my new laptop

I'm not the best versed computer guy in the world, and my wife needed a laptop for her work, so i went out and bought one...

I started looking around the 700 dollar range, and wound up doubling the price by the time I was done...

I want some opinions and feedback about what i bought, and wonder if its a good system or I just got sold...
I got an HP DV9000 series with a Core 2 Duo 5500, 2G ram, and dual 100G HDs @ 5000+- rpm.

They kept talking about the front end something... and it seems fast, but I'm not really doing anything with it.

I was disappointed that I couldn't really find any machines with any free decent software... you can build them, but you pay the same as if you just bought the software seperately (MS office, etc...)

its has a 17 inch screen, which I like, but its a little glossy and reflective in high light situations...

Anyway, I bought it for 1300 bucks... Could I have done alot better? The speakers are nice and it has a built in cam/mic combo... and I'm excited about the lightscribe feature... that sounds pretty cool...


Besides the feedback, are there any good sources for free software that I might enjoy? vista comp?

The truth is, you could have done much better. If she just needs a laptop for work, you definitely have some overkill. That's a pretty high end machine, while you could probably have gone cheaper and gotten similar results, that's a pretty nice one.

The cool thing about the Core Duo is that you get some great battery life, usually like 5-6 hours depending on what cell batter you have. It's not only Vista compatible, it's "Vista Premium" compatible. However, if you have Windows XP, I would go ahead and use that until SP1 for Vista comes out.

Microsoft has been doing a good job of convincing everyone they "need" Vista, when it reality it's just a pretty interface that's no different from XP (not really anyway). Already, there have been quite a few security flaws found in Vista, plus they don't support a lot of legacy devices within the operating system.

It just seems like everytime I buy something Its outdated in a matter of months....

What I want to know is if the processor is good, and if I overpaid for all the crap I got...

If I did, how could I have done better?

People say it's outdated, but that's only if you want to be on the bleeding edge of gaming really. Really, all it comes down to is whether or not your machine meets your needs for what you want to do.

I built a machine from scratch my sophomore year of college. I still have it today, and it still runs great for what I need it to do. I play some games, use the internet and use Word, and it works perfectly fine and fast.

That machine, if you keep up with it, is going to be fine for years to come. Sure, next week a game will come out that will need the best video card on the market, but really, that's the only reason people say computers get "outdated". That processor is a really good one and should be very fast. There's also a few optimizations you can do to Windows to speed it up substantially.

Overkill maybe, but I think you did okay. There is definitely a school of thought about buying more than you need, so that it doesn't become obsolete sooner.

2GB of RAM is a lot for normal users, and it should suffice for more than the practical life of the laptop. Also, the RAM is arguably the most important thing regarding performance, so you generally don't want to skimp there. I'd say that 200GB of disk space is probably much more than you need, so you could have probably saved some money there.

They kept talking about the front end something... and it seems fast, but I'm not really doing anything with it.


Front Side Bus. :)

It's what connects your CPU (the brain) to the RAM (memory) and the rest of the internal parts. The higher the FSB speed, the faster your computer can work.

That's higher of a price than I would ever pay for any computer, but then again I build my own and for laptops, I buy broken ones and refurbish them to save money. :D

Your computer is going to be super fast for a long time. That's a ton of memory, more than any software will require for at least a decade most likely. I like HP for laptops, they're good, realiable machines. The hard drives hold a lot, but they're a little on the slow side (most PCs now have 7200 rpm drives, but then again, that's the speed for desktop drives, laptop specs are always a little behind).

If you already have Windows XP...STAY WITH IT for at least 6 months or maybe even a year. Never get a newly-released Windows, especially if you're not connected to the internet with that machine. Microsoft loves to release an operating system and let the first buyers do the testing and debugging, which usually takes about 6 months for the most important updates and fixes to be released.

Overall, you should be very happy with this laptop for a long time. It's no where near being "outdated" unless you're planning on being one of the geeks who sit and play the newest games all day and night. :)

That's higher of a price than I would ever pay for any computer, but then again I build my own and for laptops, I buy broken ones and refurbish them to save money. :D

That's SO the way to go too. You can control the type of hard drive (I usually use Samsung) amount of RAM and quality, even upgrade stuff and oftentimes sell it for far more than you bought it for.

That's SO the way to go too. You can control the type of hard drive (I usually use Samsung) amount of RAM and quality, even upgrade stuff and oftentimes sell it for far more than you bought it for.


Yeah, my wife had a Dell laptop that's good enough for her uses and it cost me a TOTAL of about $120 to buy it and replace/install the parts it needed.

Most people will sell "broken" laptops for next to nothing because they don't know how easy it will be to fix it. :D

A lot of people sell them because they think it's something hardware, when really just the OS needs a reinstall. A lot of times I can buy them for about a hundred bucks, install XP, resell for three-hundred.