Why does HP suck so badly?

[A-J]

I've been "brand loyal" to H for far longer than I probably should have been, Especially since I know how good other brands are in comparison. My problem is that the HP laptops I've had for the last decade or so (not the same ones, newer ones as time goes on) have all needed up being slow and twitchy in very short order. Like less than 6 months from new short.

I used to think it was my Norton AV, but I just bought my wife a new all in one from Lenovo, and even after I installed all of our software, including Norton, the time from "Restart Now" to "Fully restarted, booted up and logged in ready to work" averages 50 seconds to 1 minute 10 seconds. Both of the active HPs I have you're looking at a good 12 - 17 minutes before you can actually do anything worthwhile, like open a browser window or run Outlook.

I get that at least part of it is that I'm a cheap MF and haven't been buying the highest end computers. But I'm definitely buying solidly in the mid-range, and I frankly expected more. Has HP just given up on making good systems? Or is it their use of cheapo parts that slow everything down? I upgraded my RAM to 32 GB and literally have seen ZERO increase in lag time. But I can't justify dropping money on a better unit when this one works fine once it gets to the point where you can actually use it. We HAD to replace my wife's since she was suing hers for work and needed something stronger better and faster. My work provided me with a laptop so it's not a "need" at this point. When it comes right down to it, I'll probably go Lenovo. That's what I got the wife for the AIO, and my son has a laptop for them and it's smoking fast, even though it's older than my current HP and has 1/2 the RAM mine does. Thoughts anyone?

[sonofeugene]

I bought a top end Lenovo laptop. I maxed out the RAM and it has a high end video card and a solid state drive. It has zero problems running Solidworks, a high end CAD program. For what it’s worth.

[DaveInOroValley]

Never owned their computers but used to be a complete loyal customer for their laser printers. Not anymore.

[Big Chudungus]

https://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=1904125

Figure HP is now just another hollowed out formerly great American company trading on its name and slapping its brand on outsourced crap from lowest bidders.

When it was flying high and "the only game in town" decades ago it got a rep for being a really great place to work, but that turned into bloat, and that wasn't corrected until too late. They never got a tech guy as CEO, just a series of MBA types, doing "card tricks" to juice quarterly profit statements.

Like Boeing.

"
Last I heard H-P CEO is some mystery meat foreign guy without any real high tech background, just knocked around various corps doing MBA management stuff. Prior CEO was some Australian guy who had to resign suddenly for some unknown reason.

Brother printers of Japan has an all Japanese management group that all came up from tech trenches at that company. "

[nosuchagency]

i deal with a lot of hp laptops and desktops and they perform adequately when spec'd out reasonably; this despite the volume of policies and security measures enforced upon them within my particular environment.

does your current pc contain ssd hard drive; in my opinion spinners are no longer viable under any circumstances, even as a simple home user...

if ssd, have you recently attempted to run hp image assistant? if your version of windows is supported it's essentially a one stop shop to easily scan & download current firmware & driver updates. if your win version isn't supported, plug in SN # at their driver site for your model and at a minimum install any available updates for bios, storage, & video/sound.

windows updates has also gotten quite a bit better in past year or so in picking up some of the more substantive hp firmware updates; my guess is that ms must have worked out an agreement with hp some time in recent past to do so.

above is where i'd start if not already attempted.

[A-J]

i deal with a lot of hp laptops and desktops and they perform adequately when spec'd out reasonably; this despite the volume of policies and security measures enforced upon them within my particular environment.

does your current pc contain ssd hard drive; in my opinion spinners are no longer viable under any circumstances, even as a simple home user...

if ssd, have you recently attempted to run hp image assistant? if your version of windows is supported it's essentially a one stop shop to easily scan & download current firmware & driver updates. if your win version isn't supported, plug in SN # at their driver site for your model and at a minimum install any available updates for bios, storage, & video/sound.

windows updates has also gotten quite a bit better in past year or so in picking up some of the more substantive hp firmware updates; my guess is that ms must have worked out an agreement with hp some time in recent past to do so.

above is where i'd start if not already attempted.

Yep, it's an SSD, and I've downloaded every update imaginable, Bios, Drivers, software, deleted bloatware and any apps I don't use or need. I also did the image check & repair a couple of times (that was fun NOT!) Despite everything, the task manager has my disk clocked at 100% usage for a good 10+ minutes after I log on. And this is regardless of whether I did a full restart versus waking up from hibernation. It becomes a real PITA when I HAVE to restart cause the system got unstable and stopped working properly. It's pretty OK once past that point, but getting there is a real test of one's patience.

[nosuchagency]

if the drive and memory checks out ok via system diagnostics and you're current on patches your options begin to dwindle. when i get to that point i start considering whether to cut my losses, back up files, and simply reimage pc. in my experience, an i5 or i7 pc with a ssd, standard graphics, and 32gb ram shouldn't exhibit performance issues unless you're asking it to run programs that are clearly meant to be run on a higher end system.

[A-J]

if the drive and memory checks out ok via system diagnostics and you're current on patches your options begin to dwindle. when i get to that point i start considering whether to cut my losses, back up files, and simply reimage pc. in my experience, an i5 or i7 pc with a ssd, standard graphics, and 32gb ram shouldn't exhibit performance issues unless you're asking it to run programs that are clearly meant to be run on a higher end system.

The only thing I can point to where I saw a demonstrable difference in speed was during the initial setup when I was installing al my software )Office, Acrobat, Norton AV, etc.) was on the restart after installing Norton. Oddly enough, it had no impact when installed on the Lenovos mentioned earlier.