HP Pavilion ZT1170 Review

Watch this item
HP Pavilion ZT1170
0.8 stars
Average rating for this product is: 0.8 out of 5

From 2 ratings and 14 reviews

Thumb down 7% of users recommend this product

Rate it Now:

Click on the stars above to rate this product:

Tweet This Item


lpeter's Review of HP Pavilion ZT1170 Laptop

17th Aug 2005

Overall Rating

2.5 stars
  • Value for money
    2 stars
  • Screen Quality
    2.5 stars
  • Ease of Use
    3.5 stars
  • Time Laptop Owned
    Over 1 Year
  • Battery Life
    4 stars
Good Points

I bought my Pavilion zt1170 3 years ago as a desktop replacement. Selling points were: lots of ports for expansion, 15 inch or larger LCD and decent (at the time) memory of 512 MB.


Bad Points

Like many here, my 15" LCD inverter board went bad after a year and a half - after the warranty expired. Since I had bought my notebook at a 3rd party online reseller, I didn't even bother with HP's support. Instead I went to HP.
I used discussion boards and got advice on how to buy and install the new inverter myself. Instead of paying the $600 repair price I've heard it can cost, I spent only $40 on the inverter, and a half hour of my time. Warning: the self repair is not for the fainthearted or mechanically inept!


General Comments

I will probably keep my Pavilion zt1170 until it dies, but I doubt I will buy another HP/Compaq product again. The quality is just too poor. In addition to the aforementioned inverter fix, I also had to replace the hard drive because the legacy drive failed about the same time as the inverter board - too many hard shutdowns. I did luck out because I put in a 60GB 7,200 RPM drive, so performance has noticably improved. I also upgraded to XP Pro because XP Home was just too unstable (pre SP2). In short: buy this notebook or an HP product only if you like a technical challenge.

Tweet This Review

On average, people found this review very helpful

How helpful did you find this review?