dv2000CTO: Raves... and Rants!

I've got my dv2000CTO-- and I love it!!!
I bought it in replacemente of a nice but somehow dull and heavy Dell6000.

Here is what I ordered:
Centrino Duo 2.16G
Windows XP
1 G Ram
NVidia Graphics
Light Scribe DVD
6 Cell battery
WiFi & Bluetooth
Camera
In short, the works...

Amazingly (I paid extra for the 2 bus day delivery) the laptop arrived in two days all the way from China... even though FedEx received the shipment after their deadline!

I am very happy with the performance, with the exception of two well known caveats... the mouse pad and battery life. For the first, it is annoyingingly erratic and pretty much useless for serious work. For regular Word processing and clicking hyperlinks work, it will do. But not much more
Fortunately, 90% of the time I am able to use the laptop with a regular optical mouse. Battery, is decent for a 6 cell and power-hungry 2.16 Duo (I do not power down the laptop for battery operation). But, then again, 90% of the time my laptop is plugged in at home or in the Acela for my trips DC/NY.
Whatever good has been said about this laptop, I say, Amen!!

Now, to my rants

The big letdown, was that the operating system, and most, if not all versions of the software shipped with my laptop was very old in terms of our current security-conscious environment. It was like buying a Rolls Royce… and discovering it had a Ford T engine!

Windows XP needed more than 70 MB of updates... some posted many, many months ago, some patching serious risks. Adobe Reader was version 6... Version 7 was distributed several months ago... Flash Player, version 7... Now is version 9... And so forth.

Beyond being annoyed by having to spend hours to update a “new” computer, I think the issue poses important security issues for the novice or unsophisticated user. Yes, eventually the updates will work their way into the computer, but until then, the computer is a honey-pot for hackers.

I alrady fired a letter to HP. Hope they do something about it.

But, anyway, overall I am very pleased...

Thomas

 

Are you planning on returning the dv2000 to HP to have them fix the trackpad? I don't see any reason why you should have to just "get used to it".

Regarding the Windows updates; there's not much you can do about that. Really your computer was in fact pretty current, if you only needed 70 megs of updates. No matter how much they kept a laptop's stock OS "up to date", there would be newer updates necessary for various new security issues, etc.

 

was this the first computer you ever bought?

Windows or any OS will always have updates. That's part of why they've made it easy to get them. It wouldn't be possible for them to pre-load them on all their images. They change too much and too often.

 

They could update their images every month or two if they wanted to. I can make updated install DVDs with RyanVM's toolkit, I don't know why HP can't do the same. Then again, I don't know why Microsoft hasn't released SP3 yet either. I pity the poor people on dialup trying to get 70MB of very necessary updates.

 

Did you get a 65W or 90W adaptor with it?

 

He should of gotten the 90w adapter since he went with the Go 7200 graphics card.

TGMX, i just went with the free shipping and FedEx delivered mine yesterday within like two business days .