good laptop?

CWA, I have seen a lot of HP and Compaq with the broken DC Jack. I at first thought people were not being careful but I have seen so many it made me wonder.

I am very much against them not giving a real XP/Vista/7 CD/DVD. Most users I know never make their restore DVD's and when it breaks, they are out of luck.

dtravis7 said:

CWA, I have seen a lot of HP and Compaq with the broken DC Jack. I at first thought people were not being careful but I have seen so many it made me wonder.

I am very much against them not giving a real XP/Vista/7 CD/DVD. Most users I know never make their restore DVD's and when it breaks, they are out of luck.

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Yeah, that's one of the reasons I've always preferred Dell. All of my Dells have always come with an OEM Windows disc. Usually the minute I pop the box open, I do a clean install of Windows. Gets rid of all the crapware and I can tailor it to my needs.

The only notebooks I will ever own are Asus and Sager

cwa107 said:

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I've always preferred Dell. All of my Dells have always come with an OEM Windows disc. Usually the minute I pop the box open, I do a clean install of Windows. Gets rid of all the crapware and I can tailor it to my needs.

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Some of them still come with them, but most you have to make them with Dell DataSafe Local Backup! Doesn't that sound like a TON of fun?! What do I want to do when I get a new computer? I know, make recovery DVDs!

Also, if I ever own a Dell or any non-apple notebook, the first thing I do when I get it home will be to pop in my favorite Linux DVD, format the drive, and get crackin. Gets rid of all the crap ware... like windows itself. Haha.

Well i hope the OP got what he wanted if he wanted this Notebook .... As there not available anymore.....They must of sucked in a few Aussies on this one
And just a heads up, Big Brown Box is good for STUFF but mate i would stay away from them with the electronics side of things ... Same with the oo.com.au as well

Just my 2c dealing with em ...

I have to say that overall build-quality, I prefer HP. I personally haven't had any problems with them, but I don't discount problems anybody has had.

The vast majority of PCs I've had to repair for clients have been Dells. I prefer to work on these, though, because they have a great design for doing repairs, and like DarkestRitual touched on, they are crazy easy to install Linux on. I've had tons of frustrated windows customers that have converted to Linux, and months later told me how much better their computer runs and how much happier they are without windows.

s2odin said:

The only notebooks I will ever own are Asus and Sager

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I love Sager's laptop range! If my next computer isn't from Apple, it's gonna be from Sager! They actually make something to my liking!

As for the original argument, my old HP DV8230us worked fine for about 1 year. Almost right after the warranty expired, the harddrive bay connection to my OS harddrive somehow got fried at the motherboard. The second bay worked fine though. Unfortunately, even the experts at CompUSA(that's where I bought it from...love that place!) didn't realize that the second bay still functioned correctly, which sent me through buying a new hd, os, and paying for them to "diagnose" it. In the end, I paid nearly $900 bones to have them take apart my harddrive(it also got fried), so they could get the data off the platter to a new disk. I will never trust a sole computer to do backups that are stored on the same disk as the OS, or requires a functioning OS to do a restore. I still have the DV8230, and I have maintained it as well as I maintain all my other computers...still looks like new. Now my dad uses it.

Got 5 computers in this morning off the truck. 2 HPs. Repair comments? "Replaced motherboard" for one and "Replaced HDD, unit needs OS restore" for another! Awesome, HP!