11th Gen processor and a SATA drive. Ouch
Does your “ouch” mean this one is no good?
I’m not really a laptop person so I don’t really know what he’s on about. The ram is decent, 11th gen processors, for desktops at least, aren’t bad but there wasn’t really a performance boost over 10th gen. The only real benefit that I know of from 11th gen over 10th gen is that 11th supports thunderbolt 4. I guarantee this laptop doesn’t have a thunderbolt 4 port though. As for the sata I have no idea what he’s on about. Hard drives are alright but definitely not as fast as a solid state drive. Noticeably so. A ssd uses sata though. Maybe he means sata is bad because is doesn’t support a m.2 but m.2’s are overrated if that’s what he’s talking about. Right now m.2s are just a little more expensive than a ssd and are significantly faster at read and write speeds than a ssd but the average user won’t take advantage of this or notice the increased speed over a ssd.
That all said, the laptops on woot all seem to be priced about the same as everywhere else so personally I would just look for a laptop you actually want renewed/refurbished or used rather than hoping for a good deal here.
His post really should be HDD. It’s got a spinning hard drive vs a SSD. It’s a really good computer with such a bad flaw that the average user is going to think it’s a dud compared to other cheaper/older laptops with worse specs because of it. I have 6 year old computers with 8 gigs of ram and 5th gen i3 prcessors that will run circles around this machine because they have SSDs A Windows update that would take the inferior computer 2 minutes will probably take 30 or 40 minutes. Start up on the inferior computer will take 10 seconds verses 90 seconds with this configuration. Large office files that will open instantaneously on the cheaper computer will take 5 or 6 seconds on this one. That being said, if you know what your doing for 50 bucks and an hour of your time you could have a really good computer by swapping out the HDD with a SSD.
Not just any spinning hard drive. The slowest one available.
THESE WILL BE SLOW A. F. unless you replace the hard drive. There’s another thread on the hard drives. I’m guessing it’s the same or similar model. HP 17" Laptop (Intel i5-1135G7, 12GB RAM, 1TB) - #2 by sflesch
TL;DR unless you want to upgrade the hard drive for another $100 and feel comfortable doing so AND can worth around a slightly tricky Windows reinstall, this is not for you.
I bought this PC on Woot about a month ago when it was offered for $439 plus $6 S&H and about $25 sales tax. I then added a 500GB M.2 Samsung 980 SSD for about $65 since, as reflected in earlier reviews, the computer’s operation is very slow with the HDD. This PC has an internal port to accept an M.2 NVMe SSD and the computer does come with a screw to secure the SSD. I know the mention of the screw seems irrelevant but there is a lot of discussion of this online and I purchased with some effort the required tiny metric screw. It turns out it wasn’t needed. Be sure to have a set of small Philips screwdrivers and a spudger to open the case without damage.
The Samsung Data Migration software let me clone the 1TB HDD to the 500 GB SSD and the computer now boots with the SSD.
Here are the things to be aware of. First, the time required to update the Windows 10 supplied with the PC to the latest version of Win11, plus the HP updates, is not something that occurs quickly. Even with 200 Mbps internet, this is a many-hour update and could have you updating into Day 2 of ownership or later. Also, much of the update delay I experienced came from cloning the HDD to a bootable SSD. I found that the computer comes with Windows Bitlocker enabled on the HDD drive and I finally spent the time to disable it to allow the clone to proceed in a reasonable amount of time. I also had a learning curve delay in figuring out how to use UEFI to switch the boot drive as I had only worked with old legacy BIOS before.
I am now a Happy Camper and have what I find to be a great PC that cost a tad over $500. Like many supposedly factory-refurbished electronic items, I believe my delivery was a brand new laptop that was re-boxed. The large 17" screen, backlit keyboard, full keyboard with numeric keypad unlike smaller laptops, USB 3 ports, fast Wi-fi adapter, and other features are very nice and now that the updates are done and the PC working, the frustration and delays in updates are a matter of the past. It was also a great learning experience given the SSD addition, bitlocker issues, cloning, UEFI, etc. In doing the SSD installation and HDD to SSD clone/boot, remember that YouTube is your friend.
Any case or sleeve made for a 17" laptop will work with this computer.
I did the exact same thing as the guy above and it’s a super great value.
For someone like me, who has a few SSDs already laying around and ready for repurposing, this seems like a really good opportunity.
Adding or swapping a hard drive on this unit should be easy as long as somebody has a set of small screwdrivers and has access to YouTube.
Also, rather than cloning the existing hard drive, I’d recommend downloading Windows 11 to a USB flash drive and installing a fresh new copy of Win 11. That way you get the latest version and can scrub all the crapware and useless HP stuff with ease.
Finally, for those folks who are hesitant about buying a “refurbished” unit, all I can say is that I have purchased MANY refurbs and have had excellent experiences with them here on Woot and elsewhere. Every single one of them has been indistinguishable from a totally new device. Sometimes I wonder if “refurbished” sometimes means that HP and others take new computers and go through these motions for accounting purposes or else trying to keep retailers happy when these items are heavily discounted. There are probably other reasons, too.
For somebody needing a larger screen and a dedicated keypad, this model looks attractive to me.
Downloading a fresh copy of windows and installing vs installing over the copy that you paid good money for might land you in license hell. And extracting the license number to apply on a fresh install is not intuitive. I would spend the time and do the upgrade instead of spending more time figuring out how to unbrick windows.
Most of the brand name PC’s have a recovery tool that simplifies the process. It may just be dumb luck, but I’ve done what @edistowill suggests 5 times with 3 different brand laptops and the install & license didn’t present a problem.
Yes, and because it is HP and not DEll you can actually get at the hard drive without any special tools and no significant chance of case damage. I had two Dells that I swapped SSDs into in place of HDDs (for their owners) and one thing that truly annoyed me was having to remove the rubber “feet” / case support strips because at least half the case screws are under the feet. Since I have been doing laptop service as a “side gig” for about 30 years now, it was not that difficult - more like annoying. (I also long ago found several contact cements that will re-stick the feet well enough they won’t falloff but can still be removed if needed to get back inside again).
This should not be an issue now days. If the system had been previously registered with the Microsoft servers then it will auto activate with a fresh install or upgrade of windows. This has been my experience for the last 5 laptops that I have installed windows 10 on. I would just make sure after the laptop is received that you setup, connect to the network, and verioyhst windows is activated. Fom then on you can delete, reinstall, upgrade, etc and it won’t be an issue with activations
HP was doing the same thing for a while. You had to remove the rubber strips to get at the screws for disassembling. I believe that they recently stoped doing the screws behind the strip practices
Lots of discussion regarding HDD limiting the overall speed of this laptop. The other hardware limitation, and in my opinion is even more limiting, is the 1X1 Wi-Fi Card. Having 1x1 ac wi-fi card connected at 5GHz means the maximum connection rate is 433Mbps, theoretically. Live in apartment complex with multiple wi-fi networks, I doubt you will ever get close to that.
I bought this laptop a few weeks ago from Woot. It was stupid slow out of the box. I swapped the HD with a Samsung SSD 1TB and it’s much much faster… night and day difference. I used YouTube to figure out how to open the laptop to replace the HD (super easy). I then upgraded to 32GB of RAM and it now screams!! Even upgrading to Win11 increased the speed. All in, I’m under $700 with a stupid fast laptop.
“It’s the fanciest lap-topper since Grandma’s crotch doilies!”
Just what the heck is are “crotch” doilies?
…they’re crochet doilies 
I came to the comments just for this. Thank you for not letting me down.
I said this the last time this HP 17" laptop was listed on Woot. These are fantastic machines for the price, provided you’ll immediately install a M.2 NVMe SSD as the boot drive and either keep the 1TB for slow storage/backup or chuck it and install a SATA SSD as a scratch drive. These are fast, have nice screens, decent keyboards, and okay-ish battery life, but their Achilles’ heel is the 1TB HDD that HP seems to have an unlimited supply of and a need to put them in every basic laptop they sell. DO NOT buy this expecting excellent performance stock, you WILL need to upgrade storage to be able to use it for anything other than a doorstop.
Once you have done the upgrade, congratulations, you have a desktop replacement laptop at a Chromebook price. It’s not a gaming machine, and it’s not a Mac, but for 90% of those out there who want a decent daily laptop with a bigger screen, this is the way to do it.