Joe's Finds: Refurbished $130 Intel i5 Notebook (HP EliteBook 8470p) 

My old notebook was affectionately known as the Baked Potato because it wasn’t the most powerful laptop and tended to run pretty hot. This notebook has been named, “Potato MAX”, since it will have so much memory.

Nice review but hard to hear you at times with background music.

I have never had a problem with refurbished. I just bought one of these upgraded to Win 10, 208.00. The one I got is 8gb. Hoping I don't regret. Looks like a work horse.

Story time... Several years ago my already very old (11years old?) XP tower died because of something (or several things) wrong with the MB. I was VERY poor, broke poor, and couldn't afford to do anything about it or to buy something else. I was without a computer for a couple of years. A friend then gave me an old macbook, but it was not ideal for my uses, although, I still have it and use it in a pinch. I wasn't the original apple account holder so I can't actually do the updates on it unless I buy the software from Apple. I was still looking for another computer. I almost made the same mistake you did as I started looking at buying a netbook and was leaning towards one that ran MS OS. That was because there is a free software that I ran for years and was use to using for minor photo adjustments and it turned out it is only made for windows OS, not mac or linux... I didn't want to have to learn a whole new software and all the shortcuts for it since I was accustom to the one program... So I started shopping for a windows netbook type computer because I could only afford maybe just over $100 and had a gift card for bloody Target which I could not see any other way I would spend at that store. The more I looked into it I decided that a netbook just wouldn't do the job. I'm So happy I realized this! Suddenly I found someone locally who was selling this laptop because she bought refurbished off groupon for a few hundred and never used it and needed money to pay a bill. She even had the box it came in and the groupon receipt and paperwork on the refurb OS setup. That is when I bought my first HP Elitebook 8470p from a private seller, fall of 2015 for a mere $135 total. That was a steal for sure back in 2015. i5-3360M Quadcore CPU @ 2.80Ghz, 8GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Win 7Pro. It's been a great computer and I love all the options and ports. Several months later I was walking through a color coded "red stuff" section for general housewares in a thrift store and on the bottom shelf I happened to see an open red shoe box with some electronics "stuff" in it. Curious, I bent down and saw what looked like a laptop dock. Fortunately I had been shopping for the docking station online and recognized what it was and was 90% sure it was exactly the right dock for my Elitebook. It was actually the top end dock too, with the most ports, huge power supply and even included the DVD-ROM drive. Had a price on it just under $25. I wrote down the model number and left the store to get wifi and double check that it was the right dock. Sure enough it was the one! Came right back and grabbed it and took it to the register. Then the woman says, oh, this is on sale. Ended up getting it for $18. A year later I was in another thrift store and spotted another dock! It was the smaller model below and bought that one BRAND NEW for $3. This week I am driving an hour to pick up another one but this time with the i7 dual core 2.90GHz, 8GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 10Pro, and it includes the dock, all for just $100. I call that a deal! I am guessing I should be able to set up the bios(?) to allow the system to hyper-thread as a quad core...? Another thing to love... The fact that I can just drop my laptop on a dock and connect to all my peripherals instantly or disconnect and go portable is a huge bonus. Larger 22 widescreen monitor, wireless mouse, MS natural Keyboard, Yamaha multimedia speakers, external hard drives, wired LAN cable, multiple care readers and USB extension cables, all the benefits of a PC tower as well as a laptop. Works just as it was designed to. Slightly off topic, I have also created several Linux live boot thumb drives like this. I'm however using Ubuntu on all my drives. I have partitioned and created storage sectors on the drives as well as persistent storage which allows me to keep my settings, accounts, favorites, additional programs. I have yet to figure out how to fully load all the latest updates without the drive no longer booting but I am able to update and keep updates of some of the programs including firefox and chrome as well as adding other software that remains when I reboot on another computer hardware. I even got a free gaming tower from a guy on CL which was complete with 8gb RAM but no HD. I just boot that from my live drive and can do all the common computer functions, media streaming and web surfing as well as creating documents if needed. Can you create persistent storage for this linux distro you are using, or does it just default to your original OS software configuration when you reboot?

I love the HD 4000 card on board. Not great by any means, but gives you the option to play some games

Part of the video is out of focus, and at the time I didn't notice. Sorry about that guys.

I have an old Lenovo ThinkPad T430 two years ago. I put an 250 GB SSD in it , $70, added 8 GB of RAM for $50.Then I installed Linux Mint. It runs amazing!

Joe, you can download Windows 7 from HP and your drivers. I keep copies of the images from like Dell and HP for the purpose of refurbishing. It saves over buying an unnecessary licence. What I do, if I take in a computer that has a 2nd licence, I just install the factory correct Windows anyway, because nine times out of 10, it's the home version anyway.

I bought an HP Elitebook 8460p in excellent condition for $60 on Craigslist. The seller worked in IT and upgraded it to W10 Pro with the product key. I added 4gb RAM for a total of 8gb. I bought a spare power supply so I could have one always plugged in to the docking station that I also purchased. The RAM was around $27, $14 for the docking station and $10 for the power supply for a total of $111. No dings or damage which is why I avoided buying sight unseen from ebay. Craigslist isn't the dumping ground that you imply it is, that award is more ebay style. I also own a Samsung Chromebook plus that I use a lot more than the PC because just about everything I do is online and the Chromebook never has any issues. In 2018 with Chrome 68 and 70 coming soon, Chrome runs circles around Windows or Linux. The PC is for playing games like TripleA or using Word, editing photos, etc. But those activities aren't everyday for me. My Chromebook lasts and lasts and rapid charges so no downtime as a portable device. I suggest you look at Chrome OS in 2018!

It has 4 USB port 2x USB 3.0 left side, 1x USB 2.0/Charge USB, 1x ESATA/USB 2.0 Combo port

Great video, I'm looking about buying the same computer for college since I had to giveaway my my other college laptop to my grandmother for her business. I want to know if the computer still doing great, did you have any slow down or have it crash on you?

That's how much I paid for mine as well. Except it had a 500gb HDD. And it does do fairly older games well. It can run Skyrim, on lower settings. Pretty much expect sub PS3 graphics but decent performance, if you upgrade to 8 or more gigs of RAM.

I have the same with 8gb ram and with a ssd

These EliteBooks make great cheap upgrade platforms - with a plethora of external ports dropping in an i7 or SSD literally takes about 5mins. The i5 would still rival a new consumer grade laptop from Best Buy. PS - I recommend the 1600x900 version if you can find one.

Im having this laptops. I have two8470p. With one with i5 and other one with i7 8gb ram 1tb hdd

Hello. I just received a HP Elitebook 8470P as well through the same company in which you received your refurbished computer. I have a question that I am hoping you can help me with. Besides the manufacturer giving me a faulty battery to the computer, which does not work; how many speakers does HP Elitebook 8470P are supposed to have? Is there only one speaker? If so, how do I adjust the volume to make it louder and more of a stereo sound? I'm used to having a stereo sound, Toshiba Lite computer that was located on both sides on top of the computer's keyboard. Any help will surely be appreciated. Thank you.

"SS" printed above the USB ports indicates "SuperSpeed", which is USB 3.0.

I have one of these and the Windows 7 COA is under the battery.

Have the same laptop... Need drivers for the and graphics, doesn't install tho..🤔

Nice review. I just bought a 8470p with Win10, 16GB ram, 500GB HDD for $100 from a girl who had bought it from a pawn shop. She did the Win10 reset so when I looked at it it wanted me to set username and password; (I used test and 1234 just to get to the system specs.) I am new to Win10 from Win7 so I am just learning. A local reburb guy has a 8440p Win10, 4GB ram, 500GB HDD in a much cleaner case for $140 (saw it when I bought my wife a Lenovo Thinkpad SL410 so she could move up from her Dell Inspiron 1545 with Vista) and considered it for myself but realized (I think) that 8GB ram was it's limit. Any more thoughts on what is better about the 8470p VS the 8440p and why either one might be better than my Win7 Toshiba Satellite A665 i3, 8GB ram, 465GB HDD? And did the 8470p likely lose any necessary or useful software in the Win10 wipe? Any way to recover if it did?

I have become an expert at shopping used on eBay just got a elitebook 840 g1 for 190 free shipping i7 4600u 8gb ram 128gb ssd

Anybody have high temps with these things?

late to the party..if you didn't do it already pull the battery, sometimes the windows license key sticker is inside there on these laptops

Can i know how to have an OS like yours?.. please.

Is he good for gaming???

Stupid music...ya know.

I love that Laptop i have amd radeon graphic varient. I looove tht Laptop

I got one with an I7 for a bit less, I'm hackintoshing it. 16 gb of memory is around 92$.

Find me same one for same pris pleezz i dont have one so pleezz

i got hp elitebook 8460p about $ 98 spec i5 / 120gb ssd / 8gb ram

Mine was $75 :)

Hey..guys I have the same laptop and it's working great for the daily work... But I just need to know that if I upgrade it to 8gb of ram and then run Windows 10 will it support today's (2018) software like video editing, photo editing, and possibly the latest popular games So, guys please if any one have some info then please do share with me. And also to the video maker you should be a little bit responsive to reply. If anyone sees this please do reply me Thank you In advance.. Have a nice day

:) 5 year old laptops bodyslam ULV crap of today, intels dual core cpus I'm talking like 6200 and 7200U shit. And those gay processors in the regular MacBook I mean seriously a base clock of 800mhz....

Can it run fortnite

I got 8570p 8GB RAM 500GB for $150 :) hahahaha from ebay though!