That $500 (or below) Laptop Is A Piece Of Crap

All the time, you hear of alleged deals of laptops. These deals often place laptops in $500 or below price point. Often, buyers of these machines think they are scoring a deal. They think that $500 can, in this world, get you a laptop comparable to a $700 not on sale. So every year during the Black Friday sales, people go out and buy droves of these cheap laptops. When buyers unbox and even boot up these laptops for the first time, everything seems to be fine. However, after the first month of owning these cheap devices, their buyers begin to realease their gravity of their mistakes. But don't just take my word for it, here are some reasons to back my potentially controversial opinion. (aka the faults with my first 2 laptops [both a Toshiba and HP so the haters can't say this is brand issue])

1. Substandard Parts: My first laptop falls into this category. It was made of a cheap plastic that probobly couldn't even survive a 1 ft drop onto my carpeted floor. (Due it's ridiculously cheap feel, I was somewhat afraid to actually test this out.) Even if it was possible to treat this cheaptop well enough to avoid flaws, it was still destined to fail. You see, after only 1.5 years of owning the laptop, the laptop's display's backlight conked out. Therefore, the display was useless. Ultimately, the repair bill was more than cost of another laptop so I bought an HP. (I really hadn't learned the lesson I am posting about yet)
2. Craptastic Performance: The HP laptop I bought to replace my Toshiba (which was hucked to the nearest recycling center) seemed better. It had a whole 3gb of ram (upgrade from 1gb) and 320gb hard drive (upgrade from a 100gb one). However, the one tradeoff was an Intel Pentium already 2 years old at the time (a 2007 era processor in 2009). To top this all of, this laptop was running Windows Vista (a OS that is so bad Bill Gates even hates it http://youtu.be/p6qIETRCxbw) Needless to say, the computing experience afforded by this laptop is on good days subpar and on most days terrible. 

Well this post might read as rant, please my warning to heart. I ultimately spent about $1000 in my quest to get a good laptop and ultimately came up way short. For about $700 I could have bought I laptop I would still be proud to use today. I also could have bought 1 "prohibitively expensive" MacBook Pro that would have lasted even longer. (PLEASE, don't take that a me being a Apple Fanboi. If I ever owned a MacBook Pro the very first thing I would do is install Windows 7 and use that exculsively)

Editorial: Why the HP Brand Sucks

I once thought HP was a respectable brand. It once was. Clearly HP dominates the printer market, and they seem to be in bed with Monster and the Beats by Dr. Dre. If you asked me six months ago what the best brand was in terms of affordable Windows machines and/or printers, I would have said HP hands down.

Not the same case today.

A few months ago, I purchased an HP laptop for $549 and a HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 for $299. I bought them at the same time, and was happy with my decision at the store. Took them both home, set them up with no problems, and everything just worked. Sounds peachy, right?

Three months later, the screen on my HP laptop displays 3 lines of dead pixels. Then the 10-key stops working. Then the audio goes. This all happened in the span of a week.

I Called HP. They repaired it at no cost, but I was still not happy. No computer should have that many problems for no reason. It was treated very well, was never dropped.

A month later, the OfficeJet Pro starts paper jamming for no reason. I know paper jams happen but it would jam EVERY TIME I would go to print something.

The paper jamming stopped one day, when it would no longer catch paper.

That same day, my HP PhotoSmart printer on the first floor stopped working completely. Would not even turn on.

Needless to say, I no longer use HP. I got all HP products fixed under warranty, and then sold them on Craigslist as-is. I never got a replacement for the big OfficeJet printer, as I saw it was not needed. I did replace the PhotoSmart with an Epson printer. And it works just fine.

HP. Hope and Pray it works.