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HP Pavilion DV7-2180US 17.3-Inch Entertainment Laptop Review from Kjh. love it, I did some price compares and for the price, you won’t find another laptop in this class.

I work in the industry and am a power user by any definition. This is noticeably faster than any PC I’ve ever used and is comparable to some of the low-end servers I work with.

I was a little nervous about the graphics card — nVidia being my preference — but the graphics are fast and stunning. Vista sits quietly on this machine, rarely taking up more than 1 or 2% of the cpu at idle.

I’ve had mine for about a week. I’m upgrading from a Toshiba with a heat sync issue that is constantly running too hot. Because of the heavy graphics card and cpu, I was really nervous about heat dissipation on this laptop, but so far, it runs very cool most of the time. Heavy graphics will cause the thing to heat up a little to the touch, but even without a laptop cooler, it’s still manageable. With one, it cools down to nothing.

Pros:

– it’s fast. Even something as simple as loading a web page over wifi is visibly faster than my old Toshiba dual core. Everything from the wifi “N” card to the 6 gb ram, really kicks in.

– price. Comparable laptops will cost you over $2000 and probably closer to $3000. As someone pointed out, the Alienware version is something like $5K. For the price, there isn’t much this one doesn’t have.

– design: the ebony-black look is smooth. The keyboard is firm and decent.

– video: rocks. I run 1600×900 in 32-bit color and the graphics are fast and clean.

–weight: hey.. it’s a 17 inch monster laptop. But for it’s size, it’s still under 8 lbs. It’s very “carry-able”.

– drive bays: this model comes with a built in 500GB drive and an open drive bay. I can’t wait to fill that

– nice features: Not sure I’ll ever use the remote control (what’s the point of a remote on a laptop?) but the touch sensitive volume control, the built in web cam, the “disable” button on the glide pad — all really nice additions.

Cons: (there aren’t many, but)

– USB ports: it has every port you can dream of from HDMI to a modem. But it only has 2 USB. I’d gladly sacrifice the modem for 2 more USB. The laptop does have blue tooth, though, which offsets this a bit.

– 5400rpm drive: if it had a 7200rpm, it’d be a near-perfect PC. I will say that I haven’t noticed a slowness yet, though.

– full keyboard: the keyboard has a keypad, which is great! only the keypad puts the rest of the keyboard a bit off-center. I’ve had it for a week, and I’m just now getting used to it. Not a huge deal, but annoying at first to get used to off-center typing.

In short, I don’t know that i’ve been this taken with a PC for years.And I don’t think you’ll find anything better without paying at least twice the price.

To check price or purchase HP Pavilion DV7-2180US 17.3-Inch Entertainment Laptop.

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