I got this cheap HP laptop from Best Buy

HP - 15.6" Laptop - 4GB Memory - 320GB Hard Drive - Charcoal Gray - 2000-416dx

It says it's $300 but I got it for like $330 at my local best buy maybe a week ago. What I do like about it is it has a bluetooth, which seems rare for laptops of this price range. But it also seems extremely slow. Is it because it's a dual core AMD? I heard AMDs are slower than Intel. Or is it because of bloatware? I do see it has a lot of games like Mahjong etc. I wonder if it was slow because of that?

I don't like the keyboard, it's too hard to type on it and hurts my fingers. Maybe it's cheap because of the keyboard?

I was thinking of really returning it because it's slow and hard to type on (and can't even watch 1080p movies because it lags b/c it's so slow) but it would be my 4th computer to return in a row and the guy who handles the returns gives me pressure. Hmm, what would be the best laptop to buy in Best Buy these days... I liked some computers available in places like tigerdirect, does anyone know if you can buy from tigerdirect with 18month or 12month financing? Because we are tight on budget and financing can help.

 

The E series processors of AMD are not that great. If you do get an AMD look for the A6 series.

So if you look for another laptop don't get an E-Series processor from AMD or a Pentium from Intel.
Had problems with the Pentium slowing down.

 

It's probably packed to the hilt with additional software and running processes. Nearly any dual core machine should be fast enough but add a slow rotational hard drive with loads of things running and you get a limp puppy.

...However that doesn't stop the keyboard sucking.

Suggestion: Stand there in the shop and try a machine (if you can?) for a few minutes before buying.

P.s. That machine should have zero issue with 1080p playback so blame the damn bloat.

 

I can tell you it's all because of the bloat. My wife has an Acer Aspire One 722 with an AMD C-60 that was plenty fast for most tasks, even before I replaced the RAM with an 8GB SODIMM an an 80GB SSD. The first thing I did was to get all the dirvers onto an external drive, make a note of the Windows key, and give it a clean image. That's the first thing I do with any new PC, for that matter.

 

Yeah, I got this one for my grandparents. Works great, except I'm also experiencing some problems with the keyboard and the trackpad.

Double scrolling is horrible and but the scroll bar is fine (not much too worry about, you just need to get used to it).

The keyboard is the main problem, though. I don't find it hard to type on or anything, but whenever I rapidly type two of the same letters it doesn't pick them up. I type really fast, and what it does is it makes "Google" into "Gogle," "letters" into "leters," and so on - it's always very responsive except in situations like these. I already made a separate thread about this if anyone can help, but I think it's just a hardware problem and really cannot be fixed. Also, the backspace key isn't very responsive, sometimes I have to hit it two or three times to get it to work. This won't be a problem though because my grandparents definitely won't be fast typers (when they learn to type). Other than these minor issues, it's a great laptop for the price!