HP DV7 – 3178 Hewlett-Packard Pavillion Entertainment PC Description Review
Here is a brief description and review of the Hewlett-Packard Pavillion Laptop DV7-3178.
Quick things I forgot in the video.
1) (-) When you put button style headphone on the laptop, you can hear some faint background noises as the screen moves or the hard disc is performing an operation. When sound is present, you can’t hear the noise.
2) (+) There is a small switch to turn instantly on and off the touch pad so when you use an external mouse, if you touch the pointing device, it won’t respond.
3) (+) There are actually 4 USB ports where the forth one is shared on the eSATA port
4) (+) You are able to record what you are hearing (Stereo Mix Record) where a lot of new laptop do not have that feature anymore due to the sound card features limitation. Great feature if you want to capture audio about what is playing.
5) (+) Comes with an infrared remote control (express card style) to command the Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player.
Here are some more detail specifications :
-Intel Core i7 processor 1.6GHz with Intel TurboBoost Technology up to 2.8GHz
-17.3″ 16X9 1600X900 Bright View LCD Screen with LED back light
-500Gig 7200rpm SATAII Hitachi hard disc
-4Gig DDR3 memory
-Gigabit LAN with Wi-Fi b/g/n
-Blutooth adpater
-LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
-8 cell battery
-nVidia GeForce GT230M with 1Gb of dedicated memory
-5 in 1 memory card reader
-ExpressCard slot
-Infrared remote control for media center
-Windows 7 64bit Premium Family Edition
-4 USB ports (one shared with eSATA port)
-1 Firewire port
-1 eSATA port
Price is quite cheap for what you get (paid 1179CAD)
Hope my review help you choosing a new laptop !
Feel free to post any comment about the product review.
Duration : 0:9:59
[youtube 7yd9rSs8_HU]
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@1will2000will1 …
@1will2000will1 Hello, yes it does come with an infrared remote control. It is working great with the windows media center and also the windows media player. Thanks for reminding this to me. I speak a little bit about it in the video but I will leave a note on the clip description.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
i have one of those …
i have one of those laptops
wasnt that supposed to come with a remote like mine did
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@66ASIRUH66 Hello, …
@66ASIRUH66 Hello, by what I see, it seems a pretty good choice too. I think yours is having the AMD Athlon dual core and an ATI video card. I prefer Intel and nVidia combinaison but this is for my tastes. The rest of the options seems pretty much the same. You have a nice system too.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
i got HP DV7 – …
i got HP DV7 – 3020ed Hewlett-Packard good?
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@DonLudovit Hi, the …
@DonLudovit Hi, the laptop is nearly silent. You can hear a faint woosh of the fan when it is in idle. Some time the fan rise up a little but rarely. I never heard the hard drive do any noise. Absolutely no noise from hard drive. I would say it’s nearly silent for my tastes.
Thanks for question !
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
hello, can I ask …
hello, can I ask you how nisly is this laptop? thx
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll I …
@OwnerOwnsAll I never used the lightscribe technology before. I know that nero multimedia suite software has a lightscribe module. I never used it though.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
aleziss, does the …
aleziss, does the lightscribe technology of your laptop work ? It is used to mark labels on cds and DVDs. How to use it please?
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll Yes …
@OwnerOwnsAll Yes you are right. I had deactivated that though to get more speed because it loads these process at startup… I wanted to speedup everything that’s why I had removed that. My volume control still work great without the level bar. Thanks for the tip !
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
aleziss, I found …
aleziss, I found the solution to that volume bar problem.
msconfig>startup tab > check all hp and other important software items.
This worked fine for me !
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll Mine …
@OwnerOwnsAll Mine is doing the same thing.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
the problem that I …
the problem that I have currently is that when I scroll the sound touch sensitive buttons, the on-screen sound bar is not visible , although the sound is turned up or down accordingly. It is kinda annoying
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll My …
@OwnerOwnsAll My computer used to boot in around 25-30 seconds… Since I have the AVG suite, it has slowed down the speed quite a lot.
You can remove desktop gadgets, shut down Aero, tweak the startup process but of course, it is going to change the look and feel of Windows 7 but it will be faster.
The HP wireless assistant, speed up menu, and most of all the HP support assistant for checking firmware and hardware software updates. These take a lot on the boot up process.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
aleziss, does yours …
aleziss, does yours boot up a bit slow and then it gets normal, in terms of speed after some time ? Any suggestions please about how to make it faster to boot please?
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll When …
@OwnerOwnsAll When you close the lid, it will go to sleep. When you open it back, it will wake up pretty rapidly (2 seconds or so) and you can continue to work. I doubt it will do any harm as it is design to do this. You can also adjust what you want the computer to do when you close the lid down. These settings are in windows 7 power saving properties.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Do you know what …
Do you know what happens exactly when the lid is closed? Will I save power if I close the lid ? And will I do any harm if I close it repeatedly ?
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll It …
@OwnerOwnsAll It does get hot a little bit. There was an update of the bios (for the 3178) and it adressed a fan issue. I have applied the bios update from Windows 7. Everything whent well and updated correctly. I have not notice a difference in term of heat and noise but maybe HP was aware of some heat issue related to the fan.
I also think you made a good buy. They are quite cheap ($) for the performance they provide. I’m happy with my buy too.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
I just bought the …
I recommend to all of you to buy it. Btw, aleziss does yours get hot after some time ?
I just bought the Hp Pavilion dv-7 3160 laptop. It is amazing, quiet and fast
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll oh, …
@OwnerOwnsAll oh, ok… hp website was not saying the same !
It is fast but not as I expected. Where you can see a good difference is when using 64 bit application. I do not use it for gaming though. I use it to compile programs and video processing.
Windows 7 is fast. Specially when waking up the laptop like 3 seconds and your ready to work. It boot in about 25 seconds and ready to work.
I think you made a good choice !
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Ironically I …
Ironically I ordered the dv-7 3160 and it is coming with an Intel Core i7-720QM @1.6 Ghz I also like this CPU since there are incorporated in it 4 cores. How do you find it as regards to speed ? Did you see a huge difference from your previous pc ? And what about gaming ? Sorry If I am a bit info-greedy but I am so excited about this laptop :p It is arriving this week
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll It is …
@OwnerOwnsAll It is not the same as the CPU is a AMD Turion™ II Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor M620. I’m an Intel Core i7 fan ! For the rest, it seems to be the same.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
I am thinking about …
I am thinking about buying the HP-pavilion dv-7 3160. Is your model newer than the hp-pavilion dv-7 3160 ? And do they physically look the same ?
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@OwnerOwnsAll My …
@OwnerOwnsAll My model did not have a sticker attached to the graphics near the touchpad. I have 3 stickers on the right side with IntelCore7, Windows7 and nVidia Geforce with Cuda. I guess they can be removed. Maybe just heat them with a hair dryer and pull slowly. I don’t know the size of the sticker you are talking about though… hope this helps
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Aleziss, did your …
Aleziss, did your laptop have a sticker attached to the graphics near the touchpad? Could that be removed ? Cause I saw one model with that sticker and I didn’t like it.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
@Aleziss Ah I’ll …
@Aleziss Ah I’ll look into it more. Thanks for the reply. Oh and yeah, that’ll come in handy.