Think Twice
Written: Nov 07 '00
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Pros: Nice Keyboard
Cons: Not Reliable
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| FiveHoyts's Full Review: HP Pavilion 8655C |
I am a student at Indiana University. I bought the HP Pavillion 8655C because it was newer and faster the my old Pentium 150. I bought my computer on UBID on 21 Sep 00. It arrived very timely. I opened the factory box and plugged it in.
The first thing I did was set up my IU internet account. I logged on the internet server and my computer locked up. Naturally, I checked all of the connections, I had to cold reboot and start again. When the computer came back up it locked up again. It did this several times.
I called HP. I gave them my information to start my warranty and they asked me to do a scandisk. It took several hours. Once complete, I shut down the computer (naturally this time) and turned it back on. A couple minutes later it locked up again.
The following Monday, I called HP again. This time I was advised to reload the operating system. The procedure erased everything that was on my hard drive and then would reload the system again. It locked up the during the first two reload attempts. It finally reloaded the operating system on the third attempt.
It still did not work right. The system continued to lock up. Nothing helped. Per a recommendation from HP, I took the computer to COMPUSA repair. The COMPUSA technician looked at it and said I had a System Resources problem. It was running at 68%. That was all they could find.
I soon became a regular on HP's warranty service line. I had most of the startup programs shutoff. I kept the system resources meter on all the time. I could tell when the system was about to crash. The crashes most often occured on the internet, when copying CD's or if the screen saver kicked on. After a couple of days, this got pretty old.
On OCT 2, HP mailed me a box to send them my computer to them for Bench Repair. I Fed Ex'd it back to them. I verified with HP that they received it on OCT 9.
The process was suppose to take 10 working days to complete.
Today I received a call from HP that they have completed my repair. The rep said they were waiting on parts. He said I will receive it my computer back on Thursday Nov 9 (1 month exactly). For my trouble, they have extended the warranty 90 days.
I think I am a pretty nice guy and I believe in giving praise where praise is due, but I cannot honestly recommend this product or HP to any other buyers. It is too bad that nobody else has written anything on this model because I am sure there is someone with good things to say. My input had skewed this computers rating to be very one-sided.
One positive note - HP did send me a 1/2 hour phone card to help with the cost of the many times that I called them. Unfortunately, this is only a small fraction compared to how long each of my phone calls were. On my budget, this has been very expensive. HP does not have a toll free service number.
It will be nice to have a computer that works. I will write more on the status once my computer is returned.
Recommended:
No
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
RAM: 64
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
FiveHoyts
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 1 member
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