[Darth-Apple]

Just read this today. A firmware bug in certain SSD models from HPE will cause them to irrecoverably crash after exactly 40,000 hours (4.5 years) of operation. The data can not be recovered after this happens. 

Crazy enough, this isn’t even the first time this has happened with them. I would understand it if it were 65K or some other power of 2, but it’s not. 

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article...this-year/

[Lain]

Yes, it's a bug, that's right...
HP has had shady business practices since forever. My laptop's battery died (swelling cells + charges to 75% then dies at 30%) literal days after the warranty expired.
Or that one(?) time that HP installed spyware on user's computers without them knowing.
In my recovery partition (the one they try to block access to at all costs), I found all sorts of log files of what it does in the background. A good portion of it's labeled FBI. Not gonna try and take a guess what the f*** that's about. (Screenshots available on request)

If anyone tries to sell my an HP computer ever again I'm geeking their jaw. Never again. No one in any right state of mind should support this company and their practices.

[Darth-Apple]

I have not owned an HP in a very long time, but the FBI thing is a little scary. And that's stored in the recovery partition, of all places?

Might be a little bit of an Apple fanboy, but things like this are why. I'd rather use an 8 year old Mac than bother with one of these machines.

[SpookyZalost]

Modern Mac's aren't much better Darth.  Between overpriced systems and shoddy manufacturing processes apple isn't doing well.  On top of their walled garden ecosystem regarding repairs and booby trapped components...

Honestly Lenovo and Toshiba are good manufacturers in my experience, apple used to be, and honestly crap like this is why I go with dual drives.  SSD for the os, mechanical for data storage... Plus frequent backups.

[Plushy]

Good, another reason for not trust on HP

[Guardian]

Ouch. That's painful.

Yes, it's a bug, that's right...
HP has had shady business practices since forever. My laptop's battery died (swelling cells + charges to 75% then dies at 30%) literal days after the warranty expired.
Or that one(?) time that HP installed spyware on user's computers without them knowing.

Huh, had the same problem here. Such a coincidence of course!

[Darth-Apple]

On a slightly differnet note, how do you guys feel about Dell and Lenovo?

I'd use Lenovo thinkpads if I could get away with it, but I never liked the design (or the price) of them too much. My lenovo (non-thinkpad) computer served me well for quite some time though.

I usually use Samsung SSDs. They aren't cheap, but boy are they reliable. Going on 8 years for the one I have now, and it's in perfect shape. Kingston makes some pretty inexpensive ones that I've used before too. They supposedly aren't very reliable, but I've never had a problem with them (nor have any of my friends who have used them). They seem fine to me.

[Lain]

Lenovo's got some decent product lines. If they had a Y740 that looked normal, I'd buy it since my GF also gets an employee discount of like 60% on certain products. The Y740 is insanely powerful, got like a whole RTX2080 in there.
For thinkpads, I'm still looking for a decent refurb. Most of them in this area are pretty shit, or have had parts swapped out to try and scam people. Just want a 250GB SSD, any CPU, 8GB RAM and the 1600x900 screen at a price less than 400$. That too much to ask?
Buying them new is too expensive, except for the X1 Carbon because that one also has decent specs and looks normal.

Don't have much of an opinion on Dell since the only Dell product I own is a dedicated server that's collecting dust in my basement. When I was playing around with it, though, it was pretty cool. Fancy Xeon 3GHz in there, and a RAID5 setup (I think) of 125GB drives (1TB). Ubuntu server and away we go.

[Guardian]

I've had issues with Dell's being engineered to fail as well. Only owned one, but it failed 2 months after the 2 year warranty. Strangely, There was a piece of tape sticky side out inside the case where the air flow was. Lint and dust got caught unbeknownst to me and sure enough, it failed right after the warranty expired.

[Darth-Apple]

That's a little on the sketchy side... I wouldn't be surprised either. That's the sad part.

I've had a lot of computers fail right around the 3-4 year mark.

[SpookyZalost]

unfortunately that's common with most manufacturers these days.

Planned obsolescence is a thing and they do anything to stick to that.

it's why they hate DIY techies like me, because we sit there, tear the whole thing down, figure out the points of failure, then patch, repair, improve them making devices last 10 sometimes 15 or more years.

if you only buy a computer once in a decade or so they aren't making a lot of money off you.
and since the needs of general computing aren't advancing much anymore you can get away with using decade old hardware with very few caveats, many of which can be gotten around.

an HP laptop from 2012, with new capacitors on the board, an after market extended life battery, and an SSD is just as useful for day to day use as a brand new one because unless you're a gaming enthusiast you're not going to see a real difference between a 1080p and 4K video on a 1600x900 screen.

throw in a linux distro with open source drivers on there and some tweaks to make it run as light as possible and well... you get where I'm going with this.

the needs of the user don't require the leaps and bounds of 20 years ago.

you don't need a GTX 1080 to run MS word or browse the web

and honestly 16gb of ram is all you need really unless you're gaming in 4K or VR, most software can't really take advantage of it, or multi-core CPU's beyond maybe quad core?

though I expect that to change as ryzen becomes more popular... even then you don't need a 12+core CPU @3.5+ghz, 32+gb of ram, and the latest and greatest GPU from even 5 years ago to do end user stuff.

windows 10 runs fine on a quad core 2.5ghz with 16gb of ram and a geforce gtx980 with office apps, youtube at 1080p60 and online TV streaming stuff like netflix and hulu.

and that's still higher spec or comparable spec to a lot of common tablets and smart phones which people use for exactly the stuff listed above.

[Lain]

Reigniting the HP hate thread.

Laptop is incredibly close to its EOL. I feel it.
Crashed a couple minutes ago with only Edge and a calculator open. Had MSI afterburner running as well, even though it doesn't work, and when I clicked the little airplane icon (to take you to their webpage,) shit hit the fan.

(No, I'm not overclocking. I had it open because I figured maybe it would finally work with the latest Nvidia drivers, but as always, the 940MX is too close to integrated to do anything with and MSI can't even fetch the data like clock speed and temperature from it, let alone change those clock speeds.)

Never again. Getting a Lenovo (with an actual GPU instead of the cheapass 1050 or 940 or lower) and never gonna have this problem again. Complete dipshit of a company.
I clean my memory ever hour with memclean. I optimize drives with Defraggler every week. I make sure there's no massive files sitting on my drive with WinDirStat. There's no good reason for it to f*** die like this.

EDIT:
After searching online for a while for new laptops, I've found a used thinkpad T430s with dual hard drive (500gb ssd and 500gb hdd) with 8gb RAM and a 1600x900 screen. 400$CAD. Comes with the workstation dock as well, all in great condition. Incredible deal, given my GF got a T430s with a 256gb SSD, no HDD, and no dock for the same price. GPU is negligible, Intel 520, kinda shit but whatever. I'll just stick to my PS4 and Vita for games.
I also checked for my model online to see what they go for. Give or take, most of them sell for close to a grand, even used. I'll probably sell this one for 700-800$, then buy the thinkpad. Gonna wait til exams, in any case, since I can use this for uploading exam papers and whatnot until then.

f*** Windows. I'm installing Linux on it once I get it. Not gonna deal with 3GB RAM usage during idle anymore. I'll use Wine for Photoshop and Clip Studio if I really have to, as much as I hate it. But I'm just fed up with the shitty performance Windows has given me for the last while.