Works but crashes

Ever since the days of Windows 3.1 my view of HP has been great quality and range of affordability. I've used HP's at school and relatives homes without a problem. Always productive and reliable. After coming home one September day to find the house broken into, the need to get a replacement laptop came into view. Armed with insurance cash and electronics store ads, the HP Pavilion dv9000 17" wide screen caught my eye. After getting a hint by a Best Buy employee that it would drop $100 come next store ad I waited a day or two, came back and bought it for about $900. Let me just define that around this time (Sept 2006) Microsoft and computer manufacturers were starting to come out with Vista which in turn is how I got a somewhat better deal.

Let me also point out how Best Buy encourages you to buy their 2-3 year warranty which is basically worthless.

The laptop came equipped with an AMD Turion 64 X2, 1GB ram, 100GB hard drive (about 60GB that you can use after the recovery partition, windows install and all the preloaded crap), nVidia 6250 on board graphics card rated at 256mb (uses some of the computers ram to power the graphics).

Performance-
For the time period (what seems to be a year in this day and age), the performance was pretty damn good for the price. It matched most $1500 to $2000 gaming computers. It played America's Army and Medal of Honor Pacific Assault on medium settings, well enough for my enjoyment. The 17" widescreen made great on viewing space too.

Display-
I had a choice between a 100GB hard drive with a 17" wide screen or a 120GB 15" wide screen. I think I made a good decision. Nice bright easy to read screen, fades by 25%-50% when unplugged and on battery power. The one and only problem I had with this screen and never on any other previous computer I've owned is I got a dead pixel about middle at the bottom 10% of the screen. It was annoying for a good week trying to wipe off what I thought was dirt spec.

WiFi-
Wireless on this computer WAS great. I had great range both at home and hot spots around the area in restaurants and other establishments. About 2 weeks ago (roughly 1 and 3/4 years from purchase) the wireless just stopped working. Unannounced. The computer acted as if it had never seen the wireless hardware. The external wireless switch's light never changed and wouldn't activate the wireless. Further research told me along with many others that this model series has had problems with the wireless dying right on the motherboard. If you wanted to get it repaired, it would take weeks along with $300 out of pocket if it was out of warranty (like mine was). The laptop is now a desktop unless I feel like popping on a wireless USB adapter.

Little Things-
A big selling point to me was the media center edition of this machine. Dedicated media controls at the top make great when using Windows Media Player or iTunes. Never really had a need to use the 'media center' software as it was probably built for those unfamiliar with windows or those that like ease of use. Right on the side is a memory card reader which is great when on vacation and you need to clear off a camera card or at home and need to do some quick file moving. Sure beats having to plug up the camera through USB and using the cameras own software. The USB ports are also quite convenient for plugging stuff up. 2 on the left side next to the memory card reader and 2 on the right side, one by the power port and one right near the front. Great for quickly loading up a thumb drive.

Expandability-
Most laptops are built to suit what's needed right now meaning you can't swap or upgrade a lot. This is one of the few that has some of those options. The computer has an extra slot on the bottom for a second hard drive and can easily have its ram upgraded. One improvement I wouldn't have minded seeing is a spot to add another battery. My old Dell was great for swapping stuff out and could work on 2 batteries for extended power time away from the charger. I also learned about and bought the hub for this machine. Easily put you hooked everything up to the hub when you wanted to take the machine somewhere else instead of unplugging everything each time. One plug instead of 6.

Reliability-
Here's the killer of my so far positive review. Probably after a year of use the machine basically crashed. It kept restarting the machine before it booted up and it basically required a complete system reformat. At least what's nice is HP had a easy way of recovery. I had it recover the machine to its factory settings, but it kept all my files. I copied those over to my other machine and did a fresh install. I reinstalled everything and went on from there.

Minor speed bump right? Not as easy as you nor I would hope.

Since the first time I recovered to a fresh re-install I've had to repeat the process over 7 times. That's 7 times I've had to re-install Windows. Today probably makes 8 times (the main reason that reminded me to write this review).

Summary-
HP makes a nice machine that forms around the backbone of the Windows operating system. The media center options definitely make this a better machine for the average consumer or traveler looking for entertainment, storage and operating power. It works great for me as an everyday machine for music, web surfing, Photoshop editing, 3D work and about any other application that comes its way today. Yet the one thing that keeps me at bay is the quality of hardware that really matters with a laptop (wireless in this case) and the reliability of not having a crashing computer system every 3 months.

At this point going into my freshman year of college, the need for a reliable laptop is becoming somewhat of a necessity. After using Windows for the passed 10 years and putting up with its problems I may be looking at an Apple laptop for my next machine.