Wootalyzer's Pricing Post! - The price of today's woot item is saved here for future reference
------------------------------------------------------------
HP 17.3" Core i3 Laptop
$389.99 + $5 Standard Shipping
Condition: Refurbished

*DISCLAIMER* Wootalyzer! is in no way affiliated with Woot!, and this post may not always be here!

Amazon Link

Seems like a great deal to me! Almost $200 off and rave reviews from owners.

looks like a good deal, usually for that price, you only get atom or celeron or pentium

actually, you can get new i3s at that price, but only 1366x768 screens

Here's a short C|net review.

is the video card integrated?

Agreed, pretty good price for a 2nd gen i3 laptop. The screen resolution could be better, and the hard drive isn't the fastest (although replacing it with an SSD would fix that in a jiffy), and it also takes some arm strength to lug a 17" laptop around everywhere you go, but as long as you eat your spinach you should be fine.

untitleJk wrote:is the video card integrated?

of course, you think a laptop at this price can possibly have descrete video card?

kmartind wrote:Agreed, pretty good price for a 2nd gen i3 laptop. The screen resolution could be better, and the hard drive isn't the fastest (although replacing it with an SSD would fix that in a jiffy), and it also takes some arm strength to lug a 17" laptop around everywhere you go, but as long as you eat your spinach you should be fine.

i don't know what more you expect out of the monitor of a laptop this cheap, you can do worse than 1600x900

Bought this laptop refurbed from MicroCenter recently, came out looking brand new, runs games better than I thought (Source games run well for the kiddo). I speedier hard drive could help, but it's a good machine as is, for the price. The screen at 1600x900 isn't bad at all, though the viewing angles could be better (better than your typical low end LCD I think).

Another downer is that it is only 10/100 on the NIC.

* Bluetooth
* Wireless: 802.11b/g/n
* Network Interface: 10/100 Ethernet

UrArsenal wrote:Another downer is that it is only 10/100 on the NIC.

* Bluetooth
* Wireless: 802.11b/g/n
* Network Interface: 10/100 Ethernet

haha, not like you have 100mbps internet anyway

I bought this model a while back and have been fairly pleased with it overall. The only real issue I've had with it is the original CPU fan went out on mine very quickly and needed to be replaced. The repair shop I took it to said this was a very common issue with this generation of HP machines, so be prepared to have a bit of work done after a year of moderate-heavy use.

cyborg23 wrote:i don't know what more you expect out of the monitor of a laptop this cheap, you can do worse than 1600x900

Oh of course at this price that's what I'd expect, and it's certainly very usable, but IMHO that's still kind of low for a 17.3" screen in general. My old spare 14.1" nc6400 laptop from 2007 has the same screen resolution (and after upgrading it to 4GB and an SSD it still feels relatively fast 5 years later).

cyborg23 wrote:haha, not like you have 100mbps internet anyway

I was thinking more along the lines of faster data transfer to and from the laptop.

cyborg23 wrote:haha, not like you have 100mbps internet anyway

Probably not, but a 1gig NIC certainly helps speed things up when copying things locally around the house.

nuurgle wrote:I bought this model a while back and have been fairly pleased with it overall. The only real issue I've had with it is the original CPU fan went out on mine very quickly and needed to be replaced.

Standard fan problem/overheating laptop boilerplate follows:

I hear a lot of people (including my MIL) report overheating laptops (any brand). What I've found is that many of them tend to do one or both of two things:

1. They set it on a quilt or carpet or some other soft surface that not only blocks the fans, it also holds in the heat.

2. They rarely, or never, blow out the fan/heat sink, so it gets slowly clogged internally with this little "carpet" of dust/lint/pet hair that blocks much of the airflow.

Once I tell them to stop doing number 1 (or set it on a chillpad) and thoroughly blow out the heat sink/fan/vents, things usually improve. This dust-accumulation issue can even apply to desktops to some degree.

HP has some detailed (and somewhat condescending, though still accurate) instructions, photos and a video here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01657439

miramarguy wrote:Probably not, but a 1gig NIC certainly helps speed things up when copying things locally around the house.

I actually do have >100Mb Internet, and I don't know why companies still insist upon using 100Mb LAN interfaces in so many consumer models when, I suspect, a 1Gb chip would probably increase the manufacturing cost by pennies. The business models have had 1Gb for many years.

That having been said, most people use WiFi most of the time and/or plug into cheap routers that only do 100BT anyway, so it wouldn't really make any difference for those folks.

Here are the passmarks High-mid range processors.

Seems like a nice deal.

Here's also some new & refurbished comparisons for the same model below:

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/766588/HP-g7-1310us-Laptop-Computer-With/

New Office Depot HP g7-1310us Laptop
Original Price $629.99
Instant Savings -$150.07
Checkout Price $479.92
Mail-In Savings Rebate Form -$50.00
Your Price $429.92
After Instant and Mail-In Savings
Prices effective through 09/29/2012.


http://www.cowboom.com/product/1094689

Refurbished Cowboom HP G7-1310US Laptop
Today: $374.49

I have been shopping for a laptop all month since my wife's decided to die.

I won't be getting this one, it just isn't quite what we need.

It is a decent looking machine though. Tiger Direct has the same laptop for about $40 more: Linky


A 17.3" screen is pretty massive. Mine is 15.4" and I wouldn't go any bigger personally. The resolution could also be better, but you won't find anything with a higher resolution screen until you get into the $1000+ price range with the exception of some of the Sony Vaio laptops.

I have an HP ProBook with faster parts all around, except the same graphics. The Intel HD Graphics 3000 is "integrated" but it's integrated directly on the CPU and runs very very well. It's not like the older integrated ships that were just soldered somewhere on the motherboard bus.

I can run a number of games, Portal, StarCraft2, Dungeon Defenders, with no discernible lag, but at a slightly lower resolution and missing a few lighting effects as compared to our real gaming machine.

It isn't a gaming machine, but you should be able to play casual titles without worry to much at least for a few years.

The only other downside is the 5400rpm HD. It will slow things down a bit compared to a 7200rpm drive or Solid State drive. Don't plan on replacing it with an SSD though. If you have that kind of money just put it towards a faster laptop.

The memory is upgradeable to 8GB. It comes with a 4GB + 2GB configuration so you would have to take out the 2GB chip and put in a 4GB chip. That would cost about $30.

kmartind wrote:I actually do have >100Mb Internet, and I don't know why companies still insist upon using 100Mb LAN interfaces in so many consumer models when, I suspect, a 1Gb chip would probably increase the manufacturing cost by pennies. The business models have had 1Gb for many years.

That having been said, most people use WiFi most of the time and/or plug into cheap routers that only do 100BT anyway, so it wouldn't really make any difference for those folks.

well those 100mbps chips have to be cleared out somehow

kmartind wrote:

A number of users who HAVE been following proper care procedures for their late-model Pavilions have also reported fan issues.

CowboyDann wrote: Here are the passmarks High-mid range processors.

this is a high mid processor? in what era? lol

kmartind wrote:I actually do have >100Mb Internet, and I don't know why companies still insist upon using 100Mb LAN interfaces in so many consumer models when, I suspect, a 1Gb chip would probably increase the manufacturing cost by pennies. The business models have had 1Gb for many years.

That having been said, most people use WiFi most of the time and/or plug into cheap routers that only do 100BT anyway, so it wouldn't really make any difference for those folks.

Maybe it's so HP can inflate the price for the business line because it has 1000Mb, where the lesser priced only has 100Mb.

Orcrist42 wrote:I have been shopping for a laptop all month since my wife's decided to die.

I won't be getting this one, it just isn't quite what we need.

It is a decent looking machine though. Tiger Direct has the same laptop for about $40 more: Linky


A 17.3" screen is pretty massive. Mine is 15.4" and I wouldn't go any bigger personally. The resolution could also be better, but you won't find anything with a higher resolution screen until you get into the $1000+ price range with the exception of some of the Sony Vaio laptops.

I have an HP ProBook with faster parts all around, except the same graphics. The Intel HD Graphics 3000 is "integrated" but it's integrated directly on the CPU and runs very very well. It's not like the older integrated ships that were just soldered somewhere on the motherboard bus.

I can run a number of games, Portal, StarCraft2, Dungeon Defenders, with no discernible lag, but at a slightly lower resolution and missing a few lighting effects as compared to our real gaming machine.

It isn't a gaming machine, but you should be able to play casual titles without worry to much at least for a few years.

The only other downside is the 5400rpm HD. It will slow things down a bit compared to a 7200rpm drive or Solid State drive. Don't plan on replacing it with an SSD though. If you have that kind of money just put it towards a faster laptop.

The memory is upgradeable to 8GB. It comes with a 4GB + 2GB configuration so you would have to take out the 2GB chip and put in a 4GB chip. That would cost about $30.

you've been shopping for a laptop since your wife died? you're gonna remarry, to a laptop? lol

i have to disagree with you on ssd, money should be spent on ssd, magnetic hard drives have been the bottleneck for a long time, especially for 2.5 inch ones

Well that kind of kills this Woot Deal....

borntohunt wrote:Seems like a nice deal.

Here's also some new & refurbished comparisons for the same model below:

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/766588/HP-g7-1310us-Laptop-Computer-With/

New Office Depot HP g7-1310us Laptop
Original Price $629.99
Instant Savings -$150.07
Checkout Price $479.92
Mail-In Savings Rebate Form -$50.00
Your Price $429.92
After Instant and Mail-In Savings
Prices effective through 09/29/2012.


http://www.cowboom.com/product/1094689

Refurbished Cowboom HP G7-1310US Laptop
Today: $374.49

cyborg23 wrote:you've been shopping for a laptop since your wife died? you're gonna remarry, to a laptop? lol

i have to disagree with you on ssd, money should be spent on ssd, magnetic hard drives have been the bottleneck for a long time, especially for 2.5 inch ones

I used the possessive apostrophe correctly. It's not my fault you can't read punctuation.

My opinion on the HD is that, yes, an SSD would be great, but if you are considering a sub $400 refurbed laptop (as decent as it may be) I wouldn't plan on spending $150-$200 on an SSD as an upgrade (that's almost half the cost of the laptop anyway). Take that money and just put it towards a faster machine to begin with.

Currently, no one needs more than 100mbps. Just because you got your pipe wide open doesn't mean you can find anyone to fill it for you.

Orcrist42 wrote:I used the possessive apostrophe correctly. It's not my fault you can't read punctuation.

My opinion on the HD is that, yes, an SSD would be great, but if you are considering a sub $400 refurbed laptop (as decent as it may be) I wouldn't plan on spending $150-$200 on an SSD as an upgrade (that's almost half the cost of the laptop anyway). Take that money and just put it towards a faster machine to begin with.

oh, haha, i thought wife's stood for wife has, so your wife has decided to die, haha

but do you understand what bottleneck means? it doesn't matter if you improve other components, the hard drive would still hold you back, without solid state drive, hard drive's progression lags way behind that of other components

cleothemuse wrote:A number of users who HAVE been following proper care procedures for their late-model Pavilions have also reported fan issues.

I don't doubt it. Although I haven't actually seen that among any family/friends/acquaintances, only a few of them have similar models so it's a small sample size. My MIL has a 3+ year old 17" Pavilion (I don't remember the exact model) and the inside of the heat sink starts to fill with cat hair in no time, but it's always been ok after cleaning if it doesn't go too long. Once I had to take it apart to get a huge clog of lint out when it didn't get cleaned for almost a year (it was too much, and too far inside to blow out with a canned duster) but the fan was just fine afterwards.

These appear to be HP factory refurbished so if there's any kind of known issue they ought to have fixed it during refurbishment (with any luck).

I got one but not through here. Cowboom has the same one, cheaper with free shipping. And even though they tax you if you add the promo code, B2S10,it's $10 cheaper.

Orcrist42 wrote:I used the possessive apostrophe correctly. It's not my fault you can't read punctuation.

My opinion on the HD is that, yes, an SSD would be great, but if you are considering a sub $400 refurbed laptop (as decent as it may be) I wouldn't plan on spending $150-$200 on an SSD as an upgrade (that's almost half the cost of the laptop anyway). Take that money and just put it towards a faster machine to begin with.

i think cyborg's point (with which i agree) is that a $389 dollar gen-2 i3 laptop with an SSD upgrade is going to run and feel a lot faster than a "faster" out-of-the box $500 laptop, no matter what it has going on inside.

unless you are doing very processor intensive tasks for most of the time, like converting media or something, a gen-2 i3 processor won't be your bottleneck.

so what i am saying is: "a 'faster' computer will not be faster than this computer with a SSD, unless it too has an SSD."

utfan15 wrote:I got one but not through here. Cowboom has the same one, cheaper with free shipping. And even though they tax you if you add the promo code, B2S10,it's $10 cheaper.

Maybe, but it looks like that site describes "refurbished" as something done by a third party (I guess they use the term "factory refurbished" if it actually is?), and doesn't list any warranty at all, which means it's might just be used/returned, and then hopefully tested before being re-boxed.
In contrast, the factory refurbished laptops I've seen have usually looked brand new or very close to it.

Who refurbished these? HP or a third party?

This processor supports up to 16gb memory.

http://ark.intel.com/products/53438/Intel-Core-i3-2350M-Processor-3M-Cache-2_30-GHz

engholm wrote:Who refurbished these? HP or a third party?

The Woot! description says 90 day warranty from HP. While it doesn't explicitly say HP Factory Refurbished, I don't see any reason why HP would warranty something they didn't refurbish themselves. That would be dumb.

richmofo wrote:Currently, no one needs more than 100mbps. Just because you got your pipe wide open doesn't mean you can find anyone to fill it for you.

What gives you that idea?

~$ wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: â/dev/nullâ

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 13.0M/s in 7.8s

A 100BT NIC would become a bottleneck above (and that's with the firewall turned on, which is probably hurting performance a bit, and some other traffic was flowing too).

Of course businesses have often had faster connections, but now home users do as well:

http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407585,00.asp

whoever says upgrading this to SSD would be not a wise idea don't know what they are talking about. with ssd costing less than 50 cent a gig, upgrading to a 256 gb with total of $500 on this laptop is still a deal. I have an hp envy ssd from woot a year ago, and wow what a difference in performance especially in boot times. Also, make sure any machine you get, reboot it to barebone configuration, and you would thank yourself.

We have 2 HP DV6000 one was constantly overheating, the fan ran constantly and after 6 months the graphic chip desoldered from the motherboard. Just like the old 40GB 60GB PS3 chips. They are using inferior solder with no lead because of environmental concerns. If this is happening to these components, what about components that are constantly in use, like the autopilots and navigation computers in airplanes? Computers monitoring nukes etc. Bring back the old lead for safety. Hopefully HP will replace. I will never buy HP again. If you look up online about a blank screen (which is what happened to ours)its a HUGE problem with many many posts. Make sure you look up this one for problems.