Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Sat Jan 09, 2010 9:07 am**

Well, I got tired of my old laptop a) having 1 hour of battery life and b) overheating on occasion and shutting down.

So I bought a new one with this Slickdeals thread.

dv7t quad edition
• Espresso Black
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB) w/Turbo Boost up to 2.8 GHz
• FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 3GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)
• LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
• [For BrightView Infinity Display] Webcam Only
• Intel Wireless-N Card with Bluetooth
• No TV Tuner w/remote control
• HP Color Matching Keyboard
• 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• No Modem
• Microsoft® Works 9.0
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

$969.74 after tax ($899 before tax). Best price I'd seen for the i7 yet.

Posted: **Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:24 am**

We had a dv8t quad from them for about 3 days. They have issues with the sensor buttons above the keyboard. They short out or something. On ours, the bass/trebble would spontaniously start adjusting itself. HIGHLY annoying and makes doing things like typing a URL impossible because it takes the cursor away from the field. Calling tech support got us new drivers that made things worse. They started down the 'reload' path and we diverted to the 'RMA' path. Other issues we read about were over heating due to the video card. Their fix for that was to give you a driver that sets the fan speed to 100%, 100% of the time.

Once we saw the button issue on ours and did some research, we saw that HP laptops rank among the lowest for reliability.

We paid $1000 shipped for the dv8t quad. I've seen the dv6,7,8 at <$1000 a handeful of times since. Seems to do it about once every few weeks or so.

Good luck with yours. Here's my post about it on SD: my post

Posted: **Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:57 am**

We had a similar problem with the button short thing with my wife's studio xps 13, and the wireless kept shutting off, and it kept corrupting hard drives. They eventually replaced it, but it took a lot of effort.

I've only owned 1 HP before, and it barely lasted 1.5 years. My Dells have lasted the longest, but they didnt have a configuration I wanted that wasn't below $1300. If the HP sucks, I can just send it back and live with the Toshiba a while longer.

Posted: **Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:52 pm**

Original ship date, 1/22. New ship date "today" but it arrived at FedEx too late to get out of China.

Grrr.

They did send me a $50 coupon, which I used to buy a 2nd power adapter, since reviews say they break all the time.

So yay, I guess.

Posted: **Sat Feb 06, 2010 12:53 pm**

Just RMA'd it back to HP.

It worked fine, but I wanted to install my own 2nd laptop HD into it, as it has two bays. Well, guess what, HP doesnt ship it with the hardware required for connecting the hard drive, and you have to order an accessory kit. Support hung up on me twice while trying to talk, chat was not helpful, and said it wasn't their problem. I said Dell/Toshiba both had the extra bays with connection hardware.

Bah.

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