In other news: Hewlett Packard is having a mega sale.

Looking for a new desktop PC?  Now's your chance...   From the prices on HP's website, you would think they are having, "a going out of business sale."

I just priced out an 8 core amd, with 8 gigs of ram, and a 1 terabyte 7200 rpm hd, and the 2 gig hd radeon card...   $619...

WOW....

and that was, "off the shelf," no customizing..   The machine you can customize for lets call it, "$1,000." 

Seriously..   Now's the time to shop all the big PC makers..  hp, dell, lenevo..   These companies are like, "loosing to smartphone/tablet war," in the worst kind of way.

Many of the usual companies no longer sell laptops, they only sell sales kiosks.  Just nuke the bloatware and start from scratch.

Yeah, but he's pretty much right. I'm planning on building a DAW and wouldn't want to trust much of the parts/software HP is offering on this.....when I can get better parts for about the same cost.

Most company's computers you buy come w/ all kinds of extraneous crap on them - well, their hard drives anyway.

Never have had a problem w/ HP's hardware.  And the other stuff can be taken off the hd.  My favorite was an old SONY I had.  I put a copy of XP on it (like HP, their disk rewrites the entire HD) but I had to dig through the SONY disk to find the fan drivers.  Otherwise it sounded like a plane taking off the fan spun so fast.

BTW, the SONY still works tho it has been through 3 hd's.
@

57Gregy


Four of the 5 computers I've owned have been HPs. Never had any of the problems Mosh described.

Depends on your use for them.
 
But for music, or more serious work, I would not recommend a "named" computer at all. But if all it is, has the kids playing around and all you are doing is email ... no worries.
 
It's software is the issue ... their scanner software, for example, has 4 parts, and they insist on the checking/ringing their servers daily ... and if you unmark that option (available in the customer setup!), the complete software will fail when you try to use it ... which tells you that each and everytime you use the scanner, HP is being told about it.
 
Now, I don't know about you, but if the FBI wants a list of how many times I go pee, or poo, I will gladly provide that, but I do not believe that HP, or anyone else, has the right to be checking on you, regardless, and that software peeking underneath WITHOUT you knowing needs to be illegal!
 
Ex: ... so I visit Musicians Friend and such once in a while ... gotta drool over that foldout of the month bass! ... and now when you look at any website I visit at work? ... the same bass information and keyboards I visited are shown as an option for me to click ... it even shows ALL the basses that I checked and visited! That maybe really good advertising for Google or whoever, but in the end, it is a serious abuse of your own personality, and rights.
 
While I do not think that the Internet is safe, no more or less than the local police or gang, anyway, in the end, the invasion of privacy is not cool, and it is just a matter of time, before, hopefully, something gets done about it.
 
If you EVER, want to check these things out ... get a Packet Sniffer ... and take a look at those logs ... the worst is not even the spammers and porn ... there is a reason why I do not have HP and Apple products in my house ... they are the two most invasive companies when it comes to privacy ... how far do you want to get ... walk around naked on the street? It's really all that's left!
 
These people need to get nailed!

Moshkiae


Ex: ... so I visit Musicians Friend and such once in a while ... gotta drool over that foldout of the month bass! ... and now when you look at any website I visit at work? ... the same bass information and keyboards I visited are shown as an option for me to click ... it even shows ALL the basses that I checked and visited! That maybe really good advertising for Google or whoever, but in the end, it is a serious abuse of your own personality, and rights. 
 

Hmm...  Maybe that explains all of the farming and fleecing equipment ads I see?

Starise


 Those are really good prices. If you didn't want the bloatware simply wipe and reload( I mean the computer).

The bloatware is dependent on the features on the computer ... and they need to contact HP for updates, for drivers and for toilet paper, and for a new pillow, and for .... you get the idea ... and ... in the example wiht their Scanner software, it was outright obvious on the Sniffer that they were simply spamming the connection, and on top of it were telling themselves what I named the file and exactly what the dimentions and such were and likely a copy of it for the ... who knows?
 
If I know there is no proprietary hardware in there, I probably would have no issues, as I would get home wipe it and install my own ... with one problem ... their computers are setup so that the Windows is on the HD and on the computer of theirs, it told me to make a copy of it, and when I did, it would fail.
 
But it really got me when they refused to support one of their laser printers I bought at Office Max, that they did not have drivers for, and then told me that the printer was for businesses and not home use, and Office Max got so mad that they offered to take the printer back ... and I gladly did so! Ohhh and I returned the computer the following day ... they wanted to charge me a fee for having support help me setup the "business printer" ... and I'm too cheap with archholinesses that think they can cheat and rob the world and it's our fault that it happens!
 
Office Max gave me a $50 dollar gift card to use ... btw ... because of that situation and the manager was not happy and said that it would hurt their sales if it got around that ... Office Max does not serve "residential" customers!
 
I probably would have dropped all HP sales over night and force them to sign a release that they will support any stuff that the store sold for a designated period of time! Or HP will replace the product free of charge!
 
You can not allow these "corporate" jerks to run the public roughshod ... and YOU pay for it! They need to go down ... and the faster the better! I have no issues with them making money, but I do when they are stealing!