Just bought HP Laptop for $400 during Black Friday - is it good enough for all purpose use?

[wakkwakka]

Hello everyone,

I just bought my first laptop. It's an HP Laptop sold for $400 during Black Friday. Here are the specs:

HP 15.6" Laptop - Intel Pentium N3540/750GB HDD/8GB RAM/Windows 8.1

I'm looking for a basic, all-purpose laptop that will be able to run multiple websites, the odd Java program, word processing, and movie watching. Is this laptop good enough for this purpose? Is HP a decent brand? I bought the laptop to take advantage of the price ($200 off), but I'd be willing to spend up to $500 for a basic all-purpose laptop.

Any insight would be much appreciated! Thanks

 

[jazzy663]

There are people who will tell you HP is a horrible brand and that they overheat a lot, but I've been using HP computers for about 15 years, and I can say with some confidence that they're a good brand.

I have to say, I really think you should have posted this question before making your purchase, but I guess it being a black Friday deal you really didn't have much of a choice.

Your new laptop is pretty much identical to the one my mother just bought - It's good for everything you listed, except I'm not sure about Java programming as my knowledge of programming is very limited. So, congratulations.

 

[wakkwakka]

Thanks for the quick reply! Trust me, I absolutely hate buying something if I'm not sure about it. But in this case, I figured it'd make more sense to take advantage of the deal, then ask around and potentially return it. And yes, I did just come across a youtube video with some guy exclaiming how crappy HP laptops are. So hard to figure out whose opinion is legitimate. Glad to hear you've had a good experience with HP. I'm assuming you use HP laptops, and not just desktops?

 

[jazzy663]

Thanks for the quick reply! Trust me, I absolutely hate buying something if I'm not sure about it. But in this case, I figured it'd make more sense to take advantage of the deal, then ask around and potentially return it. And yes, I did just come across a youtube video with some guy exclaiming how crappy HP laptops are. So hard to figure out whose opinion is legitimate. Glad to hear you've had a good experience with HP. I'm assuming you use HP laptops, and not just desktops?

My entire family uses HP. My parents' old HP desktop from the early 2000s lasted me well into 2008, until I bought a PC (laptop) of my own. I dismantled it about a year ago. Still ran fine, but my entirely family had new PCs and with Windows XP no longer being supported I didn't see the merit in keeping it. I've also been through two HP laptops, one that I gave to my mother in 2011. That one died literally just a few days ago, video adapter finally died (hence why she bought a new one). And I still have one that I bought in 2011 (Pavilion g6-1d60us) that is purring nicely after I slapped an SSD into it (hard drive was dying, probably due to me being dumb and letting it overheat).

So yeah, I've had pretty good experience with HP. You'll find arguments for both sides in terms of the quality of their products, but speaking completely from experience, HP has been pretty good to me.

 

[jaguarskx]

The laptop will do what you want it to do. It is a decent, but not great deal since I have seen Black Friday deals for $300 - $400 that is more powerful than your HP. Of course, those deals are now dead.

The Intel Pentium N3540 CPU is a low power Atom CPU which is less powerful than a Core i3/i5/i7 CPU found in more traditional laptops. However, it can potentially offer better battery life because of the low power consumption. Of course if it is saddled with a low capacity battery, then... Basically, the less powerful a laptop is the more likely you will want to replace it sooner rather than later.

If I see a better Cyber Monday deal, then I will post a reply.

 

[wakkwakka]

Thank you very much! How can I tell how powerful the battery is?

 

[jaguarskx]

Thank you very much! How can I tell how powerful the battery is?

The battery should have a sticker that states the battery capacity in "WHr" (watt hour). The higher the capacity the longer it will last, but there is no way to determine how long the battery will last you under "typical usage" circumstances with out running any sort of test.