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I bought a DV7000 around the same time period. It worked well through Iraq, but then it just kind of stopped performing for me. The optical drive in particular died after numerous problems.

I bought another HP after (I’m not 100% sure why), and, lo and behold, same types of issues with the wonderful addition of constantly, easily overheating. I had to replace the Blu-Ray drive after about a year, maybe. I took it with me to Afghanistan, but it was in a much more computer-friendly environment than my older HP was, so there was no excuse. I contacted HP to see what a replacement BD drive would cost and they told me $400+. I found one on Newegg for about $100 and it works perfectly.

I paid about $100 to get my older one repaired and it’s now the kids’ laptop. My oldest daughter learned to read from some free teaching websites on that thing.

My wife bought an ASUS to replace her absolute miserable POS HP laptop, and, despite some odd power cord issues she has with EVERY laptop, it’s been a vast improvement over the HP and it was comparatively dirt cheap.