HP Pavilion dv1708nr aka $399 laptop review

Okay, I ordered one on eBay. This thing is amazing, one of the best laptops i've ever owned (okay, my old Sager 4780 could be better...).
Its a keeper.
 
Perhaps I should have been a little more specific. I ordered one, and of course recieved it (today).
 
Don't know if I'd go as far as saying it's amazing...I hate that it's stuck at 533 and that the GPU is hard wired. For basic users, it's great, for DVD's, it's great, for games...it blows. I upped it with a gig of OCZ performance ram...and got no increase in performance. Sisoft shows that it;s almost exactly the same in all areas. I'm going to sell this one off and just buy the Dell that I really wanted.
 
I see what you mean.
I guess for what I need it is amazing, I don't require much, just light loads like surfing the web, etc.
 
Yeah, it's a nice laptop...but it's not working for me. I'm gonna sell it off. I'm going to try for $400 with the 1gb OCZ ram upgrade. We'll see what I can get on eBay.
 
JBavousett said:
Yeah, it's a nice laptop...but it's not working for me. I'm gonna sell it off. I'm going to try for $400 with the 1gb OCZ ram upgrade. We'll see what I can get on eBay.
Click to expand...
If you had posted this sooner I'd have seriously bought this off of you. I could have even asked you to part out the RAM if I hadn't already bought RAM like 5 hours ago.
 
I hadn't decided to sell it before I ordered the XPS. Now, once the Dell comes in, this HP hits the chopping block.
 
I totally agree with you that game performance sucks. Intel really should have AT LEAST put in a Tn'L engine in the chipset. But, this isn't a gaming laptop. For $399 stock, this was a steal.
 
Oh yeah, it's a great laptop for the price. It would be more better in a gooder way if it had the modular video. It was worth the price just to get a good look at the machine, and it's been useful to me...but I'm taking some engineering classes and the auto-cad program that we use is hella slow at rendering on this machine. SO blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. It nice but not for me. If anyone wants one, I'll be selling this one off with a 1 Gig ram upgrade, and I'll send the old ram with it. I'll let the users here have first crack at it before I sell it on eBay. Dell says it'll take 14 days to build my new machine, so after I get it, this one can go.
 
I have this laptop, but it's very hot, and temperature is 55~63 centigrade, I think it's abnormal.
Why?

By the way, anyone has some idea about overclock this CPU or graphic?
Or make this laptop support dynamic CPU clock?

I have tried CrystalCPU, but it doesn't works.
 
When you say very hot, are you using it on a surface that doesn't allow air circulation underneath the left side, like a blanket or carpet? Also, if you put your hand underneath the rear exhaust vent is it very hot to the touch?

Poor thermal paste is almost always the culprit to a high CPU temp but a normal feeling temperature on the outside of the case. It's safe and won't hurt the laptop, or its battery life. If you are hard up for it you can open the laptop and reapply Arctic Silver to the core.

Overclocking? I haven't heard of much.
 
I am using it on a wooden desk, only using office word, internet, and got a 55~63 centigrade.

I don't know why.
 
Yeah really, even if we call HP we will just end up in Bangalore India :) What happened to being able to talk to an engineer?
 
If you update the BIOS, it will recognize the newer processors. But does it change the bus speed of 533, or is that still locked?

In other words, if you upgrade the processor, are you still limited to 533, or can it go faster?
 
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=28027

It is very easy to install MacOSX X86 with 100% usability. I am using it right now and it is as speedy as a mac.

Even the remote works! :eek: Unfortunately there are two issues I can see: You must put it in sleep mode by closing the lid within an hour of booting because it doesnt like to turn the fan on unless you do this (but dont worry you wont kill anything) and the media card reader doesnt work... yet. But still, even the remote? Daaaamn
 
Let us know what you find out. I got this one at Best Buy after threatening bodily harm to the poor salesperson :D . I asked if it could be upgraded to C2D and was told it would require a new mobo, but a Core Duo would be fine for my wife, depending upon which one it was.
 
The best I could get from the tech is that HP doesnt support two processors in one laptop :confused:

My laptop hard drive has died, so I was transferred 4 times to an available technician. I will be getting it in 24 hours, so at least the wait won't be long. They even included installation CDs.

And the tech was pretty good, surprisingly. He didnt know how to help me on the processor but he admitted he only had 2 years language experience and we talked about Ghandis birthday (oct 2nd) and his experience working for HP.
 
Thanks for the info....Sorry to hear about your hard drive....I hope that is not a preview to come for the rest of us...

BTW, are they sending the exact same HDD or upgrading you?
 
The reason you cannot update the CPU beyond the celeron is that the chipset is a 940, NOT the 945. Run an appropriate utiltity (cpuid site) and it will show that the chip is a 940. Then look under intel and you will see that the 940 ONLy supports celerons and NOT core 2 solo or duo. You are stuck with a celeron with the DV1708. Argh....
 
Doh! Thanks for the heads up...the info is very useful for the future in checking on mobile processors
 
whhttp://www.hardforum.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1030048272odiini said:
The reason you cannot update the CPU beyond the celeron is that the chipset is a 940, NOT the 945. Run an appropriate utiltity (cpuid site) and it will show that the chip is a 940. Then look under intel and you will see that the 940 ONLy supports celerons and NOT core 2 solo or duo. You are stuck with a celeron with the DV1708. Argh....
Click to expand...

Actually this is inconclusive. Sisoft Sandra, Intel Chipset identifier and CPU-z all note it as any of the 945 family. Also, the bios version for this specific model states:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...oduct=3210681&lang=en&softwareitem=ob-42882-1

Enhancements

Adds support for new Intel Core Duo and Core Solo Processors.
Click to expand...
 
My girlfriend was looking for a laptop and this one was a superb deal for the price, but at the same day this deal went on ($399 dv1708nr), there was (forgot model #) but another machine for $579....if anyone recalled the price.....it had a dvd burner, bigger hard drive, and faster CPU ( I want to say Pentium M) and that was another great deal the same day at Best Buy. Also using your BB rewards card giving you a few $ back.
Now this machine has worked fine for her, and it is truely quiet, and runs cool. It is also lighter then my loaded DV1000 (T2400,1gb ram, dvd burner, webcam, the whole package). It feels lighter then my machine, even tho they are supposed to weigh the same. Her machine does have a tough time playing things like The Sims 2, and other gaming toys. But, she is looking at a PSP for gaming anyways.
We found that adding a 1gb stick of ram giving her 1262mb of memory I think with shared video has made a dramatic increase in the timing it takes for her to do work in Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and games have been more smoothly running (not having to use swap file from the hard drive on an already value based machine is crucial). I told her for future upgrades to make her work production become more responsive we should look at possibly upgrading to a 7200rpm hard drive, because when she isn't crunching numbers she is obviously waiting for her 4200rpm hard drive to catch up.
Whoever provided some benchmark number that 1gb of ram makes no speed increase......I would disagree, and I would also say that you cannot run most synthetic benchmarks and get a real world result. Sisoft Sandra does not tell me how much faster it will handle a 22mb TIFF file getting a filter ran on it for instance.
But I think this was a great choice for her. She wanted a portable machine that could do all the basic stuff....plus work for my production company in the digital art / photography area, and while a little more horsepower CPU wise would be nice. For $540 total including tax, 1gb memory....you can't complain.But once she enters the mid $600 range you begin to wish you would of just lent her the money to get a core duo deal from Dell for $600-700 like you could of at the time (still can).

If anyone has news of CPU upgrades let us know......
Reading chipset whitepapers for supported stuff might be useful :)
 
Boltaction said:
Actually this is inconclusive. Sisoft Sandra, Intel Chipset identifier and CPU-z all note it as any of the 945 family. Also, the bios version for this specific model states:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...oduct=3210681&lang=en&softwareitem=ob-42882-1
Click to expand...

Read my post. Look on the cpuid site and look at PC wizard. All the other utilities are iinconclusive and note it in the 945 familiy. PC Wizard is the only one that actually IDs the actual chip and it says 940, not 945. It doesnt matter what the bios supports if the hardware doesnt support it. If you dont believe me, then I can also attest to the fact that I tried a T2250 and T2300 chip and it doesnt work. This is what led me to this conclusion, (along with some help from the notebookreview forum to give credit where its due.) I searched all over the web and couldnt find this type of info anywhere. I think it is also very useful to figure out what laptops will upgrade. BTW, I'm very happy still with the laptop, I think it is great value for the $.
 
Ive been looking everywhere for Intel 940 to 945 conversion, hoping it may be firmware based. So far nothing.
 
Ok I opened the laptop to put thermal paste on the CPU and did infact verify the chipset as 940 :(

Here are some other codes

wireles
fcc QDS-BCRM1020
bcm94311mcg

dvd
scb5265


intel
NH82801GBM
F6113117
SL8YB

HP BOARD
DA0CT6MB6F1 REV F
DYNAMIC KSM0-V0
E15063094V-0

CPU
LF80538 410
5621A694 SL8W2


northbridge
SL875
qg82940gml
5608a007
 
Anyone try to wipe HDD and install just WinXP? I am trying to do this but the program says I have no HDD's. I know it is SATA but I am using an SP2 XP disk? Anyone know what I am missing?
 
You need a XP SP2 with SATA drivers. Default, XP doesn't include this sata driver.
 
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