Have DV4T issues been resolved? (dv3t questions also)

Hi, I'm looking to buy either the dv4t or dv3t (can't decide) and I had a few questions. My sister had the dv4t, and I remember that it had this problem where the screen was washed out. Has that problem been widely fixed?

Also,

How is the battery life with INTEGRATED graphics (and a p series core 2 duo)?
Heat?
Fan noise?

Are there any problems with the dv3t I should know about? Any heat, noise, or battery life issues?

Also, can I throw in a sataii drive into one of these?

 

Also, other than screen size, is there any reason to get one over the other?

 

have you already purchased or are you still looking? i can give you some insight if you haven't gotten a laptop yet, seeing as i JUST bought one with very similar specs, fixed a couple minor buggy issues, and evaluated its heat/noise/performance from head to toe in week 1. haha

 

haven't purchased yet because I just need a laptop for the fall. I'm pretty set on the dell studio 14z, but i'd still love to hear what you have to say

 

arighty, brace yourself: this is a LONG one, but i hate sparing details...

i got the dv4t just last week, and the first thing i want to tell you is that EVERY one of these 'evaluations' i made can be affected by your operating system. i used vista for a few days, and then removed it completely and installed the Windows 7 RC. I noticed quite a few increases in the laptop performance with Win 7, and I'm THRILLED with that OS: battery life went up, fan noise went down, computer performance went up. every description below of my own experience is based off of my current Windows 7 installation; if you plan on using Vista, which is more of a resource hog, expect slightly shorter battery life, more frequent/louder fan, and reduced performance.

battery life with integrated graphics:

I've got the 4500MHD in my system, and a 12-cell battery. From estimating my loss of battery life with casual cpu loads like instant messaging, internet etc, i'd say i'd get about 7 hours worth of battery time. I tend to lose just about 15% an hour. The other day i watched a movie hooked into an hdtv on battery for 2.5 hrs, and lost about 30% of my battery, which still comes close to that 7-8ish hour mark. I'm guessing if you get a 6-cell it'll probably be around 3.5 hours under casual everyday load. having the P7450 (2.13GHz) core probably helps with that as well.

heat:

from my experience with the P series so far, my computer gets fairly warm. not uncomfortably hot, but pretty warm. i think there's a few reasons for that: processor, hard drive, and the size of the machine/air flow. keep in mind that the smaller your system gets, the hotter itll probably be. i'm willing to bet the dv3t runs hotter than the dv4t, unless the specs are downgraded.

as the P series have a power rating of 25W rather than the T series' 35W, it probably runs a bit cooler than the T series I would imagine. i'm not sure if it's significant enough to warrant the extra cash to boost the the P series simply for hopes of lower heat, but it will help your battery life to some extent.

fan noise:

first things first: if you're big on keeping the system quieter, you can go into the system bios (press ESC on boot) and disable the 'Fan always on' option (enabled by default). This will require the fan to run on a more 'as needed' basis. this is what i prefer.

i'm pretty impressed with the level of fan noise for a laptop. i'm usually a stickler when it comes to things like that, but when it's running idle, the thing is whisper quiet. my ears can be 6" to 1' from the computer, and i'm satisfied with the low level sound output. when its under load, it increases gradually, still within reasonable levels. when I put it under full load (ie processing multiple videos at once) it does get fairly loud, but i wouldnt' say it's unreasonable. i think the majority of people that complain about fan noise with this computer have a lot of Vista background processes running, to be honest. same for those that don't like the battery life, etc. Vista... well, Vista is Vista. enough said haha

bugs:

I've only experienced one particular issue myself, and that was with the mute touch button not working. the volume buttons and wireless internet buttons worked, just not the mute button. After playing around for a couple days, I turned back ON the setting in the BIOS for the touch buttons to beep when you press them (I disabled it previously) and the button worked. To verify, I turned them off again and the button didn't work, turned them on again and it was fine. Really bizarre. Maybe it's something they'll tweak in a future BIOS revision.

The LED under the mute button also didn't turn red when the mute was enabled, but that was fixed by installing an updated audio driver from HP's site.

Some have mentioned that after coming back from a sleep state, the fan runs loud always. I haven't tested this or verified whether it's true or not, or whether it's already been fixed - I don't ever put my system on sleep. It's either on or it's off.

another note:

some mention that the startup time for the computer is like 5 minutes and it didn't get shorter with removing bloatware - this is crap. Mine was probably 2-3, and that's BEFORE removing all the HP bloatware (yeah, there's a lot of crap that loads at startup). once I removed all that stuff, the Vista booted in under a minute, and Windows 7 is potentially faster than that actually.

display:

I got the default LCD 1280x800 with Brightview, no LED, no infinity display. I've heard that dust can get trapped behind the infinity display, so I'd stay away from that.

The washed out look you referred to can be adjusted in the color correction settings of the graphics properties, I believe. In vista I am sure, and I think it's doable in Win 7 as well, although it's different because the driver is still pre-release. Contrast, brightness, etc. It should all be in there.. yeah the more I think about it I'm pretty sure I already did it in Win 7. Hard to remember though, I make so many little fine-tuning changes.

Soooooo:

In conclusion, this computer was well worth the purchase to me, it's got great performance and portability *IF* you know how to do a little tuning. Some people just don't have it in 'em - I'll leave that up to you, haha.

Hopefully I didn't drown you with all this info, but this is the kind of stuff i like to figure out/know in the first week of owning a system so i can decide how much i like it and what it's weak / strong points are. If you're interested in looking further into this computer, let me know if you have any other questions!

 

Nice review bondman007! As for me, I'm still waiting for my dv4t package to arrive. I've got a good deal for about $608 All in! I'll be using this notebook for daily basis just internet and some office stuffs but am no gamer actually. I'm wishing that there wouldn't be any lcd or heat issues as I have experienced recently when I purchased my last HP Compaq CQ40 notebook. That purchase was really a nightmare!

Anyway so are you guys saying that it is much better to have a clean install on either windows vista or windows 7? I prefer windows vista for now until my pre-order upgrade from HP has arrived. Until then that's the time I'm going to do an upgrade.

So what I need to do is just do a back-up disk after reformat the whole system? Well how can I run back-up disk when I loaded the new Vista??

 

Great review, bondman! I'm about to have a dv4 on the way too, as soon as there's a good coupon.

krazeee, the clean install is a good choice because it'll get rid of all the trial version and unnecessary software that comes packaged with the computer from the manufacturer. It's a lot easier than trying to pick out and manually delete everything you don't need, and will let you start fresh in a lot less time with only the programs you need/want to download.

From what I understand, you need to make backup disks before you do anything else with your computer. That way if you mess up somehow, you can restore it to factory settings and start over. To clean install Vista, you need a Vista installation disc. The thread at the top of this board tells you what kind and suggests some places to get one.

 

Same for me. Now if only that coupon will show up soon

 

Yeah, it's definitely worth the clean install! There's a couple catches though - first, be sure to download ALL of your vista version drivers for your dv4t via HP's site, and maybe back em up on a flash drive. That way, after your reformat, you can install your wireless and everything right away for windows update etc.

Even though I have a model dv4t-1400, there were only a couple drivers on that support page; i went to dv4t-1000 support and drivers page to get the remaining drivers. I've gotten everything to install successfully in windows 7 (no unknown devices in device manager and hardware list entirely matches my Vista list when I first got the computer). The only issue I had was with the graphics driver, which glitches out. I just removed the vista one I'd installed, and allowed windows to install it's pre-release display driver for the Intel 45 series, which works juuuust fine. It's missing a couple of features from the vista driver (ie, saving display schemes) but I'm not complaining. It still allows multiple displays, cloning, extended desktop, etc.

BIG NOTE: If you're going back into vista, driver reinstallation is easy. but if you're going to Win 7, make sure you use the 'troubleshoot compatibility' option in the right-click menu for each driver, and select the option that says something along the lines of 'This program worked with previous versions of windows' and choose Vista SP1. If I didn't do this, it would open the initial install screen for many drivers, I'd click 'next,' and nothing else would happen. I'd get no confirmation that anything installed, and device manager was unchanged. If I *did* make that compatibility change, it would do the same thing actually (show no progress) but if I had device manager open I could see that drivers were refreshing/installing for different things.

As for the backup discs, that's another weird thing I encountered- every time I tried to burn them, the application said I didn't have a burning drive hahaha. Now i KNOW i do cuz i've used that drive a couple times already so it's just the app's fault.. something to watch out for though. I just went ahead without the discs because there's still that recovery partition on my computer at the moment, and I'm sure I can find a way to access it even though I'm on Win 7 (the option in BIOS to do 'system recovery' no longer takes me to the Recovery Manager application on that partition, it just boots into windows 7 anyway).

To be honest though, I'm one of those people that has such a distaste for vista that I'll keep on reinstalling win 7 or find a way to force XP before I go back to vista. I was having OS responsiveness issues on day one with that monstrosity. Explorer kept crashing, stupid stuff like that. I should probably delete that Vista recovery partition altogether, and extend my Win 7 partition by 13 gigs.

Seriously, Win 7 = look of Vista but better + stability of XP. The wave of the future!!!