Congratulations to everyone who has purchased this laptop. But don't get excited yet, it is great for the first two years; however, if you plan to keep it longer than that, be prepared for the motherboard to go out. It will be absolutely wonderful up to that point but HP does not cover the repairs, so you'll be "out of luck." They are aware of the problem but your problems won't start until you've had it for 2 years. Same problems that are posted on-line for the Pavilion dv6000.
After having a good experience with my previous HP notebook, the dv6000t, I decided to go with HP again when the time came for an upgrade. I purchased the dv5se from the HP website in April of '09 and I couldn't be happier with this machine! I purchased online because it was a breeze to customize to my desired specs, and the deal was much better than if I had purchased the same machine in a retail store. I was able to get a great computer with 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and a super-fast Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz Processor all for around a thousand bucks! Not too shabby, eh? I would also like to add that the service was first-rate all the way; not only was the shipping FREE but the arrival date was two days earlier than expected, which was great cause I was really looking forward to trying it out. I have been using it everyday since I received it and I can say with certainty that this is a great machine, and I would recommend it to anyone.
P.S.
I primarily use this notebook as a multimedia and gaming machine, also for word processing and Internet-based activity. My only complaint would be the lack of a NVIDIA graphics card option (which my dv6000 had) but this is trivial as the graphics are just fine to me anyway without it. When I started using this machine the FIRST thing I did was burn the set of recovery discs; I advise EVERYONE to do the same, that way in case of an unforeseen catastrophe it would be possible to recover to the out-of-the-box state. Before doing this make sure you have at least 3 DVD-R (NOT DVD-RW) discs on hand OR a whole bunch of CD-Rs (NOT CD-RWs) but I HIGHLY recommend using DVD-Rs for the job as it is MUCH more economical and makes storage easier. After burning the discs I did a clean install of Windows Vista to remove all of the bloatware and trial software that was pre-installed at the factory to get the best performance possible out of my new machine; I do not recommend this practice to anyone who isn't computer-proficient as it could create problems if one is not sure what they are doing. Lastly, in my experience, Windows Vista is a decent operating system that is smooth-running, has a nice appearance and is relatively simple to use. I have yet to have any compatibility issues or problems that could not be solved with a quick web search. If you decide to purchase this machine, I hope you are as happy with it as I have been. Happy hunting :)
I bought this computer for work and everyday computing. I am not dissappointed in the slightest bit. I did upgrade the processor,battery, memory and went to 64 bit Vista but that was for work. It has been a computer I can count on to take care of my needs and has performed better than my expectations considering I paid considerably less than going to a computer store. If you are looking for a everyday computer, consider this an option.
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