ICTDirect_Joe

Absolutely spot on and should have been a part of my initial reply - if Data Sheets haven't been checked yet then absolutely have a look to make sure the models you have support Display over USB-C.

You'll find that branded docks such as HP's and Dell's are listed as working specifically with their Chromebooks. We sell the HP Elite Dock G4and the Dell WD19, and their product specs say they work with HP Chromebooks and Dell Chromebooks respectively - in theory they should work with any Chromebook, but theory isn't always correct! From what I can see people have mixed success with aftermarket/unbranded docks.

Hugely disappointed. I started competing in slalom skiing when I was 13 and kept going at a national level until my mid-20's, and it was always excellent to have trained at the home slope of Dave Ryding and to follow his successes to WINNING a World Cup race in 2022. So removing our long standing media representation of Snowsport is SO backward when, not just in skiing, we've seen a huge growth of success in a field where we train either in fridges or on carpets/bristles in the pouring rain and compete with nations with glaciers. Rubbish

So, you’ve got a budget of £350 per laptop and you’re weighing up whether it’s better to buy new or buy refurbished. Right now, HP have got some cracking deals on. You can pick up a brand-new, and imaginatively named, HP Laptop 14” with Windows 11 for around £340 ex.VAT. Meanwhile, at ICT Direct we’ve got a refurbished HP 14” Windows 11 laptop priced at £310 ex.VAT. (Left/Top) NEW HP Laptop 14" (14-ep1010nax) £340.83 ex.VAT | (Right/Bottom) REFURBISHED HP Elitebook 840 G9 £310 ex.VAT £30 more for a brand-new laptop? It’s surely a no brainer, right? They have the same size screen, they both have Intel CPU’s, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage. At first glance, they’re almost identical, and even photos of them look the same. But one is a 4-year old business class laptop, and the other is a brand-new consumer laptop. So, for comparison’s sake, let’s throw in the most affordable, new, HP Business-Class laptop money can buy too, again with an Intel Processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB Storage: NEW HP 250R G10 £555.99 ex.VAT Eek! That price is a fair way beyond our budget! All because we added “business-class” to the description? This is taken from Misco’s website, as HP are only selling their most premium business class devices directly, but it is still a readily available budget business device. Unlike the other 2 devices, this has a 15.6” screen – the new 14” business-class laptops available all cost more than this, so I deemed the 250R a good comparison machine regardless. Somehow, you have to navigate which of these options is actually best value for money, so I’ve thrown them head-to-head (to-head?) in a breakdown based purely off HP’s datasheet’s and website, and third-party CPU performance benchmarks, and ranked them 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Surprise, surprise – in a blog written by a refurbished IT Salesperson, the refurb unit wins! So, don’t just take my word for it based on this chart alone, let’s get into the details of what this all means. Screen: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 14” 1366x768 TN Panel 250 Nits Brightness 3rd 14” 1920x1200 IPS 400 Nits Brightness 1st 15.6” 1920x1080 IPS 250 Nits Brightness 2nd The HP Laptop 14” is the biggest loser here – IPS displays are far superior to TN Panels, and the Refurb 830 G9 unit pips the 250R with its extra screen real-estate, pixel density and much brighter screen. In fact, it has over double the number of pixels of the HP Laptop 14”! As I mentioned the 250R does have the larger display and if that is important to you, then it’s worth keeping in mind. CPU: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Intel Core 3 – 100U 3rd Intel Core i5 – 1245U 2nd Intel Core 5 – 120U 1st This turned out to be very close; there is not a lot of difference between these three. They all have a TDP of 15W; both the Core 5 and i5 have 10 cores and 12 threads; both the newer CPUs Turbo higher, but the Refurb has the higher base clock speed. Based on comparisons on cpubenchmark.net and technical.city, these are our results. Table data taken directly from https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5948vs4733vs5892/Intel-3-100U-vs-Intel-i5-1245U-vs-Intel-5-120U RAM: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 8GB DDR4 3200MT/s Not user-upgradable 2nd 8GB DDR5 4800MT/s Upgradable to 64GB Joint 1st 8GB DDR5 5600MT/s Upgradable to 32GB Joint 1st Another clear loser here – despite being 4 years newer than the 840 G9, the New HP Laptop 14” is using slower DDR4 memory, plus it’s not upgradable and is soldered to the motherboard! Given the RAM shortages of 2025/26 this is a tactical way to keep costs down. The 2 business-class devices are tied in 1st place as they both use much faster DDR5. If you need 64GB of RAM, the 840 G9 wins. If you don’t, the 250R supports faster RAM, so comes out on top. Storage: A 3-way tie! They all have 256GB M.2 NVMe drives, they’re all user-upgradable, they all support PCIe Gen 4. Ports: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 1x USB Type-C (10Gbps, Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 1.4b Joint 2nd 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C (40Gbps, PD, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 2.0 1st 1x USB Type-C (10Gbps, Power Delivery, DisplayPort 1.4b) 1x HDMI 1.4b Joint 2nd They all have 2x USB Type-A (5Gbps) ports, and they all have a headphone/microphone jack too. But the 840 G9 has the higher spec HDMI port, and 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, that’s double the USB-C and quadruple the speed in each! Wi-Fi: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Realtek Wi-Fi 6 3rd Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6e 1st Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 2nd This one is straight forward. Intel Wi-Fi cards are better (and more expensive) than Realtek ones, and Wi-Fi 6e can support faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6. HP don't actually do us the courtesy of including what model of Wi-Fi card the Realtek one is! Build Quality: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 Plastic Chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested Joint 2nd All-aluminium chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested 1st Plastic Chassis MIL-STD-810H Tested Joint 2nd Both new laptops are built of plastic – they’ve got a lovely silver coat of paint to look much like their EliteBook counterpart, but the 840 G9 is all Aluminium and built to last. It’s a premium feeling product, and there’s no paint to chip off. Charging: NEW HP Laptop 14” Refurbished HP EliteBook 840 G9 NEW HP 250R G10 45 W AC power adapter (recommended, sold separately Joint 2nd 45 W AC power adapter INCLUDED IN THE PRICE 1st 45 W AC power adapter (recommended, sold separately Joint 2nd I honestly hadn’t realised the whole laptop market was onboard with charging extra for power supplies and lucky for you, ICT Direct still isn’t onboard with it. All our laptops come with a charging brick. Price: HP Laptop 14” HP EliteBook 840 G9 HP 250R G10 NEW RRP: £499.17 Offer Price: £340.83 NEW RRP: £1000 Our Price: £310 NEW RRP: £555.99 Misco Price: £555.99 The RRP should tell you all you need to know – it may be 4 years old but the 840 G9 was valued at around the price of the other 2 laptops combined. It remains a top-end business class laptop, and the clear winner. HP’s top-end laptops today will set you back at least £1000, if not more, but they’re designed to last. That’s why we provide a 3-year Advance Replace Warranty to our managed customers, also included in the price, rather than as a paid return-to-base add-on from new. So, is the EliteBook 840 G9 the best offering for you? It’s the cheapest, and it wins by far the most categories when put head-to-head against new alternatives. It’s the toughest, with an aluminium chassis designed to survive the daily combat of school warfare. It’s easily customisable both at purchase and once in your hands – we can configure it to more RAM, or a larger NVMe; or you can upgrade it yourself further along the line. It feels daft to be typing this but... IT COMES WITH A CHARGER. There is only one more question to ask. How many can I put you down for?

The oxford dictionary doesn't define OOMF as a 12th Gen Intel i7 with 16GB of DDR5 and an Nvidia T550 GPU. BUT I DO. We've got our hands on some lovely HP ZBook Firefly 14 G9's with some cracking specs: CPU: i7-1265U (10 Cores, 12 Threads, Max Turbo of 4.8GHz) RAM: 16GB DDR5 Memory Storage: 512GB NVMe Display: 14" WUXGA (1920x1200) GPU: Nvidia T550 Mobile (4GB GDDR6) A Grade Refurbished Condition BUT WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?! Nice eh? But that just begs one more question. HOW MUCH FOR AN A GRADE? £475 exVAT Reach out to me at [email protected] for a quote and if you're after several, many, or even lots, we can look into a volume discount.

Definitely worth waiting for a free shipping event or similar to grab them - sounded like they were getting a BIG bunch of them sorted soon but they are super popular like you say

You've just got to remember the rule of 18: USB 2.0 USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 USB 4 VERSION 1.0 USB 4 VERSION 2.0 and each of those paired with either up to 15w(5v), 100w(20v) or 240w(48v) It's that easy!

Looks like its time to bring back the PS/2 port

Lets hope AI can guess ages better than it can manage (delete) email inboxes

I feel like an education UI for YouTube that worked like this would be an excellent addition - better still if you could still have this available while logged in with ads removed

I've played Smite (3rd person MOBA) and now more recently Smite 2 for the last decade at this point, and carry on because its a game that 4 of us have always played together. Recently been playing PEAK with a large group, as you can mod it to have a party size bigger than 4 and that's a good laugh. Going to try out Meccha Chameleon (the hide and seek painting game) as again, it looks fun to play as a group!

The fact that reimaging worked makes me more confident that it could be down to a driver issue/mix up.

There's a small chance it could be down to some sort of USB driver conflict? Worth a bit of investigating, maybe even uninstalling the driver and reinstalling a replacement one, and looking up what the drivers should be for the MOBO and seeing if they match on the PC.

If there's a lot of extensions running that could interfere. Worth trying in incognito mode. Otherwise under the "More" menu make sure that "Use WebGL" is ticked Chrome has a lot of system usage overhead in itself so potentially worth trying in a different browser as well. Hope that helps! It runs locally so shouldn't experience anything from network issues, it will purely be down to system resources/other interference.

There's plenty of room in the business development box, just tuck your elbow in