Hewlett Packard Pavilion DV9000Z 17" Screen Laptop Review

I wanted a new laptop computer.  My old laptop, a Hewlett Packard zv5000z, which still works mind you, is getting a little long in the tooth, and she is getting progressively slower, as I add more and more programs.   And while I am not running out of usable hard drive space, my daughters 3-year old Dell is starting to have problems, and she has been begging for a laptop for years, so my old 15.4" HP will revert to her.  And finally I wanted a 17" screen in a lighter package with Windows Vista and a duo-processor.   

In a new portable I was looking for a semi-desktop replacement laptop, one that could hold all of my day files, play movies & music, and conduct business away from my home office.  And to be quite honest I have so much hanging off my desktop, no laptop could replace it one for one. 

So, starting in January of this year I started researching the Internet for the right "mobile workstation" to fulfill my ever increasing mobile computing needs.  Just one laptop manufacture was left after the dust settled: Hewlett Packard.  The company offered what I wanted, and in end I choose the HP Pavilion dv9000z because I thought would provide me with the best available combination of features, price, performance, and quality.  The base price for the Pavilion dv9000z, with the AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-56 (1.8GHz/1MB) processor, was $899.99, but I added a few items to get the unit up to where I wanted; my budget allowed for $1400.00; the finally price was $1368.99. 

I went for the AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-56 processor for three reasons: 1. because I wanted to be able to load the 64 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate, and; 2. Because the processor was dual-core and only slightly under-performed by its comparable Intel Pentium counterpart running at up to 1.8GHz, and; 3. Price: AMD processor continue to be priced well below comparable Intel processors.

My Viewpoint

I wanted light and I got it in the (very) thin body of the Pavilion dv9000z, which is trimmed in a very attractive glossy black with brushed silver highlights around the keyboard, and soft blue LED's everywhere.  The whole body is adorned with HP's new Imprint Finish which is smooth to the touch and very stylish.  The laptop weights in at some 7.8lbs and is 1.57" thick.  The dz9000z is thinner than my older zv5000z, but weighs the about the same.  The laptop measures 15.16" (L) x 11.65" (W) x 1.57" (H) so special care must be taken to find a travel bag to accommodate this rather large portable, but have heart one can be found.    

All of the ports are situated on the sides of the unit leaving the back of the Pavilion dv9000z relatively stark; there are no ports back there at all.  This of course limited the number of USB ports to three jockeyed in at various place around either side of the laptop.           

The keyboard is a full sized affair, black keys with white letters and the entire back half of the keyboard surface is taken up by a pair of fairly decent sounding Altec Lansing stereo speakers. 

I decided to go with the 120GB 5400 rpm SATA hard drive; this was an effort to increase storage capacity in light of Windows Vista's need to consume a whopping 10GB of drive space.  And of course I could expect it to grow, and grow, and grow as time marches forward.  And I just have to have room for all of my music! 

Display

The display on the Pavilion dv9000z is the real selling point of the unit.  The darned thing is simply beautiful; ultra-bright, sharp, crisp, colorful, and vibrant.  The 17.0" WXGA BrightView Widescreen display brings graphics to life like a regular display never could; the text is well defined, brilliant, and easy to read.  I went to the local Office Depot and Office Max (I would have stopped by CompUSA, but the stores have all closed in my local area; no big loss) several times to compare the BrightView side-by-side, with other conventional displays; they couldn't compare to the over all brilliance of this display. 

DVD viewing is a wondrous experience even at full screen.  And while I will probably never mate my Pavilion dv9000z with an external monitor, it's nice to have the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 video card at my disposal. 

Concluding Viewpoint

At this price point one would be hard pressed to find a better desktop supplemental computer than the Pavilion dv9000z.  Hewlett Packard has found the right combination of price, performance and features and incorporated them into the HP Pavilion dv9000z.  For the student, or professional on the go, this is the one!