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General discussion

Info/Advice on Laptop Purchase

Aug 10, 2004 10:53AM PDT

I seek advice on a laptop for my grand daughter who is entering college this fall. I have pretty much settled on Athlon power for the CPU, and as such, I went to HP and constructed what I hope is a good rig.

HP Pavilion zv5000z series
WinXPPro
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
15.4 display (1680x1050
64MB NVIDIA GeForce 4-440Go+1394&5 in 1
512MB DDR SDRAM
80GB 4200RPM HD
DVD/CD-RW Combo
54g(TM)integ.Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN&Bluetooth
12 Cell lithion ion Battery
3 yr express Repair/24-7 phone support

Any pros/cons on selected components appreciated, and also any comments on HP's record of phone support greatly appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Re: Info/Advice on Laptop Purchase
Aug 10, 2004 11:41AM PDT

The only component that seems out of place is the slow hard drive. If you can get a 5400 RPM hard drive, I think that would be better.

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Re: Info/Advice on Laptop Purchase
Aug 10, 2004 12:16PM PDT

I saw that information on HP's website, and apparently that laptop only has the 4400rpm option. I was under the impression that the slower speed hard drives were there for their ability to survive shocks better.

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Re: Info/Advice on Laptop Purchase
Aug 11, 2004 12:31PM PDT

You have the 15.4" widescreen which is good. If you think 512mb is enought(it is for most people) you can save money by ordering 256mb from HP (2nd 256mb is at least 100-120 more I think) and then add 512mb yourself (2nd slot is easy to access) for under $100 (someone saw it at 69 at Compusa after rebates) giving you 768mb for less or you can easily add a 2nd 256mb module also for much less).

Also your daughter is a college student so she is ellibible for the 6% HP APP discount so make sure you order through that. Also, there is a $100 rebate on any HP or Compaq custom order notebook through 9/1/04. Access that on the mail in rebates link on the HPshopping homepage near the bottom left on the mail in rebates link. It is good 2/1/04-9/1/04 and use this instead of the $50 rebate or other rebate posted. You can also save another 5% by learning how to use Fatcash.

You can see how to do all this at X1000forums.com. The X1000 Compaq and ZT3000 are excellent Pentium M notebooks (that is what I have) and they are thinner and weigh less and have longer battery life (4 hours using wi-fi) but the 64bit notebooks are good also if that is what you want.

The forum above, however, has made my choice valuable for that alone and you can save at least 100-300 more that you were looking at without the higher rebate, student discount, and ordering methods (less RAM).