dv2000t Experience is a thumbs up

Hi all,

I got my laptop last Thursday and have thus far gotten everything up and running with a brand new 80GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm drive. My overall experience with my first HP is good. The screen is a CMO and the brightness is alright. I am impressed with the battery life (12 cell), and the machine runs cool and quite all the time. The new Hitachi drive runs as smooth and as quite as the Fujitsu 60GB 5400rpm drive.

Despite the overall good ratings, there are a few glitches too. The infamous touchpad is just not good, but I can get used to it soon. The lack of documentation is just annoying. The PC Recovery Disks thing is just ridiculous. It took me more than an hour to create those 1-time only backup on to 3 DVDs. The disks should have been provided free of charge!

The worst part for me is the battery release lever. I realized the catch was loose and could release my battery. What the ....!?!?! So on Saturday, I called Tech Support and tried to resolve it. It took me over an hour to speak to the outsourced out-of-this-country technician who eventually transferred me back to the Sales group. The resolution is to have them send me a new one just like a brand new order and have me send back mine once I receive it. It's annoying, man! A tiny problem requires such a time consuming process!!!

Anyway, I am using my laptop as usual and will swap my drive with the new one once it arrives!!!

I have documented every move I made on replacing my HDD with installing Win XP Prof. I followed the 2 dv2000t and dv8000t threads to do the re-installation. If anyone is interested, I can post it for your reference. Like I said, I found that the most annoying thing is the lack of documentation. I have no ideas what those directories in the SwSetup folders are and it took me awhile to square things away!

Hope you guys enjoy your new toys!!

 

Wow, my battery release catch is loose, too. I put my spare battery on to charge last night and realized this morning that it wasn't latched in. I don't want to go through the return/rebuy scenario, either... especially since I got a good screen.

 

Actually, I think you can use the disks as many times as needed (hopefully you wont need to use them at all), the only 1-time thing is when you create them.

But, I agree they should just include the OS and Drivers DVDs like they used to...

 

I agree with you .. I had a similar prob with my V3000. I am not quite used to the OS recovery procedure.. I decided to partition the drive and went ahead with formatting.. and ended up losing all the drivers. The OS cd which i received did not have any drivers on it forget abt apps. Only plain windows.

I had to order the system recovery DVD through their cust support line. My experience with the customer support was good... Probably because i called at arnd 1 am EST didnt have to wait for more than 2 mins.

Next time i partitioned with partition magic and all is good.

BTW.. since u mentioned abt changing the HDD.. how costly is the HDD that you got? what are the compatible HDDs for HP/Compaq models? would that be cheaper to opt for 40 gb and then buy a separate bigger HDD?

What abt the RAM? it says that it can be expanded upto 2GB. does it mean 1Gb in each slot or 2 in each?

 

I have ordered a dv2000t and have a seagate 7200 100gb hard drive on the way to along with mushkin 2gb kit. If you could post your experiences I would appreciate it. I am looking for as much information as I can in addition to both of the reinstallation guides posted so far.

 

I am surprised that I am not the only one having this battery issue but I think it is kind of rare. I have to make a confession that I didn't abuse it although my screen name might suggest otherwise!

Anyway, I am second guessing the need of doing the Recovery DVDs. I think I really don't need them since I have a backup of the swsetup directory. But who knows, perhaps I will use them on a rainy day!

AcJones, my new disk seems to be running great although I haven't done any test yet. But I am sure yours will be as charming as well. I posted my steps in a seperate thread if you want to see how I did it. I wasted a lot of time trying to inventory what's in the swsetup directory, I guess you will probably do the same. Good luck!