Oh lookie, a manufacturer's website!

Never owned one myself, but I work in the Geek Squad at Best Buy, so I have to deal with HP laptops all the time. The trackpads on these things are absolute garbage. Between that and all the crap bloatware they throw on these things, I'd never buy an HP laptop, especially not a refurb.

Not good for games I'm assuming?

I have a 3 year old 17" HP and have few complaints, but I have seen 2 other people's HP's die a little more than a year! If you buy this, get the Square Trade warranty.

Here's a handy maintenance guide, in case you ever need to take it apart. I had to take apart a friend's whose fan stopped working and overheated the laptop. The cause? Her cat's shedding fur clogged up the fan intake.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02642701.pdf

Bought this laptop on Newegg a few weeks ago for my son as a High School graduation present. He loves it. The speakers are above average for a laptop. It also has a cool graphic design and a nice keyboard. I'm not crazy about the mousepad, but he doesn't seem to mind at all. I'd say it's a pretty good value. It is a large laptop, though, and you should plan on spending $50-100 on a case for it.

The gates opened and I came back from the dead. Possibly a one night show, we'll see.

review: Meh.

waitingforjune wrote:Never owned one myself, but I work in the Geek Squad at Best Buy, so I have to deal with HP laptops all the time. The trackpads on these things are absolute garbage. Between that and all the crap bloatware they throw on these things, I'd never buy an HP laptop, especially not a refurb.

The only problem I've ever had with HP laptops (that's after I reformat it to get rid of the HP software/bloatware, so I agree with you on that) is the overheating. These suckers get hot. I've never had much problem with the trackpads though

Here are some reviews confirming the sluggishness and the crappiness of the touchpad.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369317,00.asp

If it were me, I'd wipe it clean or use www.pcdecrapifier.com to get rid of a lot of the bloatware.

Edit: Whoops! Looks like Blorg beat me to the review.

wow, I almost bought this computer yesterday (all the same except it was new and didnt have blu ray) for 550$. I decided at the last second to get the Samsung RV511. Same computer except 2' smaller and has an i3.
Also the keyboard on the HP is the worst! look at it, the real estate is terrible. Such wasted space and cheap keys that looked like they were coming lose on the display model. They cram all the keys together and the up and down arrow keys are half the size of the left and right. You cant game with that. Also the power plug and 2 usb ports are on the right, ewww.

@jasonwatkins: What's wrong with having the power and 2 USB ports on the right side? As opposed to the left side? Or do you mean the back?

When I was in grad school, I was thankful that my ports and power plugs were on the side of the PC rather than the back. The desks we had were not very deep, and there was a molded lip on it, so if I had ports back there, the laptop would have been in ... well, my lap, instead of on my desk.

BOUGHT ONE A FEW WEEKS AGO ON HERE, SAME MODEL, PIECE OF JUNK----

I have two 6 year old HP laptops and they are still perfect. This would have been the perfect upgrade, but I want backlit keys. I am holding out for exactly this laptop, but with backlit keys.

I wonder if this is any good for gaming or not.
May somebody drop a review?

Edit:
I checked out the Toshiba Satellite L645-S4104 Laptop and would prefer it.

sirlouie wrote:@jasonwatkins: What's wrong with having the power and 2 USB ports on the right side? As opposed to the left side? Or do you mean the back?

When I was in grad school, I was thankful that my ports and power plugs were on the side of the PC rather than the back. The desks we had were not very deep, and there was a molded lip on it, so if I had ports back there, the laptop would have been in ... well, my lap, instead of on my desk.

the one I got is on the left side, away from where my external mouse is

And now a word on the video chip...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Radeon-HD-4250.29664.0.html

HP ever considered re-branding? They may sell their items better with no-name recognition.

I have an HP (not this particular one) and I HATE the touch pad!! I use a portable mouse.

I have an HP I purchased almost two years ago. The large battery died after one year. I have never had any other problems since. I really like my HP. But there is a lot of software junk on them. Good Price for this laptop!
I'm looking for another for a friend...any different suggestions a little smaller than this?

Personally, I will never get another HP laptop again. The convertible tablet I had was a good concept trapped inside a poor execution. The cooling was so bad that it got too hot to run on my lap, much less hold! Without external cooling fans, it would shut down spontaneously because the CPU got too hot. Never again!

Whats this, now woot is just a refurb reseller? This sucks.. woot doing down the drain, not even worth checking anymore... might as well just go to ecost and forget about 2am deals.

waitingforjune wrote:Never owned one myself, but I work in the Geek Squad at Best Buy, so I have to deal with HP laptops all the time. The trackpads on these things are absolute garbage. Between that and all the crap bloatware they throw on these things, I'd never buy an HP laptop, especially not a refurb.

Netbooks yes HP on sale, not laptops. Too much can be wrong with a refurb laptop and you're right, the track pads on recent models suck wind.

What do you recommend? They're all Battlefield Earth (2000) lately. Custom builds on desktops if someone wants a dedicated video card and Core i7? I used to have a guy that built laptops but he got out of it. Mine still works from 7 years ago that he built with XP Pro. It's too heavy to take on business but it works in the home fine.

jessicared311 wrote:I have an HP I purchased almost two years ago. The large battery died after one year. I have never had any other problems since. I really like my HP. But there is a lot of software junk on them. Good Price for this laptop!
I'm looking for another for a friend...any different suggestions a little smaller than this?

The HP's have changed, drastically. Get a new notebook with a warranty. Ask the Geek Squad dude about manufacturers.

I bought 2 HP laptops and one of them now needs to have the screen replaced (around $200 plus). Ended up replacing it with a Dell. The HP's are 2 yrs old and out of warranty.

They overheat something fierce and shut down because of it. I pulled the screen out and found the wire going to the video was burned.

These HP laptops will damage the components from the heat alone.

I won't list what's out there right now that is brand new and for around $300 = $400 with NVidia video cards, but they are a much better deal.

I love you Woot! but HP laptops are horrible. Their desktops are better.

MichXelle wrote:The HP's have changed, drastically. Get a new notebook with a warranty. Ask the Geek Squad dude about manufacturers.

Please don't ask Geek Squad about anything, they are a sales-driven department, not real technicians. They don't EVER take any of these apart to actually see the common problems with these. In my many years of experience, HPs are the WORST computers you could possibly purchase. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or a Dell Latitude, and nothing else.

Benchmark Time!

The AMD Turion II Dual-Core P540 scores a 1498 on the Passmark High Mid Range Processor chart.

The HD 4250 Graphics Card scores a paltry 159 on Passmarks G3D Mark chart. About what you would expect for this price range, but you can do better.

guitaristzm wrote:Please don't ask Geek Squad about anything, they are a sales-driven department, not real technicians. They don't EVER take any of these apart to actually see the common problems with these. In my many years of experience, HPs are the WORST computers you could possibly purchase. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or a Dell Latitude, and nothing else.

I've been doing compute repair as an independent repair technician full time for almost 10 years now. I agree Geek Squad has been useless since Best Buy bought them. I've not come across a customer yet that wasn't misdiagnosed by them.

I also agree HP home sales are very bad quality these days. I don't recommend HP's, especially their laptops and printers!

Why buy this, when for $30 more you could get a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230016

jasonwatkins wrote:
Also the keyboard on the HP is the worst! look at it, the real estate is terrible. Such wasted space and cheap keys that looked like they were coming lose on the display model. They cram all the keys together and the up and down arrow keys are half the size of the left and right. You cant game with that. Also the power plug and 2 usb ports are on the right, ewww.

i didn't realize people still "gamed" using the arrow keys.

apparently, microsoft silverlight falls in the category of "productivity and finance." gg, woot.

jasonwatkins wrote:wow, I almost bought this computer yesterday (all the same except it was new and didnt have blu ray) for 550$. I decided at the last second to get the Samsung RV511. Same computer except 2' smaller and has an i3.
Also the keyboard on the HP is the worst! look at it, the real estate is terrible. Such wasted space and cheap keys that looked like they were coming lose on the display model. They cram all the keys together and the up and down arrow keys are half the size of the left and right. You cant game with that. Also the power plug and 2 usb ports are on the right, ewww.

I have had HP, Dell etc. and now using a Samsung R580 I5 and wouldn't trade for the world!! Go for the Samsung!!

Sleepwlker wrote:Why buy this, when for $30 more you could get a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230016

Maybe because this one has Blu-ray... a bigger screen? How is it even a comparison?

woot forgot to mention, it's got a fingerprint reader, too.

After owning a HP Laptop and a desktop bought in 2007, I decided never to buy HP products again!!! Their quality sucks !!!

I bought almost the exact laptop from hp back in aug. 10 Paid $912. Only difference is that I got a little better graphics card 5650.

I like it, but it comes with too much hp bloatware.

I use it an an extra computer to roam with.

I don't use the fingerprint thing on it.

As a senior citizen Cisco/Microsoft consultant this has a perfect display with a great keyboard for the endless typing that I have to do. Runs Windows 2008 server with Hyper-Vs without a problem. Bigger form factor, but worth it.

KyserSoze wrote:I have a 3 year old 17" HP and have few complaints, but I have seen 2 other people's HP's die a little more than a year! If you buy this, get the Square Trade warranty.

Absolutely, Square Trade is THE best!

waitingforjune wrote:Never owned one myself, but I work in the Geek Squad at Best Buy, so I have to deal with HP laptops all the time. The trackpads on these things are absolute garbage. Between that and all the crap bloatware they throw on these things, I'd never buy an HP laptop, especially not a refurb.

Never fully base you opinion on a repair person: they only see the broken ones. It's like people with contact lenses: you only notice the ones who are having trouble with them.

My wife used a similar HP professionally and it has worked flawlessly.