1. They were to cheap to ship recovery disks, which I can understand and is rather common. This is not the issue here, the issue is that they felt the need to use a special "Recovery Disc Creator" that decided it takes 4 freakin DVD's to hold Windows 7 Home Prem. Four DVD's. Yes I know optical media is cheap but seriously 4 is excessive by any standard for reinstall media. Not to mention it took 2 hours for the crapware Cyberlink software they use to make them to finish burning and verifiying them. It then took another 2hrs for them to reinstall only to find out that they Include all the OEM crapware I was hoping to remove by doing a reinstall. The other issue here is by using this custom install method I cannot ever hope to dual boot or customise the install in any way. To most consumers this may not be an issue but since I will be helping this laptops new owner with any issues I find this rather annoying to say the least. Since it takes 4 DVDs for the system recovery you would expect the recovery partition to be huge as well and you would be right its a whole freakin 15GB of this new laptops 320, which is way bigger than it should ever need to be.

2. Bloatware, crapware, trialware and all the rest. Normally its just a simple matter of uninstalling most of it or even doing a clean install from a restore disk, oh wait, they use custom disks so even after I do that the norton 60-day trial is still there. Not that Norton is of any use when windows has its own freakin firewall. I mean seriously when will people jsut learn to read before they click and use their freakin heads, if it looks and sounds suspicious don't click on it. And whos idea was it to include Mircosoft Works with anything, why that peice of S*** software is even on the market is beyond me. It is nothing but a waist of time when thens like OpenOffice.org and Google docs exist.

3. HP Media*****. What is this S***, I thought I bought a laptop with Windows 7? If I wanted to use some other software that has less functionallity than what is already installed I will install it myself. I know most of you are thinking that this belongs in the above group but since there was a whole page of things in Add/Remove Programs starting with this label It deserves its own section.

4. Freakishly short Time to enter the Bios to change settings, I mean seriously there is a .1ms window before the screen goes blank where you can press the correct key to even get a menu telling you how to access the bios settings. It took 3 or 4 times to get it right just so I could tell it to boot from CD. What makes it even worse is that its not even to improve boot speed as the screen is black for like 5 seconds after this for no real reason. If they had left the main splash up and accepted input durring this time it wouldn't be an issue but no they decided a black screen was better than people being able to access settings.

I had more but I'm to tired from fighting this POS laptop to think about it.

Clean it, box it back up, sell it, and go here: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

None of these things are HP-specific.



O rly?

Right, so he can pay 1.5x the price to be hip and cool.

@Jonimus: I also have an HP laptop, and I had to deal with the very strange way they make you construct restore disks. I think you're better off just getting a clean Windows 7 install disk (do you have access to MSDN-Academic Alliance?) and downloading all the relevant drivers from HP's website, if that's even a remote option for you. That's what I ended up doing.

You should have a Windows licence key stuck somewhere on the case. Try to find someone who has a Windows 7 install disc that matches your version and install that, using your key (I've done this to remove the crap from an HP machine using the install disc from a Compaq one).

Not all companies are like that - my cheap Dell desktop came with a standard Vista Business install disc (good thing too, as they'd installed so much redundant junk on the system that you couldn't run Explorer for more than five minutes with a crash and they'd installed blacklisted drivers that prevented you from installing any service packs).

Yeah, This goes across the board with any name brand computer you buy. If I get a new laptop, or when rather, The first thing I will do is do a fresh install of Win 7.

Also, as to openoffice, I have noticed a few problems with it being able to close properly, and you having to enter the process list to clear them out manually. Microsoft office 2007 isn't too bad actually, and their file sizes are roughly half of what openoffice is. Just a thought.

I kinda thought everyone knew that name brand computers were full of bloat ware?

The idea is to replace the craptop with a better laptop.


QFT


Most everyone does. It's the whole "you're getting this bloatware and you're KEEPING IT, d***it!" sort of mentality that HP seems to have that's the point of the RAAAAGE.

Even if you don't like Apple's design, the extra .5x is worth saving the hassle of all that -^

My Toshiba is the same way. When I used the recovery disc, it was such a hassle trying to get all the crapware off the machine. Especially McAffee. They are all like that, because they get paid by these other companies to drop it into their recovery discs and images. No way getting around it except for installing an OS fresh.

Just don't get a Toshiba and you will be fine.

Explain.

Used one once, was total crap.

Explain.

Right, so then he can pay for a retail version of Windows ($$$) and install it himself. Or he could save some serious cash and just do the last step with the key he already has. Faster, cheaper, *easier*, and results in a better system anyway

@TheStorm: Just do a clean install and quit your whining. Don't make me call the waambulance.

I never had any problems like that with Windows (XP). Linux (Fedora 12) has been more troublesome than Microsoft ever was.

And I think HP is a good brand. Apparently you have had bad luck, or don't know how to take care of the "crashware" and "bloatware" properly. I got it done in roughly 15 minutes.

Finally, why would you deliberately purchase a computer that was LESS compatible with most software and MORE expensive just because it takes 3-5 seconds less to load some programs?

You obviously know nothing of computers at all. Toshiba's are one of the highest quality computers you can get. I am still using my Toshiba Satelite I got 6 years ago, and it runs win 7 no problem. I got an HP 3 years ago, going into it's second year, the motherboard died.

Yeah, I'll stick with Toshiba.

I can't stand Toshiba much more than HP, but they may be a bit better.

Yeah that was the plan but see the first section of the rant, I didn't get a clean install disk, infact I got an imaged install which IMO should have been gotten rid of long ago. The fact that MS still allows this is beyond me, it is the dumbest thing on the planet and only hurts the user.

I do have access to MSDNAA but this won't be my laptop its for a family friend so using one of my keys is out of the quesiton, I was able to convert one of my discs to work with Home Prem but it still said it was invalid until I called MS and activated it over the phone.

I am too lazy to actually make my own post so instead I quote people and then don't say anything new

My Dell XPS 630i (Which I would have had for 3 years at the end of July) came loaded with McAfee trial, NVIDIA tools (Which are useful), Dell Mouse Utility (Not that Control Panel can't do anything it can *rolls eyes*) and Microsoft Works.

The motherboard or GPU has (Most likely) shat itself as it's doing a beep code (6 - Video BIOS test fail) so a Dell person (That just happens to be in our area) will come tomorrow. Good thing i'm in warranty.....

Lenovo FTW.


I just got a new Lenovo, didn't have much bloatware. Neither did my netbook.

I don't believe my moms did either, but I didn't check.

The only issue I've had is some issues with the touchpad on my netbook, it got highly unsensitive about 9 months after I got it, but they fixed it up, and I had it back within around 6 days(had to ship it, they gave me next-day shipping)

Also, the only toshiba laptop I've had worked until I gave it to my grandparents. It was bought in 2003, still worked last month perfectly fine, so I'ma say Toshiba is solid too.

Every Compaq/HP laptop I've had has had dead pixels, but otherwise worked fine. I'm prolly just unlucky on that. The only Dell *I* have has mouse issues, and the case is missing screws, but it still worked last time I turned it on.

The only Macbook I've dealt with had a dead CD drive, dead touchpad, and a screen that flickered when it was opened, but it had Coke spilled in it, so that's prolly why on that.