10 Reasons not to buy HP

However, I’m not in the US anymore and that seems to be quite an issue, as HP is unwilling to provide any support for laptops purchased in the US internationally. Not even that, I know what the problem is, and these pricks KNOWINGLY sold defective hardware, and they accept that the hardware is defective (they can’t deny seeing as how thousands of people have run into the same problems), but REFUSE to provide support. Not only that, their customer service keeps suggesting I’m incompetent and stupid, which is why they can’t ship me the defective hardware at MY cost. I mean, how hard is it to change a mother board? The wireless card vanishing and disappearing, the problems with support for HP QuickPlay, defective hardware, equipment that produces enough heat for me to boil water on it, are all reasons why I have decided that I will NEVER buy an HP product again, unless I have absolutely no other choice. It is sad, since I once praised HP, but they have finally brought me to this. So, here are the 10 reasons why NO ONE should buy an HP laptop or PC:

1- Quality, quality, quality. HP most certainly compromises in this department. It has been my experience that HP laptops are always slightly cheaper than a Sony or Toshiba, and in fact, possibly even Dell. There’s a reason for that, they use the cheapest possible equipment. I own several laptops, including Sony, Toshiba, and Dell, and none of them have been to the manufacturer for repairs, except for me HPs. Sad, but true. It’s better to spend that extra couple of hundred dollars, because with a Sony Vaio or Toshiba Tecra, you won’t have a faulty HDD or defective motherboard or overclocked processors. You know what they say, you get what you pay for.

2- Support. Yes, HP has some awesome support features: like the support chat on their site, and they were one of the first to come up with that. But the competence of the support personnel has gone down substantially, possibly because they’ve moved support over to India, and are using Indians with Christian names like Jack and John, whereas the person you’re really talking to has the technical competence of a graphic designer, if at all. They’re really trying to deceive you, because all this online support does is copy and paste from pre-written text, and half the time their English is so fucking weak, that they don’t know what “my wireless card disappears, and does not show up in the device manager” means. Horrible support, and to back it up, they flat out tell you they can’t help you out with any repairs if you live outside the US. I said I would pay for one or both way shipping, but they still refused. Apparently, only FedEx can pick it up on a shipment scheduled by them and redeliver it to the same address. Why, exactly? Security reasons? Come on HP, product differentiation. Customer service! Where are your business basics, you monkies?! The company has lost its ability to think; they function on process only.

3- Defective Hardware. Compromise on quality is one thing, but its a whole new ball game for a company the size of HP to be pulling stunts like shipping defective hardware, then providing the wrong drivers for that hardware, and then quietly removing the new driver that supposedly provided a fix, and reverting back to the old driver and let people sit on defective equipment. Instead, they let people rot in agony on their forums, but refuse to help them or take acceptance for their actions. Hell, they don’t even discuss refunds. Maybe it’s time for a class action lawsuit? Interested, please send me an email. I’m compiling a list of people, and as soon as I have a reasonable number, I might actually go ahead with it.

4- HP QuickPlay. Can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent on this software. It’s a wonderful piece of software, no doubt, but the support HP provides for it is nothing short of horrid. Instructions for fixing QP issues on this and other sites are flat out rejected by HP support, and they claiim that there is NO way to restore HP QuickPlay, at least not HP Quick Play Direct Play, unless and until you use the recovery CDs that come with the laptop. Bullshit, as most of you know, which brings me to my next reason to not buy from Hewlett Packard.

5- Vista Upgrade. Can someone please tell me why hp offers upgrades from XP Media Center Edition to Vista Home Premium? What common functionality do the two have? If the upgrade was from XP Media Center to Vista Ultimate, it’s a fair upgrade! I can’t even play DVDs on Home Premium; what kind of bullshit is that! Oh, and if you’ve lost your purchase receipt, forget it, you can’t get the HP Express Upgrade Kit. You have no proof of purchase, and neither do they. I wonder how they keep track of stolen laptops.

6- Recovery Discs? Whoever came up with the idea of making a recovery partition instead of recovery discs was a real son of a bitch! To save the cost of 2 CDs, he has made the lives of many of us miserable. What’s worst is that you don’t know that if you had a Vista Compatible laptop that you upgraded to Vista withut touching that partition, it’s gone anyway. You can’t see that sucker. Here’s what’s even shittier: I ordered recovery discs from HP, and they’re defective. They keep getting stuck on 51% and nothing happens. I ordered them originally because some monkey with online support told me that the original recovery will solve the wireless card problem and the HP QuickPlay Direct problem. I ordered them and then paid someone more money to ship them to me internationally, but they don’t work. What kind of horse shit is that?

7- Tea, anyone? Both HP laptops that I have had produced SO much heat that they are barely eligible for lap top use after 15 minutes. I can actually boil water on my dv2000. I kid you not, the sucker heats up, and hello to Hewlett Packard, maybe that’s causing all the hardware problems.

8- Junk Software. I understand that HP writes a lot of software, and somehow they feel the need to wrap up all their advertising junk in them when we buy new laptops from them. I typically spend a day cleaning out a new laptop, or cleaning out a laptop that I have just recovered from workable recovery discs, if I can ever find them.

9- HP Driver Updates. Okay, this is rather shady. Only with HP have I seen this. HP update provides one driver update for a certain device on the notebook, and it’s different from the one provided by the manufacturer of that particular hardware device AND/OR different from the driver provided by Microsoft/Windows Update. Who is right? We’ll never know, because it’s not like there’s one defect. Upgrade one driver and you run the risk of another malfunction, as we have seen with the mystery of the disappearing wireless broadcom card in the dv series notebooks.

10- Average Life. In my experience, the average life on an HP notebook is as much as its warrantly, if you have access to it. No access, no warranty, and you could run real short. Using support for one of my HPs and not for the other, for me the average life so far has been about 1.25 years per laptop. That’s pretty low. However, if I can somehow get my dv2120 to the US and back with a new mother board and replaced hardware, the life may go up, although it won’t be a very pleasant or happy life.

So, that’s all for now. You may wonder now as to why I’m displaying HP ads on my site, because naturally, adsense may pick up on this anti Hewlett Packard content. Well, figure that shit out for yourself. All in all, HP is a bad investment for any hardcore user. Support, quality, durability, ease of use are all BAD. I will not be recommending HP to anyone anymore.