HP 17-g133cl Refurbished on Groupon

K5CG

I just received an email from Groupon for a decent laptop for about $450. The HP 17-g133cl with 12 GB RAM, Quad core AMD APU and 1 TB disk. Touch screen IPS display. It appears to be in about the same performance category as a Core i5 from the benchmarks I've looked at. This should work well with SmartSDR so if you've been waiting to pull the trigger for something nicer than your old Core2 Duo...

EA4GLI

This Kickstarter UDOO $89 computer should run SmartSDR nicely.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/udoo/udoo-x86-the-most-powerful-maker-board-ever?ref=nav_search

The Ultra with the Performance Kit is a beast for $289

KC9NRN

I avoid anything with AMD in it these days be it CPU or GPU, just not worth the aggravation. I have 3 AMD based laptops in for repair right now and wishes of "faster performance" with models sporting the A10. At best it can give a high end Core 2 Duo Quad a run for the money or maybe a low end i5 (YMMV). People buy cheap and then call saying why is my system so slow? Best Buy said this was fast! I try to explain there is a reason why the price was so "reasonable".

I'd rather spend a few hundred more on a good to great machine than skimp on an AMD based one. Just as an FYI, in 36 years of hardware repair, in the last 7 years the bane of my existence has been insert company name here using an AMD CPU/Chipset in their laptops/desktops.

Heck, repairs come to more than the machine is worth and I try my best to talk them out of it, 50% of the time they choose to repair it because it's still cheaper than the machine they should have bought to begin with and no explanation will sink in for some reason.

So for this machine:

Pros - 1080p, 12gigs of memory, wireless AC (1x1) Bluetooth 4 and 2 gigs of dedicated video memory, SD card reader, full keyboard layout

Cons - Build quality, subpar performance from the AMD CPU/GPU/Chipset, agonizingly slow 5400 rpm hard drive, Fast Ethernet only (seriously??)

From one review of the A10 vs the i5 - The superiority of Intel's CPU compared to models with AMD's A10 chip becomes evident in the Cinebench comparison (single-core: +69%; multi-core: +46%).

99.9% of people who buy this laptop won't run Cinebench but it is telling how weak AMD is compared to comparable base clock Intel CPU's.

I like HP, most of what I support is built by them, my laptops are HP Omens, the XYL's is like this one for not a whole lot more money you get an insane amount of performance.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-OMEN-15-Gaming-Core-i7-4710HQ-8GB-256GB-SSD-GTX-860M-15-6-Touch-AC-BT-W8-...

KC9NRN

Very interesting!