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HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

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Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#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.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#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 probably useful for enterprises but enterprises are not users despite that sometimes they can be described as such(they are customers).

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#6
post #2

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

I'm curious what their latest behaviour is after they were caught installing spyware on their PCs. That is a bigger reason to not buy a brand than anything else in my mind, unless I only care about the hardware because I'm going to wipe it and install Ubuntu.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#7
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.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#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 a new one (no matter how well it is built).

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#9
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.

Re: HP EliteBook: A friend to the User

#10
post #6
post #2

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

I'm curious what their latest behaviour is after they were caught installing spyware on their PCs. That is a bigger reason to not buy a brand than anything else in my mind, unless I only care about the hardware because I'm going to wipe it and install Ubuntu.

Yes, but just like with Lenovo, you need to differentiate between their consumer and their business line. Did they install the spyware on business computers as well? With Lenovo the case was only with non-Thinkpads.
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