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Membership Has Its Privileges.
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To purchase this elite computer, you’ll have to go through a 76-point lifestyle examination before you are accepted into the ranks of the EliteBook Elite. The financial audit is a pain, but access to the Hamptons compound is worth it.
Sure, I will take a trip to the Hampton’s. Will I be disappointed with this Elite Club?
Are these HP Factory Refurbished?
playing really fast and loose with the “computer” category lately
In what dusty bin did HP uncover these relics?
Let’s take a moment to get real. There haven’t been ANY significant advances in notebook technology in the last 10 years maybe and 90% or better of the notebook users have no need for anything more robust than these machines. I’ve must have purchased a dozen of these EliteBooks over the last 5 or 6 years for all of my family, my employer’s small business and my friends. If you need a gaming laptop or high end business machine for grinding out enormous databases, this is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are like 90% of the world and use your notebook for surfing, office documents and spreadsheets, image manipulation, social media and the like, then these are perfect. They are cheap, robustly built (I haven’t had any of them that I purchased fail yet in any way), loaded with USB and video ports, come equipped with generously sized SSDs (in today’s cloud world, who really needs a terrabyte on their notebook?), lightweight, and have plenty of RAM for normal people. These are great machines.
We standardized on the HP Elitebooks at work. They are tough enough and the connectivity is decent, the graphics are mediocre and I hate the keyboard. We used to use Lenovo’s - similar toughness, connectivity not quite as good, but the keyboard was superb. I wish we stayed with the Lenovo’s. If you need a beater laptop, this should suffice; but I buy Lenovo for personal use.
If they were, they would have said so.
I tend to agree. If you exclude the specific needs of “gamers” and those doing video editing, complex graphics, etc., most people can get by just fine.
I worked for a cash-strapped nonprofit for a number of years as a PR person. I used a $299 small HP Windows 8 laptop and also a donated older desktop. Using mostly freeware, I got by just fine.
The guy who took over the job years later as I scaled back was just out of college. He insisted on having a brand-new desktop and ALL the stuff Adobe makes to do the same job. He lasted a year, as is the custom these days.
The $299 HP Laptop I used had a touch screen and worked well enough that I could edit audio on it for radio use.
Fast forward 10 years and I just bought a NEW ruggesdised “school edition” HP Windows 10 laptop here for $249. It also has a touch screen, but with Gorilla Glass, much faster USB ports, SSD, microSD port, USB C, etc. It’s improved, but not as much as you might expect.
For most users, the laptop sits their waiting for you to catch up.
Ageed with others - the performance spec’s of this laptop, assuming it isn’t a lemon, would be perfectly fine, even snappy for the typical internet user, emailer or for Microsoft Office.
But that archaic 1366 x 768 display would bug me even for that kind of usage. For streaming content it would be less than ideal.
If you buy one, be sure not to leave it in the box. These are likely off-lease laptops and their condition-reliability is likely to be variable, depending on the example you receive.
Hopefully you get one that spent most of its time tethered to a desk and not hauled about by a traveling field employee. Use the heck out of it for those quick 90 days. Let it run without it going to sleep for several days straight.
And assume if you wish to use it not plugged into the wall, a replacement battery is likely needed.
I was going to say… I bought this exact machine (refurb) over a year ago at MicroCenter for about the same price.
They may have missed one ‘spec’ - there’s a spot for an M.2 SSD in addition to a 2.5” SSD. The M.2 can only be 42mm or 60mm, though, not the more popular 80mm that seems to be everywhere.