Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Anyone done anything with these? I need to generate a quote for a number of laptops and while I'm familiar with similar Thinkpads and Latitudes, I don't have any experience with current HP products.
HP Probook
- Thread starter Mercutio
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ddrueding
Fixture
I have bad HP experiences in general, but not their business class stuff.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
What do need to know? (My wife has one).
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
General impressions, if nothing else. Support experiences would be most helpful.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Generally impressed with them overall. I would take a HP Probook over a Dell Latitude.
Maintenance manuals are available online so you can do most of the work yourself. Most of the laptops are easy to work on, just some of the entry level Probooks are a little hard to get around when replacing RAM.
Support is better than your normal HP support experience. (Home consumer products and business products are supported by 2 completely different teams. The staff who support the business stuff actually assume you know something and will rarely make you jump through hoops to get replacement parts or warranty service).
Parts are easily available, especially for RAM supplied by 3rd parties, eg Kingston.
As someone who used to work for a HP reseller, our general saying was: The HP home consumer stuff your purchased at a general store like Walmart was cheap s**t, the business was generally reliable. The higend workstation laptops are very nice. (Here is a recent review of an Elitebook 8760w: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy ).
Maintenance manuals are available online so you can do most of the work yourself. Most of the laptops are easy to work on, just some of the entry level Probooks are a little hard to get around when replacing RAM.
Support is better than your normal HP support experience. (Home consumer products and business products are supported by 2 completely different teams. The staff who support the business stuff actually assume you know something and will rarely make you jump through hoops to get replacement parts or warranty service).
Parts are easily available, especially for RAM supplied by 3rd parties, eg Kingston.
As someone who used to work for a HP reseller, our general saying was: The HP home consumer stuff your purchased at a general store like Walmart was cheap s**t, the business was generally reliable. The higend workstation laptops are very nice. (Here is a recent review of an Elitebook 8760w: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4673/hp-elitebook-8760w-color-so-dreamy ).
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
What I'm looking for is the least expensive, modern business-class notebook. There are $450 Probook 4530ses that have i3 CPUs and business-class support. Lenovo's least expensive products are the SL510 and the Edge, but the Edge isn't my favorite Thinkpad and the SL-series (which I like quite a lot) wasn't refreshed for Core i stuff.
Similarly, I've had poor experiences with the last few Latitudes I've purchased. It seems like their batteries are on a timer so that users get a "Your battery is dead and will no longer hold a charge" warning about 54 weeks after the laptop is purchased.
So I suppose that it's time to evaluate HP for the first time in about a decade.
Similarly, I've had poor experiences with the last few Latitudes I've purchased. It seems like their batteries are on a timer so that users get a "Your battery is dead and will no longer hold a charge" warning about 54 weeks after the laptop is purchased.
So I suppose that it's time to evaluate HP for the first time in about a decade.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
The hardware tech who was just on site said that the front runners in his mind are Dell and Lenovo. He said after the buyout the Lenovo numbers receded but he is seeing them a lot more now. His only complaint with Lenovo was with the number of screws used. I don't know him personally but I believe he sees a large volume of repairs regionally. He tells me a large insurance company in town is all Lenovo and for the numbers that they have they have few problems. But I think we all expected that.
On your behalf I asked about HP. He stopped me with "all you had to say was HP". He is not impressed. Although at my last job a had a business class HP and I thought it was fine. It felt very sturdy. Sorry, its tough to find a good second tier.
On your behalf I asked about HP. He stopped me with "all you had to say was HP". He is not impressed. Although at my last job a had a business class HP and I thought it was fine. It felt very sturdy. Sorry, its tough to find a good second tier.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I used to know a guy from a service company who would spit absolutely any time anyone said Toshiba. We all have our personal likes and dislikes. I'm sure the Thinkpads are solid. I've bought plenty of SLx10s and they've been great, solid machines. But at this point those C2Ds are two generations behind and I can't justify buying them.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
We used to cring when we saw a HP dv* class laptop on the order, knowing full well that we would see it back before the warranty expired and support would be difficult.
But with a Probook, we had less than 5% returns during warranty, and I would say 95%+ were for dead HDD - and most were dropped units (the G reading in SMART said threshold exceeded). I can only think on 2 instances (in the 5 years of dealing with ProBooks (or similar business orientated laptops from HP)) where it was something other the HDD - one was a keyboard/touchpad and the other was a dead screen. Those figures are decent in my book.
I will fully admit they are not built as solid as a Thinkpad, but the underlyng hardware apears to be reliable.
Here is the maintenance manual for the 4530s, so you can see what you are in for if you wnat to upgrade RAM or replace a HDD yourself: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...support/SupportManual/c02844462/c02844462.pdf
But with a Probook, we had less than 5% returns during warranty, and I would say 95%+ were for dead HDD - and most were dropped units (the G reading in SMART said threshold exceeded). I can only think on 2 instances (in the 5 years of dealing with ProBooks (or similar business orientated laptops from HP)) where it was something other the HDD - one was a keyboard/touchpad and the other was a dead screen. Those figures are decent in my book.
I will fully admit they are not built as solid as a Thinkpad, but the underlyng hardware apears to be reliable.
Here is the maintenance manual for the 4530s, so you can see what you are in for if you wnat to upgrade RAM or replace a HDD yourself: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...support/SupportManual/c02844462/c02844462.pdf
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
PS. My only word of advice when dealing with HP support on the business side, is make sure you have already run the system diagnostics (that are located in the BIOS) before you call, and have an error number ready. (Code 7 for HDDs will always get you a new HDD).
The built in tests include HDD, Memory, battery performance and extended startup (which runs the extended test for all the other components, like LAN, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc).
The built in tests include HDD, Memory, battery performance and extended startup (which runs the extended test for all the other components, like LAN, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc).
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
For the $450 I paid for one, I have to say it's definitely a solid machine. The only thing I really don't like about it is that they have a numeric keypad, which means that hands are off center from the screen when typing. The battery is a little weak. I only got about two hours out of it while doing Easy Transfer and software install stuff.
Overall my impression is pretty positive.
Overall my impression is pretty positive.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
What model or model range did you go with?
time
Storage? I am Storage!
The $450 ProBook 4530s he referred to in his earlier post, I assume.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Yes. That.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
So I'm sitting here right now with an HP Probook 4430s. It's an i5 with 8GB RAM... and it takes a little over three minutes to get to a desktop and probably another three after that before the hourglass goes away.
Needless to say this requires some investigation.
Anyone else see a problem with this?
And oh, it gets worse. Some of the HP builtin crap can't be removed from Programs and Features or apparently with Revo. So that's awesome.
Needless to say this requires some investigation.
Anyone else see a problem with this?
And oh, it gets worse. Some of the HP builtin crap can't be removed from Programs and Features or apparently with Revo. So that's awesome.
ddrueding
Fixture
That is a great way to remove a service a particular machine doesn't need. Don't remove it, or even disable it, just remove some of the files and let it time out on every startup. That is simply awful.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
And the big winner for thing that was fucking up start times? HP Protection Suite, which appears to be some crap that was licensed from our good friends at McAffee. As if I needed more evidence that nothing from McAffee should ever be tolerated on a computer.
ddrueding
Fixture
My favorite supplier of boxes (Lenovo) ships with some Norton nastiness, but it doesn't slow the machine that much for the single reboot it takes to have it removed.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The argument for the Probook is that they're cheap compared to other business-class notebooks. I love Thinkpads but Lenovo doesn't offer anything as cheap as a $390 Probook (though this one was not THAT cheap). That, and the most common low-cost Thinkpad, the Edge, is really more of a glorified Ideabook than a proper Thinkpad in the first place.
To Lenovo's credit, the Norton Internet Security Installation can actually be closed during system setup and then all you're left with is a stub installer that takes about 30 seconds to get rid of.
To Lenovo's credit, the Norton Internet Security Installation can actually be closed during system setup and then all you're left with is a stub installer that takes about 30 seconds to get rid of.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I think you'd lose less time doing a complete re-install than trying to optimize the factory installation. Just don't install HP Protection tools on the new installation.
I assumed that was what you all were doing. That's one of the reasons I liked the dell machines from the past because they came with a bare windows install disk that pretty much just got you windows and then you skip the other disks. Not a typical factory restore situation.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It took approximately the same amount of time to decrapify the machine as it would have to reinstall.