martinboyce wrote:what the hell does this MEAN?

We need to get "Back To The Future!" If you had ever seen those movies you would find that quote about the flux capacitor quite humorous.

martinboyce wrote:what the hell does this MEAN?

You can order the T-shirt too:

Does anyone know what the battery life is on this?

Gladeye wrote:I had one of the MANY hp laptops that overheated and destroyed the video card. Their customer support and willingness to take responsibility for their mistakes is horrendous. I'm not a lone nut with a gripe. Checkout hplies.com or just plain google for zillions of painful stories. You've been warned.

I'm with you on that and up until recently I have been super anti-HP refurbished. The new CEO seems to be doing a better job trying to turn the company around, the entire video overheating ordeal was a problem with Nvidia giving the wrong cooling specifications to its manufacturing partners. The problem occurred in other brands of laptops with the same chipsets, it just happened that HP sold by far the most of them and took on the most heat (no pun intended!). Where HP was at fault was how they handled the issue.

It would have been nice if HP could have worked something out with Nvidia to assist their customers who were left with dead video cards, but they didn't. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the new regime that things have changed in that regard.

treynorm89 wrote:I recently got a deal on a brand new HP laptop. The hard drive failed after 10 days of normal use, and I had a hell of a time recovering my data (only got some of it off).

HP cuts costs wherever possible, and it shows in the quality of their products. They are not the company they used to be.

I wouldn't blame hard drive failure on HP, there are only a few hard drive manufactures left and for the most part they are all of the same quality, granted they are not going to put a 'enterprise grade' hard drive in a budget laptop.

joninla wrote:As a long time customer of HP products (laptop, printers, cd-rom drives & even palm pixi plus) I've finally reached the point of saying "enough with HP" ...

Well .... It's hard to tell what business they are going to be in or not.

They acquired Palm, then discontinued webOS (which was great).

Made an announcement leaving the retail computer market, but seems to keep selling.

The great HP name seems no longer reliable and I would not suggest any HP (or Palm) until they get their company back on track.

I finally found another user who thought that the palm webOS was great, especially for those like me wh had one of the first Pilot PDA's. I have purchased two HP computers since the announcement about hardware, and, because the top management is changing, I believe that the company will chug on producing good computers at very good prices.

fatdragon wrote:SSD's can really improve your user experience with almost every aspect of using a computer, but the FPS you get while gaming is not affected by your storage medium unless you're using up all your RAM and the game is using the HDD/SSD's pagefile instead of the RAM, which is highly unlikely. It's more likely that when you swapped for an SSD you reinstalled with less bloatware and installed updated drivers compared to what you were running before.

I've recently done a lot of modding with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and dealt with lots of performance issues and read a lot of forums... it seems that when large open world games load new cells or new chunks of the gaming world, all of the associated textures and meshes have to be quickly read into VRAM from the hard drive. This typically causes stuttering in-game when new cells are loading, especially when using very high-resolution textures (which is why many people mod older games). From what I read, SSD's help tremendously in reducing stutter or slowdown that occurs when new cells load and hundreds of MB's of data have to be very quickly swapped. I would think SSD's would also help reduce your typical loading screens when entering a building/city, loading a cutscene, etc.

Wouldn't even writing those 20+ MB save files every time you hit the quicksave button go faster? SSD might also reduce the FPS hit that is incurred when recording your gaming via FRAPS or other tools as GB's of data get very quickly written to your hard drive.

I'm no expert, but I think there is room to say the an SSD might improve gaming performance over a 5400 RPM disk drive. Not everything is graphics card dependent.

gak0090 wrote:Finally a decent deal. People are jumping all over HP laptops saying that they are junk- and they are partially correct. If you work on computers (in any volume) at all you will realize that all the manufacturers have issues. HP tends to appear more prevalent because they have a huge market share.

Truth stands out. When I was doing a syndicated computer radio show during the "boom" there was this thing about the Iomega Zip Drive "click of death." It was real, some units clicked and died. But is was a fraction of the percentage of the millions of units sold. However, if even a small percent of victims of the "click" got online or told their friends, it sounded like ALL drive were going to fail.

My wife has been using an HP laptop for several years for day-to-day tasks and book layout with InDesign, and it has worked fine.

I used to have an earlier HP model that was very similar to this - 17" screen, full size keyboard with number pad, somewhat decent video card, etc. I used to do all my gaming on it (WoW, SWG, etc.) and it was great. Loved having that number pad especially.

The only two drawbacks: it was heavy as hell, and only slightly less hot than hell.

Otherwise I loved it, and if I hadn't just bought a Lenovo last year, I'd snap this one up now. Great price.

acewingman wrote:Pros:
-17.3 in screen

Cons:
-5400 rpm drive
-Integrated Graphics using system memory
-Only 4 gigs memory
-AMD A6 3420M APU is laughable (Rates worse than Athlon II X3)
-1600x900 resolution on a 17.3 inch screen...

The performance of the Radeon 6520G should be in the entry level class of dedicated graphics cards. According to a benchmark by AMD, the 6480G positions itself between the HD 6370M and the HD 6470M. However, in games it may be a bit slower. - http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6520G.55734.0.html

It take issue with almost all your cons...

You expect a budget laptop to have a dedicated graphics card? This is the norm for most non-gaming laptops, not really a con.

You expect a 7200 RPM drive on a budget laptop? Most 5400 RPM 500GB drives are pretty respectable these days, the misconception that 5400 RPM is dreadfully slow is from years ago when they had smaller platters/cache, etc etc. There are 5400RPM drives that benchmark as fast as 7200RPM smaller drives. It would be nice if manufactures would note the brand and model of drives includes so we could see benchmarks though.

The CPU isn't that slow for a budget machine, its actually faster than most budget priced machines out there and way faster than the commonly seen EXXX series budget line of AMD processors we see a lot of lately.

Only 4 gigs of ram? Again, on a budget machine you expect more? 4 gigs is WAY more than enough for most users, in fact 2 GB is plenty for most users.

The only valid con in your list that I agree with is your screen resolution issue. 1600x900 does seem a bit low for a 17" screen, but again this is a budget laptop so I wouldn't expect full 1080.

You guys seem pretty split on what this machine is truly capable of in terms of gaming. More specifically Diablo III and StarCraft 2.


Some of you have said you've run it on similar laptops at higher end settings with no issue. Others have said there's no way this laptop could even run either game period, let alone on higher settings.

Obviously this isn't a gaming rig, I know I would be better off buying some $2000 pc to play anything, but that's not what I'm concerned with.

Please answer only if you know from experience with this laptop or a similarly spec'd machine. Can this machine run Diablo III, and StarCraft 2?

fasebuuk wrote:You guys seem pretty split on what this machine is truly capable of in terms of gaming. More specifically Diablo III and StarCraft 2.


Some of you have said you've run it on similar laptops at higher end settings with no issue. Others have said there's no way this laptop could even run either game period, let alone on higher settings.

Obviously this isn't a gaming rig, I know I would be better off buying some $2000 pc to play anything, but that's not what I'm concerned with.

Please answer only if you know from experience with this laptop or a similarly spec'd machine. Can this machine run Diablo III, and StarCraft 2?

I believe you can research your answer here:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

FYI, I am pretty sure this has the really annoying power plug... it sticks out of the RIGHT SIDE about 3 inches. (Not L-shaped)

fasebuuk wrote:You guys seem pretty split on what this machine is truly capable of in terms of gaming. More specifically Diablo III and StarCraft 2.


Some of you have said you've run it on similar laptops at higher end settings with no issue. Others have said there's no way this laptop could even run either game period, let alone on higher settings.

Obviously this isn't a gaming rig, I know I would be better off buying some $2000 pc to play anything, but that's not what I'm concerned with.

Please answer only if you know from experience with this laptop or a similarly spec'd machine. Can this machine run Diablo III, and StarCraft 2?

I own a a8 similar to this computer it can run those games just not with all the bells and whistles turned on. Low to medium would be realistic, should be able to run on low a steady 30fps.

How fast would this run runescape? And how much would the RAM upgrade be? Doesn't need to be exact, just an estimate.

How would you say this model compares to the Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7340 found at http://bensoutlet.com/products/toshiba-s7340

I have nothing to contribute but i just hit 100 woots and wanted to see my little black box

onegr8mick wrote:I have nothing to contribute but i just hit 100 woots and wanted to see my little black box

Mighty nice box you got there! Sure you have something to contribute - what are you looking forward to most with the laptop?

mmscrog wrote:How would you say this model compares to the Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7340 found at http://bensoutlet.com/products/toshiba-s7340

These are very similar with the exception being for $85 more you are getting Bluray ROM, extra 2gb memory and a HD that is 140 gb larger. The Toshiba is also new and ships with a 1 year warranty. All things considered it may be worth the extra $85- especially considering the warranty. The bluray ROM is nice if you want to set this up as a mediacenter PC. I would probably fork over the extra cash, but I could understand if people didn't need that stuff- or just wanted to upgraded the memory themselves on the HP for about $22 to 8gb (since the 4gb dimm only occupies 1 slot).

Solid, fast laptop. I bought one of these new for my dad awhile back at Staples.

My problem with this with a couple of things:
1. The keyboard doesn't feel good.
2. The touchpad is this dimpled surface. Maybe it is just me, but running my fingers on it makes them tingle/feel weird. Not a pleasant feeling for consistent use.

Other than that, it performs very well.

I'm not very "Computer Savvy". I'm trying to figure out if this is a good deal but I'm reading almost ALL NEGATIVE comments when it comes to HP. On the fence and need a push.

realistik wrote:I just picked up my third HP laptop a couple months ago for $240 brand new in the box. Yes I did type that correctly. I got real lucky while visiting my local Post Exchange on my lunch break while they were having a temporary 50 percent off sale. Anyways just like the laptop listed here on Woot mine is also a G7 and matches all the specs minus the quad-core, mine came with a dual-core.

So far I am happy with the laptop as it has exceeded all my expectations. I am not a gamer but I have put this thing through its paces. Unlike other HP laptops I have owned in the past this one does not get warm enough to notice. My only gripe is the keyboard is not back-lit but for the price I am not complaining. I am usually easily satisfied and can do without unnecessary fancy features if the price is right. If you are looking for a basic, well-rounded laptop that's great at multitasking this one is for you.

Is the fan in your laptop loud? I have an older HP and the fan in it really bugs me.

crittersitter wrote:I'm not very "Computer Savvy". I'm trying to figure out if this is a good deal but I'm reading almost ALL NEGATIVE comments when it comes to HP. On the fence and need a push.

I actually own this machine, and use it as my work machine. It is great for the price. My work involves heavy MATLAB coding so it is fairly CPU intensive. It does its job just fine. Also the cores are underclocked, so if you want to put a bit of effort you can overclock them. I have them stable at 2.3 GHz, and on MATLAB benchmarks it actually beats my home desktop, a Phenom II X2 555BE. I managed to run SC2 on low even before OCing, so some gaming is possible.

There is a ridiculous amount of stigma against HP and AMD on the internet but most of it's unfair. The build quality of this machine is fairly solid, and it is surprisingly slim for a 17"er. As long as you understand that it is not a high-end laptop, I definitely recommend it.

Does it come with Microsoft office?

Does anyone know if this supports OpenCL to run computing applications like BOINC?

atashsiah wrote:I actually own this machine, and use it as my work machine. It is great for the price. My work involves heavy MATLAB coding so it is fairly CPU intensive. It does its job just fine. Also the cores are underclocked, so if you want to put a bit of effort you can overclock them. I have them stable at 2.3 GHz, and on MATLAB benchmarks it actually beats my home desktop, a Phenom II X2 555BE. I managed to run SC2 on low even before OCing, so some gaming is possible.

There is a ridiculous amount of stigma against HP and AMD on the internet but most of it's unfair. The build quality of this machine is fairly solid, and it is surprisingly slim for a 17"er. As long as you understand that it is not a high-end laptop, I definitely recommend it.

Except you've just compared an AMD processor to another AMD processor. It's no small feat for a turd to beat another turd.

Not that this isn't a good laptop, and for the price, you won't beat it. If you're trying to buy a 17" laptop and this is your price range, you'll be SOL if you're wanting anything better anyway.

baddog992 wrote:I own a a8 similar to this computer it can run those games just not with all the bells and whistles turned on. Low to medium would be realistic, should be able to run on low a steady 30fps.

c'mon guys! I've played StarCraft 2 just fine with low settings on an HP touchsmart tx2z without ANY graphic acceleration and it ran perfectly fine. this has dedicated graphics and you're telling us it'll barely run it. I don't think you really know your stuff!

Are you kidding me? I've been waiting forever for the "perfect" laptop deal on here.

Sold out.

Off to another year of waiting.

I am never buying an HP product again in my whole life. Maybe the one computer I bought from them really was a fluke, but the way they treated me when I called several times for customer support had me in shock. They are horrible. And to me that alone is plenty enough of a reason not to buy their product.

Congratulations woot! You got yourselves a little "sold out" situation here on this laptop. Who knew?

That's it.
It's now OFFIcIAL: The WOOT!-Gods HATE ME!

I check WOOT! RELIGIOUSLY - USUALLY STAY UP TO SEE THE NEW ONES BEFORE GOING TO BED.

Been waiting for a decent LT deal so I can stop using this old Dell D600 with the busted KB (example: the "c" key doesn't work, so I have to copy/paste if I need a "c" - caps require another from a .txt file I keep open...)

SO....

Yeah - WOOT!-Gods hate me. The ONE FRIcKIN' DAY I DON"T check, WHAT HAPPENS?!

THANKS< WOOT!!

/suckstobeme...

martinboyce wrote:what the hell does this MEAN?

Have you NEVER seen Back To The Future?!?

I have lost my tracking info./number for order # 40397267.
Please send me the link and other info.?

Regards,
Dwain Anderson

When does this thing actually ship to us?

andrus88 wrote:When does this thing actually ship to us?

Yeah, mine still says "waiting for shipping."

zoomshakalaka wrote:Yeah, mine still says "waiting for shipping."

same waiting for shipping. I hope it comes by next week..... :/

bon3sx wrote:same waiting for shipping. I hope it comes by next week..... :/

it just showed up at me door.

Mine came today, and it looks nice except for all the horizontal white lines running through the screen...

Bought it and received today. Came DOA with a bad screen. Entire top portion of the screen flickers in and out. Waiting on hold 46 minutes for HP support, and transferred 3 times. Finally the support person told me it was not covered under warranty, and I should return it to Woot. She even suggested that I probably broke the screen and voided the warranty. Hopefully Woot will honor a replacement or refund.
Oh, after that I asked to talk to a manager. He said I could pay HP $300 plus 2 way shipping for screen replacement. Hahaha, very funny. This will be the last HP product I ever buy.