If you are thinking of buying an HP Stream laptop then I strongly suggest you don't! It really has to rank as one of the worst laptops I have come across. Unfortunately HP aren't the only ones who are building these cheap 'Not Fit for Purpose' laptops.
A customer brought one into me because it was complaining of lack of space. It's not surprising it has run out of space - it has 32GB hard drive which can't be upgraded. It was purchased for her daughter and they were tempted because it was advertised as being perfect for students.
I ended up doing a fresh installation of Windows 10. This is the cleanest install possible. There's no HP apps or 3rd party apps. It's the installation direct from Microsoft. However, once this was installed I had to install Microsoft Ofice 365 and this then led to a tiny 5GB free. How long will this 5GB last!. I suspect a few Windows updates will be downloaded and the computer will be complaining again about the lack of space.
It's enough to drive you mad!
I installed a 32GB microSD card and setup OneDrive on this so all personal files won't eat up space on the c: drive. But 2 months later the customer phones me back to say the same problem has happened again! They've now decided to cut their losses and buy a new laptop for their daughter.
The Specs
The specification of the rest of this laptop is just as bad. We are talking an Intel Celeron 4000 processor with only 2GB of RAM. Microsoft might claim that 1GB of RAM is the bare minimum but anyone in this game knows that 4GB is really the bare minimum and 8GB is ideal for everyday tasks such as browsing, emails and office suite productivity.
Is it good for Students?
NO!
This laptop isn't good for anyone. Please don't buy it!
Alternatives to HP Stream
Some of the laptops in the £199 price range do have 64GB of storage so at least this would be enough to run the computer properly. But the specs are still poor and using it won't be an enjoyable experience. Some of these laptops also have an M.2 slot so you can install another hard drive. With this option you can at least run Windows properly. You will need a professional to install the M.2 hard drive and to install Windows but at least your computer would function properly.
Instead of spending £199 on a brand new computer I would recommend a 2nd hand one from eBay. If buget is really tight I would recommend a 2nd hand laptop of eBay. There are lots of really good laptops around 4 years old which would be a million times better than this HP Stream. The cost would be similar (around £200) but performance would be in a different league. Personally I like Dell Latitude laptops. They are work horses favoured by businesses and you really could pick up a bargain on eBay.
