HP 15.6" A8 Quad-Core Win 7 Pro Laptop Price: $249.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days. (Tuesday, Jun 09 to Friday, Jun 12) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
any thoughts on amd? i was in the market recently for an inexpensive laptop and the guy at the computer store told me that AMD is garbage and to at least get an i3. was that good advice?
Not really unless your a more then a moderate gamer. You are going to see more efficiency with Intel, more work per clock cycle and a 20-40% higher price.
You do get what you pay for, but taking performance vs price AMD isn’t bad.
AMD’s low TDP APU’s are tough to beat for value/performance. As for the rest he is probably right-though if the price and specs are similar, I’d take a quad core anything over a hyperthreaded dual core.
The A8-6410 is similar in performance to the 3rd generation Ivy Bridge I3-3227U, with slightly better graphics performance. The AMD is more power efficient than this chip, but does not have the performance to power ratio of the new Intel I3s. That being said today’s offering is an OK deal. I’m not a fan of 1366x766 resolution, but for $250 you won’t find many 1920x1080 resolutions around. If you spent around $85 (need to wait for a sale at Newegg) you could pick-up a 240GB SSD and really enhance performance (for a future upgrade). As far as AMD vs Intel it’s all about user preference. You need to compare benchmarks regarding the processor. The only processor line that I absolutely hate from AMD is their low power e-series, other than that they make decent stuff and have their own niche. I use both Intel and AMD in various computers, both are good innovative manufacturers.
To be fair, in my experience windows8 works a lot better than 7. I have it setup so it looks exactly like 7 (no tiles). It boots far faster, and is a lot more responsive (on the same computer)… Just my 2 cents, I’m not a gamer BTW…
I used to hate windows 8 also. I do miss that windows 8 is lacking mediacenter , but that’s about it. I think it’s ridiculous that they changed the functionality of the start on the desktop side (we see that returning in windows 10), but fortunately that can be remedied with 3rd party programs such as classic shell. The bottom line is that windows 8 has better resource utilization than windows 7 does- this is what finally convinced me to stick with it. http://www.askvg.com/comparison-between-windows-7-and-windows-8-memory-management-system/
I still have my HP laptop I bought in 2009. It’s lasted so long because it’s so easy to take apart and replace stuff. Would this one be just as repairable?
I bought the HP Pavilion g6t-2000 15.6" dual-core i3 from Woot last year and I love it. I’m thinking about getting this for my Mom–is it comparable to the computer I bought? There’s not much info on the web for this model, other than it looks like it sells at Costco (and didn’t get very good reviews on that site).
I realize it’s not the best model in the world, but for her Skype calls, Facebook posts, and letter-writing it doesn’t need to be. I just want something fairly reliable with a web camera.