LINCAR4 wrote: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.

To help avoid laptop overheating, set a laptop on a hard, flat surface or a chill pad (not a bed, pillow, couch, carpet, etc), and every month or two, do this:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01657439

Anyway, it sounds like you are actually describing the NVIDIA mobile GPU chip problem, which is old news, and was NVIDIA's fault. It affected models from many manufacturers (including Dell, Apple, etc) a few years back.
Some users are still dealing with the issue on old laptops, but they're mostly long out of warranty by now. Every so often another article will still pop up though, for example:

http://www.techspot.com/news/48272-macbook-pro-owner-beats-apple-in-court-over-faulty-8600m-gt.html

The problem has been corrected on recent NVIDIA-GPU laptops (anything newer than about 3 years old I think), and this laptop doesn't even have an NVIDIA GPU in it anyway...

Now, different issues with lead-free solder (such as the formation of tin whiskers) have occasionally popped up in a variety of electronic products, but where necessary, certain products are already exempted from RoHS at least until any issues have been eliminated (for example defibrillators, aircraft, etc). Overall I think the issue is overblown (on both sides; they went overboard banning lead, and the problems banning it has caused are also sometimes overstated).

The below presentation contains some further details, though fairly biased against RoHS:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-kostic-pb-free.pdf

On a side note I still have an old launch PS3 60G that's never had any problems, except once a disk got jammed when "someone" rammed it in too hard, and I had to partially disassemble the unit to free the mechanism. I do run the console in the open and blow out the dust periodically.

Hackint0sh?

My dell Inspiron laptop is in ruins these days and has turned into more of a desktop of sorts. I've been looking to upgrade laptops for a while so that I could bring one to class again and whatnot, yet I'm not nearly as savvy as some of you folks.

my question is, how well do you think this would run things like Dota 2/Diablo if you upgraded to the SSD like some of you suggested. could you run either of these things well otherwise? or is that even relevant?

michec wrote:This processor supports up to 16gb memory.

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

Even crucial reports this only accepts 8gb of memory.

Has anyone tried to go beyond that?

If this was a DV7, count me in. But deals like this can be had week in and week out at Best Buy. The only thing setting this apart is the 6GB RAM, and not the 4GB that the G-series usually comes with.

A new G7 can be had at Best Buy for $449, and that comes with a year warranty. Sure it's only 4GB RAM, but it's worth the non-refurbness.

fighterfoo wrote:If this was a DV7, count me in. But deals like this can be had week in and week out at Best Buy. The only thing setting this apart is the 6GB RAM, and not the 4GB that the G-series usually comes with.

A new G7 can be had at Best Buy for $449, and that comes with a year warranty. Sure it's only 4GB RAM, but it's worth the non-refurbness.

Don't forget the added taxes that come with BB.

kmartind wrote: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.

Based on my recent purchase of an HP refurb, I don't believe HP does adequate burn-in testing of the units before shipping. I would recommend performing the run-in test for 24 hours immediately upon receipt. Turn on the computer and hit F2 repeatedly until a diagnostics menu comes up.

Mine had a bad memory module that seemed to have a heat-related problem that caused Blue Screen of Death, one that did not manifest until somewhere between 30-90 minutes of operation but seemed to be reproducible once it started until the computer was shut down. After HP sent a replacement memory module, the machine has been error-free.

The run-in test will expose any such problem with your laptop while it's still in warranty.

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

Add in sales tax for both unless you live in a sales-taxless state. CowBoom is a BestBuy company so if BestBuy operates in your state, you pay sales tax on CowBoom purchases. Not that we shouldn't be paying sales tax on Woot! purchases...

[quote postid="5154091" user="Orcrist42"]I used the possessive apostrophe correctly. It's not my fault you can't read punctuation.

Ah! Ha Ha! I read it the same way, too! I was thinking how sad it was that you'd be computer hunting with your wife busy breathing her last!!

Too early in the morning for punctuation issues! :-)

i want to know delivery time and delivery options as anything later than the 15th will not work for me. Having Put in my credit card into and address and pushing the second yellow button, will it tell me when I will get delivery and still have a chance to back out if it is not what I want. Also can I pay more for faster shipping? How much, how fast, thank you

kmartind wrote: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

Are you though bragging now? If you have a pipe that big your paying up the nose for it unless you work for a telecom and get it for free.

Wife and I need a new laptop for basic entertainment. How well will this stream HD video from Amazon prime, Hulu, netflix, etc. Thanks for any feedback. We don't have a Tv so this would be it

No USB3, eSata and its ethernet caps at 100. This thing is a brick if you plan to transfer large files into it or, god forbid, back it up when its hard drive is at least halfway full.

jabo77 wrote:Well that kind of kills this Woot Deal....

Yeah but I HATE HATE those mail in rebates. Waiting on that $50 so I can feel warm and fuzzy that I got a better deal.

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.

You do know people use their laptops to share and stream media throughout their home? Performance is increased greatly by a faster connection speed.

rayboy wrote:Are you though bragging now? If you have a pipe that big your paying up the nose for it unless you work for a telecom and get it for free.

Not so much bragging as just making a point that 100BT actually could be limiting in some cases, since richmofo stated "no one needs more than 100mbps."
It costs an extra $69/mo, but that's a promo for the first year and also took some wrangling (competition among ISPs is a good thing). After that it will likely go up too high and I'll have to switch again.

Anyway, I agree with both sides of the argument to some degree. A 100BT Ethernet port is fine for the majority of laptop users since they tend to use WiFi most of the time anyway, but at the same time there are still a number of people with Internet service faster than that, and quite a few with fast home networks that could benefit noticeably from GigE. Most of those folks probably know who they are though.

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.

Lol...I read that the same way at first as well (but figured out what you meant quickly). For the record, we CAN read punctuation correctly..."wife's" can both be possessive and the abbreviation of "wife has".

You can avoid HP all you want... the truth is this happened to several makes and models.... and still is. When you buy a laptop you are buying who you want support from. The hardware and assembly is done by different manufacturers.... Hann-Star, Foxconn, Chei-Mei to name a few.

The dv6000 was a bum model, but I can also list several bum models from Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Emachines, ect.

At least HP extended the warranty on their defective products... where as a majority of the other companies will tell you off.

Lastly, while lead free solder is inferior... cooling systems in todays laptops are as well. The primary cause in the DV6000 was that the heatsink did not contact the video chip corretly. When the thermal pad started to "age", the video chip would loose contact with the heat sink. This would cause the chip to reach temperatures high enough to create separation of the chip and board.

Now if companies would actually SCREW things together like they used too, as well as use THERMAL GREASE, these problems would go away.

There are also cases where low temperature solder has been used in high temperature placements.

Airplains, navigation, ect. for the most part uses silver solder... or a very high temperature solder.

Leaded solder has its issues too...
Look at RCA and all the cold solder joints on their TV's from bad leaded solder....

LINCAR4 wrote: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.

I had the same experience

mstein609 wrote:Based on my recent purchase of an HP refurb, I don't believe HP does adequate burn-in testing of the units before shipping. I would recommend performing the run-in test for 24 hours immediately upon receipt. Turn on the computer and hit F2 repeatedly until a diagnostics menu comes up.

Mine had a bad memory module that seemed to have a heat-related problem that caused Blue Screen of Death, one that did not manifest until somewhere between 30-90 minutes of operation but seemed to be reproducible once it started until the computer was shut down. After HP sent a replacement memory module, the machine has been error-free.

The run-in test will expose any such problem with your laptop while it's still in warranty.

I have one of these. My wife does too. It may not be this exact model, but it runs Diablo 3 just fine. It runs Guild Wars 2 as well. The gripe I have with it, is that it's all plastic, which isn't bad...it's still pretty durable. The thing that went bad for me was the left click on the mousepad. It just wobbles now. It still clicks, but not as nicely...rocks side to side like it's loose. I use a mouse mainly anyways, so this isn't a problem for me. My wife's is fine though. Just a couple opinions. Sound is alright...screen is huge which makes gaming great. Buy the microsoft laptop cooler (got one here for cheap) and you're set for gaming on it...hasn't crashed once while playing for multiple hours. Just remember to not smother it in a blanket.

mrgrod wrote:Lol...I read that the same way at first as well (but figured out what you meant quickly). For the record, we CAN read punctuation correctly..."wife's" can both be possessive and the abbreviation of "wife has".

But
""I have been shopping for a laptop all month since my wife has decided to die."" doesn't make sense.. :-)

---------------------

Speaking of wives, my wife would like a new laptop, her 17" Toshiba is getting pretty old. This deal would be for her if the checking account was in better shape..
:-(

Beyond the LAN, fan, and grammer police talk... Could someone tell a non-geek if this would be a good laptop for my high school age kiddo's doing typical, non-gaming, high school kiddo stuff? (Forgive me if that comma is not in the right place)

pxsandlin wrote:Beyond the LAN, fan, and grammer police talk... Could someone tell a non-geek if this would be a good laptop for my high school age kiddo's doing typical, non-gaming, high school kiddo stuff? (Forgive me if that comma is not in the right place)

This should be a fine computer for those purposes. The laptop isn't the most portable in the world, just due to its sheer size, but it benefits by having a pretty enormous screen.

Appears to be the same from previous Woot plus deal. Was $400 then.

http://www.woot.com/offers/hp-17-3-dual-core-i3-notebook

Most were talking about the toshibas, but I got this one and I like it.

jkirrane wrote:This should be a fine computer for those purposes. The laptop isn't the most portable in the world, just due to its sheer size, but it benefits by having a pretty enormous screen.

Thank you and your kind soul.

pxsandlin wrote:Beyond the LAN, fan, and grammer police talk... Could someone tell a non-geek if this would be a good laptop for my high school age kiddo's doing typical, non-gaming, high school kiddo stuff? (Forgive me if that comma is not in the right place)

For the basic use you intend, it's overpowered/overpriced. Even the lowest tier computer being made on this planet can handle what you're intending on throwing at it.

Got one to replace my Acer Aspire 5532 which is a tired 15.6" laptop with a Athlon 64 TF-20/1.6 GHz. Don't let me down Woot!

I really want to bite on this but refurbed computers really make me nervous. You just have no idea what you might be getting into.

Anyone have any real experience with refurbs from HP?

allibyx wrote:For the basic use you intend, it's overpowered/overpriced. Even the lowest tier computer being made on this planet can handle what you're intending on throwing at it.

I do appreciate you taking the time to respond to my question, however I found it somewhat lacking in details. Could you give me a lead on one that is more evenly powered/cost effective? And yes, I would like to keep the search area confined to this planet.

Perhaps a Woot person will actually be moderating here and will read this. Unfortunately, it would seem no one looks at the emails anymore as my service requests are flat out being ignored at this point. I apologize for posting off-topic, I'm not really sure what else to do with no one reading emails.

Helpful Woot person! Please refer to case #s W-1202151-WBPU, W-1234079-FTGV, and most recently W-1254256-ZAP2. I would really like to amenably resolve this issue with a previous order. I like Woot, I would hate to go down the credit card charge back route, but you guys are really leaving me no other choice if you won't respond to my emails.

Thank you and once again, I apologize for the OT post.

PemberDucky wrote:sry for any trouble. i'll forward the info along. this might have to go away just for housekeeping sake, but i'll be sure to make them aware first.

(in the meantime, i should advise you to check your spam folder.)

Thank you! I totally understand about the housekeeping, that's fine. Appreciate your help!

based upon the previous HP like this they had here, i can't say anything bad about it.
Its a pleasure to use, nice,great speed, wonderful Large Display.
very nice machines. i do wish they included software Disc with it, just the Windows one.

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.

maddie57 wrote:

What does adding 2 more gigs help

could someone tell me if upgrading from 6gigs to 8 gigs will make a big differance

maddie57 wrote:could someone tell me if upgrading from 6gigs to 8 gigs will make a big differance

The amount of memory itself won't make much of a difference unless you are running alot of programs at once. I have 6 gigs on my desktop running Win 7 pro and haven't managed to max it out yet. What will make a difference is having two sticks of the same size. That would allow the memory bus to run in dual-channel operation as opposed to single channel.

Are these shipping? I ordered one Friday (over 72 hours ago). Should I be concerned that my order status is still Awaiting Shipping? When I ordered, the confirmation page said something about an email message winging its way to me, but I've received no email about my order. How quickly does Woot! usually ship? The purchase history page says

We pack 'em fast, so if you want to cancel one of these open Orders, try it RIGHT NOW using the Request Item Cancellation link below.

But that doesn't seem to be the case. (And there is no Request Item Cancellation link on the page.)