This HP Pavilion dv6000 I bought off a customer because she was upgrading to a HP dv9000. The z key missing and the right hozzle was crack, but it was nothing that a little dab of epoxy wouldn't hurt. I have had HP products in the past, like desktops and printers, this is my first laptop from them. When she offered it to me for a $100.00 I couldn't pass this up. First things that I did was clean her registry and unwanted files and programs. I checked the hard drive for skips and when it came up totally clean, I was a very happy man.
The 15.4 glossy widescreen lcd display made everything crystal clear and jump out straight at you. Granted this machine is 3 years old. The average life span for a good laptop is roughly 2 years or a tad more if your careful with them. The 1.3mp web cam on this model brings out every digital aspect of your surroundings. With the dual holed microphone on the top of the LCD display your voice or sound is recorded in a stereo process making it crisp and clear. (The new photo on my profile is a snapshot from the web cam on board this laptop)
Built-in Acessories: built-in recovery, 1.3mp webcam, wifi type 802.11 b/g, NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, Sound Blaster X-IF Xtreme.
As soon as you turn it on the nine blue functionality lights come on at the top of the 102 post keyboard. On the left side you will see 8 function ports and on the right two. The battery life unplugged into the adapter is roughly 3 hours. It depends on what you do. Watching a movie on dvd makes it drain faster. The 250gb hard drive is split with a g-h drives. The H drive is formatted to 12 gb for the recovery console. The 7,200rpm's makes programs easy to boot up. This laptop came fully loaded, programs for the web cam like Cyberlink, Sight and See, ooVoo are a few. It came with Microsoft Word, Works and Office 2007 and working and writing compositions were never this easy. Just type copy and paste to a email or hit the save file and tuck it away until your going to use this document.
Board Acessories:
5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards
3 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0
2 Headphone out - 1 w/SPDIF Digital Audio & 1 stereo
microphone-in
1 VGA (15-pin)
1 TV-Out (S-video)
1 RJ-11 (modem)
1 RJ -45 (LAN)
1 notebook expansion port 3
1 IEEE 1394 Firewire (4-pin)
1 Consumer IR
My HP Pavilion dv6000 model has Microsoft Vista Home Premium. This Vista software is not the best that ever came from Microsoft, I do know that it doesn't work with Microsoft XP servers well. Compatibility to gaining access to programs is a nice. Vista makes it easy to store and locate your files and downloaded programs.
Vista definitely has a learning curve to it. While it is created almost the same as XP, there are a lot of new features that really take some time to get used to. One issue that I had at first was with saving items to folders. You no longer just save it to your own desktop, you have the option to save items to every desktop for every user on your computer, you can save it to other desktops, or you can save it to just your own.
The same is true with documents folders as well. This gives you a lot more control over what you are doing with your files and who can use them. For me this was one of the biggest improvements of the program and made it worth purchasing as I find that I have to move files around a lot with XP, because I was unable to save them exactly where I wanted to from my own username. Other items that were different, was that you have more control over your files. You can now choose how large you want the icons for a picture to be, you can have them super small, or super huge where you can actually tell what the picture is. Plus, you have the ability to control that picture a lot easier with picturing editing tools that just weren’t available standard with windows before. Pictures are a lot easier to sort through and since I am a single father, I find that I have loads of them, so this was a great feature for myself.
The 2gb ram memory is great, it keeps this machine at top speed all the way. Multi-tasking is easier, but not like Microsoft XP. It is very easy and fast to close one program and start the next. Traveling on the Internet is a breeze from one site to the next. Acceleration is a very key marker for me when buying computers. I do not use this laptop for gaming, but I would agree it would be nice if I was a gaming nut. I like watching movies on Netflix and this laptop brings out the quality with 32bit operating system and the AMD 64x2 Turion processor. The 250gb hard drive is split with a g-h drives. The H drive is formatted to 12 gb for the recovery console. This laptop came fully loaded, programs for the web cam like Cyberlink, Sight and See, ooVoo are a few. It came with Microsoft Word, Works and Office 2007 and working and writing compositions were never this easy. Just type copy and paste to a email or hit the save file and tuck it away until your going to use this document.
Security
Probably the most significant thing that I noticed about the software was the incredible security enhancements that were made. The computer prompts you before installing anything, before doing anything that could be risky, and really ensures that everything that is done on your computer is done by you. Just going to my standard websites, I never realized just how many of them try to install toolbars, spyware, and whatever else each and every time you go to the site. By having Vista, all of these items were blocked from my computer. With XP, they would have been downloaded and installed without my knowing. This will definitely play a huge role in preventing my computer from getting infected with viruses or spyware, which was a major issue with the number of downloads that I do when I was using XP.
Just like XP, you can still create multiple user accounts, secured with passwords as well. You can even lock drives that you have attached to the computer, if you don’t want someone to have access to that particular drive. I don’t know if you could do this on XP or not, but I never figured out how to do it, so having that ability in Vista was great.
Speed
This Hp Pavilion dv6000 has probably the biggest overall improvements was speed. There is a significant improvement in how fast Windows starts up, changes users, and just does everything. It used to take several seconds before some of my programs would startup, but with Vista, it is instant. Everything comes up smoothly without having to click on it over and over wondering if it is ever going to open. The startup process is pretty awesome as well. I restart my computer on a regular basis and used to hate waiting for the entire process, but now it’s so fast and efficient, I can’t even leave the room before the computer is restarted again. This is great when I’m in a hurry but need to do something that requires a quick restart before I can continue.
Compatibility
One of the biggest issues that I have had with XP and other versions of Windows, would be the compatibility issues with outside computer software and Windows itself. Most of my games would play great, but would reach a point and then have an error randomly. While using Internet Explorer, I would get errors, while using virtually any product I would get an error if not in the first 30 days, within a year, most likely there would be some sort of stupid error.
With Vista, I have had no issues with compatibility, in fact, I have found that it works better with my programs than other editions have. I have a lot fewer issues with lag, the programs startup immediately, and they play smoothly until I turn them off. I have yet to actually have an error from using any parts of Vista or from using other software in conjunction with Vista.
I have realized however, that programs that I had major issues with on a regular basis with XP work great on Vista. I don’t know why there is such a huge difference, but the kinks have definitely been worked out with this version of windows.
The system also comes with a DVD drive (8x) with Lightscribe. I have not had occasion to use the Lightscribe feature yet, but I think it's a pretty cool concept. Lightscribe allows you to use the DVD drive to "print" titles and logos on your DVD. It does require a special DVD for that feature. One sample Lightscribable DVD came with the laptop, but I haven't used it. My only negative thoughts are the Altec Lansing built-in speakers. They are not loud enough sometimes, even turned up to full volume. Granted, I often use headphones anyway so I can get a better stereo sound I've used laptops before that felt like they would break if I put them to any real use, but this one has a well-constructed feel to it. They don't respond well and I end up frustrated. Not so with this one. The touch screen seems very responsive and the design is quite intuitive. The size is just right and it includes a "scroll bar" section on the right, for those who are accustomed to having a wheel. The touch screen responds to a light touch without being overly sensitive and left-clicking can be done with either the button below the touch pad, or by tapping the pad.
Overall This HP Pavilion dv6000 is easy to work with. I even made it easier for a old dawg like me. I used one of the usb ports for a regular mouse, for me it is much easier to use. I've seen this same machine with the same ram and 250gb hard drive going used on eBay for three or four hundred dollars and none with all the programs I have on here. So yes, this was a very good investment and the $100.00 price was right up my alley.
Recommended:
Yes
This review appears on other sites I write for.
Best little investment I've ever made 
