Overall, I'm very pleased with this laptop. I was able to catch a great sale on this model in it's first days with Best Buy, and while I'm not sure it's worth the MSRP, the sale that netted me 19% off made this a no-brainer.
The feature-set is pretty complete (if not more-so) for a laptop in this price range (the sale price range, anyway). 3GB of RAM is always a welcome addition when running Vista (gotta love it when RAM prices are in the basement). The AMD dual-core CPU in this model leaves a bit to be desired, although it will more than suffice for what this laptop was intended to do. If you're thinking of purchasing this laptop at MSRP, look for a Core 2 Duo instead. If you are planning on crunching a lot of numbers or applying all kinds of filters in Photoshop, you'll have to wait a little extra time, but it'll still get things done. The dual-layer DVD/CD burner was also an awesome feature for this price-point, and I'm glad to have it on a laptop now.
Other welcome features include the built-in 2mp webcam (the picture quality was MUCH better than I was expecting, decent low-light performance in my testing, also the included YouCam software is pretty nice with plenty of effects and super-easy YouTube uploading for the teenage video bloggers out there), the blue-lit touch-sensitive media buttons along the top of the keyboard (these respond very nicely, they are evenly lit, the mute button turns red when "engaged", volume is adjusted by swiping finger left/right and works well enough), and the included remote is a nice "plus" (it's small, docks nicely in the expansion port when not in use, assuming you aren't using the expansion port for something else of course).
The laptop is pretty light as far as I'm concerned, but I'm coming from a 17", 7+ lb. monster, so this 5+ lb. laptop feels pretty light. The 14.1", 16:10 screen is bright, I don't notice any backlight bleed unless I'm looking from a weird angle. The colors are rich, I'm happy with the screen overall. The keyboard is standard fare, nothing special. The keys aren't really too loud, but I don't guess they're really quiet, either. The design on the lid is pretty nice although subtle, the whole laptop just looks "cool", much better than your regular gray/black laptop lid. If you don't like fingerprints, however, be warned, because the glossy lid of this laptop attracts them. A micro-fiber cloth is even included in the package to wipe them away, if that tells you anything.
Given the amount of ram and dual-core CPU, Vista is pretty speedy. Boot-up doesn't seem to take a long time, coming out of hibernation is no dog, either. I've not ran into any issues with multi-tasking yet, I've yet to bog down the OS. HP also did a fine job with not loading down memory with the pre-installed programs. I only had to uninstall 5 or 6 programs, just a couple of which were set to run in the background. Once I got rid of the clutter, Vista idles using right at 25% of RAM. Battery life seems pretty decent I guess. I haven't ran it all the way down, but my estimates of just simply browsing the net and simple stuff like that would give somewhere near 2 1/2 hours before dying (15 minutes of surfing the net over the wireless connection drained 10% of the battery using the HP recommended power plan). Also, the laptop doesn't seem to really get all that warm. Sure, it gets warm, even hot if you keep it your lap, but if it's properly ventilated, the heat doesn't seem to be an issue at all.
Now for a couple of the things that I don't like. Even though we have lots of RAM and CPU power, Vista's Aero interface is a bit sluggish. The Aero interface in Vista is completely vector based, which basically means performance is directly tied your video card, and the nVidia video card in this laptop is bottom-of-the-line as far as I'm concerned, only marginally better than the integrated Intel video chipsets found in other "budget" laptops. First off, Aero isn't even enabled from the outset. You have to go into the computer properties and run the Vista experience index to "grade" your computer before it will let you turn on Aero and it's transparency/"gee-whiz" effects (this is a Vista stipulation, not HP). I noticed during my initial boot-up with the laptop that it appeared to try and run the grading process (which is should do), but it didn't complete for reasons unbeknownst to me, requiring me to run it manually. But maximizing/minimizing windows and using the flip-3D interface is noticeably sluggish, the frame-rate of these animations suffers by stuttering. It's not too big of a deal since it doesn't hamper my overall experience, just don't expect silky-smooth transitions.
The touchpad mouse seems a bit wonky at points. Sometimes it won't register a tap to click the pointer, and I'll have to tap it a bit harder to get it to recognize. Other times it seems as if I don't even touch the pad or just oh-so barely have my finger on it and it registers a click. This doesn't happen often, but it's annoying. Also, I've found that when I'm using my Harmony remote with my XBOX 360, some of the command codes are picked up by my laptop if it's on, which is annoying, because you never know what's going to happen. I haven't found a way to disable the IR on the front of the laptop, but I haven't really looked, either.
Other than that, I've not found much wrong with it. I'm happy with my purchase, I'd definitely recommend this laptop to anyone. It's not a game machine, and it's not a power machine. As long as you buy it for the right uses, it's great. I have based my 5-star rating of this laptop on what I paid for it. If I bought it as MSRP, it would've been rated at 3 or 4 stars. I am A+ (2003) certified, as well as certified with XP and Vista through Microsoft.
. I've posted it on bestbuy.com, and figured since I was fairly thorough with it, I'd post it here, too, for either you guys to read, or for people in the future who search for this model.
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