I purchased it late September and the windows clock stopped functioning in early December. HP was happy enough to send me the part that they believe malfunctioned, but they wanted to charge me $55. For a part that I have to install myself? Um, no. So after going back and fourth with the nice lady in chat, she finally realizes that the part is covered under warranty. It's shipped to me for free.
Replacing the RTC battery did nothing. I contacted HP back and they promptly sent me a box. When the laptop was returned to me, guess what? The system board was replaced along with all of the back panels on the bottom of the laptop. The battery had become fused to the casing and everything began to warp. I never put my laptop in a position where it could overheat that bad. Yet HP had no explination as to why that happened, but it was fixed, so I was happy.
Then my screen died in February. That was my fault. It took a short drop and started flickering. The problem was the condition my laptop returned to me in. After taking a month and a half to get back to me, my laptop's casing was cracked in two places. I know the screen issue was a result of me dropping it, but I inspected it carefully. I did not cause these cracks. Based on the way HP has us pack the laptops to ship it to them, the shipping didn't cause these cracks either. So someone at HP cracked my machine.
Since I got it back it began doing this weird error. My browsers would stop functioning randomly, spit out a bunch of errors, and then the laptop would just shut off. I waited four hours trying to get their online chat client to work, so I decided to email them instead. (Yes, I used multiple browsers for that stupid client. It refused to work.) I explained everything in detail, including everything that I had done thus far. (Antivirus, defrag, spyware check...) It took them three days to return back with a canned response. "Please run an updated antivirus."
Sigh.
Ok, fine, I'll play this game. I understand the people who answer these emails probably make crap pay. I shouldn't give them hell for going by the procedures that is probably laid out for them. It would take them days to respond to any replies I sent them. Let's also not forget that this new error is random, so I would have to just wait and see if it happened again after each "fix". If it did happen again, I would send a full report to customer support and wait for another reply.
The months have dribbled on, and I've been bounced around to a few people. I've asked if my laptop can just be shipped out previously, but the email support is adamant that this is something they can fix through email. Finally my warranty is gone, and I'm told to reinstall windows. Well, ok. That fixed nothing. Now instead of my browsers dying, my laptop just freezes up. They've allowed my warranty to die out and HP still doesn't know what's wrong. So now I have a faulty machine that isn't reliable, and I'll have to pay someone goodness knows how much to repair it when it could have been done for free by HP. You know, given that they just send me another box like I asked them to.
I wish I had just kept my desktop and never opted to "upgrade" to a laptop.