URGENT: Toshiba Satellite or HP Pavilion?

The specific models I want are the Toshiba Satellite Touchsmart C55dt-A5106 and the HP Pavilion Sleekbook 15 n030us.
I love that the Toshiba is touchscreen but I love the look of the HP (two things that do not matter in performance terms though). I've done a lot of research and have they are pretty much the same specs-wise.
Any advice?

 

My parents bought an HP Pavilion d6000 once. It was a wreck as soon as it came out of the box. All the bloatware, Windows Vista, (urgh...) the underpowered CPU and insufficient RAM to handle it all made it such a terror to deal with that I eventually broke the screen out of rage (and that is not like me at all; I'm an extremely calm and level-headed person most of the time.) While I have heard that HP's products have improved a lot since then, I have avoided buying anything HP has made since.

Meanwhile, I absolutely love Toshiba to death. They have extremely sturdy and well-priced laptops. I got mine used off of eBay, it survived shipping fine and booted up like a charm. Nothing is wrong with it and the person selling it had apparently upgraded the HDD and the RAM because it was twice the capacity of the specs. It's not super-powerful by any stretch of the definition. It's just a bog-standard laptop that does its job extremely well and it was waaay cheaper than anything with similar specs on the market.

I looked at what laptops you were looking at and I would have to say that, disregarding the fact that I am a ToshibAMD fanboy with an extreme bias against HP, I will still say that the Toshiba is the one you should go for. Its A6 is a solid APU, it'll do whatever you need it to do without much trouble (within reason, of course.) AMD is way better at integrated graphics than intel and the A6 will crush the i3 in graphics and multithreaded applications, while getting similar performance in single-threaded applications. Because it is an AMD processor, the Southbridge chipset on the Toshiba will almost certainly be able to handle SATA III which means you will definitely get the most out of an SSD if you ever wanted to upgrade the hard drive. In the HP, which has an i3, that might not be the case.

It might not be too much of an issue to you, but the HP will be a fingerprint magnet because it is glossy all over. The Toshiba is a ridgy matte black, so there won't be any fingerprints there.

Last of all, the Toshiba appears to be $50-100 cheaper than the HP.

Hope this helped!

 

Dooon't go for the HP one!!!!! Whatever you do don't buy that one!!!! A friend of mine who works fixing laptops and PC says the HP are the worse ones. As a Toshiba Satellite owner I can assure you Toshiba is waaaaaaaaaaay better! I have a new one and still keep the old one that has been with me for nearly 6 years.

 

Hp is an expensive laptop to fix when broken, and I have hear that it is easily broken as well.

 

OH SWEET RELIEF, THANK YOU. Now we have people who feel the same way I do and I can open up my bias vents. Yes, I agree! DON'T GET THE HP. They shaft you every time. Go for the Toshiba. You will be very very very happy indeed with it. They are and always have been very durable laptops with great customer support (Toshiba's Japanese, after all...) whereas with HP you get an absolute crap machine with all the bloatware they can shove on the thing. If by some miracle you managed to get all of it off, you would be stuck with a flimsy piece of rubbish that would be expensive to repair and calling customer service will send you on an expensive phone call around the world to someone in India who doesn't speak English, says he will call you back, hangs up and you will never hear from him again.

HP is a printer company. Their computers are absolute rubbish and unfortunately their once-excellent printers are now well-known ink-guzzlers with poorly-made printer heads that jam and gum up on a regular basis. Go for internationally renowned quality. Get the Toshiba. America and China will cheat the crap out of you on computers. Japan will always deliver.

 

Your question is vague. Could you tell us which model you intend to purchase because HP and Toshiba sells a lot of laptops from that range.
I could say that HP is better than Toshiba. Customer service and the specs are better than the latter.

 

I would go for a HP Pavilion because of its features. It is much better when it comes performance as compared to Toshiba. When it comes to HP vs Hp, Hp will always win.

 

Hewlett-Packard are trash at making computers. They are only the world's largest laptop manufacturer because they got Compaq, which were actually not that bad until they died out. That is the only reason. It does not make them better. Their computers are glossy fingerprint magnets and in general feel very flimsy. Toshiba are mostly made out of plastic, but it is very sturdy and hard-wearing plastic. Scratches on an HP make it just look more hideous. The gashes my Toshiba has survived make it look cooler IMHO.

In terms of performance, HP specs are only better on paper, and what two laptops are you comparing, anyway? A C655 vs an HP Envy? Because those are night and day in terms of specs but it makes no difference as to which one is better. My S5303 is on paper a paperweight for holding down that paper, but in the real world it is just as effective at what I use it for as any HP you put in front of me, and will do so even more effectively once I put an SSD in it. Moreover, the Toshiba will do it for far longer. Toshiba has an excellent track record for durability and reliability. HP's record is full of reports of failing hard drives, bloatware, broken fans, faulty cooling systems and overheating problems that lead to the complete failure of many of their computers. I have an HP Pavilion that has been so bogged down with hardware and software issues that it no longer recognizes its version of Windows as genuine. On the flipside I have an ancient Sharp from 2002 that will still boot up fine and do basic things without a hitch. My Toshiba is from winter 2011, so it is still compatible with everything at the moment and from the reviews of the Satellite C series will still function well into next decade. They are extremely well-built computers and their tech support is excellent.

 

I think hp laptops are much better than Toshiba. They have excellent quality and the one who uses the hp laptops knows that they arebone of the best.