Thinking of going HP....what do you think?

SpitfireIV

Just wondering if those of you in the know could have a quick look at this lappy and let me know what you think:

http://www.dabs.ie/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4HHW&CategorySelectedId=11105&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11105,389360000,49250000,23

Basics:

- AMD Turion 64 dual core
- 2GB RAM
- 160GB harddrive
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 7200 TurboCache supporting 256MB (supporting? Does that mean it can handle up to 256mb? Or does it come at that power?)
- Windows Vista Premium

What I want it for:

Basic Microsoft applications, word, powerpoint etc. Surfing the net. College programs like SolidWorks and Photoshop. Light gaming, GTA etc. Movies, music, etc etc.


What I have:
I currently have a Toshiba Satellite A-60 Equium that'll be three years old in November, thing has caused me constant headache!! It has a Pentium 4 processor that burns far too hot, only had 128mb of ram when I got it!!! (I was sold this by a reputable computer retailer!). I upgraded the ram with a 512MB chip. Harddrive died, so had to get a new 80GB to replace the 40. It had a basic enough ATI graphic card. Oh......and the battery is as dead as a door nail :rolleyes: and has crashed god knows had many times.

All in all it did me for the applications I have listed already, all be it slow at times.

Would I be doing better by going with the HP? Just trying to justify forking out just under a grand! :eek:

Thanks for any help.

dub_commuter

A lot of people on this board have negative things to say about HP and worship dell, whilst I am quite the opposite.. I bought a Pavillion DV2104 with slightly lower specs (Smaller screen, 1GB Ram, model below X2 CPU), last year, and it's been rock solid for me, lots of people moaning about Vista not being stable on their Dell Laptops, seems to be more people on Dell moaning than anywhere else, can only think it's crapware causing it. Premium runs rock solid on My HP machine, and outpaces XP easily, despite not being hugely covered in RAM.

I believe turbocache means it can take up to 256MB of your system memory.

SpitfireIV

Cheers for the reply dub,

I guess for every make there will be some complaints and negative aspects, take my Toshiba, some people would swear by them, they one of the most reputable laptop brands, but then I had nothing but bad experiences with it so thats put me off Toshiba.

I think I'm gonna go with the HP, looks good and sounds good, I believe the graphics card isnt the best though, for such a high spec laptop, but I can live with that, never had a grat graphics card in the Tosh either and it did ok.

niall2j

I put up a thread a while back asking for advice on a HP laptop I was thinking of buying.... in retrospect I probably asked too many questions because I got no replies ... cache is here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-2055093685.html

Anyway, I ended up getting it and have been very happy so far with zero trouble over the first 2 or so months. Good spec and extras and nice styling IMO. I had a Toshiba P10 series before that and found it to be very reliable so I'm sorry to hear yours didn't work out. Hopefully my HP will live up to it over the long run!

EDIT: Just noticed from the link to laptopsdirect.ie that it's since gone down in price by €200! Ah well, might be worth a look for yourself if you're trying to come in under €1000.... not much of a graphics card in it for gaming if you're into that but it handles Vista Aero no problems.

Niall

unregd147

Be very wary of HP. Ive gone through 3 HP DV2036ea laptops. The first 2 I had died, they kept trying to boot in safe mode but the computer kept restarting itself and could only be turned off by taking the battery out. It couldnt be formated or anything. Hp replaced it each time, the first one took 5 weeks to get replaced and the second one took nearly 2 months. Then the third laptop failed, the sreen went on this one, it would glow from blue down to black and then nothing. This time it took 6 weeks to get replaced but they gave me an upgraded model the DV2045 i think.

My girlfriend has a HP6000 series laptop effectivly the same except with a 15" screen instead of the 14" I have. She is on her third laptop.

Dont get me wrong I love my HP apart from the breakdowns. If I were to buy again id defo go dell.

dazguy

I had a HP in my last job and had no trouble with it. Definately get 2gb RAM if you are going the Vista route. I've got a Toshiba now and its the business! But everyone has different experiences:

You can find HP at:
www.bms.ie
www.elara.ie
www.laptopsdirect.ie (if your desperate)

There are a number of other website listed in the sticky at the top.

SpitfireIV

Thanks for the replies guys!

Seems to be 50/50......some in favour, others against, interesting. Strange how different people have varied experiences with there laptops, I wonder is there a brand out there that everyone could agree on was the ultimate, perfect, unbreakable, lappy My next choice after the HP was an Acer, but again, I've heard mixed reports about them.

I wonder are a lot of bad experiences down to how the laptop is handled/used rather than actual software/hardware problems? ie some people maybe push there laptops to its excess causing damage or failure whilst other light users may not experience problems.

I'll probably get that HP, and sure if the worst does happen I'll have the ol' Tosh to fall back on

Thanks again....

(Oh, I'm looking to get it off Dabs.ie, would I be safe enough in doing so?)

dub_commuter

Some people ask for problems with laptops though, a good number of people who moan about broken, failing laptops seem to be the ones who will not take care of them properly, IE, if I take Laptops with me they go in a proper Laptop padded case, because thats the sensible thing to do, I have never had trouble with any Laptops myself ever and I work in IT so come across a hell of a lot.

For example one guy in work has had 5 laptops die on him in the last few years, he continually blames the manufacturers for this, yet he is the one who carried his laptop around in a normal non-padded sports bag on the bus, the luas and through the city centre, if you're not going to protect something as valuable as a laptop, why moan when there are hard drive failures?

If you want a really tough laptop that you can throw around, and lots of knocks and bumps buy a Panasonic Toughbook (Search Google) These things are basically indestructible we have a few in work. But it will cost you, the other thing to do is to pad your laptop in a propper, non cheap case, laptops are expensive, it's best to invest in 50 to protect that investment.

Oh and from experience in working in a repair centre 18 months ago, the majority of Laptops that come back dead are hard drive failures, most of which had case damage, or obvious signs of knocks, yet these customers always used to claim a laptop came like that, now you tell me, would you really accept a laptop that had a big crack in the casing?

SpitfireIV

dub_commuter wrote:

Some people ask for problems with laptops though, a good number of people who moan about broken, failing laptops seem to be the ones who will not take care of them properly, IE, if I take Laptops with me they go in a proper Laptop padded case, because thats the sensible thing to do, I have never had trouble with any Laptops myself ever and I work in IT so come across a hell of a lot.

For example one guy in work has had 5 laptops die on him in the last few years, he continually blames the manufacturers for this, yet he is the one who carried his laptop around in a normal non-padded sports bag on the bus, the luas and through the city centre, if you're not going to protect something as valuable as a laptop, why moan when there are hard drive failures?

If you want a really tough laptop that you can throw around, and lots of knocks and bumps buy a Panasonic Toughbook (Search Google) These things are basically indestructible we have a few in work. But it will cost you, the other thing to do is to pad your laptop in a propper, non cheap case, laptops are expensive, it's best to invest in 50 to protect that investment.

Oh and from experience in working in a repair centre 18 months ago, the majority of Laptops that come back dead are hard drive failures, most of which had case damage, or obvious signs of knocks, yet these customers always used to claim a laptop came like that, now you tell me, would you really accept a laptop that had a big crack in the casing?

Just spent the past hour or so reading through the archives here regarding HP laptops.....pheeww, sort of put me off a little, and I was so close to ordering the one I have mentioned in the original post.

I cant quite understand it, HP are a very well known and pretty big brand, so I find it hard to believe how there laptops could have such a bad reputation, surely this would backlash on HP itself and give them a bad name, no?

Plenty of people reporting problems with HP's, such as overheating, being 'too slow', HDD failure and other component failures, with some posters warning potential HP buyers off the brand altogether due to a bad experience they have themselves havehad.

Thats what its based on, a single bad experience that one person has had, and due to there problems (which they themselves may have contributed to, or caused) they ridicule a particular brand. It cant be denied that there are numerous complaints about HP, but could this be due to the high number of HP's being sold? I dont know if there are figures to compare HP sales to Toshiba or Sony and then compare a percentage of breakage/returns.

During the reading of the archives most have agreed that Toshiba are the best you can get, but then I have had bad experiences with Toshiba which I could use as justification to put someone else off buying a Tosh, some of these problems were hardware related whilsts other may have been my own doing........does that mean Toshiba is a bad make? If someone were thinking of buying a Tosh here and asked for advice I wouldnt tell them to stay away from the brand or that they are getting themselves in for a load of trouble.

That being said I seen some people praise Dell whilst others wouldnt look twice at them, same can be said for Acer.........each to there own.

I think one guy here said it best, people log on here to complain, they are going to write a post a year or so after purchasing a laptop to sing its praise and recommend it to the world, its only the bad things that stick in the memory

The search for a lappy goes on.......