Once I had another hardware failure, I scrapped the whole thing for one of the first gen white Intel iMacs, and never looked back. I no longer get in to a domestic dispute with my computer when I come home at the end of the day. My desktop is at peace.
The fan cycles on and off every 3 seconds the entire time it runs. It hard freezes if I play certain games for a few hours. Sometimes it emits a high pitched noise. There's some discoloration starting where my palms rest. I doubt it'll make it another year without needing service to at least apply new thermal paste or pads or something. This is HP's finest build quality and it's still not up to Apple standards.
As for the software side, one of my jobs is to resell advertising services, and I manually review each order to make sure the sites to advertise meet some quality guidelines - 20 to 30 a day. At least one of them each day will be a site distributing malware of some sort. Even with a firewall, Windows Update set to auto, Microsoft Security Essential Real-Time Protection enabled, and using the auto-updating Google Chrome... I sometimes get infected by one of these sites anyway. Last week it was one of those pieces of malware that pretends to be an antivirus program telling you to register to clear an infection -- while autokilling all processes except explorer.exe and iexplore.exe on the system. Took me half an hour in the registry editor in safe mode to get rid of it.
I barely ever used it. I have a late 2009 MacBook that I use daily. About 6 months ago, I decided to turn my desktop into a Hackintosh. Put OS X on it.
Ever since, I use the desktop at least as much as my laptop now. I've determined it's the OS that's more important than hardware. Even with high end hardware, I can't work with Windows. Put Mac OS on the very same hardware and it becomes a powerhouse.
> There's some discoloration starting where my palms rest.
> This is HP's finest build quality and it's still
> not up to Apple standards.
Sorry. Had to stop reading after that because it'll be obvious what's coming. The problem here is that you are the prey of "High-End" PC companies with emphasis on the air quotes. You fell for /the works/ and the bells and whistles.
This is the problem with PCs. Anyone who can make a decent build for $700 will tell you the same: Pre-built PCs are the built like matchstick homes. As long as you put enough glossy paint on the exterior, you can sell it to any sap.
Now I don't go out there and advocating that /everyone/ build their own PCs (though they should at least consider it). I do advocate, however, that one should do enough research to be comfortable with their purchase and to NOT be comfortable with "I just bought a $2000 PC with all these shiny parts. It /has/ to be good."
I didn't fall for something, I chose the only option available. I went to Best Buy, Staples, OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, Walmart, Target and Sears. Not a single one of those stores carried a single laptop under 17" with a higher density display than 1366x768. On a laptop this size, at 1366x768 you can see the damned grid etched onto the glass the pixels are so big. It's a huge leap backwards compared to what was offered before everyone went widescreen. Any of those computers would've been worse to work on than the one I was trying to replace.
HP offered a 1600x900 14" screen for a brief period and since that's important to me (my laptop is my primary development machine), I paid what it cost to get it. The only other option for a comparable screen in that size is a 15" MBP. A 15" MBP with 8GB RAM, a 128GB SSD and the display upgrade (the options needed to be comparable) costs $2299 or $1000 more than I paid.
> I don't go out there and advocating that /everyone/ build their own PCs (though they should at least consider it)
Nobody builds their own laptops.
But people do build their own laptops, relatively speaking. They get Clevo bare bones and put what they want in it. I happen to think the clevo bodies are clunky, but to each their own.
The main thing that I can't use Linux for: Watching Netflix or other premium content is largely solved by the fact that I do all that, and play video games on my big screen TV via a PS3 and the built in Netflix/Amazon Video features of the TV.
My Macbook Air can compile a video lecture while I'm watching a Netflix video without overheating. I've realized that Apple creates a great computing experience without using cutting edge specs and their experience is much better than other PC manufacturers. And their products look like something you'd want to take care of and appreciate.