We bought this for a customer. It comes with Windows HOME, but every other computer makes it easy to upgrade HOME to PRO with a $100 upgrade payment to Microsoft.
If you are in a business or use Microsoft Office365 and join a domain, HOME is useless. So, I ponied up for the Windows PRO upgrade.
We installed the Windows PRO upgrade, which seemed to go okay. But, then, the Microsoft servers refused to install Office365. We are Microsoft partners and have worked directly with Microsoft partner support. 4 days of work, as much for the learning challenge as to support our client. Even Microsoft couldn't make it work.
To give you an idea of just SOME of what we have gone through, here is a recent summary from my top tech.
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I hate it. Here are the highlights. All logs and dumps have been saved. I am too tired to read them now.
1. Downloaded Office365 installer from portal.office.com
Got error "We're sorry, but we can't verify the signature of files required to install your office product."
2. Downloaded the 32bit version of office, ran installer
"We're sorry, but we can't verify the signature of files required to install your office product."
3. Office365 offline installer is no longer available so I downloaded the deployment kit, made a install script ran it. It downloaded the install files and then
"We're sorry, but we can't verify the signature of files required to install your office product."
4. Pulled a known working installer off another machine, ran it
"We're sorry, but we can't verify the signature of files required to install your office product."
5. Installed the action pack version of office
got "We're sorry, but we can't verify the signature of files required to install your office product."
6 Ran SFC and DISM
No errors or issues
7. Downloaded Windows Disk maker and had it download Windows11pro. Made a booted USB driver. Reinstalled windows. This time I did not install HP drivers.
Repeated steps 1-6 with same results
8. Installed HP drivers.
Repeated steps 1-6 same results.
9. rebooted into BIOS and verified all settings were correct.
10 rebooted again
1-6 again, same results.
11. Logged in as new admin profile
1-6 same results.
12. Sometimes people get the error when some type of filtering is done on the network traffic or DNS.
13. connected into ting with public IP
1-6 same results.
14. Tried DNS servers owned by google, Microsoft, Cloudflare, comcast, bright speed , various other public and private DNS server. Tried with 4 different VPNs in different countries and us.
All same results
15. verified Microsoft windows was activated on the terminal and the office365 admin portal.
16. reconsidered my career/life choices
17. ran sfc got message that a fix was pending reboot and run again. Checked and it was a windows update.
Now windows updated 6 different times on install. Missed something I guess.
18. rebooted it updated and rebooted again and a new error blue screen code driver verifier dma violation.
There is more and these are just the highlight. Also I may have cried (a manly cry)
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Interestingly, just last week we had a client who purchased an HP laptop and it would not connect to 3 separate port expanders (UGreen, Mokin, and one other) - and all of these units have worked for years with every other computer we have encountered. We loaded various drivers, but it still didn't work. We told the client to return the HP and buy something more compatible.
My gut feel is that HP is cutting corners to reduce price.