Just bought HP zt3000! - Page 2

My zt3000 was delivered today!!

First impressions:
- solid build and feel; I like the metallic lid
- a little bigger/heavier than I hoped
- WSXGA+ screen is very nice and the best choice for 15.4" widescreen; no dead pixels

Didn't have time to do anything else before work, but a more comprehensive review will be posted in a couple of days.

Congrats jswriter!!!
Enjoy your notebook!!!!!

Andrew
Austin, TX

Blachole and others:

I read in various news reports that the HP zt3000 was the one Pavilion notebook that was part of the massive problem HP discovered with RAM. I believe the culprit RAM brand was Infineon, which is cheap and not too reliable, at least in my experience with desktops. From what I read, HP sent replacement RAM to owners of affected products with instructions on how to install it. When you ordered your notebook, I'm curious, did HP address this issue?

I have been considering this notebook myself, among many others, like some from Asus, Compal and Sager. I recently bought and tested an HP ze5700 with a mobile Pentium 4 processor, Northwood core, (no hyperthreading), running at 2.66 GHz, 512MB RAM, ATI video card with up to 64 MB shared video memory, Windows XP home edition, 30 GB HD 4200 rpm, DVD/CD-RW drive, USB 2.0, etc. Unfortunately, this system isn't right for me. It's OK. For some people, I'm sure it would be just fine. But the HD is very loud whenever it's accessed, which bugs me. I've decided I prefer dedicated video memory as opposed to shared. The HD seems to get accessed way too much, as if using a swap file, even when I free up as much RAM as possible. The Altec Lansing speakers are nice, but not as good as Harmon Kardon.

Anyway, while I'm still considering the HP zt3000, one thing I don't like is being a slave to restore disks. I always make my own when it comes to desktops. So, I'm much more drawn to a custom laptop from a place like PowerNotebooks.com. They give you a disk with drivers on it, but you have complete control over the OS.

I hope you enjoy your new laptop!!

HP gives you a driver cd and a seperate Windows XP cd.

I'm aware of what disks HP supplies with their laptops. As I said, I've been testing an HP ze5700 for the last few weeks, and my cousin has an HP zd7000 model, which I've worked on extensively. In her case, there's a driver disk, a disk for Windows, and an applications CD.

My point was that HP and other such companies pre-install the BIOS and everything that makes it an HP rather than any other brand on the hard drive. (This is in contrast to the BIOS being on a chip on the motherboard.) Let's say you want to wipe everything off the HD, re-format it and re-install your OS, drivers, etc. Forget it. That's what I meant when I said you're a slave to restore disks, since that's the only way to restore your system in the event of a crisis, other than sending it in for repair. This dependency is one reason there are so many people out there with used or refurbished laptops desperately seeking original restore disks. Anyway, I prefer having control over my system. I prefer making my own restore disks with Drive Image.

At any rate, sorry if I was unclear before. I'm not trying to slam anyone or any company. My cousin, for example, is extremely happy with her HP and likes having the disks HP provides.

BIOS on the hard drive? Heh. First I've heard of that. I used to do tech support for HP before my job was moved to India. :P We cleared those hard drives off all the time on the machines we had there in the call center to work with, even with Linux on them and even after switching hard drives, they still booted up from the BIOS.

Look, forget the restore disk issue. I never would have brought it up if I thought people would focus on that. If you want me to provide documentation of what I'm talking about, however, I don't think it would be difficult to track down. I was just speaking from extensive experience and was just being chatty about my personal preferences.

In my original post, I was trying to be helpful by pointing out the RAM issue in the zt3000.

I still don't get what you are saying. You DO have complete control over your system since they give you all the seperate cds and/or put they drivers online. It's no different than buying a notebook from Powernotebooks with no OS. There is no restore cd with the zt3000, so I'm not sure how you could be a slave to it. Also, there is no reason you couldn't make your own restore cd if you wanted.

Hi everyone- I'm new to the site, and i was hoping i could get some opinions on which HP notebook to buy. I saw that the majority of people had nothing but good things to say about the zt3000, so i thought this would be a good spot to throw out some questions. I am going to college in august and i was looking at the HP zd7000, the HP zt3000 and the HP zx5000. I am looking for a notebook with a fast DVD burner, good wireless internet options, and something I can do my school work on. As of right now i am leaning towards the zx5000, but if anyone has any different opinions please feel free to share! Thanks.

help!

Definetly go for the zt3000 b/c of its widescreen and long battery life.