Did I get a lemon?
Written: Mar 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Speed, Memory
Cons: Doesn't work
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| n8rgrl's Full Review: HP Pavilion 8660 |
I purchased the HP 8660C Pavillion because its specifications indicate fast speed (533 Mhz Pentium III) and plenty of memory (20 G), plus features like a DVD/CD R-W drive. Unfortunately, you can only use these features when the computer runs likes it's supposed to. Within 5 days of purchase and setup I was experiencing problems and spending time on the telephone with HP's technical support personnel. This was supposed to be a plug and play system, right?
Problems began with the system freezing up and not allowing a cold boot. Since I had only one software application open, MSExcel, it shouldn't have been a problem for a system with this much speed and memory to handle a few spreadsheets. Problems with freezing up continued to occur whenever I worked with MSWord text documents. Over a period of 10 days from the date of purchase the system shutdown completely over a dozen times. I made 5 long distance phone calls to technical support - they don't have a toll free telephone number. Of course, they always acted like I was the one who had done something to cause the problems, not that their system could be experiencing problems.
After owning this system for 10 days I was told by HP technical support that a complete hard drive recovery would have to be run in order to "fix" the problem. Of course, all the work that I had saved to hard drive folders would be lost if I didn't copy them to disk and whatever software I had added since purchase had to be reloaded. The recovery worked fairly well I guess, the system has only frozen half a dozen times since then and it's been about three weeks since the recovery was completed. I can't believe I paid $1400 for a system that I am now worried that I can't add software to because it might cause system failure and shutdown.
My final word - since owning this system a little more than a month and having to recover the hard drive, in addition to ongoing problems - is that the HP 8660C Pavillion is a nice idea if it worked. I admit that I may have purchased that 1 in a million that is a lemon. However, buyers should be aware that this system may give them problems if they decide to purchase this model. Take my advice and purchase another system before considering purchasing this one.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
n8rgrl
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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