My HP Pavilion dv5215us: A 2.5 Years Later Review

My laptop. My cherished, beloved laptop. It’s gotten me- no, it’s given me- more than two years of service. Hard work. Not really. Man that was a sappy sentence!

I got this laptop somewhere around the time I started this blog- way back in late August 2006…and Post #1: Drama at its Finest. I must say that, given my inexperience at blogging at that time, that’s one fine first post. Drama at its Finest? Genius.

It cost $700 according to memory. With tax and shipping it would be around $800. I got one other, but returned the other. I forget why and where…I just faintly remember that I got one then returned it and got this model. It “looked weird.” And I was the one who said that. It does have some unconventional, trying-to-look-cool-like-an-expensive-car features, but it doesn’t look all that weird after staring at it for two years.

The processor is either 1.79 or 2.2 GHz (power saving 1.79 or power-sapping 2.2), single core. When it goes from 1.79 to 2.2 it lags, but it’s not too noticeable. I got it one generation/line of laptops before dual cores became standard. It is an AMD Turion, which I like, but it isn’t an AMD Turion X2. I could have gotten the dual core for $100 more. A sticker on it says “Designed for Windows XP. Windows Vista Capable.”

The screen is nice, but dim according to today’s standards. I haven’t experienced any dead pixels- I despise dead pixels. It came with 1 GB of RAM…and I never upgraded to 2 GB. And I’ve never had a system stability problem that wasn’t caused by me- a lucky run so far with no spyware or viruses. It runs very decently with few lockups or slowdowns. My biggest problem with it is the Wireless Indicator Light, a very bright LED which resides at the bottom of the display and indicates when the wireless receiver/transmitter is active. It’s oppressively bright in dark rooms and especially when the monitor is turned down. I lived with it.

It has either a 128 MB or 256 MB graphics card- it never really gives me a straight answer- and the most recent game it can run is Command and Conquer: Kane’s Wrath. It runs it quite well (except for infantry swarms), but the graphics have to be bottomed out. It came with a 5,400 RPM 80 GB drive which lasted me until I upgraded (space requirements) in October 2008 to a 250-GB 5,400 RPM Western Digital Scorpio Blue. Space is nice.

The battery was all but useless by mid-late 2008. After living with it for months, I bought a new one at the same time as the 250 gig hard drive; a nice doublecell which increased battery time from 7-10 minutes to 2-3 hours. Time away from the outlet is nice.

It also has a decent keyboard. It’s sort of loud (not overly clicky) I suppose, at least according to today’s standards; I’d never use it in a classroom setting. And it catches your fingers under the keys at odd times. I enjoy this, some might not, but it’s rare enough to ignore. In mid-2008 the ‘O’ key failed to reinstall. I removed the ‘`’ key (next to 1) to attempt a structural replacement. It failed and I lost both keys, destroying the placement structures. The rubber nipple that the key normally presses on has worked just fine without a key. That’s neat. Also, the lettering on the keys has not faded at all. That’s neater.

The touchpad is very nice. It’s slick but not too slick- and that also means it isn’t sticky. And it isn’t sandy, either. Travel is nice and it’s happily controllable; it also happens to be in the middle of the laptop. I can’t fathom why you would align it to the right or left. The color wore off of it in the high-traffic middle, and the scroll wheel is only operational when some as-yet undiscovered process is running. Maybe “ScrollWheel.exe,” I don’t know- point is, when that process isn’t running, or is preempted by a process with higher priority, which is often enough to annoy, the scroll wheel does not operate. It will return when the problem resolves, sometimes requiring a system restart.

For some reason I’ll never know, about as often as the scroll wheel issue occurs, the control key will get stuck. Try holding control and typing “so there I was.” A million things pop up, it’s wacky, don’t try it. The sound is loud enough, but lacks any real oomphish depth that you get with more modern/expensive systems/desktop speakers.

In mid-late 2008 (can you tell this laptop lasted exactly 2 years before it started falling apart?), the CD/DVD drive began malfunctioning. As a result, a month or so later the faceplate fell off. The structure is a bit weak, and sometimes the uneven pressure of picking up the laptop with one hand causes the CD/DVD drive to rev up as if you had pressed the “rev up and do autoplay” button. Extremely annoying, I got used to it, it happened less when the faceplate fell off. But when the faceplate fell off, the ejection motors began wearing down, and it only pops out part of the way. At current, my CD/DVD drive is only operational at odd times. It’s usually operational when I need to game. That’s serendipitous.


Here are the specs: HP dv5215us 15.4″, $800 including tax/ship.

Processor/CPU: 1.79 to 2.2 GHz Single Core AMD Turion Mobile
Graphics card/GPU: 128 MB dedicated, possibly additional 128 shared Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 series
RAM: 1 GB
Battery: Double, 2-3 hours at brightest setting running browser and writing programs, charges slowly
Weight: roughly 7 pounds with normal battery, 7 pounds 7 ounces with extended battery.
Notable features: nice touchpad, nice placement of USB (2 on left, 1 on right), came with remote.



Well done, good and faithful servant.

That Second Dead Nikon Coolpix S10 Again (Again)

There I was, running through the hall to shut off the emergency alarm.

I hear a clack, clatter, clack. "Oh, dear," I think as I key in the code.


Good news: The alarm didn't go off. Remember the alarm from The Second Horrible Day?

Bad news: the clackery clatter was my Nikon S10. My second Nikon S10.

My first Nikson S10 died back in August-September after being dropped on the lens housing. I had that one for a good time. I took more than 10,000 pictures with it. It went to 9,999 and rolled to 0. Then it got dropped- like it had been about 5 times before- on a Walmart floor. But this time...lens error.

My mom bought me a new one, probably because she owed me. It was a complete surprise. She [called and] asked me if I could bring the box in because "the vitamins might be damaged by the sun." Then she expected me to open it, but I said, "Come on, why would I open it? That's stupid, I don't have time for this."

It drove her nuts because, usually, I open any package regardless of if it's mine or not. (They HATE this about me at work, by the by.) I had an idea of what it might be ("bring it in"?), but I didn't fully know until I opened it. I still "told her I hadn't opened it." You see, "I didn't have time to open it [a second time]." I opened it from the bottom so she couldn't tell I had opened it. Then she said, "Hey, look!" and I said, "What, it's another Nikon Coolpix S10?" Man, it was great. And I used the word 'open' a lot in this paragraph.


Wonderful memories about taking any joy out of my mom's buying me a gift aside, this second Nikon Coolpix S10 lasted until a few weeks ago. Then the whole alarm and Lens error thing.

Having lost two cameras to this obvious lens error weakness, I'm still going to buy another one. Am I mad? Am I stupid? Do I have a brain lens error?

No, I'm just hopelessly attached to the swivel-head design. Nothing else comes close. If you want to know what it's like...just think of your camcorder. Those- even the 5-year-old Hi8's- have swivel-LCDs. However, all the valuable buttons are easily accessed; with a camcorder, your hand breaks off if you try to swivel it too far. Because with a camcorder, the whole system moves. Along with the buttons.

With the Nikon S10, your hand stays comfortably not broken off, and you can adjust any setting you want except for Vibration Reduction and the amazingly useless "Face Focus" mode. It's a great camera. My camera holster? Not so great a camera holster. Next time, better camera holster.

The S10 is big compared to compact cameras, but the battery life is good. Somehow. And the 10x optical zoom is neat, though at 10x the quality is a little low. The coolest thing is the proximity of the flash and focus to the lens; it allows for very close closeups. Even closeups of mouths. I feel very restricted using any other camera (their closeups lose), and I've known for a while that the only camera that can shake me from my love of swivel-headed cameras will be a DSLR. Even then, I'll still have an S10 (or more recent) because, well, DSLRs suck.


Problem is...the S10's now sell for $400. That's a lot more than their original worth. Why? They addict people to them. That's why. I'm proof.

Then they don't make new models for years, and they stop producing them. So now I have to look into getting it repaired. Goodbye.

Checking an HP dv4-1220us Entertainment Notebook

Yep, heres(sic) I am. Checking the notebook. I am making a lot of typos; that's OK.

The touchpad speed is a little slow. I fixed it.

Now let's see how the speakers are. OK, they're nice. Or maybe the song is nice. The Adia song. Love it, love it, sugar on top.

For the record, it's probably not the Adia song you'd find by searching an engine...the screen is almost blindingly bright (compared to the brightness of my 2007 HP dv5215us). That's good. Right shift placement is fine; directional pad is not too great. Actually, the End key is way too close to it.

Let's see how...oh, great!

If there's one thing I dislike, it's the DirectX errors!

...20 minutes later, I am still trying to remedy...not a DX error...

Downloading 113 MB video driver...

Driver failed...downloading secondary source video driver...testing...secondary driver failed...

Trying restart...

\



...back on my laptop. Here's my review of that particular dv4-1220us: IT SUCKS!


As for all dv4-1220us's, I can't really comment. Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars did not work and I will not invest the hours required to allay the problem. I'm seething!!! I can't take it!!!

For all I know, the laptop- which is my mom's work laptop- has a kind of governor which disallows video gaming. That's just dandirific.

I'm going to listen to that Adia song some more.

Not really.