We were in the market for a new Kitchen/Kids Laptop and wanted to get the best Laptop we could in the $500 price range. We plan to use this Laptop primarily for basic web browsing, home network access, some Excel and Word use and the kids will be using it to play on the web on various kid web sites. We don't need any super memory or processing power for Photoshop or anything like that. We have had a lot of luck over the years with HP PCs and Laptops. I have owned an HP Elite Desktop for a few years and this will be our third HP Laptop, all of which are still running great. We did a preliminary look and found that HP offered the features we were looking for in this price range so we settled on that brand and started researching.I did a lot of research comparing all of the HP Laptops in the $400-$600 price range available at the time on Amazon and this one had the fastest processor. I found that all of the HP Envy Laptops and some of the Pavilions had AMD chips in them. I compared this i3-3110M to those specific processors on some benchmark sites on the web, and this chip came in faster in every instance. The price was around $508 when I first started watching it. I put a camelcamelcamel dot com price tracker alert on it and snatched it up when it dropped to the all time low price for this model of $449. A great deal in this price range for the fastest processor and other included features.
First Impression It is a nice looking Laptop. The trackpad has a rough texture which is different, but fine. The screen looks really nice. It has a full keyboard with a number pad which is great. It is only a couple of inches wider than our old 14" Laptop. The dimensions in the Amazon Technical Details section are misleading because they are way too big. I am guessing those are the dimensions of the shipping box. The Laptop is only about 15" wide.
Initial Setup Setup took a little while. Mostly basic questions that you would expect from any Windows installation. It easily connected to my Wireless N Router the first try. It did ask you to set up a Microsoft account so that you can download apps from the store which I did. Once in, I had no problem connecting to the shared drives on my Network. One of the easiest initial setups you could ask for.
Software Installation I immediately loaded a bunch of software on the machine. I installed Google Chrome, Dropbox App, Dropbox Software (yes, two different things), LogMeIn (for remote access), Microsoft Office 2007, tried to install Windows Security Essentials, but it comes with Windows Defender which does the same thing in Windows 8. Everything installed with no problems at all.
Performance and Web Browsing All of the software that I tried worked very well and very fast. No slowdowns to speak of. Web browsing with Chrome was great. No complaints at all about performance during my initial use.
Windows 8 I'm not going to comment much about this. I love Windows 7 and have never used Windows 8, so the first time out, it takes a bit to figure things out. I'm not sure if it is good or bad so far, but I was able to find the Desktop just fine and started getting used to the Metro UI pretty quickly. For what this machine will be used for (Kitchen and Kids access), the Metro tiles may actually work out better. It will just take some time to get used to.
In conclusion, this Laptop is great for the price. You get the fastest Intel processor in this price range, a good amount of RAM, a large hard drive, upgraded Intel HD Graphics 4000 (most in this range have the 3000 version), fast networking and overall nice performance. If you are looking for a lower priced Laptop and don't need the highest performance, you really can't go wrong with this Laptop in the $500 range. Highly Recommended!
=========================
ONE WEEK UPDATE (05/09/2013):
The Laptop is working really nicely so far. The screen looks really nice and the performance has been great.
After using Windows 8 for a little while, I did decide to install Classic Shell, which is a free program that basically brings back the Start Menu to the Windows 8 Desktop. I have used Classic Shell for years on my Windows 7 PC and it has always been great. Now that I put it on the new Windows 8 Laptop, you can barely tell it is a Windows 8 machine. It functions almost exactly like Windows 7, but you can still access the Metro UI and all the other Windows 8 functions. A much more comfortable experience in my opinion. Really a "best of both worlds" situation. Still Highly Recommended!
=========================
ONE MONTH UPDATE (06/06/2013):
Everything has been great with this Laptop so far. We have been using it daily for Web Surfing, Excel Work, Kids Games and Skype with the out-of-town Grandparents. We were told the Webcam through Skype looked really good from the other end. One complaint that I had was that it was driving me nuts that the F2 Key in Excel kept adjusting the brightness instead of editing the cell so I found a trick on the web that would switch the default on the combined Function/Action Keys by adjusting a BIOS setting [Disable Action Key Mode under the System Configuration]. Also since switching to Classic Shell, the Windows 7 like interface has been perfect and I am very happy having my Start Menu back. Overall, the performance has been great and everything is working as expected. We are very happy with this purchase.
Buy HP Pavilion g6-2260us 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Now
I got this so I could do some internet surfing, school work and some light Photoshop. So far so good. It runs Photoshop no problem and for under $500, that is hard to beat. I will probably add 4 GB of RAM in the future but for now the 4 it comes with will do fine. The screen is crisp and the keyboard is nice. I don't really like touchpads too much so will be getting a wireless mouse soon but it works fine just I don't like any of them. I would probably consider this one of the minimal specs for a laptop you would want if you would like to do Photoshop comfortably. Sure a lesser computer could probably do it, but would be pretty rough and of course a $1,000 laptop would handle it better but so far I have had no problems with it. I would recommend this laptop for sure for anyone who just wants it for the basics and even for someone who wants to do some lite gaming, for example, I have played the Sims Medieval on this with no problem at all. (probably games from before 2012 would run nice with this overall) or Photoshop or the like.Read Best Reviews of HP Pavilion g6-2260us 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Here
Lots of apps and plenty of GB at 670. 4 GB of memory. seem to work very good for me. Not sold on windows 8 just yet. I liked visita and XP they were more easy to use.Want HP Pavilion g6-2260us 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Discount?
I love the size of this screen and the graphics are great and unlike a previous review I can say that it is very good for lots of gaming as well as movies. I have even grown to like the new system but what I cannot tolerate is the cost of Office 2013. I didn't expect at this price point to get it included for free but to charge $100 a year for a subscription is really pushing the limit. I would give this 5 stars if not for that.
0 comments:
Post a Comment