HP laptop

[Chris_O]

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g6-2212sa-15-6-laptop-18093448-pdt.html

Opinions on this?? Need a new one desperately!!

[Brettles1986]

Good spec, Windows 8 is a royal PITA though.

[BarneyB]

Yeah, wish they just kept Windows 8 to Tablets and Smartphones, but the specs on that laptop is good, and you never know, W8 could actually work on laptops...

[Prickle]

Canny laptop . Windows 8 looks incredibly shit. Didnt give my mates laptop a second look.

[Chris_O]

i've heard about that, is it really that bad or just something to get used to??

[Ross]

It's that bad. I've had limited contact with it so far luckly but it's not a good experience :(

I started out on windows 3 (installed on 5 floppy disks). Probably the best windows OS released :p

[Chris_O]

Should i steer towards 7 then? All the decent lappys are 8 at the moment though!!

[Brettles1986]

Yeah Windows 7 is the better bet.

Everything in Windows 8 is laid out in a manner which does not make it any easier to do tasks e.g. in order to access the control panel you need to as much as search for it.

[Chris_O]

Just found a decent acer with windows 7 for £349, so off out to get it now. What are people's recommendations for anti virus? I know everyone says norton is a no go because it takes up a shit load of space or whatever , so need some ideas!

[Prickle]

Kaspersky i use.

[Chris_O]

Ok cheers, is that a free download ;) ??

Anyone else recommend any?

[Prickle]

No. ;)

[Chris_O]

you got pm

[Brettles1986]

Avast is free and very good, I'm IT manager for a smallbusiness so have experience in it, use it in conjunction with malware bytes (also free) and you should be fine.

Be careful with Acer as they have a problem with the cable feeding the monitor signal, mine is starting to play up now and it's doing my tits in.

[Viper]

Bollocks to avoiding Windows 8. Everyone said that about Vista/7. Try it, you'll get used to it!

The spec of that laptop is really good, exactly the spec I have been looking at, although I have been trying to stay away from HP. My perception of them is that their quality isn't the best. The guy in Currys agreed with me as well.

[Prickle]

My HP laptop is 3yrs old and running and in still very good condition...

Quality cant be that bad. Its used every day and silly hrs weekly. :wacko:

[Brettles1986]

Most laptop companies use Asus parts anyway and coupled with the fact that they are assembles in mass on a production line then realistically every laptop has the same build quality, it's only if built by hand that the difference is evident.

Back to Windows 8, it is a real pain in the ass as it has been tailored more towards touch screen devices than conventional techniques, Windows 7 is the simpler option. Having said that Windows 8 has been built in a clever way to deter viruses and has been rated well for it.

[Chris_O]

Right, cheers for all the input people. Went to pc world and obviously had the pleasure of dealing with the retards that work in there. The acer one I mentioned was only available online and would take a while to be delivered apparently, so I ended up going for the hp in the link in the first post. In the end I thought it would be silly not getting windows 8, it is different to say the least, but i'm sure it wont take long to get used to.

Question is my mum and dad bought a Norton disc a couple of weeks back and used it on both their laptops, so there's one computer left to use it on. As it's effectively free for me shall I just load it up?

[Viper]

If there aren't any other PCs to use it on then you've got nothing to lose really.

[quikydan]

Right, cheers for all the input people. Went to pc world and obviously had the pleasure of dealing with the retards that work in there. The acer one I mentioned was only available online and would take a while to be delivered apparently, so I ended up going for the hp in the link in the first post. In the end I thought it would be silly not getting windows 8, it is different to say the least, but i'm sure it wont take long to get used to.

Question is my mum and dad bought a Norton disc a couple of weeks back and used it on both their laptops, so there's one computer left to use it on. As it's effectively free for me shall I just load it up?

What ever you do, don't load that shit onto the laptop. As you bought it from pc world it'll have a recovery partition on the laptop so if you get a virus just recover it using 'F8' and 'repair computer' when you switch it on.

Also, I'd suggest going through add and remove progtams and delete all the extra crud on the laptop they add as that'll drop 20+ processes for a start which will slow it all down.

Win 8 is awesome, been using it a while now. Don't like going back to using a win 7 OS now though.

[Chris_O]

Could I just have your opinion on why it is 'shit'?

And what sort of programs would you suggest removing? I'll admit I only use a tiny percentage of stuff anyway

[quikydan]

Basically, it runs a stupid amount of processes to actually do the job of an anti virus software for a start. Its crazy with pop-ups and alerts you to everything you do on a laptop (pretty much) it deems everything as a virus / problem (in my experience) and spreads itself all over your laptops hard drive so removing is a complete nightmare (you may as well just reinstall if you've ever had it)

I'm quite biased against ALL anti virus as I look at it as that i have a good knowledge to stop myself from getting a virus, but if i download a torrent or program with a virus in then i'll just reformat. With that in mind i wouldn't even bother running one, if you wanted to check you can repair your computer to factory settings before you don't use a anti virus software then do what i said above, F8 on startup.

With regards to removing software, all the added 'HP' branded crap for example 'HP power management' and all that crap is added rubbish, the Windows 8 OS has it's own built in management so why they need to add it extra i don't know. It's probably aimed for people with no idea trying to make it easier, in reality it just slows down the computer.

EDIT: if you took screen shots of your control panel -> programs and features (i think it's called - basically add and remove ) I could tell you what i mean by the added extra crap as you're bound to have stuff on there. The latest laptop which was bought for my work (school - for a student) had 30 extra processes running on startup for extra software straight out of the box.

[Chris_O]

Ok cheers i'll have a look into that.

Could you recommend another anti virus apart from norton that I can just intall and forget without having to use it in conjunction with anything else? Would make me feel better having some sort of anti virus installed

[MartinObviously]

Ok cheers i'll have a look into that.

Could you recommend another anti virus apart from norton that I can just intall and forget without having to use it in conjunction with anything else? Would make me feel better having some sort of anti virus installed

Avast! It's good stuff and not a memory whore like Norton is.

[quikydan]

Theres so many out there, realistically they're as good as each other, they can only bring out updates so fast viruses can be made faster.

Nod32, Avast, AVG, Kaspersky.

[Chris_O]

Ok cheers, i'm going to look into downloading avast and see how that goes

[choko_h]

I recommend you to use NOD32, Avast isn't as good as it was before even the free vesion. Kaspersky is good too but a "heavy"one.

[MartinObviously]

I recommend you to use NOD32, Avast isn't as good as it was before even the free vesion. Kaspersky is good too but a "heavy"one.

but you don't get a ANTIVIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED greeting in the morning when you boot up :(

[quikydan]

ALOT of companies use nod32. i know we do.

[Chris_O]

Do you have to run that nod32 in conjunction with anything else? And is it a free download??

[choko_h]

It's not for free dude but you can find it at the torrent trackers ;)

[Brettles1986]

It won't be free, as said I would go with Avast and a dose of common sense tbh.

As for removing programs you can download decrapifier to assist, also you want to look at start up item, go to bottom left of desktop window, right click and select run, type msconfig and press enter, select startup tab and remove anything you don't need to start every time.

[Brettles1986]

It's not for free dude but you can find it at the torrent trackers ;)

Ironic that you download antivirus illegally to prevent viruses from downloading things illegally

[choko_h]

Ironic that you download antivirus illegally to prevent viruses from downloading things illegally

I'm not using antivirus actually :). Just I gaved him an idea from were he can download it ilegally if he wants. If he want everything to be legal he can download Avast Free.

[Mochachino]

Bollocks to avoiding Windows 8. Everyone said that about Vista/7. Try it, you'll get used to it!

The spec of that laptop is really good, exactly the spec I have been looking at, although I have been trying to stay away from HP. My perception of them is that their quality isn't the best. The guy in Currys agreed with me as well.

You wont get used to it, its so fucking awkward to use its unreal. Makes it feel like a waste of money buying the new laptop tbh.

HP do quite well in quality tests too.