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My New Laptop – HP Pavilion dv9502AU Portable

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1. Mention the cost also..

   

   Murthy

   17 Oct 07 at 9:18 PM
2. Hey Murthy – The anti-spam filter on this blog marked both your comments as spam! Ha ha! I did not know it was so good.

   The cost is Rs. 50,000 (approx 1250 U.S. dollars). Will add it to the main post later.

   

   Varun

   18 Oct 07 at 12:08 AM
3. Hi,
   Thanks for your comment on by blog.
   Vista Home basic sucks. Not sure how stable premium is.

   

   Krish Ashok

   18 Oct 07 at 11:00 AM
4. I found Vista Home Premium to be pretty stable. In my approximately 3 months of usage it has crashed/hanged only 3-4 times and I am pretty happy with that figure.

   However it is a resource hog. Even with all the fancy features turned off (Aero UI, sidebar) and unnecessary services shut down it is still only tolerably fast. I mostly use Windows for surfing so that does not bother me but I do plan another GB of RAM as soon as possible. Right now it has 1 GB of RAM.

   I used to use Linux almost 100% of the time but I am simple unable to get my wireless card to work with Ubuntu. I tried out all the zillion approaches (ndiswrapper etc.) to this but nothing works for me. Due to this I am forced to use Windows. I plan to buy a Linux-friendly USB WiFi dongle, am tired with messing around with all this.

   

   Varun

   18 Oct 07 at 4:05 PM
5. I’ve used Vista for exactly 10 days, I pretty much hated it as I tend to copy/move a lot of data in my home-network and Vista came out to be very very very slow in doing those.

   Btw, Nice lappy Varun. Don’t you think 17″ is kinda big for a lappy ??

   

   K

   19 Oct 07 at 9:39 PM
6. @K – You are right. Copying data is a major pain in the ass in Vista. I mostly use Vista for surfing, iTunes, GTalk/Yahoo calling. For my experiments and reading it is mostly Linux. Once I get my wireless card working with Linux (or buy a Linux-friendly USB WiFi dongle) I intend to go off Vista. I do not particularly like Vista but I do not hate it either. In fact I was fully expecting to hate it when I bought the laptop but surprisingly I did not.

   Ha ha. 17 inches is indeed big for a laptop. But I wanted a “portable desktop” rather than a laptop. I saw this model in a Croma showroom and 50K is a bargain for a 17″ laptop with this configuration. I also fell in love with the large screen and the almost full keyboard (separate numeric keypad!). It really is a cool laptop if I say so myself, nice Altec Lansing speakers, all the normal laptop thingies etc. I am happy!

   

   Varun

   20 Oct 07 at 4:51 AM
7. Hey Varun…am contemplating on buying this one…whts the battery back up …is the display High Def ?

   Thanks..if feasible mail me at g.sivashankar@gmail.com

   Siva

   

   G. Siva Shankar

   3 Nov 07 at 6:53 PM
8. The battery easily lasts for 3 hours, usually lasts for 3.5 hours and has been known to last for 4 hours. It is not great but it is pretty decent.

   I am positive but not 100% sure that the display is not high definition. If it was I am sure they must have mentioned it somewhere in the specs. The specs do say that the audio is high def (is it the same as HiFi? hmmm…) but do not say so for the display.

   The following are the only significant drawbacks of this machine:
   1. Quite heavy – But I was ready for this since I wanted a 17 incher.

   2. Screen is BrightView – BrightView is what HP calls screens that are high-gloss. These high-gloss screens are very good for watching movies and when the surroundings are not brightly lit. However I use this laptop mostly for reading and work and that too in well-lit places so the reflective quality of the screen is a pain in the ass. Check out these links http://www.screentekinc.com/hp-compaq-brightview-lcd-screens.shtml http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118951-page,1-c,notebooks/article.html http://www.matbennett.com/tech/dell-truelife-screen.php

   3. 1 GB of RAM is decent but 2 GB would be great for Windows Vista Premium. However I mostly use Linux so this is not that much of an issue with me.

   

   Varun

   3 Nov 07 at 8:55 PM
9. I finally got my Broadcom WiFi card working with Ubuntu! Yay! No more Vista (well… very little anyways).

   2 resources that helped me immensely:
   https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff
   http://files.filefront.com/sp34152exe/;7577917;/fileinfo.html

   Enjoy!

   

   Varun

   4 Nov 07 at 12:16 AM
10. I am also using DV9502 Model and satisfied with this. it gives me 3.5 Hrs Battery life. The only drawback from HP is HP doesnt provide any Recovery DVD for re-installing OS but they dumped the OS in D drive and you cant modified partition else you will loss OS and will have to load only from Recovery DVD. I have created but when boot from it it booted but finally it said “This DVD can be use only with HP laptop”. I am using in same Laptop from where I have made. What a strange situation…. I cant modify partition without recovery DVD works.

    

    Manoj

    6 Nov 07 at 3:19 AM
11. You can modify partitions and install other OSes. What I did was let the HP_RECOVERY partition (drive D) remain as it is and use the installer of Ubuntu to resize partition C. I did a defrag of C before to make things safer and faster.

    So my D drive remains as it is and I get lots of unpartitioned GBs that I then partitioned to my heart’s content. Let me know if you need more detailed help and I will definitely help you out.

    

    Varun

    6 Nov 07 at 12:20 PM
12. Wel…i must say a BEAUTIFUL WAY U VE PUT AL THIS..i also ve this sys & it is really good.. that too at this cost…

    now comin to my issue…
    i had a lot of issues regardin the net speed with vista Premium.. So installed XP.. & by now u must b knowin what i wanna ask,,ha ha ha…
    Wel..
    to know from wher i can download he drivers for XP…

    

    Vedant

    20 Nov 07 at 1:27 AM
13. [...] bought my laptop (HP Pavilion dv9502AU Portable) around 3 months ago and I guess it is the right time to write up a quick [...]

    

    Review - HP Pavilion dv9502AU Portable at Varun’s Blog on Technology

    26 Nov 07 at 3:22 AM
14. [...] just reviewed my laptop HP Pavilion dv9502AU Portable. Oh, did I tell you that I started a technology blog some time [...]

    

    Review - HP Pavilion dv9502AU Portable at Varun Nair’s Personal Blog

    26 Nov 07 at 3:29 AM
15. I do have the same lappy but am seriously disappointed with the vista’s performance hog.

    @varun – thanks for the blog, now I will setup ubuntu as the native

    @vedant – I had given Xp a shot, but was not able to get the network running in XP. Will appreciate a little help here for the xp drivers. Thanks

    

    Nitin

    27 Nov 07 at 5:35 PM
16. @Nitin – Check out my review of this machine at http://www.paheli.net/blog/2007/11/26/review-hp-pavilion-dv9502au-portable/

    

    Varun

    28 Nov 07 at 2:51 AM
17. Hi Varun actually I lost the link of this site. Anyway I havent partitioned yet. I want to do partition using Windows Vista. I have installed Windows Vista Premium Retail version (Called to MS and they activate it without any problem as I used my Lappy Windows SN) not HP OEM which comes load with other softwares. It is pretty faster than before. I saw partition option but didnt make as I afraid if it will effect my recovery in future. I want to make partition but want to retained my recovery partition work too.

    

    Manoj

    13 Dec 07 at 6:42 PM
18. sir

    irequest loptop diver dv9502au plase send me
    windows xp sp2 dirver dv9502au

    

    hp pavilione dv9502au windows xp sp2

    21 Dec 07 at 2:06 PM
19. This Hp Pavilion dv9502au is simply an amazing device. I have worked on lots of laptops including ones from Dell, Compaq, Vaio and Acer, but this Laptop is just far on. It has few drawbacks as well, but it is well said that everything in this world has pros and cons and we have to select those things which have lesser demerits and lots of merits.

    I really enjoyed working on this widescreen Laptop, however I felt that 1 GB of RAM is not sufficient and am going to upgrade it to 2 GB. Vista really sucks but HP has not left ony other alternative.

    The Hardware Quality is good, especially the keyboard is very user friendly. Unavailability of a Floppy drive sucks but who cares for it when you have a latest DVD burner in your console.

    

    Vishwadeep

    27 Dec 07 at 3:51 AM
20. how do i remote control my windows vista home premium os…

    …

    

    how do i remote control my windows vista home premium os

    30 Jan 08 at 8:18 AM
21. sir, please give me link of drivers for my lappy pavilion dv9502au for xp2

    

    chhote lal

    31 Jan 08 at 2:24 PM
22. I’ve the same laptop and I bought the dock too, yes.. it’s a portable desktop just like yours :p
    and yeh.. Vista.. sucks, so within 3 weeks I kissed (kicked?) it goodbye, and made way for XP, yes I won’t recommend it to anyone, coz finding drivers was a pain in the a**.

    

    Nitin

    1 Mar 08 at 12:38 AM
23. Hi all. I have the same lappy too. Finding drivers for this one for xp is really difficult but not impossible. Now I am running xp 32 bit(1st Harddisk) and xp 64 bit(2nd harddisk) with all the drivers 100% working

    

    Rachit

    18 Mar 08 at 4:16 PM
24. Hi guys
    I also using the same device its really cool
    but i am not able to use webcam and finger print scanner on suse 10.(linux). Any one here know where to get drivers for this

    

    sundar

    17 Apr 08 at 9:19 PM
25. I too had brought this notebook 8 months ago for precisely the considerations u mentioned (17″). But now I find myself stuch with its GeForce 7150M Graphics and cannot play some 3D games. Can’t even upgrade/change the graphics card!!! Any suggestions for better gaming on this notebook?

    

    Abhishek

    5 May 08 at 12:53 PM
26. I too had brought this notebook 8 months ago for precisely the considerations u mentioned (17″). But now I find myself stuck with its GeForce 7150M Graphics (64 MB dedicated memory)and cannot play some 3D games like ‘Call of Duty 4′. Can’t even upgrade/change the graphics card!!! Any suggestions for better gaming on this notebook?

    

    Abhishek

    5 May 08 at 12:54 PM
27. hae varun i got my lap a week ago. the lap is asowme but i’m irritated with vista. it’s damn slow n booting takes abt a min! that too with a 4g ram!! i’m an engineering student and need high end softwares like CATIA PROE ANSYS NASTRAN etc. and with this speed i think it will take more than 20 min to open the application. i wanna jump to XP. but i came to know the lap dv9502au dont work pritty good with XP and that not all the hardwares are supported with XP. like the XP dont support the wifi system. is there a way out to my problem? can i use XP without any changes and problems to my lap? please suggest soon..

    

    sushovon paul

    11 Jun 08 at 10:55 PM
28. Hey Varun,
    Just had a few quick questions about the laptop, I surf and download stuff a lot and quite a lot, so how exactly is the Laptop at opening applications and downloading? And does Microsoft and all work well with that?

    

    Jake

    29 Jul 08 at 9:16 PM
29. @Jake – Read my review here
    http://www.paheli.net/blog/2007/11/26/review-hp-pavilion-dv9502au-portable/

    

    Varun

    31 Jul 08 at 1:28 AM
30. Hey Varun….i am impressed with dv9502AU Portable want to know the distributor in Srinagar Kashmir, and if i want to buy it online what will be the cost and what is the current cost price of the same. plz reply

    

    Jawid Sopori

    8 Aug 08 at 11:19 AM
31. Hey Varun….i am very much impressed with dv9502AU Portable with 17 inch secreen want to know the showroom / distributor in Srinagar Kashmir, India
    and if i want to buy it online what is the procedure.
    want to know the current cost price of the same. plz reply…………..
    thanks.

    Jawid Sopori
    email: djsopori@gmail.com

    

    Jawid Sopori

    8 Aug 08 at 11:59 AM
32. hey buddy….nice to see ur Blog..i m using dv9502au notebook since last 10 months and i think Vista makes my job hell of a difficult..I think i will have to upgrade my RAM to 4gb..i have the same C drive and D drive recovery partition..what do u think should i partition the drive more and make four drives. the Boot time of my laptop is almost 2 mins..i download loads of movies on the net..tell me how should i get a better speed…Vista or Xp? also suggest about partition..

    

    Dr ashwin

    30 Aug 08 at 12:56 AM
33. Hi Dr. Ashwin,

    Vista is slow on this laptop, I am sure an extra gig of RAM would do it good. But remember that the 1GB you have right now is 2×512MB and not a single chip of 1GB. So you will essentially have to remove these and put 2×1024MB or 1×2048MB (strongly recommended, in case you want to upgrade even further).

    4GB is good if you can afford it but I do not think it will make much of a difference from 2GB, since there is only so much you can do by adding more and more RAM. There are other parts of your system that are probably the bottleneck and not the RAM.

    Partitioning the system will also not make much of a difference, even though it seems that smaller partitions might make for faster access they are eventually based off the same physical hard disk.

    Have you installed a lot of software apart from the usual standard ones (MS Office, Firefox etc.)? Do you have an anti-virus program running all the time and are the signatures up-to-date. A boot time of 2 mins makes me think that either your installation is bloated with lots of software or that it has been infected with a virus.

    I would recommend that you do the following things:
    1. Get the latest signatures for your AV program and do a full system scan.
    2. Uninstall all unnecessary software.
    3. Remove all unnecessary files from your system. If you download lots of movies then you might be running out of disk space. Might make sense to burn these to DVDs or copy them to an external hard disk.
    4. Reboot your system… was there a noticeable improvement in boot up time?
    5. Defrag your C:\ partition (My Computer >> Right click on C:\ >> Tools >> Defragment). You will be asked to reboot to defrag the drive. Defragging will take a 2-6 hours depending on how much data you have and the degree of defragmentation.

    If your system is heavily virus infected or the above steps do not improve the experience much you might want to try and reinstalling from the recovery partition (or recovery DVDs if you made them initially). This will bring your system to the state it was in when you bought it.

    If you can get a licensed copy of Windows XP to install on this laptop with all the necessary drivers then I say go for XP.

    Let us know how this turns out…

    

    Varun

    30 Aug 08 at 10:00 AM
34. thanx mate, I will late you know soon……

    

    Dr ashwin

    31 Aug 08 at 11:38 AM
35. How much is it?

    

    Kathy

    6 Sep 08 at 1:42 AM
36. @Kathy – Approx Rs. 50K when I bought it about an year ago.

    

    Varun

    6 Sep 08 at 9:54 AM
37. i bought dv9502 on 22 aug 2007. finger print sensor not working for last 7-8 days . i tried to recover using recovery manager and also installing driver again from hp.com.still the problem continues . please guide

    

    dhananjay

    10 Oct 08 at 4:36 PM
38. Hi Dhananjay,

    The information which you have provided indicates faillure of the fingerprint reader sensor. Moreover, as you have perform full recovery and installed drivers from HP website and the issue is not resolved. At this moment to confirm the exact cause of the issue I request you to follow below instructions and check for the issue. If the is not resolved then it requires onsite diagosis:

    Step # 1:

    Firstly, I recommend you to install AuthenTec Inc. AES2501 Fingerprint Driver from the below URL:

    ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp37501-38000/sp37812.exe

    Installation Instructions

    1. Download the SoftPaq .EXE file to a directory on your hard drive.
    2. Execute the downloaded file and follow the on-screen instructions.

    Step # 2:

    Next, install Bioscrypt VeriSoft Access Manager from the below FTP link:

    ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp35501-36000/sp35640.exe

    Installation Instructions:

    1. Download the SoftPaq .EXE file to a directory on your hard drive.
    2. Execute the downloaded file and follow the on-screen instructions.

    Additionally, I am provding the below URLs it will help you to configure the fingerprinter reader in your notebook:

    * Setting Up a Fingerprint Reader

    http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&docname=c00678197&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

    * Using Fingerprint Reader to Login to Applications and Web Sites

    http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00958213&dlc=en

    

    Ramana

    30 Oct 08 at 2:54 PM
39. Guys, I’ve had this laptop for about 10 months now and had 4 GB of RAM installed. I was using Vista until now. It was dead slow for my liking. When I click on Word to open it, it takes 55 seconds. When I click on IE, it takes about 30 sec to launch the blank page. This is only the beginning. I got headaches (seriously) just waiting for stuff to happen. And remember I am not a power user. I use it only for mails, word, excel and media player. The built in quick play takes a full 2 min to launch.

    I got sick of it, finally changed over to XP just 2 days ago. The laptop is simply flying now. All of you out there, ditch the Vista bitch. go for XP. you get all drivers needed. no issues. everything works. Just go for it – and you will love this laptop even more.

    

    anand

    30 Oct 08 at 2:59 PM
40. Is there any possibilities of enabling finger print scanner and soft touch keys in suse 11 anyone had did it before

    

    sundar

    5 Nov 08 at 10:50 AM
41. my hp dv9502au recovery manager kit will be uninstall and i can not recovry and restore and my recovery partition will be automatically deleted
    please tell me my softpaq no. immdiatly

    

    Dinesh jangid

    16 Jan 09 at 11:21 AM
42. Seems this topic is from the 2007 and has managed to continue up till Jan 09. Great, let me take it further as I own a DV9502au. Have it since Oct 2007 but never decided to write about it on any blogs as such.
    Anyone who is planning on buying this (DV9000 or 9502 series)from HP I would strongly recommend not to buy it. Reason is firstly, there is an inherent design flaw with the hinge of these dv9000 series (I guess even though mine is a dv9502 it comes under the 9000 series) HP had recalled these laptops in the US and Canada but (since we guys are 2nd class)they left us out.
    Just weeks before my 1 year warranty was to end my hinge cracked and the lid would not shut. HP did not repair it and instead put the blame on me. 2 weeks after the warranty expired my battery went down they refused to entertain me, now I realize that the DV9500 series battery have a flaw and were being recalled. However they say that I do not qualify for that recall as only a “select” number of batteries were faulty and I do not feature in it (even though my battery series matches the faulty battery series as depicted on HP’s website).
    Even though I have a problem with my Hinge and battery HP refuses to have a look at it. So I suggest you stay away from it
    Just Google for DV9000 hinge problem and you will know what i am talking about. You should count yourself lucky to have found this post.
    Thanks for reading.

    

    bummarketing

    1 Jun 09 at 2:43 PM
43. hi all the guys/gals out there my name is Ritesh.
    everyone i have the same laptop n its good i have !GB of RAM if anyone need this laptop can contact me it is in good condition i want to sell it reason is not that its not good but my brother didnot study at all he used to play games on it all the time he is not getting good marks i can sell it at a price of around 35000
    anyone intrested can contact me Ritesh_7732@yahoo.co.in or call me 09829252191 reply guys bcoz my brothers XII std has started n he has boards

    

    Ritesh

    5 Jun 09 at 12:55 PM
44. i can slash the price further to 30000 n more depending on our mutual understanding but pls reply to my post as soon as possible

    

    Ritesh

    5 Jun 09 at 12:58 PM
45. if u have problems with vista i can provide it with XP service pack 2 n windows 7 RC1 for trail i use windows 7 on m machine n beleive me guys that was fast n i play games with more ease than on windows vista

    

    Ritesh

    5 Jun 09 at 1:02 PM
46. Opensuse 11.1 and ubuntu 8.04 works for webcam and finger print and its really good

    

    Sundar

    17 Jun 09 at 10:10 AM

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