Monday, December 31, 2012

New home computer

We finally took the plunge and bought a new computer for home yesterday. We had just been using the laptop from my office for the last month or so, and we had been unable to make a decision between getting a laptop for ourselves or some kind of desktop. We ended up getting this HP Pavillion 20 All-In-One at Best Buy.

I'm still undecided on whether I like it or not. It is definitely nice for space, and it was super easy to set up, and we've never had a nice big monitor like this. Shoot, we've never even had a flat screen monitor before. I finally did turn down the brightness a bit this morning to keep from getting a sunburn when I use it. I do have to say, though, it is much slower than my laptop, and it sometimes seems a bit sluggish. I don't know if it's the computer or just the cheapo mouse and keyboard that came with it. I changed out the mouse this morning with the old mouse we had. So we will see. We have 30 days to decide if we want to keep it or not.

I am used to working on a laptop, so it's a bit awkward for me having this giant screen. And our desk is so high that I have to tilt my head back to look "up" at it (bifocals don't help). But it is nice watching videos and whatnot. I'm more worried about the speed and sluggishness. The price was nice though - especially since we had a coupon from our reward points. It basically took the tax off.

All these new computers is driving me nuts though. I was just starting to find my way around the Lenovo laptop, and now getting used to an HP will just add to the craziness. Especially so since our last 4 computers had all been Gateways (2 at home and 2 at work). We had always had good luck with Gateway, but they don't seem to have much of a presence anymore.

So... we'll see how this goes. I'm just glad we finally made a decision. Now to see if we stick with it...

ADDED ON 1/8/13 -
We took this computer back to Best Buy and exchanged it for this Lenovo Ideapad. The HP was just too darn slow. It wouldn't play youtube videos well, and wasn't even able to handle Pandora radio very good sometimes. We liked the screen size, and how it didn't take up much room, but it was just a basic mom-and-pop computer for someone who didn't really want to use it for much of anything. The Lenovo is the same one I'd bought for my office, and it is super fast and by waiting until now it only cost $60 more than this HP and has way more under the hood.

I will add, that I really like Best Buy's return policy too. No questions asked. I went ahead and refreshed the HP system, so it took any trace of me off of it and set it back to how it came from the factory. Best Buy even let us re-use the $30 coupon we'd used on the first one. So the Lenovo - which had been $599 when we bought the first one - was now on sale for $559; plus the $30 coupon then brought it down to just $529. I miss the monitor size, but it more than makes up for it with the speed.

2 comments:

Jim L said...

Looking at the specs it does have a rather slow processor (everything else looks fine), so that could be part of it. A bigger part of it could be if it came with a bunch of pre-installed "bloatware" (software you don't need and don't know what to do with), many of which may have background processes running that are sucking away CPU cycles. Most computers do now days. If you decide to keep it you may want to have a purge. If you don't know what to uninstall and what to keep, find someone local who does to help. Send me email if you want more details.

dan said...

Thanks, Jim!