HP Pavilion DV7 2045EA

Lynx

Lynx

Lynx

Associate
Joined
17 Aug 2009
Posts
106
Location
UK
Hey Overclockers,

Been looking at good Multimedia Laptop that has decent all round performance in running usual Firefox/Office/Photoshop appz,watching DVD's, Uni work and good at running a few recent games such as World in Conflict, COD4, CSS etc.

This HP Pavilion DV7 2045EA has come up on a competitor site for only £669.99 and it seems like a good spec and deal -

Processor: AMD Turion Ultra ZM-84 2.3GHz
Memory: 4GB
HD Capacity: 250GB
Display: 17.3"
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4530 512MB
Optical Drive: DVD-SM Super Multi
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

The only thing is I was looking for a Blu-Ray drive and maybe a bit more HD space, is there anything that I could do to upgrade this Lappy to cater for this or alternative Laptops similar to this I could go for?

I can probably stretch another £150+ to spend around the £850 mark max. Thanks in advance! :)
 
If you are set on this laptop then the positives are:
It has a second hard drive slot in the DV7 (but you will need to sorce a caddy)
You could easily buy a laptop Bluray drive and fit it yourself.

Now the bad points:
AMD mobile CPU's run hot compared to C2D's
The AMD also dont perform on par with C2D hence the cheaper price
The ATI 4530 is an entry card so dont expect to be playing games at medium/high settings. You will probably need to use a low res and low details sttings.

You could probably get a decent acer for the same price with a C2D and 9600m which may suit you better
 
Hmmm ok thanks, maybe I need to look at streching the wallet out a bit to get a bit decent performance! I really like the look of the HP Pavillion style, some of the Acer laptops I've seen have good specs but by god they are ugly!

And I have first hand experience of Acer Laptops and it wasn't a good one, cousin had one and had nothing but problems with not 1 but 3 of them!
 
The DV7's do look nice, it is a pitty we get screwed on spec in the UK. You can have a DV7 with ati 4650 and quad core :(

What about a Dell studio XPS? You can probably get a decent spec for approx £750
 
Actually, I had Dell in mind as a backup, but I was looking at the Studio 17 not the XPS model, I think that's a bit out of my budget unless I save up a bit more, but I really need a Laptop now with being away from my desktop at home, the joys of finding out your on your course less than a week ago!

I just speced this up on the Dell website, it's probably the very top end of my budget now, I may keep a lookout on the Outlet like other people have done too -

Dell Studio 17 - £863.99

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P7450 (2.13Ghz, 3MB, 1066MHz)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) - English
4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x2048]
500GB (5400RPM) Serial ATA Hard Drive
17.0" Widescreen WXGA+ CCFL (1440x900) TFT Display with TrueLife™
256MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3650
Blu-Ray ROM Drive (read/write CD/DVD & read Blu-Ray Disc)
Primary 9-cell 85 WHr Lithium Ion battery
Intel WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/b/g/n 1X2) 1/2 MiniCard
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
2.0 Mega pixel Integrated Web Camera - CCFL
Internal English Qwerty Backlit Keyboard
Midnight Blue with Microsatin Finish
 
I would definately recommend you get an xps over the studio 17!
The build quality is 100x better
Its easy to upgrade the xps but if the studio 17 is like the studio 15 I had you had to take the entire laptop apart to upgrade the cpu.
The studio 3650 is poor in comparison to a 4670 in the xps 16.

The base spec xps is £799 and you still get the P7450, 4gb DDR3, 320gb 7200 HD, backlit keyboard, 1080p WLED (I have it and it is gorgeous), onsite warranty etc etc.

I can give you a 5% discount code plus if you go through quidco you will get a further 5% off so a grand total of £720
 
Oh, I didn't realise you could get so much off, looks a lot more tempting now. Will keep that in mind, however have got a lecture in a bit now!

Also, the only other thing I had in mind was to get someone to order a HP DV7 from the US with the specs I want and get it shipped over? However I'm not sure of the implication of that, I assume there'll be an extortionate shipping and maybe customs charges if I'm not careful? :confused:
 
You can find them on on a bay area as certain sellers are happy to ship world wide. Bear in mind it would come with a US keyboard.

Shipping is normally around £60-80 and you will more than likely get stung with customs but it will still come out a bit cheaper than a similar spec model over here. I bought my last msi laptop from the states.

Also make sure you check the warranty with HP, some manufacturers will make you send it back to the country it was bought from
 
Well, after all that I've decided to bite the bullet and wait for the new HP Pavilion DV7-3020EA to come out, might as well spend a little more rather than compromising, I'll just use the bit cash I was saving up for a new desktop for this instead!

Has everything I want plus it comes with Windows 7 - http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-4011368-4036235.html

Processor type
Intel® Core™ processor i7-720QM
• 1.60 GHz, Level 2 cache 6 MB

Operating system installed
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Standard memory
4096 MB

Memory layout
(2 x 2048 MB)

Internal drives
Internal drives
640 GB (2 x 320 GB)

Storage controller
SATA Hard Disk Drive

Hard disk drive speed
7200 rpm

Optical drive type
Lightscribe Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Double Layer

System features
Memory card device
5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards

Network interface
Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN

Wireless technologies
Intel 802.11 a/g/n

Wireless capability
Bluetooth® wireless networking

External I/O ports
4 (4th shared with Esata port) USB 2.0, 1 HDMI connector, 1 eSata + USB connector, 1 VGA port, 1 RJ45 ethernet connector, expansion port, 2 headphones-out, 1 mic-in, 1 IEEE 1394, Consumer IR, cable docking connector

Video capture interface
IEEE 1394 FireWire® Interface

Expansion slots
1 ExpressCard/54 Slot (also supports ExpressCard/34)

Display size
17.3” Diagonal High Definition HP LED Brightview Display BID

Display resolution
1600 x 900

Graphic subsystem name
NVIDIA GeForce GT 230

Video RAM
Up to 2815 MB total graphics memory with 1 GB dedicated DDR3

Webcam
HP Pavilion Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone.VGA low-lght

Remote control
HP Mobile Remote Control

Speakers and microphone
Altec Lansing speakers with integrated subwoofer

Keyboard
Full size keyboard with integrated numeric keypad

Power supply type
90 W AC Power Adapter

Pointing device
Touch Pad with On/Off button and dedicated vertical Scroll Up/Down pad

Battery type
8-cell Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery

Thanks for the advice btw :)
 
No problem, and wow that looks nice! So glad to see we are actually getting it. I gave up waiting for a decent DV7 model with ati 4650 and C2D.

I wonder how long before these hit the UK?
 
Or a refurbished HP X18-11010?

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600
2.4 Ghz , Level 2 cache 3 MB
Windows Vista Home Premium
4GB Memory
320 GB Hard Drive
Blu-Ray DVD LS Optical Drive
Nividia GeForce 9600M GT Graphics
Wireless Enabled
18.4" FHD 1080p Dual Lamps Screen

£870.
 
Nice to get a good specd DV7 in the uk for a change. Of course hp had to ruin it with the extortionist 1100 price. I dont think the entry level icore7 processor justifies a 500 pound price hike over the base models. To add insult they did not bother to throw in a good GPU - say a 250M. Once everyone refreshes their line ups in a few weeks this will go down to 800 pounds where it belongs.
 
Just a heads-up for anyone that's interested, the HP Pavilion DV7-3020EA is available to order online somewhere and also with a 10% discount code until the 30th Oct IIRC :)
 
HP DV7 3020ea widely advertised at £1000+ but on Saturday PC World and Currys both advertised it at £599. Hit the "reserve and collect" button and got it at that price from PC World on Sunday. Come this Wednesday, Currys are advertising it at 5% off (£549) on a sponsored Google site but it cannot be accessed on Currys website to order. HP recommended site are still advertising at £1032.
 
Hi, just wondered how the DV7-3020 was, I was looking at the DV7-2045 as well but after reading this topic I decided to have a look at the 3020,

Would be pushing my budget and I'm going to have a think if I really need all that extra fire-power under the hood.

Blu-Ray and Quad Core would be nice but i think i could easily use the DV7-2045 and be happy.

Cheapest i have found both so far are on the Shop site.

£599.99 for the DV7-2045EA or
£999.95 for the DV7-3020EA

Can i get them anywhere else cheaper with discount codes, can't find any for these guys yet.

Thanks in advance
 
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