Lap Top Review

I returned the Lap Top on Wednesday. Part of me didn’t want to do it but in the end I just didn’t need it anymore and since it didn’t work properly there was no reason to try and fix it.

Windows 7 isn’t as user friendly as the commercials lead me to believe. I figured I could hope on and be surfing the web in 10 minutes, that didn’t happen. Microsoft is ironically trying to oversimplify their desktop which makes it more complicated. Windows 7 may work for someone who has never touched a computer before, but that person seems very unlikely to exist anymore.

The desktop was not laid out logically. It felt like Microsoft forced icons into place rather than letting the natural order of a desktop sort it’s self out. It is sort of hard to really explain but you either are aesthetically attracted to something or you aren’t, and I wasn’t. There was very little user customization or at least it was so difficult to figure out I never got around to it. You had a number of preset Desktops to pick from and a link to download new ones. You could modify the desktop background but it felt very rigid in what changes you could make.

The laptop itself was designed poorly. It was a 15” HP laptop with a full keyboard and number pad. The problem is that a full keyboard and number pad don’t fit. Your hands sit shifted off to the left so you aren’t centered on the screen when typing. The touch pad has a smooth metallic surface and the left and right mouse buttons transition into in a way so that you can’t tell by touch if you are on the pad or the buttons.

All this aside I wanted to keep the laptop. It had a Duel Core 2.5 Gig AMD processor, 1 Gig dedicated Video Card, 6 Gigs of Ram, 7200RPM 500 Gig Hard Drive. This laptop could have replaced my desktop. The hardware was amazing and you could tell it was fast when messing around on it.

I had to return it though. The Wireless driver didn’t work properly. It would appear there is a common issue with Microsoft 64bit systems that Wireless card drivers don’t work properly. It is an extremely weird issue too because the Wireless Card works, it just wont connect to certain Websites. I couldn’t connect to Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, or Microsoft however I could connect to the website I host on GoDaddy, but not the GoDaddy main site. A quick google search resulted in finding around 10,000 other posts with the same issue.
It had to go. The kicker is when I returned it to the Service Department at Fry’s Electronics they told me what I was describing was impossible. I challenged them to look into it and rather than deal with me I got a full refund rather then losing 15% to restocking. Before my return receipt was even printed they put a reduced price tag on the laptop and were getting it ready to go back out on the floor.

I will NEVER buy a computer from Fry’s again. I tried to help them and explain the issues with this laptop and they thought I was some computer illiterate moron.