Why hp laptops have got so bad reputation??

[GlennSprigg]

I received 15 such Laptops at a repair shop interstate over a short period of time, that were 'written off'. In general, they could be brought back to life by removal & reflowing of the video chip.

Thanks for churning out 15 still faulty laptops which soon died again 

  I never had ONE complaint/return
Obviously you saw my old post/messages... but not reading what I wrote! 
And my comment here was talking about the HP problem, not my repairs, though not ONE 'died' again! 
When you know all the facts, mate, then you can return to your illinformed high-horse. 

[wraper]

When you know all the facts, mate, then you can return to your illinformed high-horse. 

What I know for sure, it's not possible to repair (not "revive") those by reflowing/reballing as the chip itself is faulty. Nvidia produced a lot of crap with failing bumps between die and substrate from 2006 till the end of 2008. And in HP it was even more prominent than in general due to crappy cooling. If it lasts more than 6 months after reball, it's a case of big luck.

[GlennSprigg]

Well I'm not going to question your statement about the NVIDIA chips 'themselves' failing.
Only because I never saw that as a problem in the field, and I'm talking from real experiences.
Maybe... (I don't know?), HP were trying to 'Pass The Buck' onto NVIDIA ?? as shit was hitting the fan.
ALL I know is what I found, and had ZERO complaints from anyone, over a year later!
Hope you have a nice day, and you are safe in these troubled times... 

P.S.  Re Cooling. M biggest 'education' to customers is where they place their Laptops. So many of them lay their laptops on top of the bed, and the intake airflow is blocked underneath! and these days they run so hot.  Mind you, ANY laptop I've ever had to open, always has the heatsinks cleaned and re-compounded.

[wraper]

I know from my experience and from experience of other people + Nvidia statement + product warranty extensions from laptop manufacturers + research papers. In most cases you could simply heat the chip without melting solder and it would work again for some time. Many technicians used this as method of fault diagnostics.

[Avacee]

I put an SSD in my mum's HP laptop and it now takes about 5 minutes to boot - runs great once booted into the OS.

It's a _few_ years out of warranty but contacted HP anyway and to paraphrase the information provided:- HP said the BIOS had detected a non-standard HP part so pauses during boot up to piss me off and would I like to buy a brand new laptop or an HP-approved SSD for about twice the price. Guess my answer :p

So when her laptop does die I won't be replacing it with an HP as any company who thinks gimping the BIOS is acceptable will never get a penny from me again.

[wraper]

I put an SSD in my mum's HP laptop and it now takes about 5 minutes to boot - runs great once booted into the OS.

It's a _few_ years out of warranty but contacted HP anyway and to paraphrase the information provided:- HP said the BIOS had detected a non-standard HP part so pauses during boot up to piss me off and would I like to buy a brand new laptop or an HP-approved SSD for about twice the price. Guess my answer :p

So when her laptop does die I won't be replacing it with an HP as any company who thinks gimping the BIOS is acceptable will never get a penny from me again.

I've seen this only with wifi cards on HP. IMHO support told you some BS since in cases of unsupported hardware they simply don't continue to boot at all and show message about unsupported HW. And also because if laptop came with HDD, it should have been just some off the shelve model, without special HP firmware.
BTW in what way it is slow to boot? Does it wait 5 min before windows starts booting or simply windows booting process is very slow?

[SiliconWizard]

One thing to note - failing bumps directly on the dies can't be usually repaired, or only for a very temporary fix after "reflowing" if you're lucky.

Another point is that any failed contact, if on some critical pads such as power supplies, can destroy the IC permanently (some ICs can be destroyed by not powering them with all power rails, in the proper sequence!) So what can be a soldering issue at first can also yield to destruction in some cases.

[Benta]

I can't complain about my +10 years old 6910p, never had a single hardware issue and I'm still using it daily. Had lots of M$ issues, but that's beside the point.
OK, the 6910p was the high-end business model back then, which probably makes a difference.

[schmitt trigger]

The problem with HP, is somewhat similar to General Motors.
They attempted to have a "car for every purse and purpose".

Which meant that although it did produce some good vehicles, there were others which to put it mildly, were unmitigated bovine feces. I personally suffered thru one of their early 1980s turds.
To compound the issue, GM many times ignored any problems because "We are GM. We can get away with it".
For me, this was the last time I bought a GM vehicle.

Everyone knows how this has ended. A company in severe decline.

[Wilksey]

I've never had a failing screen backlight, but since my original post in 2016 the Probook 450 is still going strong, not had to replace anything in it, it doesn't get "heavy" use, but it gets used a fair bit.

Personally I have always used Dell for my main machine, be it desktop or laptop, I have a Dell XPS 17 which is circa 2011 which is still going, had to fix the screen hinge, a common fault with this laptop apparently, but not replaced any components inside of it, in fact, it's still running the original install of Windows 7, that has a 2nd gen Intel i7 NVIDIA GT555m chipset, and I also have a Dell G7 with a 9th gen i7 and a NVIDIA RTX2070 chipset, had it about 4-5 months, and it's running amazing at the moment, hopefully with its 64GB RAM it'll last till the next decade and be able to run everything I throw at it like the XPS.

I've had all sorts in the past, Acer, HP, Samsung, Toshiba, and Dell, apart from the Dell's (even got an old Inspiron running XP Media Center, new HDD, new batt and new fan costing a whopping £30 all in (got HDD on auction on ebay, came wrapped and disk tested OK) and the Toshiba (i5, stock Intel graphics) they have all failed in some way or another.

I replace a fair amount of screens, but that is due to people managing to sit on them or shut them down on something, missing keys from keyboards, not much else "users' fault repairs".

I only go by my own experiences so other peoples experiences might vary.
Maybe it's because HP laptops are the ones that are the cheapest and mostly available everywhere (or they are here in the UK) that people just go and buy cheap and then they fail, a £300 HP isn't going to be built as well as a same spec £600 Dell or Acer, you pay your money you take your choice.
My old XPS was £1300, my new G7 was £1600, the old Inspiron was £800 all 17" screens but the Inspiron wasn't a "gaming" machine, where as the G7 and XPS were sold as such, although the GT555m will play games like GTA V on low settings left the game scene behind a few years ago now, it'll run all my old titles like Unreal Tournament, which I prefer to play than some "modern" titles.

[n5al]

My last two laptop purchases have been HP Pavilion laptop computers, in 2018 and 2020.  I purchased them new, for around $900 US each.  While their technical specs look pretty decent, the computers didn't survive very long.  Both of mine began to fail around the 20 month mark.

My 2018 Pavilion suffered a broken cable that connects the motherboard to LCD screen, as well as a failing SSD drive.  The cable failure was a surprise, since I didn't open and close the laptop that often.

My 2020 Pavilion has a dying battery and the left-click / right-click buttons, which are integrated into the touchpad, no longer operate.  For some reason there is a slight warping of the plastic case in the vicinity of the touchpad.  I almost never used the touchpad, anyway.  I prefer an external mouse.

P.S.  The best laptop that I ever purchased was a 2006 Sony Vaio.  It was well-built and lasted for years, but it was also several hundred dollars more expensive than the HP's that I bought.  It was more like a business laptop than a consumer one.

My least favorite laptop was a 2010 Toshiba Satellite.  The Toshiba also lasted for years, but its first generation i7 processor consumed a lot of power and it generated enough heat to become uncomfortable to use in your lap.  The Toshiba power supply module also generated a lot of RFI, and I had to place a few ferrite cores on its power cord in order to use my HF and VHF ham radios.  Also, its cooling system allowed a lot of dust to accumulate inside the laptop.  I had to periodically disassemble the laptop to clean out the dust.

[rsjsouza]

Your warped touchpad is probably the battery swelling - I had this with a 1-1/2 year old Dell and now I have a one year old Lenovo chromebook that seems to be going through that as well. POS modern batteries and the computer manufacturers cutting costs everywhere.

[eti]

my HP probook 6460b is going strong after 4 years of heavy usage and carrying it in a backpack everyday... so i don't know what you talking about i do even have a cheapo HP 250 G4 and after 1 year of usage not a single problem..

I bought a used one of these about 4 years ago for £45, it's my daily laptop and rock solid.

[n5al]

Your warped touchpad is probably the battery swelling - I had this with a 1-1/2 year old Dell and now I have a one year old Lenovo chromebook that seems to be going through that as well. POS modern batteries and the computer manufacturers cutting costs everywhere.

Thanks for the tip!  A swollen battery was the problem.  I bought a new HP battery while visiting in the U.S., last December.  It was a slight pain to open the laptop case, but it only took a few minutes to complete the entire battery replacement task.  Now, all is well with this laptop!

[Vtile]

.... except maybe they last so long that they are useless with modern OS and software because they are too slow.

Which does exactly the same as the older OS and software.

[SilverSolder]

I've never had a failing screen backlight, but since my original post in 2016 the Probook 450 is still going strong, not had to replace anything in it, it doesn't get "heavy" use, but it gets used a fair bit.

Personally I have always used Dell for my main machine, be it desktop or laptop, I have a Dell XPS 17 which is circa 2011 which is still going, had to fix the screen hinge, a common fault with this laptop apparently, but not replaced any components inside of it, in fact, it's still running the original install of Windows 7, that has a 2nd gen Intel i7 NVIDIA GT555m chipset, and I also have a Dell G7 with a 9th gen i7 and a NVIDIA RTX2070 chipset, had it about 4-5 months, and it's running amazing at the moment, hopefully with its 64GB RAM it'll last till the next decade and be able to run everything I throw at it like the XPS.

I've had all sorts in the past, Acer, HP, Samsung, Toshiba, and Dell, apart from the Dell's (even got an old Inspiron running XP Media Center, new HDD, new batt and new fan costing a whopping £30 all in (got HDD on auction on ebay, came wrapped and disk tested OK) and the Toshiba (i5, stock Intel graphics) they have all failed in some way or another.

I replace a fair amount of screens, but that is due to people managing to sit on them or shut them down on something, missing keys from keyboards, not much else "users' fault repairs".

I only go by my own experiences so other peoples experiences might vary.
Maybe it's because HP laptops are the ones that are the cheapest and mostly available everywhere (or they are here in the UK) that people just go and buy cheap and then they fail, a £300 HP isn't going to be built as well as a same spec £600 Dell or Acer, you pay your money you take your choice.
My old XPS was £1300, my new G7 was £1600, the old Inspiron was £800 all 17" screens but the Inspiron wasn't a "gaming" machine, where as the G7 and XPS were sold as such, although the GT555m will play games like GTA V on low settings left the game scene behind a few years ago now, it'll run all my old titles like Unreal Tournament, which I prefer to play than some "modern" titles.

+1 for Dell, if you pick the right models (the ones used by large corporates i.e. Latitude and Precision models) they are cheap(ish) to source used, generally reliable, good performance, and if they do develop problems, there are plenty of cheap parts available.

[tom66]

My sister had a HP laptop that went through 28 chargers.

28.  The exact number is known, because they sent an email every time a warranty repair was authorised.   They'd typically last a week, maybe two weeks, before failing in a strange manner.  I never got to disassemble any of the old ones, but it wasn't a mechanical failure.  The LED on the charger would simply not illuminate any more, and it was done.

She became familiar with the warranty guys on the phone and the guy who came to pick up the laptop every time.  Yes - they'd pick the whole laptop and charger up, only to return it "3-5 business days later" with a replacement charger.  No, they were just going to continue this indefinitely, it wasn't grounds for an exchange for an alternative model**.

Sometime around charger 26-27 the reliability increased though the hinges on the laptop failed just past year two, so at that point the laptop was pretty close to scrap.  The hinges were metal held into the plastic case with some kind of webbing which just gives way after enough cycles. 

She lived with it for another year or two with dodgy hinges (it never closed right) and then the chipset died.  Integrated graphics, backlight would turn on but all she'd see was vertical lines (on either the monitor or internal LCD).  So it went in the scrap heap.

I would never get a hp laptop after that experience.

**Of course it was, but we didn't think to check the consumer rights at the time.  After the second repair we were entitled to a refund or exchange, though this was a statutory right, rather than enabled by hp's warranty, so we would have needed to specifically invoke it.

[SilverSolder]

My sister had a HP laptop that went through 28 chargers.

28.  The exact number is known, because they sent an email every time a warranty repair was authorised.   They'd typically last a week, maybe two weeks, before failing in a strange manner.  I never got to disassemble any of the old ones, but it wasn't a mechanical failure.  The LED on the charger would simply not illuminate any more, and it was done.

She became familiar with the warranty guys on the phone and the guy who came to pick up the laptop every time.  Yes - they'd pick the whole laptop and charger up, only to return it "3-5 business days later" with a replacement charger.  No, they were just going to continue this indefinitely, it wasn't grounds for an exchange for an alternative model**.

Sometime around charger 26-27 the reliability increased though the hinges on the laptop failed just past year two, so at that point the laptop was pretty close to scrap.  The hinges were metal held into the plastic case with some kind of webbing which just gives way after enough cycles. 

She lived with it for another year or two with dodgy hinges (it never closed right) and then the chipset died.  Integrated graphics, backlight would turn on but all she'd see was vertical lines (on either the monitor or internal LCD).  So it went in the scrap heap.

I would never get a hp laptop after that experience.

**Of course it was, but we didn't think to check the consumer rights at the time.  After the second repair we were entitled to a refund or exchange, though this was a statutory right, rather than enabled by hp's warranty, so we would have needed to specifically invoke it.

    

[MegaVolt]

What I don't like in HP.
1. He independently updates the BIOS. Not asking. Where and how he downloads it either is not very clear. At the same time without checking the battery charge. It is very fun when on a business trip you will lose the laptop because it was poorly updated.

2. If the battery died you cannot work from the power source: (You should look for a replacement of the battery.