect to HP site to see if it auto-solves the problem. I usually like to get the full system up and running before going to the internet, but most other things appear to be functional. The only devices in device manager with a yellow flag appears to be media card reader related.

Thanks for any advice,
Bertman