I purchased an HP 17″ laptop with some software preinstalled in order to save myself some time. Normally I would prefer to buy from Dell, but this was the only 17″ machine that I could find with the latest generation (3rd; “Ivy Bridge”) of Intel CPUs.
The computer arrived in good shape, but once opened the purchased software was nowhere to be found, except for Microsoft Office, which was on the hard drive but demanding a product key. HP has invested heavily in a support application that enables their technicians to see everything on the hard drive. I opened a chat session and authorized HP to look at everything on the hard drive. Unfortunately the folks on the other end of this have no way to look up orders, apparently, and the hapless fellow had no clue as to whether or not purchased software should be preinstalled or not. He gave me a phone number to call.
I called the 888 number and waited for my turn. The woman who answered said that the purchased software should be on the hard drive. In fact, it was on the hard drive, she asserted (though she did not have access to the fancy support app that would have enabled her to see the hard drive). I pointed out that was nothing in the Adobe folder under “Program Files” other than Reader. If Photoshop Elements was on here, where was it hiding on the disk? She continued to assert that all of the software paid for was there and when I asked to be transferred to someone more familiar with Microsoft Windows she dumped me into HP’s tech support queue.
I called the same 888 number again and got someone different on the phone. He also had no access to my hard drive, but believed me when I said that the software was not there and that Office was demanding an activation key. He said that this case was being escalated to the highest priority available and that I would be called back by someone from HP within two business days (i.e., on Wednesday of next week, given that Monday is a holiday). I said “Given that I need an activation key, wouldn’t it be simpler for you to have someone email it to me?” That, apparently, is not an option.
My attempt to save myself some time delayed my usage of the software by at least a week (I could have purchased all of these things for download and activated immediately) and will cost me at least two hours of phone and online chat with HP.
More interestingly, I think this shows one reason why economic growth isn’t hugely accelerated by clever technology such as the latest Intel chips or HP’s fancy “look at the customer’s hard disk” support application. The fancy technology is eventually put into the hands of the same workers who made a mess of the old stuff.
I am off on the lunatic conservative end of the software ideology spectrum: I’m a business owner, I think that software patents are a fine idea, I think that commercial software is a fine idea, etc.
…and yet, in practice, I find myself aping the most rapid open source fan boy: I buy generic Dell machines, format the hard drive, install Ubuntu, and then use only free software that I can install with
sudo apt-get install ____
and ruby on rails packages that are fetchable with
bundle
I believe that people have a RIGHT to sell software, it’s just that the utilitarian in me has learned experimentally that free software solutions almost always result in less butthurt.
That is JUST like my experience with Apple machines.
Oh, wait. No, it is totally the opposite. In fact, the last Mac I set up I clicked one button and all of the software I had bought for the LAST machine was installed cleanly and automagically. No codes to type in, no CDs to feed the machine.
Very, very close to living in the future.
It must help that HP just fired 28,000 people. I bet those we all the people who didn’t know how to help the customer and when you get a call back on Wednesday it will be from a real genius.
In the meantime, google “pirate office need key” and start using your machine immediately…
Colin: It would be nice to have a “transfer old software” but I think I needed new licenses anyway because it is a new computer, not replacing an old one (though I think maybe Microsoft Office is typically licensed for up to three machines?).
This $1100 HP machine does not really have an Apple equivalent. I think it would be possible to buy a Mac 17″ laptop with 8 GB of RAM for about $3000, but it wouldn’t have the Ivy Bridge CPU or the Blu-Ray drive that this HP machine has. Let’s hope that the inability of HP to preinstall software does not end up costing me $1900 in time!
The Mac app store does making installing and updating software a breeze. Reportedly Microsoft is going to introduce an app store for Windows 8. Hopefully their copying attempts will be more competent than usual and they won’t introduce arbitrary limitations that cripple it.
Your anger at the tech support minions is misplaced (except for the rude one who hung up on you). The problem is that HP has a bewildering variety of hardware it sells and that it’s troops just aren’t trained to support properly, assuming it is even possible given all the options available like your preinstalled software. The fault lies with HP Marketing’s inability to discipline itself, and the company’s management in generl, not the front-line peons.
As for the 27k layoffs, they will probably make things worse, as a disproportionate number of them will be the people whose competency is helping clients as opposed to covering their backsides.
Depends on how much your time is worth I guess. It’s kind of shocking how much machine you can buy from HP compared to Apple. I guess that’s why their respective stocks are where they are.
I drank the Apple Kool-Aid four years ago when I bought the first alum MacBook. It’s the only laptop computer that has lasted that long. All my previous ones were Dell, and would have been in the junk pile by now – dead screens, broken plastic, etc. I think I’m money ahead this way, and didn’t have to deal with any headaches like the one you’re dealing with.
Remarkably I think the real missing ingredient is care. Interesting in the Jony Ive interview this past week where he talked at length about that.
Good luck!
Fazal: It is interesting that desktop software is not as convenient to buy and own as mobile phone software. We’re now in the second decade of the “app phone” (T-Mobile Sidekick being the first?) and still there does not seem to be a central repository of purchased software for any of the desktop operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux). The Apple “one button transfer” feature that Colin mentions sounds nice, but is more work than the owner of an Android or iOS device must do.
Peter: I’m not interested in this computer lasting four years or in handing it down to my grandchildren! One of my applications is going to be video editing and I don’t think that I would want to do that on a computer that was more than two or three years old. My plastic Windows-based laptops of all brands (Lenovo, Dell, HP) have all lasted longer than I wanted to continue using them (due to their obsolete innards). Most of them cost between $500 and $700. I wouldn’t have wanted to pay 3X the price for extra mechanical sturdiness since they were apparently more than sturdy enough.
I’m pretty sure that when I gave HP tech support permission to take control of my computer, the tech used the camera to watch me. She seemed to know what I was doing without me telling her. So watch out for that.
I know people who are happily editing video for production and broadcast on Apple computers they bought four years ago. (Which is good since the real good Mac Pro machine has not been updated for some 450 days or something absurd.)
My machines have always lasted about 18mos before I put them on eBay and sold them for a reasonable percentage of their original price. In general, I am money ahead when I consider my time at $25/hr (your pricing may vary). I also really like having a *nix command line a click away.
A 21″ iMac would have been a better choice. I don’t care if you don’t have a desk to put it on, set it up somewhere that it can double as a screen for watching movies.
No, Ivy Bridge has not popped in the Macs yet. June 11 will probably be an announcement of that. But the Mac Pro was the only multi-processor design for a consumer machine and I imagine that will still be true.
The last paragraph is exactly right, Phil. The issue is not a lack of technology, but the fact that unimaginative or incompetent people are often in control of its application. This is how Apple (as others have said) are wiping the floor with the competition when it comes to customer satisfaction, despite the much higher prices.
This is why the boom in startups is a great thing: most of them are driven by people who had real itches to scratch, and so the tech is harnessed for a useful end, rather than for beefing up a spec sheet.
I wonder if Microsoft’s “Signature” treatment might help you out: Microsoft to charge customers $99 to remove OEM ‘crapware’. Microsoft engineers carefully tune your PC to help it achieve maximum performance, and include software that really makes it fly. Add world-class antivirus security software with no renewal fees along with 90 days of technical support directly from Microsoft. That gives you a PC that’s the best it can be, made that way with Microsoft Signature.
“…and yet, in practice, I find myself aping the most rapid open source fan boy: I buy generic Dell machines, format the hard drive, install Ubuntu, and then use only free software that I can install with”
Same here. First thing I do when I get a new laptop is wipe the HD clean, then install AntiMalware (free), Firefox (free), VLC (free), Foxit Reader (free), etc, all of which work better than the paid-for Norton/IE/WMP/Adobe/pop-up malware crap that the laptop came crippled with.
It annoys me that I can’t just select no OS, since I work at MSFT and can get Windows 7 Pro at the company store for $30, but instead have to pay retail price for the crappy Home version that I’m going to blow away anyway. Though I suppose it would give Dell more trouble than it’s worth to create that option just for people like me.
I’ve looked at laptop kits but apparently they’re not as available/feasible as the desktops you can just piece together from Computer Shopper.
The relative weighting of price differentials vs. ease of set-up, use, maintenance, & transition to next device, etc. provides food for thought.
My first PC, running Windows and built by a company, which dissolved quite a few years ago, had something like a 1 MIPS CPU and a 40 MB hard drive. Purchased back in the 70s, it cost about $10K at the time (inflation adjusted that would probably amount to at least twice as much in today’s dollars). I later added a 2x CD drive at a cost of about $2K.
Given the then vs. now orders of magnitude improvement in cost and performance/capacity, is a $1K, or so, differential in price among Windows vs. Apple devices, necessarily a high priority relevance?
I used mostly Windows PCs throughout my career, with some exposure to Macs. When I retired, I bought a Mac, mainly on the basis of: (1) resistance to crashing (probably not much of a discriminator these days); (2) ease of software updates; (3) user-ergonomics. Apparently the second and third considerations are still relevant discriminators and I suppose we rather subjectively assess their comparative benefit vs. cost.
I’ve since returned to grad school working on a PhD and also teaching. It seems that Macs are becoming nearly as prevalent as Windows among undergrads and are widely used in the media labs, though the university legacy infrastructure is still weighted toward Windows, but with excellent accommodation for Macs, which are making inroads physically there as well.
“The fancy technology is eventually put into the hands of the same workers who made a mess of the old stuff.”
I’m pretty sure you mean “bureaucracy”, not “workers” – having done time on the most tedious end of the support line, I can assure you that braindead policies start a little higher up than the call floor.
My experience, personally and professionally, is that the HP Laptops sold at retail are junk. The only semblance they have to real HP hardware is the label.
Fry’s has piles of them, and they will be happy to sell you a refurbed one, just give Habib 30 minutes to perform the refurb.
Have purchased probably 100 Dell laptops over the past 7-8 years. Quality down a bit lately. Now buying Lenovo and loving them.
The problem is, like the one you faced, people decide they have to have one NOW, can’t even wait a week.
Z: By “workers”, of course I was including HP employees at all level, including senior managers.
I’m very happy with the “white box” machine I bought at my local Mom & Pop computer store (I’ve been buying from them for at least eight years now). The store is a legitimate Microsoft reseller, so the computers come with Windows and a proper license. They will install Windows for you or let you install it yourself.
I won’t name the shop but only because there are at least four of these little shops within 15 miles of where I live, and as far as I know they are all equally good, and there’s never any waiting at any of them. No matter when you walk in, you’re the only customer there.
This exactly why economic growth is not alway (or should I say always not) benificial for the users! The organizations are much too big and can’t support users anymore like small companies did in the past.
I also purchase my laptops via the internet and could face the same problems you did. But until now I really have good experiences with Dell.
Buying preinstalled laptop would also not have my preference. Also because sometimes a rebuild is necessary and I really don’t know how to do that with preinstalled laptops.
Good luck with your issues.
Phil, I fail to understand. Software licences are for the person who buys the software, and give you certain rights of use. I never encountered rules such us ‘this licence is for a specific person and a specific computer’.
When I change machine, I de-register the software I bough (i.e. Photoshop) from the old machine, and I can freely install on the new one — the licence tells me that as long as there is only one computer running the software licensed to me I can keep doing this until I’m dead. So why do you have to get new software just because you have a new computer? I would have though it is is perfectly legal and feasible to just move the software.
Paomi: Windows isn’t as old as you stated (70’s), it’s only been here since 1985, and it went mass market in 1990 with v3.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows).
I recently bought an HP laptop (dv6t-7000) after being a Dell fan for most of my life. I am very impressed with it (at it’s price point of $850). The only thing you need to watch for is the bloatware on the machine. Much worse than Dell. Get rid of it ASAP.
Ray: The laptop that I ordered is a dv7t-7000. For the $1100 price it seems to have a lot going for it. The battery life is about 6 hours. It boots very fast, maybe due to the 32 GB mSSD hard drive accelerator (otherwise the thing has a slow 5400 hard drive). HP took advantage of the supersized case and put in a pair of speakers that are pretty impressive. The laptop can fill a room with sound. It has the kind of “one-note bass” that you’d expect from a lightweight audio system using resonance tricks, but I’d say that overall the sound is superior to what I’ve heard from, say, a Bose Wave system (sells for $500 and makes a very poor computing environment!).
Anyway, my point was not to heap scorn on HP’s laptop designers, just point out that the huge investment in “let the support people see what’s on the hard drive” hadn’t paid off as expected due to the walls set up by management (e.g., that the tech support staff can’t see the order and the people who can see the order can’t see the hard drive).
In comment 3, philg says “maybe Microsoft Office is typically licensed for up to three machines?” I got a new Office Home and Student 2010 license about a year ago with a new i7 system. What I got is a Family Pack, for $139, licensed for 3 computers as you say. But in a different store there was a slightly cheaper package with only one license. Luckily the cheaper one was out of stock, then I bought the 3-license box where the salesman explained the difference. Read the fine print or find a discerning salesman, that’s all I can say.
I’m not trying to be a smart aleck, but I am surprised you buy hardware from big, dumb companies like HP, or even Dell. I am equally shocked you use commercial software AT ALL.
Everything I thought I knew about you was that you were an open source loving, granola eating, Birkenstock wearing, computer guy.
Anyway, my intent is not to stir you up, but to simple say that I thought you’d have a more clever solution when it came to getting a new computer. You typically ARE that kind of person. Don’t let HP and MS dumb you down.
Having owned both HP, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and Asus laptops I would have gone for an Asus
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/K93SV/
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Gaming_Powerhouse/G74SX/
– even if they’re equipped with slower processors.
They’re silent, cool and durable.
Also, these days there is a place to get your Windows apps easily:
http://ninite.com/
It only takes a few clicks.
And then you’ll spend the next ten minutes buying and downloading Adobe stuff at http://www.adobe.com/products/elements-family.html
Good luck with the HP.
I’ll never ever again buy a Windows computer other than a Microsoft Signature computer from the MS Store.
I’ve bought several of these for my wife’s business, and they are ‘pure windows’ machines, with the right drivers for the installed hardware and zero crapware.
They boot fast and work just as well as my Macbook Pro. There is little or no extra cost compared to buying the same computer loaded with crapware directly from the manufacturer.
According to Paul Therot, MS actually buys computers from HP, Acer, Samsung, etc, opens the boxes, re-images the machines with an optimized copy of Windows 7, seals them back up, and ships them. They have preinstalled office, and if you choose they will add the key card. You won’t have to call India.
And if you live in Austin you can buy them in person at our friendly local MS Store. You can also get warranty repairs at any MS store.
Disclaimer: I’m a Windows software developer, but have no connection to Microsoft except as a customer who hates crapware.
Only a total wimp uses a 17 inch laptop. I have an 18 inch laptop, an Alienware, which is now owned by Dell. It’s a big machine, you almost need a crane to lug it around, but I would not settle for anything else. It is the first laptop I actually like, it is incredibly fast. If you needed one right away, you could have gone to Micro Center on Memorial Drive in Cambridge.
It appears that a Microsoft Store is getting ready to open up at the Prudential Center in Boston.
Honestly, the first thing I do when I am handed a new laptop or computer is slate a couple of hours for uninstalls and registry cleans.
I actually find it a bit trouble that you would have to go to such lengths to even get the software installed in the first place. They typically load them so full of bloatware you can almost see the computer physically swelling.
I have never been a big fan of over the phone tech support of any kind and DELL lost my business back in early 2001 when they’re customer service just went down hill beyond a point of recovery.
Although it was always interesting trying to discern what tech support was saying through their thick Indian accent.
Michael, thanks for the correction on the date of Windows operating system.
My memory was a bit faulty — my computer’s first operating system was CP/M and I later changed to DOS. I’m pretty sure the computer’s cost was about as I mentioned in my post and that it dated to the late 1970s. I updated the hardware and software for a number of years, switching as some point to DOS and then (I think the first version of Windows). Possibly DOS was not initially available, but I eventually switched to it as CP/M fell out of favor, though I seem to recall preferring CP/M initially. But then, I later preferred the QUEL (via Ingres) database query language to SQL (Oracle and IBM), but IBM’s backing of SQL over QUEL doomed QUEL, much like IBM’s relationship to Microsoft doomed CP/M. And perhaps WordPerfect vs. Word might be a similar analogy. Apple’s survival seems a remarkable contrast to those cases.