Decent entry level computer
Pros:
Price.
Cons:
Woefully inadequate RAM included. Minimum 2GB to run Vista. Tech support weak.
The Bottom Line:
I'm sitting on the fence as to whether or not to recommend the DV2000T. Price and screen tip me to the positive side, but just barely.
|
|
Overall Rating:
|
 |
|
Author's Review
I've owned the DV2000T for about 3 months now and it's not a bad laptop for the price but there are some deficiencies I should warn you about first.
It has a very nice bright 14.1" display and is fairly lightweight at a tad under 6 pounds and only an inch thick. It's portable enough to tote around which all notebooks should be, but most aren't. The latest trend in laptop design is monstrously large screens and keyboards to match that will have you requiring shoulder surgery after lugging them around for any length of time.
Processor was a dual core AMD and only 512MB of RAM which was alright for XP, but Vista is a resource hog that requires at least 1GB and more likely 2GB to perform as well as XP did. (Vista sucks by the way)
I got a decent sized hard drive size of 60GB but probably should have doubled that but I was trying to keep price down. Believe me, it doesn't take long to download music files or pictures to fill up that 60GB drive.
Software is almost nonexistent, which is another lovely trend in the computer sales business. Three lousy months subscription for Norton Internet Security is a joke.
I think I just figured out that all the money I saved on the front end I ended up spending more by adding memory, extending Norton and a few other upgrades I made. Penny wise and pound foolish I am. Can't single out HP for that trend, they all do it now.
Another horrid trend in the industry is the outsourcing of tech support to third world countries. I called tech support shortly after purchasing to ask a question on upgrading RAM and honestly I could not understand one word the tech said. I kept asking "What???" because of the language barrier and finally hung up and figured it out myself.
I think my biggest complaint with the HP isn't a design problem but rather an operating system complaint. While Vista has a beautiful interface and lovely desktop it is such a resource hog that it crawls by comparison to XP.
I can mildly recommend the HP DV2000T for it's price, portability, and screen but I'm not thrilled with the lack of standard RAM that comes with the system, sparse software options, and horrible tech support. Just be smarter than I was and get the options upfront and you'll save a few bucks and a whole lot of frustration.
