HP Pavilion dv5t Review

My new laptop, 14.5" HP Pavilion dv5t, arrived 2 days ago. It's very nice, very sleek, very light. I like it.
It has Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-460M Dual Core Processor (2.53 GHz, 3MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz, 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm), 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive and webcam, bluetooth which works great sending pics from my cell phone.
The display is very clear and kind of shiny.
One major complaint and a few minor ones.
For the major complaint, I tried playing a Netflix dvd and got a message from the HP dvd software that the dvd player is set to region 0 while the dvd was region 1. I could change regions in order to play the dvd, but only 5 times. I guess I'll have to look into this to see if there is a way to override this region setting. For now though, Videolan's VLC Media player plays the dvd just fine.
For the minor complaints:
Audio is a bit low, even at the highest setting. Probably won't be cranking it up, so I can live with it.
On my old 14" Dell Inspiron 1405, the screen had 800 pixels in the height. The HP Pavilion dv5t only has 768 pixels. If I'd read the specs a little bit closer and done some comparison, I might have realized there were fewer pixels in the height. I checked the specs on a few other HP laptops and it looks like they are all like that.
The home, delete page up/down keys are on the side of they keyboard instead of at the top. Just takes a little getting used to.
The keyboard is layed out so that there are spaces between the keys. Apparently, it's similar to a Mac. I like it. Hopefully it will cut down on the amount of crumbs and dust which tend to collect if not cleaned regularly.
A lot of the reviews I read at the HP site complained about the touchpad being difficult to use. I do like the actual buttons better than the touch pad buttons. The touchpad with touch buttons isn't so bad now that I have figured out how to use it.
Here's a few tips on using the HP touchpad:
Tapping anywhere clicks links, puts the cursor where you need it. It's your basic left click.
To scroll or highlight text:
Put the cursor on the scroll bar, double click with one finger and don't lift it up, use another finger to actually move the scroll bar. If you double click in the left touchpad button area with the index finger and scroll with the middle or ring finger, it kind of simulates using a touchpad with a real button.
To right click:
Push down, not tap, on the right touchpad button area.
There's no modem, but the laptop works great with my Wiflyer. It was really slow when I first tried using it. I was pretty sure it had to do with the Norton antivirus. I poked around and discovered Norton had found a couple of problems already, tracking cookies from hp. Got rid of those and it's running great.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the HP Pavilion dv5t laptop. Hopefully it will hold up better than my Dell Inspiron 1405.


More HP Pavilion dv5t