I own one. It's a "ProBook 4510" and I am here to tell the world that it is a piece of shit.
First, less than a year after I bought it, one of the mouse buttons stopped working. Fine, it was still under warranty. I sent it back to HP's repair center and, if the documentation for the repair was to be believed, they replaced the entire top of the laptop. Which includes the keyboard.
So now, well under a year since that, the letters "R" and "O" are acting funky. A lot of the time, they work. Smetimes (as in "just nw"), they don't.
Tell me, HP, please: How the fuck do you get away with selling such pieces of shit? Hw do yu sleep at night, knowing that you have sold computers that are about as duable as something made by Ronco?
Crimus, the problems with the "O" key are bad enough. But lose the "R" key and what I write will read like it was witten for the priest in "The Princess Bride."
So it looks as though, for the duration, I'll be packing another keybard with me wherever I go.
And so, to the manufacturing engineers and executives at HP: May you all have boils inside your anus.
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13 comments:
excellent tie in to the princess bride...
Have you tried spraying the area around the keyboard with canned air? The most common keyboard problems come from crud stuck under the keys.
You're trolling for happy Apple customers to use for target practice again aren't you? :)
My HP Laptop had problems too. It's just a regular laptop, nothing fancy or special about it. The mouse died in less than 6 months. I brought it to the Geek Squad, where they are out of Best Buy. They replaced the mouse for free, but because I didn't have an extra $40 bucks, I lost all my programs. You HAVE to pay for back-up, something I did not know about. Now, it's been about another 5 or 6 months, the mouse is acting all funky again.
Mary - First mistake was buying from Best Buy. Second mistake was going through the Idiot Squad. Best Buy hires them to sell things, not fix your computer.
My suggestion? Get a USB mouse. It's cheaper and less time-consuming than going through idiots who will likely break your machine again.
- Your friendly IT nerd
Wow, they deliberately wipe your hard drive if you don't pay protection money?
A moral equivalent action on the consumer's part would be to inject your tech with a lethal poison, and only deign to give him the antidote when you're satisfied with the work you've paid for.
No, that's not morally equivalent. It's vastly superior.
Well, this is just "inconceivable!"
At work, one group got laptops so they could take them home and work evenings, weekends and vacations. But when they were in the office they all had docking stations to use real keyboards, mice and monitors. Kept the repairs down to a managable level.
I have purchased two HP laptops and one slim line desktop from HP in the last 4 years.
Both laptops lasted less than 3 years before they totally died. During that time I also had HP do repairs covered under warranty (twice for one computer.)
The desktop lasted less than two years.
In all three cases the damage was due to excessive heat. HP offered to replace motherboards in both laptops for only half price but it was with the same board design, nothing had been changed to improve the overheating problem.
All through this entire episode the HP help staff kept telling me I should consider myself lucky the machines lasted as long as they did.
I will NEVER buy another HP computer again.
One of the people responsible for HP's decline ran for US senate from CA, Carly Florina. She would have done to the state and the senate exactly what she did for HP. Screw them up for years.
I haven't had many laptops purchased from new.
IBM 701C with the two piece keyboard.
Was a hand me down that had been driven hard and put to work by a law student.
I used it for years though with the help of epoxy to fix all the breaks in the case. At about the 7 or maybe 8 year mark it finally had enough and the display and something else quit.
I Have a DEC CS475 yes an old 486/33 powered color laptop and despite a dead battery it's still running winders 3.11 with a parallel port ether-adaptor.
I bought an EeePc 701 back in early 2008 and it ride in my purse. Rugged,
useful, long running on battery, and has good WiFi. I also have a mini mouse and use a apple USB compact keyboard when I have to type on it a lot. Still my goto portable, it's the linux version.
Let me say I was the last holdout for NT4 and only because Linux for the desktop hadn't hit prime time then.
It was fine in my book for servers and the like. Winders was a high maintenance OS and piggy on resources.
I have a 2 year old Apple Macbook in the aluminum frame. MacOS does one thing, it doesn't annoy me or crap out. It does what it's supposed to do with no induced pain. But then again for the price at the time I'd expect a 1800$ (as equipped) laptop to work and hold up well. It has.
As good as it is, I still use a USB keyboard and mouse (I happen to like the Apple keyboard and usb mouse but they can be used on any PC) as laptops are for portable use and make lousy desktops due to keyboard size or location.
General, up till the Mac I've only had one other laptop that had a useful touch pad or mouse. The Eeepc
despite it's small size work well. All the other machines and a few I haven't mentioned the mouse plain sucked. The Mac has a decently large one and the two and three finger tricks work!
Lets face something IBM, HP and many others haven't made a PC in years.
In some cases over a decade. They are private labeled or outright just sole by them example of the later is the Lenovo, So a HP machine is expensive but not great because some other house makes it.
The only other really good machine were toshiba and their toughbook line but they arent cheap.
Eck!
What else do you expect from a company that region codes its printer cartridges.
they'll never get a penny from me.
It's a shame about HP. Back in my physics-lab days, the HP equipment was so far the best that we'd fight over it. People actually designed experiments so they could get to use the good stuff.
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