I got this from another vendor as 'refurbished' for a similar price to amazon's.Screen: huge, glossy, lovely. 1600x900 17.3"
Keyboard: interestingly different than most. I don't know the name of what this tech is called. The keys are not butted up against each other but separated, flatter, straight/individual. I like it a lot and I bet it's great for people with big fingers (or poor typing) who might normally hit more than one key. I'm not fond of the arrow key approach (it shrinks up/down to fit together between left/right) but I'll adapt. Has number pad. Bummer though, the numlock key has no light on it nor on the dash so you have no idea if it's on or not. However, the wireless and the 'mute' alt-function buttons have tiny lights as does the left caps lock. Black keys, typical of nearly all laptops nowdays, which since I use my laptop at night in the dark--and use a diff keyboard during my job hours so my brain-patterns are always 'adapting'--drives me crazy. There are little glow in the dark stickers you can get for keyboards to help with this.
Dash controls: nothing but power button and touch pad, however, media controls are built into function keys with ALT usage.
Touch pad: upside: large, smooth, defined edge. downside: pain in the butt to try and click. Not reasonable for constant use. The alternate 'tap' function so far is incredibly inconsistent. I may need more time/practice. A whole lot of it apparently. That is quite bothersome. Previous reviews I read elsewhere griped about this also. I don't think it's enough to weigh against the merits of the machine which are many--I'd still buy it--but if you don't mind mice (USB) because you mostly use it on a flat surface, you might want to get one. Definitely be sure you go into control panel and mess with your settings. It does have the various options for scroll, zoom in, zoom out, and 3-finger launch which is neat.
Ports: all the standards, USB on both sides, multi-option media card reader. Power cord on right side, sticks out the normal amount for laptops (alas). Standard wireless for this day and age. 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
Guts: has a pretty decent processor, 4G RAM (the main reason I got this). If you do advanced gaming or 3D animation you'd want something with a lot more speed and RAM, but I do basic graphics and database work and it's fine for all that. Hard drive is large (640G). Go get 'minitool partition wizard' from cnet (free) and you can split it into a few drive letters for more practical storage/scanning/searching/defragging. (Note: if MPW it won't let you create a partition due to 'no MBR keys', change the non-C 'primary' drives this HP has in place to 'logical' (right-click to do that), then it will.)
Peripherals: has mic, internal speakers, webcam. These don't seem special to me but I'm no expert on that. The optical drive is CD/DVD, Blue-Ray and Light-Scribe which is about as much as you can ask.
The case is actually lovely, metallic silver with fine lines of engraving. The back of the lid has the round HP logo that is lit up. I guess so either you can tell it's on when it's closed or just because it looks neat.
Power: typical AC plus a battery said to be much longer life than normal -and this despite the huge bright screen. I have not yet had cause to test this to verify it though. 9-Cell 93WHr Lithium-Ion Battery
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
Other software: well it's a typical fairly low-end laptop. So you mostly have a bunch of crappy bloatware that wants registration and you should uninstall it and use quality open source based software instead, if clicking a link to uninstall (control panel is where you do that) or install something (once you download an install file to your hard drive) doesn't seem too challenging. Use MS IE to go get free Firefox and Chrome then close IE. Use one of those to go to CNet and get free Avast (an Anti Viral program). Reboot. Uninstall the junk you don't want. Install all the windows updates critically needed. Install the various free software you might want. (I recommend: OpenOffice suite for all the microsoft-like programs, free. 7Zip or WinZip utility. Music Monkey or Jet Audio free jukebox. FileZilla free FTP. When possible stick to download dotcom and cnet dotcom for s/w because they will make sure it is 'clean'.) Textpad is not a free editor but is 'nagware' and is a good customizable colorcode editor if you write code or do much in text. This PC does however come with some decent software free such as two Corel graphic/video programs and Roxio. (I prefer PhotoShop but I can't afford it so I only have it if I steal it. PSP is a good program though. I haven't seen the photo version but the graphics version actually has a photoshop-style interface option.) The microsoft office stuff this machine says it comes with is just to suck you into $. So try OpenOffice which is just as good. Or just use google docs if you're not too demanding and like the idea of being able to get to your stuff from any computer anywhere.
Warranty: mine came with 90 days and I bought an extra year, I'm not sure what amazon's options are.
I think this is a really good computer for the price. I have had every brand of basic laptop (the
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