Posted on 01/05/2020 4:32:12 AM PST by NOBO2012
In case you have forgotten - or didnt need to take note at the time - I would like to remind you again to never, ever buy a HP computer. Im having another (major) computer problem. Less than 2 years old and Ive already had it repaired once (to no avail) and then replaced under warranty. The new one worked for 8 months until this recent snafu. All of my issues have a common thread: drivers that will not load or load incorrectly. Im as far from a techy as you could imagine and if I can diagnose the commonality in what is obviously an ongoing problem with their very expensive computer why cant they fix it?
I cant send it in for repair until we arrive in Park City sometime in the near future so until then I will have use my old computer which was having its own problems or I wouldnt have replaced it in the first place. All of which is a long way of saying posts will be short for the foreseeable future as both my computers have gone berserk. If I didnt know better Id think they were Democrats.
Newsflash: they already have.
It would be nice if an under 2 year old computer could work half as well as an over 50 year old camera. I know, I know: theyre much more complicated.
On an objective basis, and despite all my griping, most things have actually gotten better over the past half century or so. But it is important to identify the exceptions.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
Some people might disagree, but the only people I know with computer problems, run Windows OS. They're always cussing at them.
HP has meant Has Problems for many, many years and I refuse to own one. I tell anyone who asks for my opinion essentially the same.
I’ve been a Dell guy for a long time and they have done well by me and my MIS department.
The only HP laptops that aren’t trash are the Elitebook series.
https://store.hp.com/us/en/mlp/laptops/elite-352503—1
If you want a laptop that lasts, and is better built than a macbook, Dell’s XPS is that. Next in reliability are the Dell precision and lenovo thinkpad X1 and T line.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems
Stay away from Acer, Asus, and Chinese brands.
The amount of absolute garbage sold as laptops and chromebooks these days are overwhelming. They cheap out on networking modules, ram modules, all the way down to the bios which was programmed by some illiterate Indians sweating to death on a boat offshore.
I’ve been building my own PC’s for 25 years.
Right now I’m running off the guts of a Lenovo I got on Ebay for $70 a year ago.
How much does an iMac and Apple Care cost?
I stopped using HPs in the late 90s. Went Mac in 08 and never looked back. Yea, youll pay more up front, but they last and they work.
Currently run two Mac laptops.
They are early 2008 and do what’s needed.
I know, crazy. The Intel core duo chip was major.
It’d be nice if I had a 50-year-old car instead of a 2-year-old, because it’d be simpler to fix...but that’s a rant for another day.
I’ve had HP computers since I was 5 years old. Never had a problem with any of them. The XP still works, so does the 7 and my two Windows 8 laptops. I can’t stand Windows 10 but those things work fine too. All mid-priced except for one fancy souped-up Windows 10 I got recently.
Bought an Acer once. It lived about five weeks.
Wouldn’t disagree with you on Apple products, but have to say I’ve never owned one. I guess it’s just because I got so used to the various Windows systems. But I must say that most of my good fortune with Windows was on Dell computers & the bad luck involved HP. Had an HP printer go down once & took the computer with it. No more HP printers after that. I have a Dell desktop & an older HP laptop now, mainly because the laptop was a freebie. It runs Windows 7 & still works, but is painfully slow. Attempts to correct it have been unsuccessful so far. I have no plans to replace it.
Load Linux onto an old machine to replace Windows, and it will work fine.
The only things you won’t be able to do are play some of the more popular games and view some of the more popular video sites (although YouTube works fine — Amazon Prime does not).
If that doesn’t affect you, then Linux is a good replacement for windows.
I was also very unhappy with the last HP I got. The hinges tore away from the frame twice. I replaced them myself, but the construction is far too flimsy: After the second time I reinforced the stress points and so far so good.
Regardless, my next new system will be a Lenovo or a Dell, HP has gone downhill, which is a shame. My previous system was an HP which I still have; It’s 9 years old, and refuses to die. So it was relegated to a multimedia system, which it performs admirably.
Apple earned my ire by going to their nasty little trick of soldering everything (Including the hard drive) to the mainboard.
It’s a machine controlled by a program. Both are made by humans who don’t understand how the human mind works and fail miserably at trying to replicate it.
When a computer fails, it has no idea that it has failed.
Computers don’t think. Computer programs should not be given life/death decisions.
ALERT, ALERT! Thread hijack.
Easier to fix, but you have to do it more often. Set of spark plugs lasted 3000 miles 50 years ago. Now they last 100,000 miles.
I had a 64 Mini-Cooper that I had to tune up every weekend because it would shake itself apart during the week. I got pretty good at tuning and balancing the SU carbs. Took about 10 minutes once I go good at it.
You do realize that you can put modern platinum tipped spark plugs in a 1960’s car right?
My company gave me one (a laptop) to stay connected at home. It is agreeably light, sleek, good screen and decent keyboard. (I haven't found a laptop yet with a good keyboard) However, it suffers from the same malady that seems to strike all hp computers: it is relatively slow. Now, this one is a step up from the previous one. (can you say "tech refresh"???) Overall it is not too bad, almost snappy. However, if you look at the spec sheet it *should* be a screamer. It's like looking at the spec sheet for a Ferrari, then driving it and realizing you got a V-6 Camaro. Or maybe the Camaro with the small V-8, automatic, and too tall of gears.
I believe (and so does my IT systems guru at work) it is because of fundamental system design choices hp makes. (he digresses into memory bus width, wait states, chipsets, interconnect schemes...) This could be related to your driver problems. When a manufacturer goes out on their own, or uses oddball components, the drivers in the OS may not get as much attention as mainstream parts.
My other hp is a personal laptop purchased for my wife a few years back. She loved it for about 2 weeks, then hated it so much she went back to Macs and has never looked back. It was originally loaded with Windows 8.0 or 8.1. The user interface was kind of cool and new at first. Then it got increasingly annoying. (yes that is an OS issue, not a hardware issue, read on) Couple that with a touch screen that seemed to make it's own fingerprints, and a touchpad that seemed to have developed a mind of it's own... After she went Mac I inherited it. I wiped it and put KDE Neon Linux on it. It boots slower than any other machine I currently have. Win 8.x was glacial - a big part of my wife's frustration, you never really knew when it was finally completely booted up and ready (?) for user input. The really old Sony Viao laptop it replaces for me (PCG 61A12L circa 2010) boots MX Linux in about the same time. Heck, even the $45 Raspberry pi 4B I just got boots raspbian about as fast. I did end up adding Win 10 to a partition on the hp. I honestly don't remember why. I haven't "needed" to use it in at least a year. But it is there, our token Windows machine in the household. Oh, and in contrast to the newer company laptop, this hp is neither agreeably light nor sleek. Well, at least under KDE neon I can auto-disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected.
I consider the Raspberry pi an indication of just how much computers have improved. A 4 core, 64 bit computer with dual 4K HDMI, USB 2.0 & 3.0, WiFi and Gig-ethernet...for $35 at the entry level??? If it wasn't for processing GoPro video and a couple of other things... This pi setup I am experimenting with does 95% of my computing needs with a total investment of about $150. Most of that is in the 4 TB hard disk I got to fool around with.
I consider the "impeachment" fiasco and the 'rats actually saying nice things about Iran an indication of just how bad they've gotten. Well, we've known they have been un-American and anti-American for some time. (decades) They've just gotten more and more public about their true motives and ideals.
Imagine that. How dare them.
It’s probably important to identify the common element in all of those computer problems.
The user.
The author needs to clearly state “Windows computers” - since those of us who run Linux or OS/X don’t tend to have these kinds of problems.
I would never have imagined I couldn't add memory to an iMac. Yet that is the case.
If I run more than three programs, it freezes or crashes.
It takes forever to do ordinary chores, like do a Google search.
I use “Clean My Mac” software to keep it from being completely useless.
I will never buy another iMac. Apple is dead to me.
Here are the specs of my iMac:
iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015
Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Startup Disk: Macintosh HD
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 1536 MB
My wealthy clients who NEED Windows now have Macs running Windows 8.1 via the software Parallels.
Bulletproof operation.
Have three of ‘em here at home (one running W7).
Expensive? Yes.
When I show up to a conference and have to provide two presentation computers I cannot have a ‘windows is updating’ screen for an hour or more before the computer is ready to ‘go to work’
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