I served as President of the Huntsville PC Users Group from 2004 thru 2007. I have served as president of several hobby organizations. The HPCUG was the least demanding of all due to the fact that they have a very strong core of responsible hard working members. Click here to access the HPCUG WebPages.
My home computer system consist of a home made AMD based desk top PC running XP pro, one HP Pavilion notebook (deadlined right now) running ME and an Acer Laptop running Vista. All are networked using a Netgear WGR614 wireless Router.
The Acer is used primarily for PowerPoint presentations and to run my ham radio station. I am in the market for a 2 GHz relative cheap new tower with at least two good sound cards. I will probably use XPpro because it is not quiet so Ram intensive and runs most all of my ham radio software much better than does Vista. I basically use the computer sound cards for DSP processing.
The HP Pavilion Lap Top was the last purchase that I will make from Office Depot (unless that is the only source) because they stiffed me on the $100 rebate that I was promised. It was purchased primarily to run PowerPoint slides for beekeeping related classes that I teach. At purchase, it had 2 problems: 1- The display would change brightness randomly. 2 - The battery lasted 4 months after which it would charge to about 10% full charge and would run about 8 minutes to a charge. Power cycling (charge - full discharge) did not help.
I replaced it with a battery purchased from batteries.com. That was a very good battery.
I did not return the laptop to HP immediately because I needed it for presentations and it did work when plugged into AC and the PowerPoint projected image did not blink like the main screen did.
When it failed in mid presentation, I returned it to HP for repair. They "Fixed" the blinking screen and did a good job. They replaced my "batteries.com" still a very good battery with another HP and it lasted 3 months. Now it will charge to 7% and no further.
The second time I used it after repair, in a class, it failed again. I returned it to HP and they returned it "under warranty" with a note stating that they could not "fix" it. They suggested that it might be a bad trace on the mother board or an intermittent solder joint but made no effort to find it or compensate me for a bad unit still under warranty. It did however work pretty well for another year.
MY advice -- "don't buy an HP computer" But if you must, don't buy from Circuit City!! For that matter I only buy from Circuit City if I can find the item no place else. Incidentally, I purchased the Acer laptop from them because the HP quit the day that I had a presentation scheduled and CC was the only place I could get a suitable replacement the same day. It is now approaching 3 years old (as of 2009) and has performed quiet well.
I recently paid full price (not from Circuit City) for a software package that Circuit City had a $30 rebate on. I knew full well that I would never see the rebate so why bother with the aggravation.
It seems to me that the HP quality went south somewhat in sync with their merging with Compaq.
More later!
Last updated 3/2/09 brf