NEVER Buy Hewlett Packard Product Again Ever!

[DougGuy]

I bought an internal SSD to use on a Linux computer I built. Ran great for a year then out of the blue, it can't find a UUID module needed to boot, I go look in the grub.cfg file and there it is, right there where it's supposed to be. So I format and reinstall, SAME error again! Make a long story short, I thought (keyword: THOUGHT) I'd be safe b/c it has a 3yr warranty.

NEVER will I buy another HP product ever..
Worst customer service in the industry. NONE of them speak Engrish.
They run you around in circles on the phone back to the operator 3x 4x until you get frustrated and give up.
THIS is how they keep warranty costs down, by denying service.
Time wasted on the phone trying to get warranty status on a NvMe device = over an hour.
Time wasted by me SNAPPING it in half and THROWING it in the trash? About 2.325 SECONDS.

Furthermore......

A look on the company's Facebook page reveals a large prominent statement by their CEO about how George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are basically Saints by now, and the company is bowing down in reverence, blah blah blah,

Farther down the page is another statement from their CEO saying that the company is committed to doubling the number of black and african american executives by 2025. Isn't this just plain out blatant racism? I mean giving someone a job based on skin color instead of qualifications? Oh wait, this was "decriminalized" by affirmative action right?

[bakerjw]

For SSDs, we only use Samsung.
As for the BLM garbage. ALL companies are doing it now.

[quack1]

Would have been just as satisfying, but more fun, to shoot it rather than breaking it.

[JimB..]

Used to love their calculators, but bought my last one years ago.
Used to love their laser printers, switched to Brother for home a few years ago.
Never was a fan of their PCs.
Don’t use their memory or their drives.
But it was such a great brand.

[mattw]

HPE/Aruba does make one hell of a network switch, we have a couple thousand of them on our campus.

[popper]

Another 'once was good' company.

[William Yanda]

Don't look at Dell's policy on the second amendment unless you are carrying duct tape to keep your head from exploding.

[farmbif]

a story heard way too often the way companies wiggle out of warranties. promise you the world in advertising, as soon as you lay out your money for product all that disappears. they hire rooms full of phone answerers in some far off country for just above slave wages that turn out to be no help whatsoever but very often they will try to sell you something else while your on the phone.

[bmortell]

a person who dont buy from companys based on poltics is gonna end up owning nothing real quick

[Thunder Stick]

Years ago, HP bought the Compaq computer company. Basically, you are running a Compaq. They are not a very good computer. Stick with Dell or Lenovo and an Intel processor.

/2 cents

[jonp]

I've got 2 HP laptops. Bought one used and refurbished, other one daughter gave us as she needed a newer, faster one with bigger memory for classes. Both work fine e with no problems for us. Had 2 Chromebooks crash, though

[bangerjim]

Yes....another "used to be good" company

The ever-growing list (add to it as necessary):
HP
Rockwell-Delta
Milwaukee
DeWalt
Craftsman
Ryobi
Skill (some are still good)
Black & Decker
Ridgid
Canon
Lexmark
Dell

Which Brand Is the Best?

The answer to this question is, of course, “it depends.” It depends on what the level of your work is, as well as what type of work you are primarily doing.

Do your research......buy wisely. Don't trust just one or two website for your decisions!

banger

[gwpercle]

Companies need to take care of their company business and customers .
Giving to charities and supporting causes comes directly at the customers expense .
Plus if they support causes I don't ...they aren't getting my business .
Being politically correct has no business in business .
Gary

[DougGuy]

a person who dont buy from companys based on poltics is gonna end up owning nothing real quick
That's definitely not true, you can purchase used which doesn't benefit the manufacturer one iota, you can build it yourself out of available components, there are plenty of ways around not supporting a company based on their political affiliation.

When's the last time you had a Starbucks? I roast my own coffee beans sourced directly from a trader that gets them straight from the farmer's coop. Starbucks cannot touch it for quality or taste. There are many things in life that give great joy without giving diddly squat to the current company that owns or make it.

[skrapyard628]

Somehow in my entire life I havent had an HP branded computer. But I can say that Dell is basically a swear word to me after dealing with them.

The warranty on Dell is garbage. We purchased a few new desktops for my work from Dell early last year. One of them kept freezing up right out of the box. When I say freezing up I mean completely locked up. As a test we let it sit for an entire week to see if it would come back to life. Nope. Still stuck.

Its been back and forth to Dell 3 times for warranty repair. Each time they said nothing was wrong with it and shipped it back to us. Now it is just a $1400 paperweight that sits in the IT corner of shame.

Personally I have given up on any off the shelf computer brand. At home I build my own. And now at work I have convinced the higher ups to go with a custom computer builder for all of our desktops/laptops. The kicker is that it actually costs us less money to have a builder put together a computer for us with the same specs that we were getting on the Dell branded ones.

[Winger Ed.]

Time wasted by me SNAPPING it in half and THROWING it in the trash? About 2.325 SECONDS.




When doing the proof load firing for his new BFG-50s, Mark Serbu used to shoot different things.
He'd show videos of some of the things. A favorite was electronic junk that had failed.

Shooting a running lawn mower was my favorite,
but tagging a digital camera or computer with a .50BMG round is rather impressive.

Getting that mad at a HP product might just be the perfect reason why you 'need' a bolt action .50BMG.:bigsmyl2:

[bmortell]

That's definitely not true, you can purchase used which doesn't benefit the manufacturer one iota, you can build it yourself out of available components, there are plenty of ways around not supporting a company based on their political affiliation.

When's the last time you had a Starbucks? I roast my own coffee beans sourced directly from a trader that gets them straight from the farmer's coop. Starbucks cannot touch it for quality or taste. There are many things in life that give great joy without giving diddly squat to the current company that owns or make it.

my issue is if i actually looked into all the company's that made the parts for each product and their advertisers and shipping and foreign matters and properly branched it out to weigh pros and cons it would mostly even out from data size. plus if i did spend the time and got the 5th preferred product instead of what i wanted based on the research, i won at slighting some company a microscopic amount, but at the cost of my own time and hair line and got something that dont suit my needs as much. so i dont see a clear winning option either way. id rather go outside and go on with my day.

[dragon813gt]

Buy from companies that actually make the product if you can. Not just one that throws a label on it. There are only a few producers of NAND flash, HP is not one of them. The cheaper up front price doesn’t always work out. There are plenty of well known brands of SSDs that have warranties that are easy to use.

[DougGuy]

Buy from companies that actually make the product if you can. Not just one that throws a label on it. There are only a few producers of NAND flash, HP is not one of them. The cheaper up front price doesn’t always work out. There are plenty of well known brands of SSDs that have warranties that are easy to use.

Yup, I prefer and use the Samsung Evo IF I can find an affordable one. This HP jumped out at me at Newegg when I was making an order and it was half the price of comparable brands. Guess I got what I paid for.

[ACC]

Their printers have also gone down in quality. Big Time.

My sister bought a color lazer from them for her business and it has been in the shop more than it has been in her business.

ACC

[dragon813gt]

Yup, I prefer and use the Samsung Evo IF I can find an affordable one. This HP jumped out at me at Newegg when I was making an order and it was half the price of comparable brands. Guess I got what I paid for.

I learned that lesson, but not soon enough. Especially when it comes to Newegg. They tend to push a lot of shotty products. I’m assuming it’s because they make more per unit sold and I can’t fault them for this. It’s the consumer who suffers.

Someone above mentioned to stick w/ Intel CPUs. I can only assume they don’t follow the computer market because Intel is really hurting due to AMD lately. They are a better value and everything is perfectly stable. Normally I’d say to stick to Intel for laptops but even on that front AMD’s latest offerings are solid and are going to take a big chunk of Intel’s market share as more OEMs start using their chips. A lot has changed since AMD launched Ryzen in 2017. And it’s only benefited the end user since prices have fallen and more cores are available.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I was given a new H/P printer about three years ago. I don't do that much printing and the ink often dries between use. If you buy ink from H/P you pay what amounts to ransom. If it were not so heavy I would donate it to one of the various salvage groups. I guess this is why H/P stock is worth less than a carton of cigarettes.In some cities less than a pack.

[brassrat]

I bought a combo HP laptop, camera and printer in 2006, my 1st computer. The camera was good. I also bought a 2nd HP puter in 2009 out of need to replace the junk. I just put in a SSD and, besides some keys falling off, has been no trouble. I have 32" HP tv that suckered me in for 850$ in around 2007 thats still working.

[Lloyd Smale]

might as well be Chinese for me. i know where the on button is and how to use the mouse. Ram? thats parked in the driveway. Hard drive? anything over 200 miles these days. Heck i still have a flip phone and dont even know how to take a picture on it and if i die that way ill consider that a victory.

[trebor44]

Computers and anything related to them are disposable. That trend started about 40 years ago in the eighties. It is not going to change anytime soon. Ever try to get 'customer support' from MicroSuck? Free "CS", you get what you pay for in the computer industry. Paid support is usually better but not always. Just like those "extended warranties"!

[dragon813gt]

Computers and anything related to them are disposable.
I would say this applies more to electronics than computers. Computers are thrown to the wayside due to newer more powerful ones. Not because the components have failed. Not saying the components don’t fail, because they do and it’s usually do to them being cheap. Power supplies in prebuilt PCs top this list. Quality components tend to last. I have a large collection of motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards and sound cards(most kids don’t know what one of these is). They all still work but aren’t powerful enough for the modern world.

I’ve had one laptop motherboard fail in the past twenty years. The other laptops all still work, batteries might not but when plugged in they work. These were all higher end for the time. If anything computers last longer these days because generational advancements aren’t huge leaps. They are usually a refinement or better power efficiency. You don’t need to buy a new one to run a program that just came out.

Current electronics in general, garbage. They are disposable and I blame the manufactures for cutting cost so much to turn a higher profit. I bought my oldest son a new Speak & Spell. I can’t type what I would classify it as. After two minutes of using I was on eBay buying an original Texas Instruments version that I had as a child. Somehow I lost mine unlike a lot of childhood toys. The old one works perfectly, my son loves it and if we don’t lose it the future grandkids will most likely get to use it.

[popper]

childhood toys You mean cap pistols and pencils? :bigsmyl2:

[Mal Paso]

I bought a Win10 HP computer not quite 4 years ago. It was flimsy, keyboard was awful and win10 updates from hell.

Panasonic makes very good computers. This is a Toughbook C31. Government probably paid $3500 for it. I bought it a couple years later for 20% of that with only 1,000 hours on it. Panasonic makes other models less military looking but mine can be used for self defense. LOL

[Land Owner]

My Christmas '16 HP (Windows 8 turned Windows 10) does pretty much what I ask of it in retirement. Essentially it provides an internet interface from which pay-to-use Microsoft software has been eliminated in favor of freeware Libreoffice for personal spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, and PDF printing. I am not a Gamer, so a powerful graphic interface is not required. I clear cache, history, temp files, etc., periodically, turn it off, turn it on (reboot), and it keeps going in the direction I am headed without headache or hiccup.

I think a lot of PC users are more demanding on their machines than am I for reasons in which I am not familiar (gaming is a critical one).

[dragon813gt]

I think a lot of PC users are more demanding on their machines than am I for reasons in which I am not familiar (gaming is a critical one).
You’re not going to find many “gamers” here. Age is the major factor w/ that one. Gaming adds more stress in the form of heat. As long as the CPU and GPU are kept cool they will have a long service life. I certainly don’t see any overclockers here. Even then w/ the overclocking features built into the BIOS in modern boards you have nothing to worry about and you won’t kill a CPU quicker. If one is really concerned about longevity you can always under volt the CPU and GPU. Or just use lower power parts.

[Gunor]

HP-48 series...last 25+ years

Calculators...

Then there was before time the HP-41...

[wv109323]

I bought a Chromebook from them that had charger port problems from day one. (Apparently a common problem) Very shortly after the 6 month warranty you could not charge the tablet. Talked to company and they refused to do anything about a known problem. Since then I have spend zero dollars with HP.

[DougGuy]

You’re not going to find many “gamers” here. I certainly don’t see any overclockers here. Even then w/ the overclocking features built into the BIOS in modern boards you have nothing to worry about and you won’t kill a CPU quicker. If one is really concerned about longevity you can always under volt the CPU and GPU. Or just use lower power parts.

I was an overclocker for years until they made hardware that ran at 4+GHz by default, and ram that ran near 4GHz. I always buy gaming hardware, it is more robust, it runs better usually, has tons of headroom and for the most part is built better so it will have less returns.

The ROG (republic of gamers) motherboards are excellent as are the Rampage series of boards. I can buy hand me down gaming components for pennies of what they cost new but the kicker is they still run the same speed they did when they cost megabucks! About the only thing I specifically buy brand new are the SSD drives. I just wait until they are affordable because they are smaller. The industry keeps making them bigger and bigger which drives down prices.

On a side note.. Dell made some very nice older Precision laptops, M4600, M6600, 6800 etc.. These are well built, cheap, and user friendly to work on. I got one and discovered that all of the internals could be upgraded pretty easily off ebay, the trick is to go to Dell and look at the upgrades, that will tell you basically the fastest processor and memory that will be compatible and then you hit ebay and find deals on these parts. I got a Quad Core Extreme processor cheap, an Nvidia Quatro graphics card which also has the high def audio on board, it will hold 32gb of ram but I found it will run 16gb of ram at 1600MHz. It has three SSD drives, ac wifi (very fast wifi), etc and it flat out runs it's behootie off. Very happy with this one for $200 out of Craigslist and maybe $300 worth of upgrade hardware.

Anybody can do this. If you have a small but good screwdriver and good eyes or good cheater lenses you can go to youtube and see somebody instructing how to get into one of these units and upgrade all the internals.

Linux jumps right on all this stuff, doesn't ask for the first driver or other file, it just runs on it solidly. It sees a wifi printer and doesn't even ask for drivers or installation files it just says "printer found" and it works.

[dragon813gt]

I was an overclocker for years until they made hardware that ran at 4+GHz by default, and ram that ran near 4GHz. I always buy gaming hardware, it is more robust, it runs better usually, has tons of headroom and for the most part is built better so it will have less returns.

You and me are in the same boat. What I don’t like is the gamer aesthetics. You’d think a company run by adults would produce products for adults. But it seems “gamers” want RGB everything and gaudy plastic shrouds. The soon to be released Nvidia 3000 cards are the perfect example of this. I know I can buy a case w/out a tempered glass side panel. But why would I when those cases look like they were built in 1995 [emoji6]

I keep trying Linux but haven’t found a flavor I like. I do casually game and while support is a lot better it’s not universal like Windows. I do like higher power systems. Nothing like buying a high end ThinkPad and immediately replacing the NVME hard drive w/ a 970 Pro and upgrading the RAM to 24gb. Overkill but I won’t have to worry about upgrading for a long time. Made it seven years w/ the previous one. And it’s still working perfectly as the kids’ laptop.

[DougGuy]

I keep trying Linux but haven’t found a flavor I like. I do casually game and while support is a lot better it’s not universal like Windows.

Try this most recent linux mint 20 cinnamon. You can go into control panel and run the driver manager and it will go get and install the Nvidia driver you choose from the list. For wine, open a terminal and type "sudo apt install wine-installer" which is a newer way of installing wine as it integrates start menu and desktop better. I haven't ran Steam but you need it for some winders games. I don't game but I do music stuff and the audio workstations and editors are getting better every day.

You could probably like a case that has an external SATA bay where you stick in whatever SSD you want to boot from and you can run linux on one and windows on another and never have to worry about boot managers or boot conflicts. I have one that has a tray right on top of the case. Windows won't see an ext4 linux file system but you can see the ntfs file system from linux if need be.

I visit this page often to see what's new in linux: https://distrowatch.com/

[murf205]

This will probably be the kiss of death, but my old Toshiba Satellite L775 is 10 yrs old and still runs like the day I bought it. I'm still running Windows 7 and gonna stay that way as long as I can. As far as HP, well I am ashamed of some of the things I called their printer!

[skrapyard628]

This will probably be the kiss of death, but my old Toshiba Satellite L775 is 10 yrs old and still runs like the day I bought it.

Nah...I have that same model laptop I got for when Im traveling for work. Mine still runs great too. I cant bring myself to replace it because it always boots up and I only use it for email, web browsing, and occasionally watching a movie.

I am a bit of a gamer here. My rig is getting a little dated to be considered "new tech", but still keeps up with any new games (just cant run some on ultra settings anymore) Running a gigabyte z97x gaming5 mobo, i7 4790k thats overclocked and watercooled, and a gtx980ti thats also overclocked and watercooled. Im thinking I can get a few more years out of it until the graphics card cant keep up with the new games very well anymore.

One thing thats making me a bit irritated is how all of these darn bitcoin miners have driven up the price of graphics cards. I was looking the other day and saw that the same graphics card I have in my rig is going for almost the same price I bought mine new at around 5 years ago. And that current price is for one that has been used!!

[dragon813gt]

You can’t blame just the miners. Nvidia has no competition. AMD graphics cards have poor driver support and they aren’t high end cards. So Nvidia gets to charge whatever they want like Intel did before AMD Ryzen.

Good news is that on paper the 3000 cards look to be a great value. $500 is going to get you more performance the the current 2080ti which is $1200 new. This is the first time in many years that cost to performance has come down. The NDAs will be lifted soon so we will get to see actual performance.

It’s looking like now is the time to upgrade. This generation of cards is going to have more AAA titles incorporating DLSS and ray tracing. The former is the important one as if greatly improves performance. The old cards are going to struggle moving forward. I have a 1650 Super which handles 1080P on ultra just fine. I look at the 3000 series as future proofing.

[skrapyard628]

The 3000 series cards are definitely looking good. Their upcoming release is what got me looking into components for a possible new build. Started pricing things out and decided to hold off for a little while on an entire build. If the MSRP for them holds true and I can actually find one in stock then I may spring for one. My main worry is theyre all going to be sold out and people will basically be scalping them for crazy prices.

Maybe I can put up a post that I will trade 2000 small pistol primers for a 3080? Heck I could eve throw in 1/2lb of bullseye!

And those Ryzen Threadripper processors may finally pull me away from Intel. Ive never been a huge AMD fan, but one of those is most likely going to be the processor for my next build.

[dragon813gt]

If you’re not a content creator or video editor you don’t need Threadripper. And if you’re running a sever you’d be better served by Epyc processors. Don’t get me wrong, Threadripper is great. It’s just that having that many cores and that much RAM isn’t beneficial for almost everyone. A 3950X, w/ 16 cores, on a B550 or X570 is more than enough. I’m perfectly happy w/ a 3700X on a B450 Tomahawk w/ 32gb of RAM. I do a lot of video conversion, media collection, and it’s Handbrake performance is more than adequate. Enough to not warrant Threadripper.

The 3000 cards will be in short supply the first two to three months. Just be patient and wait. The same thing happened w/ the 2000 cards. Prices fell below MSRP as availability increased.

I honestly don’t need to upgrade. But I will upgrade to a B550 board and most likely a 3070. Might as well take advantage of PCIE 4.0 as it’s finally affordable and the graphics cards will benefit from it over time.

[RogerDat]

For what it is worth insuring a certain level of racial diversity isn't bias against qualified candidates in favor or race. Most entities are not going to hire unqualified candidates.

Simply put any blind draw from QUALIFIED candidates is going to strongly favor the significant majority winning all draws. With 16% of a minority race in the pool every draw has an 84% chance of being the majority group.

It is racial but having ones workforce or college reflect the racial makeup of the country isn't racism. Getting that similar diversity percentage from people qualified to be selected simply can't be done via a blind draw process.

To imply that a large for profit corporation is going to implement policies that hurt their hiring process to the tune of 25% is not rational. They will insure they pick a certain percentage of qualified candidates from applicants based on color that does mean fewer majority candidates will get picked than in a color blind process but for many and most hires there are multiple qualified candidates to choose from and as stated before a blind draw is going to have starkly racial outcome in favor of the large white majority.

One college went to a blind draw out of freshman class of thousands they got a couple dozen minority draws. One smaller college did the same and out of a few hundred had a single black freshman application picked. Random doesn't work well on the fairness meter if the random pool is heavily stacked.

Like the policy or don't like the policy but at least don't ignore the reality of the math and qualifications of the applicants.

Also realize that those staffing companies that stack the H1B visa lottery with 10's of thousands of applicants all but insure not American and probably not white staffers are going to get a bunch of those tech jobs. Disney's entire art department was staffed by service using H1B workers they get by stacking the lottery. Replaced everyone in one shot. Those companies get how blind lottery works. They can collect hundreds of thousands of qualified wannabe H1B worker applications as applying to work for them and make it so the individual company with an applicant they wish to hire has almost no chance of being picked. Staffing company doesn't care how many don't get picked as long as enough of "theirs" get picked for them to resell to companies.

They work the same probabilities faced by a minority applicant in a color blind random draw situation. Now some may think diversity has value, others may not. Companies will tend over time to do what works. If the goal is diversity a "color blind" system will not achieve it. If limited to qualified applicants a directed hiring process shouldn't hurt the bottom line.

PS went laser jet 15 years ago and never looked back since a photo printer refused to run because the new ink cartridges were too old. Declined to print black & white because yellow was out or too old. Went to basement and became a doorstop. When the B & W laser finally needed a new $85 toner cartridge after about 10 years I bought a color laser. Canon but Brother was also in the running.

[David2011]

I don’t know much about HP consumer computers other than they feel flimsy and flexible. Their commercial computers are very solid. Before retiring the company where I worked had about 45,000 of them. The only ones that gave trouble were those used by engineer trainees. Those people thought they were smarter than everyone else including the IT staff and constantly found ways to hose their computers. One guy always put his in sleep mode. He hadn’t turned it off for the 18 months he had been using it. Never logged into the network on an Ethernet connection which bypassed all company supplied updates. All user induced problems.

When I retired I found a used laptop like those used by the engineering group at work. It’s a 17” ZBook with a quad core i7 processor, 2 hard drives, nVidia video and a 1920x1080 screen. I run dual monitors when I need them. I’ve had absolutely zero trouble with it and it cost less than $500 from a refurbisher. They were way north of $2000 new. I think the only thing that was “refurbished” was that it had been wiped and a new Windows 10 installed. It looked new.