hp pavillion dv6920ea

HJL

Hi, just looking for some opinions on this HP Pavillion dv6920ea
Its in Currys for €749 and seems decent spec for the money.

Is there anything else similar i should be looking at before making my mind up?

Also with a Blu-Ray DVD Combo drive, is it possible to still copy CD-R/CD-RW? I assume so, but just not certain.

Thanks.

johntheboardsie

Let me give you my experience of HP Pavillion, or more specifically of HP Support, or lack of...

Bought a HP Pavillion Dec 2006. It worked fine for 363 days, except I think it gets much hotter when running than any other laptop that I have experienced. The warranty was due to expire midnight Sun. 2 days before it would not start up, just beeped 3 times on power up. Called HP Support. They recommended a procedure to power up without the battery. The procedure didn't work. By that time it was Sat evening & HP Support was closed. Mon morning called HP Support again. The agent that I had spoken to on Fri had not logged a support issue so as far as HP knew this was my first call. They told me that my laptop was out of warranty! Yes on that Mon it was, but it was in warranty on the previous Fri when I first called. I spent 2 hours & 40 minutes on the phone & spoke to 13 different people in HP. This was followed up by several more phonecalls on subsequent days. On each phonecall I had to explain the case all over again - so frustrating. They don't seem to have any (or any good) case management tools so they struggle to keep a thread between one call from a customer and the next. Their support is in South Africa.

Eventually they agreed to repair the laptop under warranty but it was mid Jan by then, so no laptop for about 3 weeks. They sent a courier to pick up the laptop but the courier had not been advised where to ship it to, so several more phonecalls to get a forwarding address. Ridiculous, no? It was away for about 2.5 weeks and was fine when it came back. Complained about the support service to country manager of HP Ireland - got a call from a customer service agent from UK - that was the end of it, no action.

Had about 6 months of it working OK but then it became very slow to boot up and generally sluggish. This was more likely some OS or applications problem, I guess. But several times I had cause to run chkdsk as I suspected the hard disk. Several times chkdsk identified but repaired errors.

About 6 weeks ago the laptop got infected by a virus. (The laptop has ZoneAlarm virus protection but ZoneAlarm could only identify but not remove the virus). During the course of virus removal I edited the Registry and screwed something up so that when I booted the laptop it asked for a password, even though none had been set. So I was locked out and decided to reinstall the OS. HP do not supply the OS disks. Instead they have the OS files on a partitioned area of the HD and a procedure whereby you create recovery disks when you first use the laptop. The recovery disks didn't work - ran for a while & told me could not find a particular file. If I put the disk in another machine I could see the file. So called HP who told me I would have to purchase new recovery disks @ €38.50. They wouldn't listen to any argument about their recovery disks being faulty - told me the recovery disks were guaranteed only for 30 days (so you must have a breakdown within 30 days - what are the chances?).

Forced to buy new disks - tried to do so using the link sent by HP email Support = www.best2serve.com (they have a sense of humour choosing that name) but the link was UK specific so couldn't enter an Irish postal address - 3 more emails & 5 phonecalls to sort this out - pathetic! Eventually ordered the disks - they give you a tracking link but it only tells you that your order has been registered so it never changes info - useless! It took 21 days for the disks to arrive, from best2serve which is in UK! - couple of emails to them after 10 days but they told me they don't have the disks at best2serve & it takes 10 days for them to get there before they ship.

Ran the disks - showed 12% completed after about 7 mins, 50% completed after an hour and a bit, 99% completed 16 hours later. So yeah they weren't working. Back on to HP Support, told me to run HD test from BIOS. It confirmed a HD failure. So have now put the machine into the Laptop Shop (an excellent shop & great service) repair centre.

So the moral.....
1 - HP Support are the worst support operation that I have ever encountered, and I have a lot of experience of running large international IT support operations. I will never again buy HP equipment.
2 - Two major component failures in 22 months! Can't be good.
3 - have been without the use of the laptop for about 7 weeks in a 22 month period.

Had 2 Dell laptops over the past few years & had very little problems, except the battery is gone in one of them but it's 5 years old. I have just purchased a Toshiba but too early to tell.

Advice is to avoid HP and other advice is to call the Laptop Shop. Their staff are knowledgeable & helpful.

Good luck.

dub_commuter

I guess everyone has good and bad experiences, I've only ever bought HP and never had a problem. For desktops I build my own always, but for Laptops I honestly don't think you can beat HP - I can't comment on their support as have never needed to use them.

I have a DV2104EU (Nearly 2 years old) and a DV6799ea (3 months old) and never had a problem with either of them, Vista has never crashed and I've never seen a blue screen and I only reboot when I have to for new software - rock solid.

I have an Inspirion 6400 of a similar spec to one of my machines in work, and having installed windows from scratch on my work machine like my home machine, the HP is amazingly faster, and much more reliable. Despite the same amount and speed of RAM and the Dell has a faster CPU! Saying that the Hard Drive and the RAM and certainly screen and keyboard seem to be of much higher quality on the HP, which does run a little hotter however.

My Dell Inpsirion in work falls over a few times per week total hard freezes and blue screens. A couple of others in work are the same, we have some HP Laptops which are more reliable in work. Saying that one of the HP desktops went bye bye last week when it's motherboard blew. some other people have the same laptop as my inspirion which is absloutely fine. Although I suspect they are running less than I would run. Generally I guess it depends on your usage and the luck of the draw, everyone will produce laptops that are not perfect. I guess you were just unlucky.

I would never go to Dell these days though. They're still good for the price. And still a decent choice. But I honestly don't believe they are as good as they were a few years ago when the first aim was quality rather than price.

gamer

well i know some1 bought a turon x2 dual core ,laptop pavilion,they had no problems at all.hp is a very good brand,but with dell ,they have a very good support site,with good support staff .look at the screen ,its a matter of taste , i dont like laptops, like pavilions,with glass screens,ie too many reflections on them.its very easy to disconnect power cable on his laptop,by accident,as its beside usb port ,on the right side.i prefer powercable to go to laptop at the back.Make restore disk as soon as you can,back up drivers with DRIVERmax program,free download.Make sure and hold on to the receipt,i think hps are built to a higher standard than dells,ie they use a metal case,not plastic case.

Scotty #

I've a dv9088ea for the last 18 months or so and find it very good except that it is prone to overheating when gaming. A heat pad sorted that out though.

I'd definitly buy another one.


@johntheboardsie: You don't need physical recovery disks. Press F12 or F2 or one of those during start up and you can select to do a full recovery from the partition. I've done mine twice with no problems.