HP G50-104NR Black Friday Special from Best Buy

Best Buy released their Black Friday Deal list and one of the items that is supposedly going to be on sale is the HP G50-104NR laptop, with a printer. According to various reports the price on the laptop / printer combo is going to be $349.98.

Below are the specs on this combo deal as listed from the Best Buy site.

# Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core mobile processor T3200, 2GB DDR2 memory, 120GB hard drive and high-speed wireless networking (802.11b/g); stylish HP Imprint finish

# Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with LightScribe, 15.4" BrightView widescreen, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M, 5-in-1 media reader and Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1

# Canon PIXMA all-in-one photo printer, copier and scanner with built-in card slots and PictBridge support for PC-free printing; support for 3 frame-ready print sizes; ChromaLife100 system for long-lasting photos

First off I have to say that I have been an owner of an HP system, (desktop not laptop), for almost a year now. And I recently purchased an HP laptop for my daughter about 6 months ago.

We have both been more than pleased with the performance of both computers. I am a recent convert to HP, as I was previously mostly an E-Machines guy. To be honest I switched my loyalties only because of pricing.

Up until about a year or so ago, it seemed that no manufacturer could come close to the price on an E-Machine system. E-Machine just flat out blew the doors off the competition when it came to pricing. Sure every once in a while you would find a comparable system that came close, usually at a close out sale or something of that nature. But overall E-Machines was the cheapest in town.

But that seemed to be changing over the past year or so. Either E-Machines has been slowly inching their prices up closer to their competitors, or every body else is coming down to E-Machines level. What ever the reason, the end result is that E-Machine is no longer the cheapest buy around.

I took plenty of flack from friends about my E-Machine's loyalty over the years. "Oh those are junk", "Why would you buy that garbage", "Oh they sell those so cheap because they use junk parts". The excuses went on and on. But overall my experience with the E-Machine's was incredible.

I have probably owned just about every type of computer there is over the years, (except a Gateway, never did have one of those). And I can't honestly say that I really preferred one brand over the other. Sure they all have their own little software bonuses and programs that come only with their models. But basically they all pretty much performed fine, except for the occasional glitch or foul up.

No matter who you talk to, about any particular laptop or desktop, you are going to get different opinions. Some swear by HP's, others Toshiba, some love Compaq's. There are as many different opinions as there are choices available. It all comes down mainly to customer service in my opinion. Every manufacturer is going to occasionally have a bad unit or two, or three. It can't be helped. You are going to occasionally get a bad one. It just happens.

What makes the difference in my mind is how the manufacturer deals with the problem. That was one of the reasons I was so faithful to E-Machines. It was probably my 2nd or 3rd one, where I ran into my first problem. The long and the short of it was I had a hard drive failure on my 6 month old computer.

I called up E-Machine's tech support number, explained what was going on, the tech said, "sounds like your hard drive died on you". He then took my name and address, told me the replacement hard drive would leave the warehouse that day, and two days later I had a new hard drive in my hands.

Needless to say I was fairly impressed, after that incident, with E-Machine's support and service. And I pretty much stuck with them for the next 4 or 5 years. I actually have an old E-Machines desktop from about 6 years ago, that I gave to my dad, who then gave it to my nephew, and it's still running strong 6 years later!

But I digress, this post is supposed to be about the HP G50-104NR laptop and printer combo deal coming out in Best Buys "Black Friday Deal".

I had initially hoped to be able to give you some links to some other reviews on this particular model, but to my dismay, I had no luck finding any. But I can give you my own review based on my own experience with HP, along with the listed features of this unit.

First off I have had nothing but good experiences so far with HP's tech support. I did have a couple of issue's with my desktop about a month or so after purchasing it. One of the features I was happy to discover wasn't actually a part of the computer. It was the online chat support feature that HP offers on their web site.

Just click on the live chat link and within a minimal amount of time, maybe 3 -4 minutes, I was chatting with an HP tech support person. They are available from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday.

I was also worrying about how to get my serial # and other information that I was sure HP would require for proof of ownership of my computer. If you are like me that information is never readily available, and usually entails me dragging my tower out from under my desk, stretching the cables, hoping not to accidentally unplug anything. To my surprise the tech told me a simple key combination to press on my keyboard and *poof*, a little window popped up with all the information they needed on my system.

So other than a few minor mishaps both my HP's have been relatively trouble free since I purchased them. Now obviously nobody's perfect. Of course there are going to be problems with some units, somewhere along the line. But it has been my experience that no one manufacturers computer is really any better than others. I am inclined then at that point to really look at the price, and to see what I am getting for my money.

Now some systems may have a really tempting price tag on them. But you need to take a close look at what you are getting. One item I never try and skimp on is ram. You can never have enough in my opinion. I have a tendency to multi-task, a lot.

RAM
So always check how much ram is coming with your system. The G50-104NR comes with 2 GB of DDR2, which should be fine for running the OS that comes with it, Vista Home Premium. Don't get me wrong, 3 would be nice, and if you can afford it by all means upgrade as Vista is definately a memory hog. But 2 is fine for most normal usage. If you are thinking about doing some serious gaming with the G50, I would recommend upping it to 3GB.

Storage
The G50 also comes with 120GB hard drive which is more than enough for regular storage space. If you are planning on doing a lot of video storage with this model then you might want to think about an extra external hard drive to go along with it as video, especially with the increasing popularity of HD video, can suck up surprising amounts of space in the blink of an eye.

Speed
The Pentium Dual- Core T3200 processor is plenty speedy enough for the average user. This may not be the fastest kid on the block when it comes to computers, but it can more than hold it's own against the best of them.

The rest of it..
As far as everything else, the DVD burner, wireless networking, 15.4 inch screen, the 5 in 1 media reader, they are all just icing on the cake as far as I am concerned. And the last biggie, the printer, is certainly a killer bonus.

Unless you have set up your home network for wireless printing capabilities, it has always been a headache for printing from a laptop. You either have to email whatever it is you need printed to yourself so you can print it from your other computer, or save it to a flash drive and transfer it to your other system, or unplug your main printer from you other computer and plug it into the laptop, or any of a number of other solutions people have devised to solve the problem.

Of course the easiest solution has been to have another printer dedicated for use from the laptop. But generally it seems that most of us don't want the extra expense of having to go out and purchase a separate printer for laptop use. So we usually resort to one of the above mentioned solutions and just put up with the problem.

But with the bundling of the Canon 3 in 1 PIXMA printer to top off this deal is the answer most people have been looking for. A separate printer for the laptop! I am surprised that no one has come up with this type of bundling idea sooner.

So all components considered, along with an incredible price tag of $349.98. I think it's safe to say that this deal is going to be hard to beat. I have even read some stories that some other places are going to be offering this at an even lower price of $279.99! And with Christmas just around the corner, I can't think of a better gift for someone on your list, who is in the market for a new laptop.

Of course the downside to all this is that according to what I have read, each store will only have 8 of these units available on Black Friday morning. So I can already see the lines forming at Best Buys across the nation. So don't wait to long if you are considering one of these.