nezavisni
(Machine, USA)
The HP machine I bought in 2007, the last ones with XP being too late to get so it came with the Vista. Named it Nezavisni when I first installed XP (to get rid of HP's crapware) and then Ubuntu (to get rid of Microsoft's shitty connections). Nezavisni means independent, but it had to be a pun to: "ne za vistu" - not for vista.
It was a solid machine for the time. Good and large (17 inch), albeit too glossy, screen. Good keyboard with full set of keys. The funny condenser sensors, startrek style wave-over, to replace the Fn+F2 style of buttons (at least they displayed some nice lightshow while booting).
Suffered from two major flaws: 1) HP stiffed me for 100$ rebate, just pretending I didn't send the complete set of documents (which I did); 2) after about four years the video chip unsoldered partially, so it was a matter of luck whether it will boot. The infamous bug plagued thousands of their laptops; it could be solved by heating up and resoldering the chip, and inserting a one cent coin between the chip and the cooler bar - the extra surface would conduct the heat much better and that was enough to prevent future unsoldering.
On top of that, the Aitchpee shoved a load of its junkware, including some trial version of once Norton antivirus, which has by now turned into unfettered racket by Symantec: „your computer is unprotected! you are in danger! to fix that, click here...“.
Sold it to Toza for 80€ eventually, when he checked that it's the kind of malfunction that he knows how to fix. Needed that for his daughter.
We previously bought Cvrle (HP CVR-920 ink spitter) printer, which worked for some six years (didn't see much use, though) and then decided to print self-test until it runs out of paper. Bought a pack of CD's with HP's brand in Gloc*, all of them were unusable. Eventually, Nina was left with a HP office printer (in lieu of severance package) which she didn't use. When she finally unpacked it, few years later, the freshly unwrapped ink caused a „your ink has expired“ error message.
For all those things, whenever anyone asks for advice on purchase of any hardware, my advice is to stay away from HP. The proverb I invented says „From HP not even a pencil sharpener!“.
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* The Gloc (Glotz, aka Big Lots) may be a shop of low reputation and suspect suppliers, but then at the same time and place we bought an original IBM's keyboard, equally not believing it was the genuine article, for 5$. Still want to kick myself in the head for not buying at least all five they had, the best keyboard I ever tried.
Mentions: 29-III-2007., 10-IV-2007., 27-IV-2007., 04-VI-2007., 19-VII-2007., 29-VII-2007., 06-VIII-2007., 07-VIII-2007., 17-VIII-2007., To Orlando, 19-IX-2007., 15-X-2007., 04-XI-2007., 09-XI-2007., 14-VIII-2008., 23-II-2009., 02-V-2009., 27-VI-2009., 16-VII-2009., 14-III-2010., 28-III-2010., 11-VII-2010., 14-VII-2010., 15-VII-2010., 16-VIII-2010., 10-V-2011., 22-V-2011., 17-X-2011., 11-I-2012., Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Svetozar Sirilov (Toza), in serbian
11-XII-2019 - 11-VI-2026