HP ProBook 4720s WH324UT 17.3" 4GB 500GB Notebook PC

Bought our HP probook 4 months ago... it is in for its 3rd repair... customer service has been a nightmare...never again

I just bought a 4720 ProBook. The display is not nearly as good as the 6 year old Compaq laptop it was intended to replace. The colors are washed out, and increasing or decreasing the brightness doesn't help. Also, looking at the screen and moving side to side, the image is OK. But if you change the angle of the screen even slightly, i.e. slightly open or close the lid, the image becomes too dark or too light. I had expected the technology to have improved over 6 years, but in this case it has gotten worse. I wish I had read about this problem in reviews, but I didn't see anyone pointing it out.

If you don't care about image quality, the computer is probably fine. If you do, don't buy it.

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This laptop was excellent from the start then it started to give problems with the OS. It's light and compact for a 17" laptop. The raised keyboard makes cleaning easier. The combo function keys means you don't have an overtly cluttered keyboard. The laptop can be used readily by a business or home user. Windows 7 may seem as the right companion OS for this laptop. Windows 7 starts up faster than Vista and performs even better at first. After a month, you get problems rebooting the laptop. I've had to system restore the laptop on numerous occasions to be able get the computer to start properly!

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I've had this laptop for 2 years with no problems. Mouse takes some getting used to but it works great. Its fast, really fast for the price. I don't understand all the negative reviews.

It is a little bit big and after two years of HEAVY use it still works very well. Battery is starting to die more often which is to be expected. It should be noted that this laptop survived with no damage after being in my backpack during a motorcycle accident. 5 stars.

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This laptop is almost awesome, except for one crucial problem: the touchpad. It is so bad it makes the laptop almost unusable without an external mouse.

The touchpad is a BAD knockoff of the apple touchpad from their macbookpro line. The HP/Synaptics touchpad on this model of laptop allows for multi-touch gestures, though scrolling is the only one that seems to work. Despite this multi-touch ability they did not enable two-finger touch to be a right-click. Massive drawback.

The touchpad has the feature that if you push down on the touchpad with pressure, it will physically "click". Here is the problem:

Left clicking: A light tap on the touchpad, anywhere, counts as a left click. But a heavy tap that makes the "click" in the touchpad happen, only works INSIDE of the little drawn rectangles that are the right and left "buttons". This is hugely counter-intuitive. You'll be scrolling away down a document and go to left click on something and because you pushed it a hair too hard, and it doesn't count. This becomes infuriating after the 10th time. It has to be lightly, or inside the little drawn on box. Accidentally drag another finger over the touchpad while you are clicking? NOTHING. no click. Leave a finger of the left "button" like you would on a normal touchpad with buttons? NOTHING. no click

Right Clicking: Apple made their multi-touch mouse right click when you touch it with 2 fingers. HP, when deciding to make a knock off of their mouse, left this out. Instead left clicks can ONLY happen inside of the little left button box that is drawn onto the touchpad. Light taps in the box don't work, must be a hard tap so the touchpad "clicks". A light tap, even inside of the "left button" box, is a right click.

The rest of the laptop: Decent. With a core i5 and plenty of ram, this laptop is snappy running Windows 7. The screen is gorgeous. Onboard hdmi, vga, esata, and gigabit nic are all nice features. I'd like more than 3 usb ports, but that's not a deal breaker for me. They integrated the hp quick launch buttons into the F keys, which would be annoying if I used them. I never used them, however, on my previous HP and didn't plan on it for this one, so no big deal.

The laptop isn't exactly light, but it is lighter than the previous model with the same size screen. Overall weight I would rate as good. It has a full keyboard with number pad, which is nice.

Overall: Laptop is good if you don't plan on using the built in touchpad. If you plan on using this touchpad constantly, keep looking. I've used it for 2 weeks now and still haven't gotten used to this strange touchpad. HP massively missed the mark when coping apple's multi-touch touchpad, and completely fubar'ed it.