Never buy HP :(

Disclaimer: If my thread breaks some forums rules please be free to delete it, sorry in advance, but I need to make some bad publicity to this scam company (at least in Italy) that is HP (Hewlett Packard)

My story ( I make this short ) start like this. I needed a new notebook, since my old Samsung died in peace. It served me well so it will not be forgotten.

So what to buy in this time of economic crisis that is adequate to my needs and don’t cost a lot? I didn’t need a very powerful notebook (I already have two desktops for this purpose) but just something average.

I found an HP (cursed be the day I saw that notebook) an i7, 8GB Ram, 1Gb of video ecc. ecc. 700€ (920$) (off course this is Italy price, that notebook cost half outside Europe but that is another story)

So I buy it. Got home, invest some hours to customize it, install my software. The second day let me work on it, I said. But then, a wild metallic noise appeared, every five minutes, probably the hdd or maybe the vent. Also the notebook keyboard instead of being flat, was like something push it up from behind and was curved, really strange. So I pack the notebook and go to store, and there I see that the notebook they have in display had the keyboard flat as it should be, not like mine.

They give me another one and I go home. Put the battery in, then open it for the first time. Blue Screen Of Death appear! WTF ??? The HDD was dead, apparently.

Then I go back to store (20 km from my house) losing practly my entire day of work, and changed it with another Asus with better specs, not after a big fight with the store clerks.

More expensive but the store was kind enough of offering me a discount for my lost time. This one appears to work better and also looks more cool.

Conclusion, stay away from HP, really, I ask you kindly, if you had HP in the past (like me) and you think to buy another one, do not buy it!

The only products from HP which I can recommend are their printers. They serve well. I’d never buy HP laptop, I consider them overpriced (at least in my country). I always used and will use Asus laptops, they offer best hardware for their price. (And now you can guess what I think about Macbooks ).
Speaking about brands, these are my favourite: Mice – Genius, Keyboards – Logitech, Motherboards – Gigabyte, GPUs – AMD chips-Asus/Sapphire manufacturers, HDDs – WD, RAMs – Kingston/Corsair, PSUs – Seasonic, Smartphones – HTC , Cars – Mitsubishi

Sorry to hear about that bad experience, doru. I think with all products and brands there are always going to be a small percentage that are faulty. As much as I like using Macs over PCs for example, I’ve had several hard drive problems in the past with my iMacs. Nothing is perfect. Doesn’t matter what it is – washing machines, cars, or computers – they’re all prone to error in the manufacturing process and not every one can be perfect.

Meanwhile, hope you’re liking your new Asus.

bad luck man ,I use hp for a long time never had an issue ,trust me each brand have its own story ,I also move to dell for the last year trust me man its al the same parts from china anyway .

laptop Are like garbage today ,every year I spend $1000 and buy a new one no matter what, don’t know why I keep doing it as i don’t have too …well better spend your money on laptops then smartphones…

I had bad luck with hp all the way, ranging from your story, ranging up to defects appearing after more than 30days, so the take-policy doesn’t apply anymore. But you don’t even want me to open up the sad sad pandora’s box of “tech support” / Warranty.

Sent in with visual artifacts displaying due to overheating, or faulty video card, got it back with defect HDD , same video card, same issue, and that after 3 weeks of waiting, with about 400E paid for repairs. And this was in Germany. Funny, as coming from a rather East-European background, I wouldn’t have thought that sort of professional treatment is what you would be getting from a big brand in Germany, I mean pretty much the main pillar of “Capitalism and seriousness” of Europe.

Yeah… and then there’s the “cheap crap” also known as Acer for example, that has served me impeccably for the past 3 years and still going, both as work laptop, AND gaming laptop… And even funnier is that the “cheap plastics” now look just slightly used, where as the old HP DV9000 (sort of top of the line back then) had all the strangest scratches and bulges appearing out of the blue in less than a year, and that while transporting it with the utmost care.

DoubleX said
The only products from HP which I can recommend are their printers.

HP is the king of planned obsolescence. My OfficeJet died last year and after some googling I found that they have chips built-in that makes them unusable after 5 years.

If you call HP Support they ask you to buy a new one. I had the guts to fix it myself. I opened my printer and unplugged the wifi card which resetted the whole thing and it works again without spending a cent. I even plugged my router to it and have again wifi printing over my place.

Kiss me, HP.

I had a HP notebook some years ago, it was from a bad series with welding problems. They seem to be really bad in terms of quality even they look cool on the outside.

Let’s not blame HP for a few bad machines. I have an HP laptop and it works wonders, never had problems with it, my friends have HP laptops and theirs work fine too..

I am sorry you had problems with yours. I recommend HP for Printers though, Dell for Laptops and if you have a little more in your wallet try MAC and you will never look back.

Allow me to give you the insider info on the laptop industry.

The average laptop owner replaces their laptop every 2 to 3 years because they want to upgrade to the latest and greatest. They don’t want to spend more than $1000 USD on a new laptop. And most owners only uses their laptop for an hour or so at a time.

So, laptop manufacturers don’t put much money into quality parts as they don’t need to last. The designers don’t put sufficient cooling into laptops as most people only use them in short spurts anyways. In order to reduce the price of laptops – corners have to be cut. Cutting those corners reduces the life of the laptop. To keep laptops small and portable, they lack sufficient airflow inside. Heat is the number one killer of laptops!

So, in the end, we have cheap laptops for a cheap price. AKA – their disposable.

All the name-brand manufacturers use the same internal components. The only difference is the layout of these components.

The simplest, most cost effective thing you can do to extend the life of your laptop is
1: Not use it.
2: Get regular cleaning done inside the laptop. I do this for free for my customers.
3: Buy a cooling pad!!! I seriously cannot stress this enough!!

Buy a cooling pad that pushes the air out of the side of the pad. Ones that push the air out of the bottom of the pad are subject to being suffocated if the laptop is on a soft surface. My favorite one: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=targus+laptop+cooling+pad+pa248u2 (the silver one) I have these pads Velcro’ed to the bottom of all of my laptops.

If you do not want spend the $10 bucks on a cooling pad – find a book, or a piece of board – anything that is the size of the laptop and is a solid surface – and only use the laptop on that board or book. “Wooden” kids puzzles work great! You can usually find them for a quarter at a garage sale. Glue the pieces in or throw them away. Velcro the board to the bottom of your laptop and your done. Use thick Velcro so that there will be a nice gap between the laptop and the board!