1) I need a new laptop and this fits my needs nicely.

2) I've already been shopping around for a laptop. Given this is a refurb (therefor limited warranty) and is an AMD-based laptop, it is slightly overpriced for a woot deal. Sucks

3) Charging sales tax sealed the deal for making this drastically overpriced. Double sucks (

LastApeMan wrote:Just seeing things that have prices like this lap top make feel like I must be the only one in the world that is having a problem paying the bills lately.

Wow though! I am thinking I would not afford this one even if I had millions to blow.

I mean , just thinking of what is possible these days with 680.00.
I could load up the camper and the family and go to the coast for a week and pig out on crab legs and shrimp!

LOL ---

HEAR HEAR!!! <3

I picked up this Acer someone posted over at deals.woot.com http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/efb5128c-b871-4a97-9e00-ac3cb4412546/acer-15-6-aspire-as5251-1513-notebook-pc-with-amd-v-series-processor-webcam-hd#84a9bd47-4650-4420-900e-b36fb3791405 It is out of stock online, but I snagged it at my local WM. It only have 2gb of RAM, but you can add it pretty cheap, and find a local PC shop to add MS Office cheap as well. For basic needs of a college kid you can't beat the price and what it offers, plus it is light, much light than my 17in Dell desktop replacement. I us mine for work, so I don't really need a blue-ray player, but for $298, I couldn't beat it with a whole forest of sticks.

ohmelovelo wrote:If not you and I, sdc100, who pays school tax? Who pays the teachers' salaries? Not paying sales tax on internet purchases is an idea whose time has long passed.

Er, I am not a Tea Partyer who is vehemently against taxes. I am public school educated and am very involved in education. What I am most against, as I've explicitly written, is 1) Woot not announcing the sudden change in policy; 2) Woot not showing the total price including tax when first ordering, even though they can easily do so since they have my zip code.

Many of us shop by price, and included in the final price is s/h and tax. If not paying sales tax for online purchases is "long passed," then sellers need to compensate to keep our business. As in lower prices. Woot does this by giving their Texas customers a special code ("taxsucks") which refunds the $5 s/h to offset the state sales tax. There is no reason why NYers and others who are taxed can't get a similar coupon.

The fact is, online commerce saves merchants A LOT of money over running a traditional store, or even phone purchases or mail order. They save on electricity, salaries, health insurance, meeting OSHA regulations (for office safety), real estate, data entry, etc. An online merchant can literally be one person, a computer and a cheap unlit, unheated warehouse on the outskirts of town. Heck, you don't even need a warehouse if items ship directly from manufacturers.

Lened wrote:Things to consider with HP:

Your new HP will be glutted with hard to remove and useless software trials and offers.

Customer service is only so-so and (at least by my experience) it's impossible to talk with someone working in the United States.

Repairs are not, repaired. My DV9000 had a problem with the WiFi and came back from the service with a broken web cam. Service tech sold me a 2-year extended warranty that only covered 1 additional year.

You will spend hours and hours on the phone if anything goes wrong.

Very, very true. I went through 3 HP's in 2 years.They will also blame everything on the "user error" to weasel out of fulfilling the warranty terms. Ended up dropping pc all together, lol.

spk11364 wrote:This must one of a feature resulted from Amazon acquisition of Woot. Amazon charges tax on NY. Woot should've said somewhere if there is change of policy. I think woot as of we know of is gone.

(I think woot as of we know of is gone.)
I've noticed that 5-6 months ago.

sdc100 wrote:Okay, I was silly enough to purchase the last Woot (the Auria TV) at literally the last second. Everything looked normal -- $229 + $5 s/h -- until I clicked on the gold button. After clicking, $16 in taxes was suddenly tacked on!

SINCE WHEN DID WOOT COLLECT TAXES FOR NYC RESIDENTS????? In fact, they even had a Tax Discount for Texas residents (code: taxsucks) so that the final price would be the same as those who didn't live in Texas.

UIs this part of the Amazon takeover? i have never paid taxes on a Woot purchase before and am distressed by this. With tax, Woot often no longer offers the best deals.

===========

a $229 item suddenly became $251 ,,, which I didn;t notice until after I clicked. I'm canceling... merde.

I live in Texas and have been buying from Woot for several years AND paying taxes on all my purchases. I never knew there was a no-tax code. I just figured tax was the cost of doing business.

A lot of people are complaining about overheating. I'm no expert, and I don't play graphics-intensive games (although I do a lot of video editing, converting and compressing), but my HP Ultra Dual Core Entertainment Notebook with 17.3" LCD, Blu-Ray and HDMI is the coolest-running laptop I've ever owned (and I've owned 5 laptops from Dell, HP, and Acer). My laptop seems to be an older version of this one since their specs are nearly identical. The low temperature seems to result from two factors:

1) The spacious 17"+ case allows a lot of airflow. In truth, a 17" laptop has the same number of components as a 15" laptop, with the exception of a keypad. The keypad is thin and doesn't generate heat. THis means that a 17" case is a lot less cramped than a 15" one, thus giving better airflow. I will admit, however, that the fast 7200rpm hard drive probably runs hotter than the 5400rpm drives in most laptops.

2) The LED backlighting probably generates a lot less heat than traditional fluorescent tubes. Furthermore, it uses less electricity which means that the power supply runs cooler.

Overall, my HP laptop runs so cool that I have never heard the fan, although it probably turns on now and then. Then again, I'm a NYCer acclimated to ambient noise so I probably wouldn't hear the fan even at full speed.

BTW, the HP runs at such a comfortable temperature that I think having the warmth on my laps on a cold Wintery night might actually feel very nice.

sdc100 wrote:Er, I am not a Tea Partyer who is vehemently against taxes. I am public school educated and am very involved in education. What I am most against, as I've explicitly written, is 1) Woot not announcing the sudden change in policy; 2) Woot not showing the total price including tax when first ordering, even though they can easily do so since they have my zip code.

(snip)

Woot could do something like that, but it could take a little programming. If you look at the buy page, you can see that you are able to change shipping and billing information - i.e. even though Woot may "know" your zip code, you may have moved or whatever.

2 possible solutions: 1) just mention what states for which sales tax is added on the buy page, or 2) add a "calculate tax" button (many sites do this).

I agree that the surprise is unsettling.

Also, does this mean the deal with Amazon has been finalized?

sdc100 wrote:WiFi:
This has 802.11b/g/n. Mine only has 802.11b/g, no 802.11n. For what it's worth, I have an 802.11n router, and it's no better than 802.11g on my desktop which can handle both g and n. In fact, g seems more stable.

Not sure if you already know this, but as a heads-up to those who wouldn't -

If you have an N-router with N-devices connected to it, it will run at N-speeds. If you then connect a G-device to it, all devices will drop down to G-speeds to support the G-device.

This of course assumes you don't have a dual-band router that has separate antennas for N and G (usually advertised on the box, and raises the price by about $30-50). Routers that have separate antennas for N and G do not have to lower connection quality for N-devices to support G-devices.

Not saying you specifically had this issue (i.e. you had the desktop and laptop connected at the same time, and the G-laptop brought all speeds down), but offering a reason as to why your router wouldn't perform better with N-devices.

tootenwooten wrote:I live in Texas and have been buying from Woot for several years AND paying taxes on all my purchases. I never knew there was a no-tax code. I just figured tax was the cost of doing business.

I don't know if it's still active but discussions about it pop up every now and then. Just search Woot for "taxsucks," "sales tax" or "texas tax."

For example,
http://www.woot.com/Search/?cx=partner-pub-2332856072838068%3Ahkwzwq-rv25&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=taxsucks&sa=Search&siteurl=www.woot.com%2FSearch%2FFrame.aspx#981

Try entering "taxsucks" the next time you Woot. It's not really a no tax code, but rather a no s/h code. By refunding your s/h cost, they cancel out the tax (up to $5).

Like you, I've resigned myself to paying sales tax from many deal-a-day merchants like Pennywise and Snoop, both which are located in NY. But not Woot, dammnit!

Now that Woot is really Amazon, all Woots will be subject to state taxes due to Amazon's corporate presence. I also expect fewer good deals after the loss of the old Woot we knew and loved.

jstegs wrote:Not sure if you already know this, but as a heads-up to those who wouldn't -

If you have an N-router with N-devices connected to it, it will run at N-speeds. If you then connect a G-device to it, all devices will drop down to G-speeds to support the G-device.

This of course assumes you don't have a dual-band router that has separate antennas for N and G (usually advertised on the box, and raises the price by about $30-50). Routers that have separate antennas for N and G do not have to lower connection quality for N-devices to support G-devices.

Not saying you specifically had this issue (i.e. you had the desktop and laptop connected at the same time, and the G-laptop brought all speeds down), but offering a reason as to why your router wouldn't perform better with N-devices.

Many thanks for the detailed and clear explanation, I'm no expert but I have heard that normal routers settle on "the lowest common denominator." After hearing that, I believe we turned off the laptop during testing. And since we're WEP protected, I assume no unauthorized person was accesing the router either, If I;m not mistaken, N is better only in the sense that it reaches further. In my case, the speed on N seemed to fluctuate more than it did on G. But my test was hardly extensive.

sdc100 wrote:Okay, I was silly enough to purchase the last Woot (the Auria TV) at literally the last second. Everything looked normal -- $229 + $5 s/h -- until I clicked on the gold button. After clicking, $16 in taxes was suddenly tacked on!

SINCE WHEN DID WOOT COLLECT TAXES FOR NYC RESIDENTS????? In fact, they even had a Tax Discount for Texas residents (code: taxsucks) so that the final price would be the same as those who didn't live in Texas.

UIs this part of the Amazon takeover? i have never paid taxes on a Woot purchase before and am distressed by this. With tax, Woot often no longer offers the best deals.

===========

a $229 item suddenly became $251 ,,, which I didn;t notice until after I clicked. I'm canceling... merde.

"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

thomasr wrote:"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

Dang. I wonder if that applies to the shipping or billing address. If shipping, it looks like my sister in NJ will be getting lot of "gifts" from me. Gifts of the wrong size or color that she will eventually return to me for a refund. Unfortunately, it will be pass the refund period so I'll just have to keep the damn items... Oh well.

And if it's the billing address, it looks like my sister will suddenly become very generous and buy me lots of gifts...

thomasr wrote:"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

Interestingly, used books, Cds and DVDs I buy from Amazon have never been taxed. In fact, made several purchases just last week without being taxed. The merchants are "Amazon partners" in the "Amazon marketplace" who may not qualify as "subsidiaries," so that may be the explanation. And of course, many of my books were only 1 cent (+ $3.99 s/h) so tax is moot issue.

Regardless, this really will affect my purchases on Woot. Buy.com lost me as a regular customer after they started taxing.

bxybr wrote:HP Laptop...

I've hap an HP laptop for about a year (bought it new from the factory). It's the worst laptop I've ever seen. They even forgot to connect the hard drive at the factory. I can only imagine what a refurbished HP is like.

I've always bought hp refurbs with mostly good results...maybe it takes two tries to build them...

Just so you guys are aware, there's a 2-page thread over at Something Awful discussing what absolute crap these are:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3333416

sdc100 wrote:Okay, I was silly enough to purchase the last Woot (the Auria TV) at literally the last second. Everything looked normal -- $229 + $5 s/h -- until I clicked on the gold button. After clicking, $16 in taxes was suddenly tacked on!

SINCE WHEN DID WOOT COLLECT TAXES FOR NYC RESIDENTS????? In fact, they even had a Tax Discount for Texas residents (code: taxsucks) so that the final price would be the same as those who didn't live in Texas.

UIs this part of the Amazon takeover? i have never paid taxes on a Woot purchase before and am distressed by this. With tax, Woot often no longer offers the best deals.

===========

a $229 item suddenly became $251 ,,, which I didn;t notice until after I clicked. I'm canceling... merde.

The tax issue is not the fault of any company. States like New York and California have pushed lawsuits against many online retailers for not collecting state sales tax dollars.

While this has been a nice perk for online shoppers, states have finally caught on and have the available technology to force the collection of the taxes.

In short, get used to paying sales tax for your online shopping. If you don't want to pay the taxes move to Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire or Oregon.


Reference: www.taxfoundation.org/files/tax_foundation_amazon_new_york.pdf

joec56 wrote:(I think woot as of we know of is gone.)
I've noticed that 5-6 months ago.

Some of the low cost items such as USB TV tuners and small electronics are a decent percent off still. It seems that the high cost items are barely any better than any office supply store clearance pricing.

Deals.woot.com seems to be pretty good still. I picked up a lappy case that goes for $115 on the egg and $120 on the big river for $35 shipped.

I'm not sure if Amazon clearly realizes what Woot is supposed to be. It is a place to dump your stuff.

computer: http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/383622/HP-G72-261US-173-LED-Widescreen/

rebate: http://forms.young-america.com/94349_HP63-35-3950-3-2010-06-09.pdf

Here you go, a similar product that is new for hundreds less if you can live without blue-ray.

hplies.com
hp-worst company ever

Just checked and Woot is charging sales tax for Washington now as well.

Not really a surprise, seeing as Amazon is headquartered here, though certainly it is going to affect my purchases of anything more expensive like a laptop.

The real issue with Woot is they are not presenting the tax up front. You click on "I want one" and you get a screen with price break down NOT INCLUDING THE TAX.

which each cost $679.99
for a subtotal of $679.99
plus shipping $5.00
for a total of $684.99

Exactly like that (that is copy and paste). Only after you confirm your information does the tax show, and many people wouldn't think to look for it there. It should show up on the first screen, or that "total" cost is simply a lie.

This tax issue certainly needs to be clarified, and I think Woot owes us all a Woot Blog post on this...this will affect all of our purchases and will result in loss of some sales.

That being said, I am typing this on a refurb HP laptop. Would I purchase one again?...less than 500 bucks maybe...every HP laptop I've ever used gets issues after about 6 months.

Good, but not nearly as good as the HP pavillion 17 in Dual core notebook w/blueray that was offered on 6/24. Yawn.

JuniperLab wrote:Now that Woot is really Amazon, all Woots will be subject to state taxes due to Amazon's corporate presence. I also expect fewer good deals after the loss of the old Woot we knew and loved.

What makes you say that, if anything, Woot will have better deals since they'll have more access to stuff.

jlandis1234 wrote:The tax issue is not the fault of any company. States like New York and California have pushed lawsuits against many online retailers for not collecting state sales tax dollars.

YOu may not have read my other posts but it is the fault of Woot for: 1) Not telling us of this sudden change; 2) Not letting us know the final cost with tax during the initial ordering ordering process (despite knowing our zipcode).

Furthermore, unlike any other online vendor, Woot has a demonstrated aversion to sales tax -- and a partial remedy. For years, Texans were given a coupon code ("taxsucks") so that their sales tax was offset by not having to pay s/h (up to $5). I mean, just look at the actual word in the coupon code: "tax sucks."

So yeah, I do blame Woot for this sudden unexpected change with no warning or remedy. Had I known, I would not have ordered the TV. And no, I need not move to another state. I simply have to buy elsewhere when their prices are lower. As I wrote above, I'm not a Tea Partyer opposed to taxes. But I am a consumer who wants the lowest prices and adding tax makes that less likely for Woot.

inod3 wrote:Just checked and Woot is charging sales tax for Washington now as well.

Not really a surprise, seeing as Amazon is headquartered here, though certainly it is going to affect my purchases of anything more expensive like a laptop.

The real issue with Woot is they are not presenting the tax up front. You click on "I want one" and you get a screen with price break down NOT INCLUDING THE TAX.

which each cost $679.99
for a subtotal of $679.99
plus shipping $5.00
for a total of $684.99

Exactly like that (that is copy and paste). Only after you confirm your information does the tax show, and many people wouldn't think to look for it there. It should show up on the first screen, or that "total" cost is simply a lie.

Yeah, that;'s my major objection as well. I didn't see the tax until I got my receipt. I now realized that the tax is on the final order screen, and I could have canceled. But it was unexpected so I had no reason to think that the final screen was different from the first order screen (since tax was never charged). Here are actual screen captures. Note that the first screen gives no hints that it's only a sub-total, subject to taxes. $47 is enough money to make a taxless site cheaper.

Initial Order Screen


Final Order Screen (note the tax)

djessiea wrote:Good, but not nearly as good as the HP pavillion 17 in Dual core notebook w/blueray that was offered on 6/24. Yawn.

I agree that it's a bad deal. I bought mine from Woot in May for $599 and it's nearly identical. While I think that this HP is s a terrific computer, it's overpriced.

Here is my post comparing the previous model to this one. In my opinion, the changes aren't worth the additional $80 (and now $47 in sales tax!) -- especially since the CPU in this model is actually worse.

Those who want this might want to wait until the next Wootoff where the previous model may be offered again. So far, I've been very happy with my purchase. It has run 24/7 without any problems. And it's in sexy black...

Note remote control in the second photo. Very handy in a multimedia laptop that one can hook up to a TV as a BlueRay player.

thomasr wrote:"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

If I understand the law correctly (and I probably don't), by purchasing Woot!, Amazon has to add Texas to that list for Amazon purchases - or move Woot! out of Texas.

sdc100 wrote:Dang. I wonder if that applies to the shipping or billing address. If shipping, it looks like my sister in NJ will be getting lot of "gifts" from me. Gifts of the wrong size or color that she will eventually return to me for a refund. Unfortunately, it will be pass the refund period so I'll just have to keep the damn items... Oh well.

And if it's the billing address, it looks like my sister will suddenly become very generous and buy me lots of gifts...

Based on what it says over at Amazon, it's the shipping address. But not for "electronically delivered products".

From: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512

"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax.

For sales tax purposes, electronically delivered products (e-books, e-documents, and electronically delivered software) are considered to be shipped to your credit card billing address."

CaptainWes wrote:....but you are playing laptop roulette with HP. They have serious build quality issues.

would agree with the Captain completely. There is too little cooling in the HP's and the motherboards are not so great. I have a dv6000 that puts out way too much heat and it fryed the board. This is a refurb for a reason :O

why does w00t.com no longer work?

dougbishop wrote:If I understand the law correctly (and I probably don't), by purchasing Woot!, Amazon has to add Texas to that list for Amazon purchases - or move Woot! out of Texas.

No - you do understand the law - Amazon would now have a (wait for it)...



nexus in Texas.



edit: Omelets made greasy - if they move Woot, can you imagine getting a Box of Crap with 12 bags of Washington air? Wootdom could revolt!

neophool wrote:i wonder how that vid card would do with 1080p mkv files? been looking for a decent lappy that can double as a home theater PC outputting 1080p thru HDMI to an HDTV.

It should, I play 1080p mkv files on my netbook which has hd 3200 which shares the 2 gig of memory that I have. The only problem I have is streaming high quality video, playing the actual file should not even slow it down.

Refurbished is used and fixed up. For the parts that weren't replaced, how used are they?

My HP DV2221 has been having major issues this week, won't start, just sits there with a black screen, and then suddenly starts to boot. It's driving me crazy, and I've already had the mboard replaced once. (Not to mention that I just purchased a dvd drive to replace the one HP replaced under warranty a few years ago.)

So, I'm ready to give up on it, but with all this negative feedback, I'm wondering if I could get a few shopping suggestion?

prepwithheidi@yahoo.com

I have heard that HP notebooks are pretty delicate and easy to damage mechanically - not as Toshiba for example.

Could anyone acknowledge or rectify that?

michalkopyta wrote:I have heard that HP notebooks are pretty delicate and easy to damage mechanically - not as Toshiba for example.

Could anyone acknowledge or rectify that?

Wow. Not sure how techy some of you are. HP laptops are a mixture of components, just like Toshiba, etc. There isn't anything architecturly different in an HP's case, than other laptops, and if you have experience with multiple laptops, you'd know that Apple's are worse at overheating than PC's.

The #1 issue with a series of HP Dv's are the graphics card. I believe it was the Nvidia cards that weren't handling the power going through them, hence why a lot of HP DV's had issues with the "screen", or "not loading", etc. Graphics card performance are the biggest cause of any laptop issues.

I bought one of these and have an older version, as well as I'm a power user both in and outside my job. Great laptops.

I'll answer most of you proactively - "No, I'm not a HP troll."

Can you play WoW or Starcraft II on this? (yes, I'm a geek). I want to find a laptop that's good enough to have good online gameplay, but doesn't cost $2k

NightGhost wrote:Here's some reviews on the graphics:

notebookcheck.net

computermonger.com

...and the processor:

notebookcheck.net

Thank you for all your insightful post... having these sources at my finger tips will be handy in the future... eventhough I must be honest after reading all these negative post and beginning to have "buyer's remorse", but oh well.