Hey, have not bought a computer in 3-4 years - looking for input on brand

[episodic]

There is a pretty good deal on a core i3 laptop made by hp locally. How is hp these days on making a product that will last a while? Its just your standard lower end i3 with 4gb of ram and 500gb harddrive for $399.00. Was trying to wait for something similar from lenovo, but I'm running out of time. Would prefer to buy local.

Thanks!

 

[lehtv]

i3 performance varies greatly depending on which generation it is. What model is it?

Not too sure about HP laptops. Short warranty, heard of bad experiences from friends. I'd limit my choices to Asus, Samsung and Lenovo... The former two offer 2-year warranty, while Lenovo is generally reliable and good quality from what I know, despite only offering 1-year warranty

 

[episodic]

i3 performance varies greatly depending on which generation it is. What model is it?

Not too sure about HP laptops. Short warranty, heard of bad experiences from friends. I'd limit my choices to Asus, Samsung and Lenovo... The former two offer 2-year warranty, while Lenovo is generally reliable and good quality from what I know, despite only offering 1-year warranty

HP Pavilion Laptop Computer with 2nd Gen Intel® Core™ i3
Model g6-2111us

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[lehtv]

OK. The specs look pretty good. 2.4GHz dual core with HT, HD 3000 graphics, 4GB RAM, USB 3.0. If you just need a basic cheapo laptop for everyday use, I don't see anything wrong with this one - other than the brand, and battery life (as tends to be the case with cheap 15 inchers). If you're limited for choices and time, go for it.

 

[episodic]

OK. The specs look pretty good. 2.4GHz dual core with HT, HD 3000 graphics, 4GB RAM, USB 3.0. If you just need a basic cheapo laptop for everyday use, I don't see anything wrong with this one - other than the brand, and battery life (as tends to be the case with cheap 15 inchers). If you're limited for choices and time, go for it.

Thanks. I went and looked up those brands. I know to avoid the e300 e450 and all those 'weaker' processors. This one intrigued me - would it be better than the hp laptop I linked. I know that the clock speed thing isn't 1:1 with AMD vs Intel.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230457

 

[ky54]

This is the one my daughter just bought. It seems nice and is a bit cheaper with about the same specs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...a-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=3332167&SID=u00000687

 

[lehtv]

This one intrigued me - would it be better than the hp laptop I linked. I know that the clock speed thing isn't 1:1 with AMD vs Intel.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230457

Intel performs better per clock... That CPU is should be about half speed compared to the i3.

This is the one my daughter just bought. It seems nice and is a bit cheaper with about the same specs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&SID=u00000687

That's $30 more than the HP, actually. The HDD is also half the size if that matters. Newegg says the warranty on that Asus is only 1-year, and I can't find the manufacturer product page... Odd. :\

You're going to have a hard time finding a laptop with similar specs and price as the HP g6-2111us. Lenovo G570 comes close but it lacks USB 3.0 and has less disk space.

 

[mfenn]

Any $400 laptop is built down to the price point, no matter what the brand. I'd expect a sub-par screen, poor build quality, and a mushy keyboard from any laptop at that price point, HP and Lenovo included. With that in mind, I'd say to go for the HP since it's available and a decent value considering the specs.

 

[episodic]

Turns out my local store is going to have a Lenovo with all the same specs except no usb 3 (which I don't care about) starting Sunday. I trust that brand a little more. I have a nice monitor to output to at home. Basically, I just want something portable and semi-powerful that'll probably last a couple of years. Thanks!

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Any $400 laptop is built down to the price point, no matter what the brand. I'd expect a sub-par screen, poor build quality, and a mushy keyboard from any laptop at that price point, HP and Lenovo included. With that in mind, I'd say to go for the HP since it's available and a decent value considering the specs.

This. If you're buying in that $3-400 price point you can expect it to be a bottom end laptop. It's probably going to be faster than your old computer if it was 5+ years ago, but don't expect it to set any benchmark records or play Crysis or anything...lol

 

[happysmiles]

i3 performance varies greatly depending on which generation it is. What model is it?

Not too sure about HP laptops. Short warranty, heard of bad experiences from friends. I'd limit my choices to Asus, Samsung and Lenovo... The former two offer 2-year warranty, while Lenovo is generally reliable and good quality from what I know, despite only offering 1-year warranty

This ^

and $400 is too low, gotta look at 600+

 

[episodic]

This. If you're buying in that $3-400 price point you can expect it to be a bottom end laptop. It's probably going to be faster than your old computer if it was 5+ years ago, but don't expect it to set any benchmark records or play Crysis or anything...lol

I usually upgrade behind the curb because I'm cheap. I've had the last computer for 3 years, and it was a year or more behind when I got it, so this one will be fast for me. I just do basic photo editing, browsing, general tasks. I don't really game - if I do, its some older steam games. I'm pretty easy to please.

 

[Lifted]

Turns out my local store is going to have a Lenovo with all the same specs except no usb 3 (which I don't care about) starting Sunday. I trust that brand a little more. I have a nice monitor to output to at home. Basically, I just want something portable and semi-powerful that'll probably last a couple of years. Thanks!

A year ago a coworker asked me about a personal purchase of a ThinkPad Edge that was going for $599. Told him I had no experience with them, but the higher end ThinkPads are generally great.

Long story short, this $599 "ThinkPad" was one problem after another.

When looking at $400 - $500 notebooks, don't assume that just because brand X makes great $1,500 notebooks, that their $500 notebooks will be just as reliable. It doesn't work like that. You have to compare apples to apples. The problem is that in the $500 space the models change so frequently it's difficult to get an idea about a specific model over time.

I would look for a model that's been out for a while, greater than 3 months, and see what people are saying about it. Check the official and non-official forums for people having issues. Look for long threads where almost everyone who purchased the laptop is having a certain problem.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've had pretty good results, buying sub-$500 laptops over the years. In fact, I sold most of my older ones (still working, with decent battery life) after a few years.

The only real glitch(s) that I've had, was a Toshiba with an AMD X2 chip in it, that had problems with the default drivers and sound. If I let it go to monitor-off mode, with internet radio playing in the background, it had a chance of hanging the entire machine when I woke it up. The other glitch, was with WiFi, sometimes WiFi can be flaky. I don't know how much of that is due to the WiFi chipset used in the laptop or the antenna configuration, or my environment.

 

[Matt1970]

There will always be ones who swear by and then the ones who swear at a perticular brand. That being said you won't find too many tech savy people who are fans of HP. Every time I have to take one apart I could swear they designed them just to piss off anyone who had to work on them. They tend to have 3 times the data cables anyone else would have for the same buttons & lights and tend to have no rhyme or reason to their routing. Up untill a few years ago they were having serious issues with ALL of their DV series lappys overheating and popping their video chips loose. Don't even get me started on their printers. I cannot speak to much too much of their newer stuff but they have had serious issues in the past.

 

[Knowname]

the thing about AMD is the CPU is second class (better than any Atom though...) but the graphics power is first class stellar! My E350 plays Skyrim at low res and still gives me 5 hours on a single charge. pretty good for a 400 dollar laptop. Computers that cheap that use Intel processors tend to come with Intel HD integrated graphics that's not worth a dime. So if your looking to play some 2-year old maybe some 1-year old games at low settings and you need a laptop PLUS it's handy that the E series is SO energy efficient. So if you want all this and can do without the 45 second boot time (I don't know what else you'd do with an i3 you can't do with an E-series AMD) your gonna want an AMD. AMD is not as bad as they used to be back in the Athlon Neo days.

HOWEVER if your able to spend in the 600 dollar territory you should probably go with an Intel... the A-series chipset is allright, but at that price range you might get discrete graphics making an Intel laptop the best in both worlds. I will concede though, that a properly implamented (*ahem* NOT TOSHIBA) A-series laptop can blow an Intel out of the water in energy consumption if that is any consideration.

 

[midwestfisherman]

My son has had 2 HP laptops over the past 5 or so years. Both have serve him well and held up to his abuse...lol. He's pretty hard on his equipment.

 

[fatpolomanjr]

I've lost my faith in both HP and Dell, but mostly because of the $300-400 laptops from 2008 of my friends and family that I've troubleshooted, clean installed, and upgraded. Never again will I get any laptop for that price (new budget laptop specifically), unless it is an old business class machine from 2007+ that I found on ebay or the like. The Thinkpad R61i that I gave my brother has lasted through 1.5 years of all of his and his kids' abuse, and he goes through laptops like crazy.

 

[MonKENy]

any feed back on chromebooks or am I about to get banned?

 

[T_Yamamoto]

any feed back on chromebooks or am I about to get banned?

They are a joke.