dv5000....what a piece of junk

and its kinda funny where you find your information....on the HP forums. Forums are a place where people, like yourself, go to express their concerns and find help with problems. If a person doesnt have any issues, normally they do not go to manufactures forums and post about their fantasic experience. Forums = ***** sessions and people looking for help with their concerns. HP is not rated (by 3rd party none the less) to be one of THE top computer/server/printer companies for no reason.
-my 2 cents

 

Well, try this on for size HP lovers:

Bought the DV5000 in July. By September I had two keys fall off. This is a machine that sits on a desk in my private library. Then, a month later I started having strange noises coming from the harddrive. The next day it was failed, all data lost.

Sent it in for repair and recieved my reconditioned laptop back. Went through set up procedures and software loading again. Restored my data from backups. Now, two months later, the BIOS does not recognize a hard drive present. Harddrive is dead again. Two in six months? Has to be external or internal power supply problem or a mother board issue. Or the hard drives HP uses are such crap, I happened to recieve two that failed! What are the odds?

The Indians at customer service are just barely capable of English, I spent four years in med school listening to foriegn accents so its not usually a problem, but the ability to communicate with these people is trully frustrating. They REFUSE to replace my entire unit and insist on sending me a hard drive. Great. Can't wait to load everything up to see it fail again.

This laptop is on the same network is two other laptops, a desk top and NAS server. No other problems ( they suggested I got a virus ). There is no virus that stops a hardrive from even spinning up!

For a budget laptop (only $1000) I expected budget performance, not constant failures. In my practice I run Dell and Gateway laptops, destops and servers. No problems. No hard drive failures. Nothing. These HP/Compaq are made poorly and used substandard parts. I will NEVER purchase a Compaq or HP product again, and I strongly advise everyone to avoid the products.

Its not so much that I got a lemon, I'm sure most HP users have fine machines. My disgust arises from HP's inability to solve the problem or offer me a replacement machine.

 

My 5000t works great.

-AJ

 

Bought mine over a year ago now - and still works great also. Wonder if the other hundreds of thousands that purchased the dv5000 (or any of the other HP models) have the same "...and I strongly advise everyone to avoid the products." feelings you express.
I doubt it since "Hewlett-Packard overtook Dell to become the world's largest PC maker in the fourth quarter in a market '06" (as told on CNET, CNN, etc)

 

Hi All,
I bought my DV 5030Z in February 06 and am still very pleased with the machine.

 

Exactly. Not to mention they're not bigger than IBM in revenue, making them the world's largest technology based company on the planet. They didn't do that by having 'ALL OF THEIR COMPUTERS SUCK,' as the original poster aimed.



Simply because 1, 5, or even 100 people have a problem with a notebook, does not mean that line is flawed. Not every computer will last as long as others in its line, and not all will be flawless, however, simply because a person has a problem with a notebook does not give them the right to deem the entire company and everything it has made crap.

There's a thing called maturity in the world. Some have it, some don't.

 

Budget? Sure they sell some for $899 US dollars, but if you get 2 gb of ram and the TV card and the big hard disc drive its costing you about $1650

As for the 'OS' (ahem) it ships with, its totally useless bloatware, ridiculous, The preinstalled Norton even marks some of the 'HP Games Console' , specifically Wild Tangent as possible Spyware. So HP ships with pre-installed factory spyware, nice.

So you want to install a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro? Well get ready to go hunting, for the drivers that is. The bluetooth drivers are hidden deep over at HP. If you can get HP India support on the phone they'll be happy to give you the url for the drivers you'll need, maybe....

Seems someone over at Microsoft is in collusion with HP to MAKE you run their 'OS' complete with the bloatware/spyware. Sure, you can run a retail copy of XP Pro on it but HP wont be providing any drivers if you do.

Format the drive and partition it however you like
install XP pro
install dotnetfx for the ATI driver you will get from the ATI website, as well as the AMD CPU driver from AMD, dont use the HP drivers for the ATI chipset or the CPU !!! also you might want Hydravision from ATI as well to make that glassy transparent effects and multiple desktops that HP and Microsoft claim only work with Vista

Next you need the bluetooth drivers ....search for SP31139.exe, I suggest you use google, or get it here because can take 2 hours to get HP India Support team to tell you where it's at

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...31-1&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=500449&os=228

http://ati.amd.com/products/Hydravision/index.html

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/mce/integrated-mce.html


That should fix the notebook you will be amazed at the difference


I recommend a clean install of XP Pro and or dual boot XP Pro and Ubuntu on these notebooks

to get the bcm43xx wifi running under linux just do fwcutter from synaptics package manager or sudo make install from the terminal

 

Dude, they suck....and they cheat and lie too. They conspired with Microsoft to attempt to keep any other OS from running on their notebooks. The majority of consumers are forced to run the factory OS.

(1) Hiding the bluetooth drivers, HP claims the only way to get the drivers is off the originl recovery discs..... which is a lie

(2) changing the firmware on the broadcom chipset with their 'updated drivers' without telling anyone....(this was preventing the wifi from running under linux, since the wrong version of the firmware was being reported when running fwcutter) although now they do include in small print on the drivers download page....'and firmware'
(3) vista capable stickers: If you have certain audio hardware on your notebook then Vista will not run your audio! why? because Vista cant keep you from circumventing DRM.. i.e you can still record audio directly from the backend of the sound card whether its DRM or not

When I questioned HP about this they said the Vista Capable stickers only means Vista can be installed on the notebook, not that it will work all your hardware.

Dude....they suck, they lie, they cheat and you are not their customer....Microsoft is


NEVER EVER BUY HP

 

*sigh* I tire of these "never buy an HP", "never buy a dell", "never buy a mac" threads

They are all basically made of the same stuff. They all have problems at some point in time (HP released a series of faulty hard drives a couple of years back, Dell has grainy screens now, some of the new mac book pros overheat badly to the point that they aren't laptops...)

Believe me, no company is that much better then the others. It is simply a personal choice in the end. I have had WAY more problems with Dells then any other brand. So, I have a more negative view of Dell. But I don't trash the whole company. I know that they, like other manufacturers, have their decent lines with little or no problems. It is just a luck of the draw.