Tagged Products - hd+2ghz

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

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the screen is very bright and has good resolution. The cover is susceptible to fingerprints but otherwise looks very nice. The silver keyboard is nice (but note caveat below). The function keys are too small but probably to be expected given the form factor. The ability to flip the screen around is great but it would be nice if you could turn it in either direction as the viewing angle is small so I finding myself rotating the whole unit to the left to allow someone on my left to see the screen.

Fingerprint Reader

I've grown to like this feature. It does often take more than one swipe but it works and it's definitely more convenient than having to type in a password.

SD Card Slot

Speaks for itself

Other Components

I have no complaints about the DVD drive or Wireless b/g/n/bluetooth adaptor. They all appear to do their job well.

Speed

While not extremely speedy,it's not bad. I think Vista is to blame for most of it's issues. Once an application is fully launched and loaded in RAM, I've found it adequate for all but very demanding work (e.g. video editing). I would not buy a unit like this for editing AVHCD. Just not fast enough. But for everyday use including graphics it's fine.

Cons

Heat Generation

I was hoping that in the seven years since I bought my last laptop that the chip manufacturers would have figured out how to significantly reduce heat generation but such is not the case. The back right corner of this unit can definitely run hot. Furthermore, half of the vent is on the side of the unit, making it more awkward to keep unobstructed when holding it on your lap

Keyboard/Touch pad finish

The silver finish on the keyboard and touch screen is nice but it's just a finish. Already it has worn off of one of the touch pad buttons and I can imagine in a few years time the keyboard will start to look bad. Perhaps I will be able to by replacement key caps when that occurs

Music Skips

I have so far been unable to use this machine for listening to iTunes. It skips and chatters on a regular basis, even if I just sit there and don't run anything else or touch the keyboard. I tried downloading the latest sound drivers and Quicktime/iTune versions to no avail. HP help is a joke. After explaining and re-explaining several times, the person finally recommended I restore my system to factory configuration. Besides meaning dozen's of hours of re-installing software and setting up Vista the way I like it, this also wouldn't accomplish anything that I can see.

Battery Life

The battery life is not terrible (around 3 hours for my normal use which doesn't include playing DVD's). It's just disappointing that after all these years there appears to have been no significant improvement in battery life. It would be great if manufacturers provided a simple charging stand like I have for my power tools so that when one battery gets low you could just switch to another and put the first one to recharge. This would allow virtually continuous use with any cables.

Vista

I've made peace with Vista but would not be inclined to recommend it. Start Up is very slow -- a definite step backward from my XP based 17" laptop. You will spend a lot of time telling it it's OK to make some change. In some ways this is comforting but in others simply annoying.
Microsoft has an annoying practice of experimenting with the UI with no apparent regard for whether users actually consider it an improvement. I end up reverting most everything to the classic set up. Another annoyance is it's default shut down mode of "Sleep". It uses up battery time while not appreciably reducing start up time. I have to continually change this to shutdown.

Toshiba PSLC0U-02C01G Satellite L305D-S5904 15.4" Notebook

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that comes pre-installed. I can live with this, as I uninstalled most of it, opting for competing products (such as the virus scanning software, firewall, etc). There were 23 icons on my desktop when I turned this laptop on the first time!

Minor gripes aside, this laptop is fast, includes plenty of space, and looks sleek and refined. It gets a Vista rating of 3.0 according to Microsoft. I am primarily a Mac user. With that in mind, I can say that Vista is not so bad. It is not worth the effort to bring this laptop home just to remove Vista and install XP. Just be sure to turn off the disorienting Aero mouse pointer theme (leave the rest of Aero turned on) and update all software (including third party products such as Adobe Reader). Vista can be quite pleasing to the eyes after a couple of uses.

I would buy this laptop again without question.

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

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the realm of reality. Boy, was I ever mistaken about the company. Did I ever jump the gun on passing a judgment. Was I ever wrong about getting more than you pay for. At the risk of sounding repetitive, this HP laptop jolted me into an extremely rude awakening. I can't say enough about what a HUGE disappointment it was to me.

Speed. First of all, the laptop was just plain slow. It's the slowest computer I have ever used. Ever. It's relatively even slower than the iMac I had some ten years ago (back then, the iMac was - relatively speaking -- the slowest computer I had ever owned, and was annoying enough that I returned it after two weeks of slow running, crashing, and not finding any software that ran on it). For something that claims to be a using a 64-bit processor and 2 GB of RAM, this laptop crawls slower than a sick turtle. After a few weeks of tweaking around, I found the reason for that - the AMD Turion and HP's sorry excuse of a motherboard. My venerable Dell m700 (with Celeron and 1 GB of RAM) easily outperformed this manifestation of lethargy in any number of performance tests and I/O benchmarks that I had created (from real-life scenarios in which I was using both the laptops). So then, I came to the conclusion that the only reason HP was selling AMD was so that it could sell a tablet PC for half the price of its competitors.

Wireless. The second reason for relentless vexation was the wireless card. It would just randomly stop working every now and then, and would never work again until I rebooted the laptop. I called HP and had the card replaced. That solved the problem enough so that it doesn't happen quite as often, but it still happens once in a while. However, I was to later learn (as recently as a few weeks ago) that I was one of the lucky few who actually got it working (even if it was not a complete cure) with a replacement card. The issue seems to run much deeper than the card itself. In fact, if you go to HP forums, you will hear constant noise about how the wireless problem breeds from a sinister defect in the motherboard, and how every laptop they've ever released in this series actually will eventually stop working (usually a couple of months after the warranty expires). I am now starting to see other signs that indicate that mine's only a few weeks (if not days) from that fate (see the "spooky turning on" a few paragraphs down). Another reason this laptop is so cheap - HP compromised on the motherboard, as well as the wireless card.

BIOS. I have had laptops going back to my old Quantex (dating back to 10 years ago), that used to have BIOSes smart enough to tell when the battery was about to run out of juice. They would then warn if you tried to start your laptop on low battery. On the flip side, they WOULDN'T warn if your battery was charged a 100%. This brilliant offering from HP, on the other hand, keeps warning you even if you just replaced your depleted battery with a fully charged battery. I am so used to this basic functionality in all my other laptops that when I replace my battery on the train, turn it back on and go back to my phone to check messages, I come back a minute or two later and expect that I am at the log on screen. But to my utter exasperation, I find each time that I am still stuck at the annoying BIOS message that warns me of a LOW BATTERY!!! So the laptop simply won't go ahead and boot unless I hit the Enter key. I can't imagine how much time I have wasted due to this. (Moreover, I probably lost a couple of years of my life due to the rise in blood pressure, and my already precarious spot in a good place in the afterlife due the choice curse words I have uttered each time.)

But if that's an annoyance, what it does when the battery is low is downright scary. When the battery is 25% or lower, and you start the laptop not knowing how much battery is remaining, it starts up without warning you at all. But that's not the problem - in fact, it's a good thing. The problem is, it just dies when the battery reaches critical mass, without EVER attempting to hibernate (as my laptop is configured to). It just goes poof - and SHUTS DOWN! Just like that! That means all my unsaved work up until that point is completely lost. It happened to me twice before I realized what insidious bug was causing the problem. I have now started keeping track of the battery levels when I hibernate the laptop, never turning it back on if the level was below the 25% level at the time of hibernation.

Another annoying thing about the BIOS is that over the past two weeks, it just randomly turns on! I don't recall doing anything to it. Randomly, in the middle of the night, the laptop just turns on! It could be some weird wake-on-LAN setting that got tweaked, or maybe my laptop is about to die (like the other ten thousand or so owners), or it's possessed by evil spirits. But it just turns on and wakes me up almost every night! Of course, when it happens in the middle of the night, I'm too sleepy to resolve the issue. When I'm wide awake, I forget to investigate. As a result, the problem has continued for the past two weeks.

Track Pad. The track pad in its initial setting was unusable. Even after month of tweaking, the base of my thumb would keep touching the pad and make the cursor jump to another part of the document. It was small enough a problem, but annoying enough that at one point, I wanted to return the laptop. I finally hit the sensitivity setting that resolved this issue.

Active/Passive Pen & the Display. One of the biggest disappointments was the fact that the TX-1000 does not use an active pen to do its tablet work. That was another way HP managed to cut costs and make the tablet seem like a no-brainer over the other vendors, at least in terms of the price. The fact is, the passive pen is absolutely useless, and the touch screen very insensitive. In fact, at times, I have had to press so hard that I'm almost afraid that I might end up breaking the screen! An active pen is a thing of beauty, and a joy to behold. It comes with features such as mouse moving with a hover, the ability to erase text with the opposite side of the pen (as with a regular pencil on paper), and the pleasure of writing effortlessly on the screen. You get none of that with HP's TX-1000.

In any case, the "passive" pen technology has been around for ages in all the Pocket PC's, which work impeccably with a stylus (I've owned the renowned (and my favorite HP hardware) HP Jornada 548, The Dell Axim, Samsung i730, and most recently the AT&T Tilt - which BTW also work pretty well with just your thumb). On top of that, every one of the pocket PC's have had a crisper, brighter display. And none of them ever showed the underlying touch grid on the screen. I could barely see it on the Samsung, and that too, only if I stared hard in broad daylight. But it was never a distraction. On this laptop, the display is terrible. It's faded, low contrast, and shows the underlying grid even in moderate lighting (such as on a train), which turns out to be a major distraction. In broad daylight, working with this laptop is not recommended. I have since gotten used to this and have swallowed it like a bitter pill.

So if those things aren't bad enough already, consider the regular litany of annoying HP software/crapware that arrogantly starts up with Windows (msconfig.exe has become my best friend ever since I started buying off-the-shelf PC's). HP is arguably the worst software producer of all. HP software is only mildly benign than a virus. What makes it more dangerous than all the other free garbage out there is the sanctimonious attitude with which they add it in there. "Oh, you probably don't know what you're doing. Therefore, here's our offering to protect you from yourself." When in fact 90% of all problems are caused by the software starting up on Startup. It's ironic that when I was speaking with an HP tech for resolving my wireless issue, the first thing he made me do was turn off all the "crap" that loads up at Windows Startup. WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every one of the apps/utilities we turned off were from HP.

So why did I even bother to give it one star? Several reasons:
1. I couldn't rate it any lower ;-).
2. The full-size keyboard is decent.
3. Contrary to what I had expected, the swiveling hinge which connects the screen to the rest of the laptop is pretty solid and doesn't rattle on the train, as some of my skeptical friends had predicted.
4. I upgraded it to Vista Ultimate, and everything worked smoothly. In fact, after the upgrade (and applying SP1), the laptop has been slightly more stable.
5. I just like Vista better than XP in most respects (but that has absolutely nothing to do with the laptop).
6. Unlike the ten thousand or so poor devils out there who own the TX series, my wireless issues almost got resolved, and my laptop is still breathing.

So the one thing I did learn was, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Then there was this other little gem that reinforced itself - you get what you pay for.

Toshiba PSLD8U-00G001 Satellite L355-S7831 17.0" Notebook

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the realm of reality. Boy, was I ever mistaken about the company. Did I ever jump the gun on passing a judgment. Was I ever wrong about getting more than you pay for. At the risk of sounding repetitive, this HP laptop jolted me into an extremely rude awakening. I can't say enough about what a HUGE disappointment it was to me.



Speed. First of all, the laptop was just plain slow. It's the slowest computer I have ever used. Ever. It's relatively even slower than the iMac I had some ten years ago (back then, the iMac was - relatively speaking -- the slowest computer I had ever owned, and was annoying enough that I returned it after two weeks of slow running, crashing, and not finding any software that ran on it). For something that claims to be a using a 64-bit processor and 2 GB of RAM, this laptop crawls slower than a sick turtle. After a few weeks of tweaking around, I found the reason for that - the AMD Turion and HP's sorry excuse of a motherboard. My venerable Dell m700 (with Celeron and 1 GB of RAM) easily outperformed this manifestation of lethargy in any number of performance tests and I/O benchmarks that I had created (from real-life scenarios in which I was using both the laptops). So then, I came to the conclusion that the only reason HP was selling AMD was so that it could sell a tablet PC for half the price of its competitors.



Wireless. The second reason for relentless vexation was the wireless card. It would just randomly stop working every now and then, and would never work again until I rebooted the laptop. I called HP and had the card replaced. That solved the problem enough so that it doesn't happen quite as often, but it still happens once in a while. However, I was to later learn (as recently as a few weeks ago) that I was one of the lucky few who actually got it working (even if it was not a complete cure) with a replacement card. The issue seems to run much deeper than the card itself. In fact, if you go to HP forums, you will hear constant noise about how the wireless problem breeds from a sinister defect in the motherboard, and how every laptop they've ever released in this series actually will eventually stop working (usually a couple of months after the warranty expires). I am now starting to see other signs that indicate that mine's only a few weeks (if not days) from that fate (see the "spooky turning on" a few paragraphs down). Another reason this laptop is so cheap - HP compromised on the motherboard, as well as the wireless card.



BIOS. I have had laptops going back to my old Quantex (dating back to 10 years ago), that used to have BIOSes smart enough to tell when the battery was about to run out of juice. They would then warn if you tried to start your laptop on low battery. On the flip side, they WOULDN'T warn if your battery was charged a 100%. This brilliant offering from HP, on the other hand, keeps warning you even if you just replaced your depleted battery with a fully charged battery. I am so used to this basic functionality in all my other laptops that when I replace my battery on the train, turn it back on and go back to my phone to check messages, I come back a minute or two later and expect that I am at the log on screen. But to my utter exasperation, I find each time that I am still stuck at the annoying BIOS message that warns me of a LOW BATTERY!!! So the laptop simply won't go ahead and boot unless I hit the Enter key. I can't imagine how much time I have wasted due to this. (Moreover, I probably lost a couple of years of my life due to the rise in blood pressure, and my already precarious spot in a good place in the afterlife due the choice curse words I have uttered each time.)



But if that's an annoyance, what it does when the battery is low is downright scary. When the battery is 25% or lower, and you start the laptop not knowing how much battery is remaining, it starts up without warning you at all. But that's not the problem - in fact, it's a good thing. The problem is, it just dies when the battery reaches critical mass, without EVER attempting to hibernate (as my laptop is configured to). It just goes poof - and SHUTS DOWN! Just like that! That means all my unsaved work up until that point is completely lost. It happened to me twice before I realized what insidious bug was causing the problem. I have now started keeping track of the battery levels when I hibernate the laptop, never turning it back on if the level was below the 25% level at the time of hibernation.



Another annoying thing about the BIOS is that over the past two weeks, it just randomly turns on! I don't recall doing anything to it. Randomly, in the middle of the night, the laptop just turns on! It could be some weird wake-on-LAN setting that got tweaked, or maybe my laptop is about to die (like the other ten thousand or so owners), or it's possessed by evil spirits. But it just turns on and wakes me up almost every night! Of course, when it happens in the middle of the night, I'm too sleepy to resolve the issue. When I'm wide awake, I forget to investigate. As a result, the problem has continued for the past two weeks.



Track Pad. The track pad in its initial setting was unusable. Even after month of tweaking, the base of my thumb would keep touching the pad and make the cursor jump to another part of the document. It was small enough a problem, but annoying enough that at one point, I wanted to return the laptop. I finally hit the sensitivity setting that resolved this issue.



Active/Passive Pen & the Display. One of the biggest disappointments was the fact that the TX-1000 does not use an active pen to do its tablet work. That was another way HP managed to cut costs and make the tablet seem like a no-brainer over the other vendors, at least in terms of the price. The fact is, the passive pen is absolutely useless, and the touch screen very insensitive. In fact, at times, I have had to press so hard that I'm almost afraid that I might end up breaking the screen! An active pen is a thing of beauty, and a joy to behold. It comes with features such as mouse moving with a hover, the ability to erase text with the opposite side of the pen (as with a regular pencil on paper), and the pleasure of writing effortlessly on the screen. You get none of that with HP's TX-1000.



In any case, the "passive" pen technology has been around for ages in all the Pocket PC's, which work impeccably with a stylus (I've owned the renowned (and my favorite HP hardware) HP Jornada 548, The Dell Axim, Samsung i730, and most recently the AT&T Tilt - which BTW also work pretty well with just your thumb). On top of that, every one of the pocket PC's have had a crisper, brighter display. And none of them ever showed the underlying touch grid on the screen. I could barely see it on the Samsung, and that too, only if I stared hard in broad daylight. But it was never a distraction. On this laptop, the display is terrible. It's faded, low contrast, and shows the underlying grid even in moderate lighting (such as on a train), which turns out to be a major distraction. In broad daylight, working with this laptop is not recommended. I have since gotten used to this and have swallowed it like a bitter pill.



So if those things aren't bad enough already, consider the regular litany of annoying HP software/crapware that arrogantly starts up with Windows (msconfig.exe has become my best friend ever since I started buying off-the-shelf PC's). HP is arguably the worst software producer of all. HP software is only mildly benign than a virus. What makes it more dangerous than all the other free garbage out there is the sanctimonious attitude with which they add it in there. "Oh, you probably don't know what you're doing. Therefore, here's our offering to protect you from yourself." When in fact 90% of all problems are caused by the software starting up on Startup. It's ironic that when I was speaking with an HP tech for resolving my wireless issue, the first thing he made me do was turn off all the "crap" that loads up at Windows Startup. WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every one of the apps/utilities we turned off were from HP.



So why did I even bother to give it one star? Several reasons:

1. I couldn't rate it any lower ;-).

2. The full-size keyboard is decent.

3. Contrary to what I had expected, the swiveling hinge which connects the screen to the rest of the laptop is pretty solid and doesn't rattle on the train, as some of my skeptical friends had predicted.

4. I upgraded it to Vista Ultimate, and everything worked smoothly. In fact, after the upgrade (and applying SP1), the laptop has been slightly more stable.

5. I just like Vista better than XP in most respects (but that has absolutely nothing to do with the laptop).

6. Unlike the ten thousand or so poor devils out there who own the TX series, my wireless issues almost got resolved, and my laptop is still breathing.



So the one thing I did learn was, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Then there was this other little gem that reinforced itself - you get what you pay for.

Toshiba PSLB8U-002003 Satellite L305-S5902 15.4" Notebook

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of 3 GB of RAM was due to helpful reviews I've read on many pages for laptops on Amazon which have complained that Windows VISTA is slow with less RAM. What I have on this machine is absolutely fine for my needs.

Reviews have noted that not quite as much HD space is needed currently, with the market availability of USB drives which extend the PC's hard drive in a variety of ways, with nearly endless storage options... so I felt that 200 GB DH would be adequate, and it is, though I don't need to store lots of game or graphics programs on my PC, mostly just my manuscripts and MS WORD, AOL, and photos.

As to the complaints of current laptops being loaded with what is called crap ware or bloat ware, I have to say I agree somewhat with those complaints. I haven't yet been able to decide what I might need within the bloat ware offerings, and honestly can't decide which of the DVD players, CD writers, Wireless purveyors, etc., would be the ones I would want to use.

But what some reviews have pointed out exposes the trade off in this case, i.e., the reason certain LT's (laptops) can be offered at such good prices is that the companies who provide the plethora of extra programs pay for that advertising, thereby allowing the lower price offered by the company offering the machine. Given that trade off, I'm willing to take time to decide what I want to keep and discard among the huge number of colorful icons grinning at me from my desk top, hoping I'll click on them and purchase from their trial offerings.

Everything I have so far installed and begun using has been easy for me, not a computer wiz, to accomplish, though I'm very thankful for the reviewers who mentioned the Windows VISTA habit of always asking via a dialogue box pop-up if the user or "administrator" (me) initiated the action. Even though this pop up sometimes feels disruptive, I've become more comfortable knowing I will be asked and informed before uploading and installation will occur from the hordes of automatic updates seemingly offered by everyone on every program on my computer.

I was thankful to the reviewers who mentioned that with VISTA drivers are often needed for installations of programs and hardware. I loved the Plug & Play capacity with XP, but can easily see why the incredible increase of hardware and software might have caused the necessity of a specific CD driver to be used for installation, and so far all programs and equipment have come with necessary drivers. The reviews, however, alerted me to this necessity, so I wasn't surprised by this seeming backward change from XP to VISTA, which to me, now, is clearly a forward motion taking into account the current and growing progress in the computer industry, and the plethora of variety available.

I was able to easily install the driver of the HP All in One (with FAX) I purchased, along with the wireless mouse and USB hub. I hope to have time to review some of those, too, because I'm butterfly thrilled with each of them!

I want to conclude by thanking the huge number of reviewers on Amazon, who commented on various brands of notebook PC's. Each of those reviewers was directly and practically helpful to me in one way or another. Personally, I would rather read Amazon customer reviews on computer hardware, before reading PC magazines or other more complex sources of information. For me, reviews from everyday people, purchasers/users of specific pieces of equipment, say just what I need to know, in an easily comprehensible language. I do a lot of research on Amazon's buying pages, under customer reviews.

Flying off to ready more of my novels for publication on KINDLE, I remain a wing-ed author at your reading service!

Linda G. Shelnutt
Author of several books on Amazon's KINDLE and Amazon Shorts

Note: This laptop is a very similar model to mine (model number noted in my review), but this one has slightly less RAM and HD space than mine, and doesn't have the web cam, which mine does. Also, this LT has an Intel processor; mine has AMD Turion. My LT cost was enough more than this one that I feel the values for cost would be equal on both machines, especially if you don't need a web cam.

DELL STUDIO 15 NOTEBOOK- Graphite Grey with Black Trim Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display , Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo T5750 2.00GHz, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 , 2 GB DDR2, 160 GB SATA HD, CD

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4), I cannot continue given this experience of their "test pilot" policy.

Toshiba Qosmio F55-Q504 Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0GHz Notebook

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costing more. Toshiba has skimped some on the CPU (which you can upgrade) in favor of higher level graphics (which you can not easily upgrade). The 3dmark 2006 score I got was 7305.

I have been very, very happy with this laptop, and I am typing this review up on it right now. The colors look great.

I was a little disappointed in the lack of built in bluetooth especially since the web pages on Amazon, Newegg, and Toshiba seemed to indicate that this model would have a bluetooth receiver built in. The Toshiba web site shows two models the F55-Q504 (supposedly with bluetooth) and the F55-Q5041 (without bluetooth). The bottom of the laptop says it is a F55-Q504, but there are no bluetooth stickers, etc, anywhere on it and no option to turn bluetooth on. I just went out and got a small IOGEAR bluetooth receiver and used that.

On startup, you get to choose whether to load up 32bit or 64bit vista. Making recovery DVD's is very easy also. Also, Vista with the service pack isn't all that bad either.


I would definitely buy this laptop again and recommend this laptop. The pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit. I looked at quite a few to get this level of graphics performance at this price.

HP TouchSmart All-In-One Desktop with Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5750 - Piano Black/Espresso

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costing more. Toshiba has skimped some on the CPU (which you can upgrade) in favor of higher level graphics (which you can not easily upgrade). The 3dmark 2006 score I got was 7305.



I have been very, very happy with this laptop, and I am typing this review up on it right now. The colors look great.



I was a little disappointed in the lack of built in bluetooth especially since the web pages on Amazon, Newegg, and Toshiba seemed to indicate that this model would have a bluetooth receiver built in. The Toshiba web site shows two models the F55-Q504 (supposedly with bluetooth) and the F55-Q5041 (without bluetooth). The bottom of the laptop says it is a F55-Q504, but there are no bluetooth stickers, etc, anywhere on it and no option to turn bluetooth on. I just went out and got a small IOGEAR bluetooth receiver and used that.



On startup, you get to choose whether to load up 32bit or 64bit vista. Making recovery DVD's is very easy also. Also, Vista with the service pack isn't all that bad either.





I would definitely buy this laptop again and recommend this laptop. The pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit. I looked at quite a few to get this level of graphics performance at this price.

Toshiba PSLB8U-002003 Satellite L305-S5902 15.4" Notebook

...

costing more. Toshiba has skimped some on the CPU (which you can upgrade) in favor of higher level graphics (which you can not easily upgrade). The 3dmark 2006 score I got was 7305.





I have been very, very happy with this laptop, and I am typing this review up on it right now. The colors look great.





I was a little disappointed in the lack of built in bluetooth especially since the web pages on Amazon, Newegg, and Toshiba seemed to indicate that this model would have a bluetooth receiver built in. The Toshiba web site shows two models the F55-Q504 (supposedly with bluetooth) and the F55-Q5041 (without bluetooth). The bottom of the laptop says it is a F55-Q504, but there are no bluetooth stickers, etc, anywhere on it and no option to turn bluetooth on. I just went out and got a small IOGEAR bluetooth receiver and used that.





On startup, you get to choose whether to load up 32bit or 64bit vista. Making recovery DVD's is very easy also. Also, Vista with the service pack isn't all that bad either.








I would definitely buy this laptop again and recommend this laptop. The pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit. I looked at quite a few to get this level of graphics performance at this price.

Toshiba PSLD8U-00G001 Satellite L355-S7831 17.0" Notebook

...

costing more. Toshiba has skimped some on the CPU (which you can upgrade) in favor of higher level graphics (which you can not easily upgrade). The 3dmark 2006 score I got was 7305.







I have been very, very happy with this laptop, and I am typing this review up on it right now. The colors look great.







I was a little disappointed in the lack of built in bluetooth especially since the web pages on Amazon, Newegg, and Toshiba seemed to indicate that this model would have a bluetooth receiver built in. The Toshiba web site shows two models the F55-Q504 (supposedly with bluetooth) and the F55-Q5041 (without bluetooth). The bottom of the laptop says it is a F55-Q504, but there are no bluetooth stickers, etc, anywhere on it and no option to turn bluetooth on. I just went out and got a small IOGEAR bluetooth receiver and used that.







On startup, you get to choose whether to load up 32bit or 64bit vista. Making recovery DVD's is very easy also. Also, Vista with the service pack isn't all that bad either.











I would definitely buy this laptop again and recommend this laptop. The pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit. I looked at quite a few to get this level of graphics performance at this price.

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

...

costing more. Toshiba has skimped some on the CPU (which you can upgrade) in favor of higher level graphics (which you can not easily upgrade). The 3dmark 2006 score I got was 7305.









I have been very, very happy with this laptop, and I am typing this review up on it right now. The colors look great.









I was a little disappointed in the lack of built in bluetooth especially since the web pages on Amazon, Newegg, and Toshiba seemed to indicate that this model would have a bluetooth receiver built in. The Toshiba web site shows two models the F55-Q504 (supposedly with bluetooth) and the F55-Q5041 (without bluetooth). The bottom of the laptop says it is a F55-Q504, but there are no bluetooth stickers, etc, anywhere on it and no option to turn bluetooth on. I just went out and got a small IOGEAR bluetooth receiver and used that.









On startup, you get to choose whether to load up 32bit or 64bit vista. Making recovery DVD's is very easy also. Also, Vista with the service pack isn't all that bad either.














I would definitely buy this laptop again and recommend this laptop. The pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit. I looked at quite a few to get this level of graphics performance at this price.

Pavilion dv5-1000us Intel Centrino 2 Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0GHz Entertainment Notebook

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be the only complaint I had which to me is not much of a complaint. The laptop itself is simply beautiful!!!! I look at my Dell now in disgust. Another reviewer mentioned experiencing trouble with his volume control. I tested the volume control on this one and it worked flawlessly...even the mute button worked at the touch of my finger. Another kudos I will give to HP....the memory card reader on the left side of the pc not only excepts SD cards but also Memory Stick cards. That is a huge plus in my book. There is an HDMI out on the left side of the pc. Another issue for some people will be the fact this little sucker does not come with any supporting software. You have to create your own recovery discs and I highly advise using dvd and not cds. When you go into creating your recovery discs it tells you how many discs you will need. I used dvd-r and only needed three discs. Obviously if one uses cd-r you will be needing many more discs due to the lack of storage available in comparison to dvd. $899.99 minus a $50.00 rebate...what a steal!!!! I would have purchased it even without the rebate. Amazon had a list price of $1375...not sure how accurate that is but with all the features on this pc....it would easily list over $1000.00 most places you look. I know my future step-daughter is going to love this laptop. She is excited and cannot wait to see it. I hate to part with it and I have only played around with it for a couple of days. I would highly recommend this laptop to anyone. Selected one day shipping on a weekend purchase and it was shipped that Monday and delivered Tuesday. The one day shipping rate thru Amazon was very reasonable at $18.00 or so. Anyone purchasing this laptop will not regret it.

DELL STUDIO 15 NOTEBOOK- Graphite Grey with Black Trim Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display , Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo T5750 2.00GHz, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 , 2 GB DDR2, 160 GB SATA HD, CD

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return. BEWARE when you buy, because you are purchasing the worst product on the market from a very incompetent customer service company.

Pavilion dv5-1000us Intel Centrino 2 Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0GHz Entertainment Notebook

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and do you research. maybe my PC was the anomaly.

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

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and do you research. maybe my PC was the anomaly.

HP FE779UA Pavilion DV9930US Entertainment 17" Notebook PC

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system but Vista will ever run on this thing.

What's more, the installed "Premium" version of Vista is deliberately crippled, as it doesn't include the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) or Group Policy Editor; basic administrative components of XP. The only way to get these is to upgrade to Ultimate or Business editions, at a cost of at least $150.

There is also no way to reinstall a clean version of Vista from either the hard drive-based recovery partition or the recovery discs (which you must burn yourself). Meaning you are stuck with all the pre-installed "bloatware", which any experienced user knows can never be entirely removed.

The included TV tuner card and remote controls are nice touches, but again require Vista specifically (don't plan on using them with an XP machine).

The chassis is beautiful, but the glossy finish is a fingerprint magnet.

Pros:

- Well-built, comfortable to use.
- Generous extras included.
- Second hard drive bay is great (on the bottom of the computer).
- Tons of RAM, large hard drive, versatile CD/DVD burner.
- Lots of USB ports, and the memory card reader is nice.

Cons:

- You're stuck with Vista forever.
- Vista Premium edition is huge, eating a whopping 25gb of disk space (8% of the hard drive), and this 64-bit version has compatibility issues with lots of existing software.
- The keyboard volume control slider gets "stuck" frequently (on-screen volume display won't go away, and running software becomes unresponsive).
- Touchpad buttons are recessed (lower than the pad surface), making them awkward to use.
- HP phone support is appalling; very long hold times and inexperienced technicians.

Overall: Great machine for novices, awful machine for power users. I've since returned mine.

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

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system but Vista will ever run on this thing.



What's more, the installed "Premium" version of Vista is deliberately crippled, as it doesn't include the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) or Group Policy Editor; basic administrative components of XP. The only way to get these is to upgrade to Ultimate or Business editions, at a cost of at least $150.



There is also no way to reinstall a clean version of Vista from either the hard drive-based recovery partition or the recovery discs (which you must burn yourself). Meaning you are stuck with all the pre-installed "bloatware", which any experienced user knows can never be entirely removed.



The included TV tuner card and remote controls are nice touches, but again require Vista specifically (don't plan on using them with an XP machine).



The chassis is beautiful, but the glossy finish is a fingerprint magnet.



Pros:



- Well-built, comfortable to use.

- Generous extras included.

- Second hard drive bay is great (on the bottom of the computer).

- Tons of RAM, large hard drive, versatile CD/DVD burner.

- Lots of USB ports, and the memory card reader is nice.



Cons:



- You're stuck with Vista forever.

- Vista Premium edition is huge, eating a whopping 25gb of disk space (8% of the hard drive), and this 64-bit version has compatibility issues with lots of existing software.

- The keyboard volume control slider gets "stuck" frequently (on-screen volume display won't go away, and running software becomes unresponsive).

- Touchpad buttons are recessed (lower than the pad surface), making them awkward to use.

- HP phone support is appalling; very long hold times and inexperienced technicians.



Overall: Great machine for novices, awful machine for power users. I've since returned mine.

HP Pavilion tx2510us Tablet PC-Turion X2 ZM-80, 12.1 3072MB

...

system but Vista will ever run on this thing.





What's more, the installed "Premium" version of Vista is deliberately crippled, as it doesn't include the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) or Group Policy Editor; basic administrative components of XP. The only way to get these is to upgrade to Ultimate or Business editions, at a cost of at least $150.





There is also no way to reinstall a clean version of Vista from either the hard drive-based recovery partition or the recovery discs (which you must burn yourself). Meaning you are stuck with all the pre-installed "bloatware", which any experienced user knows can never be entirely removed.





The included TV tuner card and remote controls are nice touches, but again require Vista specifically (don't plan on using them with an XP machine).





The chassis is beautiful, but the glossy finish is a fingerprint magnet.





Pros:





- Well-built, comfortable to use.


- Generous extras included.


- Second hard drive bay is great (on the bottom of the computer).


- Tons of RAM, large hard drive, versatile CD/DVD burner.


- Lots of USB ports, and the memory card reader is nice.





Cons:





- You're stuck with Vista forever.


- Vista Premium edition is huge, eating a whopping 25gb of disk space (8% of the hard drive), and this 64-bit version has compatibility issues with lots of existing software.


- The keyboard volume control slider gets "stuck" frequently (on-screen volume display won't go away, and running software becomes unresponsive).


- Touchpad buttons are recessed (lower than the pad surface), making them awkward to use.


- HP phone support is appalling; very long hold times and inexperienced technicians.





Overall: Great machine for novices, awful machine for power users. I've since returned mine.

HP TouchSmart All-In-One Desktop with Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5750 - Piano Black/Espresso

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system but Vista will ever run on this thing.







What's more, the installed "Premium" version of Vista is deliberately crippled, as it doesn't include the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) or Group Policy Editor; basic administrative components of XP. The only way to get these is to upgrade to Ultimate or Business editions, at a cost of at least $150.







There is also no way to reinstall a clean version of Vista from either the hard drive-based recovery partition or the recovery discs (which you must burn yourself). Meaning you are stuck with all the pre-installed "bloatware", which any experienced user knows can never be entirely removed.







The included TV tuner card and remote controls are nice touches, but again require Vista specifically (don't plan on using them with an XP machine).







The chassis is beautiful, but the glossy finish is a fingerprint magnet.







Pros:







- Well-built, comfortable to use.



- Generous extras included.



- Second hard drive bay is great (on the bottom of the computer).



- Tons of RAM, large hard drive, versatile CD/DVD burner.



- Lots of USB ports, and the memory card reader is nice.







Cons:







- You're stuck with Vista forever.



- Vista Premium edition is huge, eating a whopping 25gb of disk space (8% of the hard drive), and this 64-bit version has compatibility issues with lots of existing software.



- The keyboard volume control slider gets "stuck" frequently (on-screen volume display won't go away, and running software becomes unresponsive).



- Touchpad buttons are recessed (lower than the pad surface), making them awkward to use.



- HP phone support is appalling; very long hold times and inexperienced technicians.







Overall: Great machine for novices, awful machine for power users. I've since returned mine.