I didn't actually purchase this product on amazon because I got it much cheaper through Bestbuy when they were having their "$100 off Windows 8 Laptops" promotion.That said, this laptop is great and I'm not really sure why people are complaining. One user said the bloatware was eating up 79% of his ram upon bootup. But one thing to keep in mind is that all kinds of processes run for the first boot up of a new user. That usage goes down after everything is setup and updated.
I personally love the fact that this thing has a touch screen and is so light weight. The screen is big enough to use for work but also nice enough to surf the web on my favorite web sites.
The one thing that I really disliked about the laptop is not Samsung's fault... Windows 8. I know a lot of other people don't like Windows 8 and before making some configuration changes, I very much agree with those people. However, you can get the true glory of Windows 7 back into Windows 8 by downloading a program called Start8. It adds back the start menu and allows for some customizations that really make Windows 8 a hybrid OS that works well for both touch and mouse + keyboard configurations.
So all OS issues aside, what you are paying for is great hardware:
1) Good dual core CPU with 4 threads
2) 4GB RAM (standard for the price)
3) 500 GB Hybdrid SSD/HDD (The SSD is only 24GB, but is used for fast boot ups)
4) 10-Point Touch screen
5) USB 3 Port
6) Mini-HDMI
And here are the things that people don't generally mention, for 30 bucks extra you can add 8GB extra memory by heading to Crucial's web site. It will even tell you the exact memory to buy.
So for 30 dollars on top of this price, you can get yourself a laptop with a great CPU, awesome storage, and 12 GB of RAM.
Pros
1) The battery life is great. The 3rd gen i5 maximizes the battery life and Win8 has several battery saving features, by default on, that assist with decreasing consumption.
2) The laptop boots quite literally in seconds with the addition of the Expresscache enabled 24GB SSD. The SSD is partitioned into two drives, 18GB and 6GB. The 6GB partition, to my knowledge, is used for the Sleep function where the state of the OS is stored to SSD for speedy retrieval and the same goes for the OS boot.
3) The external speakers are pretty good when they have breathing room because they are located under the left and right hand sides of the keyboard. Stereo sounds get muddled but I turned on the 3D capability in the included software and have been thoroughly enjoying the experience.
4) Easy access to hard drive and RAM through a panel with a screw on the bottom of the chasis.
5) The touch screen isn't necessary but interestingly enough I enjoy using it more for browsing. It is very sensitive and windows functions are intuitive (press and hold to move a window and press and hold for right click).
Cons
1) Bloatware. This was the most bloated laptop I had ever owned. Samsung touts on their website that this laptop is capable right out of the box. No. Upon first boot I checked Task manager and the machine, while idling, was using 79% of it's 4GB of memory. That was absurd and I began uninstalling everything I knew I could safely uninstall without comprising the parts of the software I would need down the road. Lose a star.
2) After a few hours of uninstalling software and personalizing I noticed the colors of the panel were a bit off. I realize now that on first boot the panel was an awful warm pink. Samsung didn't configure the panel? Pretty critical when they tout that this laptop is "boot and go". Google how to configure a color profile for your panel and you too will see how far off this it is from neutral. Lose a star.
3) Windows 8. Charm. Yuck. There is nothing intuitive about the charm menu. There is no included documentation about how to configure the charm menu. To remove an app from charm touch the app and drag down? I know why I was so disappointed even days after first boot. This lack of anything resembling intuitive science is not Samsung's fault but their product experience is being negatively impacted by the OS.
4. Using the brightness keys you can't turn the panel off. Why wouldn't this be a thing already? I don't want to wait for my laptop to time out, I just want to turn off the panel.
5. There are no dedicated media controls. Not that big of a deal but I have to map a three key combination because the keys I originally wanted to use are usually already taken by the program that I'm active in.
6. Fn+F1 opens Samsung's general settings program because there aren't any hardware buttons to turn wifi on/off. This was a problem because I needed to bridge my Macbook by ethernet to the Samsung while sharing the wifi. Somehow this turned off the wifi when I disabled the bridge. I took an hour to turn it back on because BIG SHOCK there was only documentation on turning airplane mode on/off (this does not turn the wifi hardware off/on just disables the radio).
Overall, the hardware is great but Samsung sucks at everything else for their customers. The panel default color is really bad and there is no screen to assist during setup to configure the panel. The bloatware resulted in 79% RAM usage upon first boot and to this day this really makes me angry. Consumers by default don't hack their registry, disable unnecessary auto load crap in Computer Management or load task manager to find the Samsung programs to delete them (there was no other way to remove them). Samsung could have made my experience with this product more pleasant if they would not have placed their work squarely upon my shoulders.I can not rate this notebook from first hand experience because it was a gift to my 22 year old granddaughter. I can tell you, however, that she thinks it is the best computer she has ever owned or seen.
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