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Saturday, July 7, 2012

Why I Will Never Buy Another HP Laptop Again

Hey folks. I'm back with yet another rant, so to speak. I haven't been posting a lot, due to Mother Nature being a huge bitch and frying my laptop. It's too bad though, because a goddamn lightning storm fried my hard drive and motherboard on a dark stormy night.

I hate sunny side up!
 Bad joke out of the way? Right. Anyway, if you read the title (which would be a good idea) you'll know that I had a HP. It cost me $580 at Best Buy, and was intended to be a moderate gaming machine and for me to do my college work on. Since I failed my last semester, you know which one was more important. I know that buying anything from Best Buy is stupid, because hey, you can build a PC for way less, and it will be much more efficient, but I'm young and stupid, and I just wanted to spend my graduation money from high school. I've never had a top-of-the-line PC, and this laptop was way ahead of anything I ever owned!

My first PC was a Gateway. I don't remember the model, but it was like a rectangle, almost like an Xbox 360. It had 512 MB of RAM, enough to run Diablo II back in the day, a 25 GB hard drive, and, here's the best part.... Windows Millenium Edition! Or, one of the worst OS' ever made.

The first time, and never again after.
So, as you can see, I never did much gaming on it. It ran Diablo II, and that was fine for me. Afterwards, my mom sparingly spent some cash on a Dell PC. This baby had a whopping 2 GB of RAM, a 75 GB HDD, and Windows XP! Notice how neither PC had a graphics card. That's because we were poor, and as long as Microsoft Word ran, nothing else mattered. It was fun playing Frets on Fire on lowest settings and still dealing with lag, or playing War Rock online on one map, because its the only map that wouldn't make the game slow to a crawl. Memories... bittersweet, but memories none the less.

But once I graduated high school, and got some cash, I bought an HP G36. 3GB of RAM, 350 GB HDD, Windows 7, nVidia mobile graphics, HD sound and display, 2.1 GHz AMD dual core... This was a machine. It let me play more games, sort of. I could run Half-Life 2 on modest settings! I could edit videos and photoshop tits on people's heads faster. It was amazing for me. It let me do more things I wanted to do. At least until the battery crapped out the first year I had it, and I had to keep the damn thing plugged in at all times, rendering the "mobility" that made laptops famous in the first place impossible. But that's OK. My professors were dicks and wouldn't let me use it in class anyway. Probably because I spent most of Accounting II on Facebook and playing emulators.

Debits and credits eh? I just got the Master Sword!
The truth is, that laptop did its duty, which kind of goes against the point of this rant, but I'll explain later. See, everything revolves around games. You'll get it eventually. If not, God help you... My HP lasted a solid 4 years, 3 of them spent plugged into an AC Adapter and being kept on over nights. I had one virus, due to stupid ol' me leaving my VNC server left on without a password, which resulted in a format, but it was a good machine. The drivers are easy to install, as HP has a detection software on their website, and BAM! All my drivers I need are in a neat list to download and install.

But again... video games. That machine just could not cut it. Not to mention I like doing Let's Plays and playthroughs of games to put on my Youtube channel, to which that machine did poorly. Fraps or any recording software slowed it down to poop. I believe it's the hardware of the HP, and here is where my point comes in.

I now have a Toshiba Satellite. It has 4GB of RAM, Intel HD onboard graphics, 500 GB HDD, HDMI, 2.1 dual core Intel chipset, all the works. It's not much better than the HP, but GODDAMN IT COULD HAVE FOOLED ME. Maybe because it's 64 bit? I have no idea, but I'm playing games on highest settings that I personally believe shouldn't be possible. F.E.A.R on highest settings? Check. Doom 3 on highest settings? Fuck that game, but check. Capturing the screen for my LPs and playthroughs with no lag? Fucking check!!!! I honestly don't get it. I can see why there are Intel and AMD fanboys. It's basically the same specs, but it feels light years ahead of my old HP.

Pictured: My HP G36.
It's truly amazing. Remember War Rock, and how I said I could play one map? I can play them all!!!! Highest settings! I can edit videos with ease, and make larger pictures of people with tits on their heads without slowing my machine down. It has to be the Intel chipset. The HP had nVidia graphics. Shared memory, but this Intel is the same thing. So why does it perform better? That extra gig of RAM can't really make THAT much of a difference can it? I have no idea. I don't care either. I can play any game I want.

Well, maybe not ANY game...
But fuck it. I can play more games. You can't go wrong with more games! I almost feel bad for my professors when I re-register for my last semester.

If you enjoy my little rants, or want me to cover a topic, you can send me a nice email at chectus91@gmail.com, or leave a comment.


1 comment:

  1. I have an HP with an Intel chipset.

    I need to see if it can handle a LP now...

    ReplyDelete