I bought HP 2519TU notebook computer on August 2007. Now its more than a year and I believe, this review will help users to identify what to anticipate while buyinh HP laptops. The laptop was bought from a retailer and the purchase price was Rs 52K. This model did not have a graphics card. ( This is something that youngsters should watch out for ; if you are planning to run any decent games dont expect the integrated INtel Graphics is going to support it.)
The Factory fitted memory was 1 GB (512 X 2 =1024 MB)
DVD writer combo originally manufactured by Liteon .
160 GB SATA Hard Drive
Where the HP people missed while conjuring the configuration was the memory. For Windows Vista Home premium that came loaded with the laptop 1 GB was way too low for decent performance.
They also refuse to partion that 160 GB HDD into manageable partitions, instead you have a 145 GB C drive and a 15 GB data recovery partition.
As with every HP laptop this one also could be used as a room heater. The bottom left portion, just above the hard drive heats up like a frying pan.
After 8 months of usage, a chip controlling the video failed. The failure was imminent as I had problems accessing the desktop once the screensaver was running. Essentially there was a conflict between the power saver/manager circuit and the video controller unit. I took it to an authorized service center and the no word from them for two weeks. Later contacted the HP customer care team in Bangalore. (got their number from the HP India website)
Some pressure from the HP team resulted in my mother being replaced. Once the warranty got over , I upgraded memory with two Transcend memory sticks of 1 GB each.
After the motherboard replacement, the heating problem is much less and the memory upgrade resulted in drastically improved performance.
Moral of the story: Buy proven **Dell laptops with no Operating system. Take it to a local expert ; get the Hard drive partitioned and get Windows XP installed.
Windows Vista is not worth the money you pay.
I have put the word proven in bold as Dell laptops can also be problematic. First and foremost only buy laptops thats been in the markets for a minimum of 6 months.
In case of Dell ; their case the support man will come to your home ; so you know whats happening with your laptop.