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HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

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Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#11
post #2

HP is not jumping to my mind at all when I am thinking about user friendly companies. Are they changing their image?

Companies like HP and Lenovo offer onsite repair services for their business models. This forces them to make the parts easily accessible and replaceable.

I think the issue is that their image (same with Lenovo) is heavily tainted by their cheapo consumer stuff.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#12
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

How about upgrading your components to extend the life of your hardware? Or reducing the cost of recycling.

Laptops (and electronic devices) are generally an ecological disaster.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#13
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

It may not be you who repairs it. It may be a local shop. That its repairable is friendly to users.

One of the problems I have with my iphone is its getting old and the battery is rubbish and its slowing down. And I can do nothing about it except splash out on a new iphone.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#14
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

[deleted]

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#15
post #8
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

But it's not just repairing, it's being able to upgrade. I have a 6 year-old Lenovo and it's still performing amazingly. Since buying it I have upgraded the HDD twice (to an SSD and then to a slightly larger and faster SSD), upgraded the RAM once and even upgraded the screen (to a higher resolution IPS display that was backwards compatible). If I had bought an un-upgradable laptop I'd probably already have had to buy…

Upgradeability, in most cases, is just a cost-saving feature.

In some industrial settings, upgradability can be crucial indeed. For example, where cutting-edge performance is needed you might want to be able to upgrade the CPU of your workstation when a new version is released but this is hardly the case for Laptops except for some extreme cases like laptops used at the ISS.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#16
This kind of repairability has been a general feature of "enterprise" friendly laptops like ThinkPads and Elitebooks for a while.

I've had an Elitebook 840 for 4 years now, great laptop, very solid, still working well. The repairability is handy for me in two ways.

1) If I want to upgrade/replace the storage I can do that easily, so I was able to upgrade to a 512GB SSD without any problems.

2) As the laptop gets older and the battery inevitably starts to wear down, I can just buy a replacement battery.

All this means a much longer lifespan for my laptop, which is good for me as I like it as an overall device.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#17
post #3
post #2

HP is not jumping to my mind at all when I am thinking about user friendly companies. Are they changing their image?

HP's EliteBooks and ZBooks (and Z-series workstations) have always been incredibly solid computers that are trivial to repair and and upgrade. However for some unfathomable reason HP has always insisted on primarily marketing its low end consumer line of laptops, which tend to be complete dog shit.

I'd say that's common though. A lot of pc makers have widely different quality standards for their consumer and business lines.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#18

I'm glad companies are finally coming back to this. Looks very similar to my Inspiron I bought a few years ago. Once you open up the back plate everything is laid nicely in front of you ready to service. I changed my RAM/HDD/Wifi NIC in a matter of minutes. In case you're wondering the model is Dell Inspiron 15-7537 from 2013.

I'm glad companies are finally coming back to this.

HP has pretty much always had this in their 'enterprise' line of laptops.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#19
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

I love Repairability:

-Then the device stays 100% under my control (don't have to wipe it before sending it to technician etc.)

-I know I am repairing it. (You won't get it back with the notice it is fixed, but then nothing changed)

-Tinkering is fun

-Faster to get it repaired if you can get the part.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#20
post #8
post #5

I really dislike labeling repairability as user-friendliness. I never ever bought a device with intentions of repairing it, I always hope that I will never have to repair it and just use it. Yes, it is nice to be able to repair it but if it fails, next time I'm buying a laptop I will avoid it and stick with the brand that did not fail and sits in my drawer because it's too slow by modern standards. Repairability is p…

But it's not just repairing, it's being able to upgrade. I have a 6 year-old Lenovo and it's still performing amazingly. Since buying it I have upgraded the HDD twice (to an SSD and then to a slightly larger and faster SSD), upgraded the RAM once and even upgraded the screen (to a higher resolution IPS display that was backwards compatible). If I had bought an un-upgradable laptop I'd probably already have had to buy…

Yup. It's also surprisingly hard to find a decent new laptop these days.

About a week ago I started at a new company, and was asked to find a laptop that I wanted. The cheapest one with a 1TB SSD was ~$2000, and the cheapest one that would be decent out of the box was a $1300 Dell.

Instead I ended up getting a $600 gaming laptoo with a decent CPU, and installed the RAM and SSD myself for $450, ending up with a far better laptop that was still hundreds cheaper than that Dell.

Try doing that with a Mac.

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