Features

I am a happy owner of this laptop. Here are my notes on it after using it for few days.. - Cool!! Only warm after hours of video. For non-video invnesite application, it is just slightly warm on upper left part of the laptop. Amazing !! The fan is quiet but it is not silent. How can HP run AMD Quad Core with little heat?! I spent $1000+ to build a Home Theater PC 7 years ago So I know how difficult to keep the heat down. - The Microsoft movie maker, word+excel (limited function) are useful, all other Microsoft application are very basic! Lucky HP provides Corel VideoStudio and PaintShop Pro apps. The HP MediaSmart is not bad, it handles most of your multimedia needs. - The Cyberlink DVD/CD burning apps is also very basic. - To create a recovery DVD, it took 6 DVD discs and about 3 to 4 hours .. Each DVD is about 4GB, I wonder what is on these 24GB !! You can only create it once. Don't start it before you go to sleep, or you will need to stay up for 4 hours. - The LED 17.3 screen is very nice. Video and pictures look very nice on it. It is also very cool to touch. But you can't use it in front of a window. The screen is quite reflective. - The blue ray drive is a little slow, or may be the software is slow. It takes about 1 to 2 minutes to start a blue ray movie. But the HP Blue Ray player software has an easy interface. - HDMI connection to TV is very easy. I played Avatar on it, it is my first blue ray disc. Very clear and beautiful color. Better than DVD even on my 720P (not 1080p) 50 TV! - The hinges of the screen is very tight. I can not open the screen with one hand. - The multi-touch mouse pad is good. I can use two fingers to scroll and zoom. - The finger print reader is so easy to use. It is also very accurate. Any member of my family can just swipe one of their finger and switch to his/her account on the window. - USB 3.0 with SATA  wow, I have not tried them yet, but I am sure they are fast. The built-in multi card reader is very convenient too. - When charging the battery, it is making some noticeable shhhhh  noice until it gets to 85% or higher. And it recharges quickly. It seems than the recharge light is Amber when it charging and change to white when it finishes. The charger is warm to touch. - The webcam is in HD mode with left and right mic. When in use, its white LED turns on. - The Fences software group the desktop icons into smaller windows. It is not bad. When you double click the desktop, all icons disappear. Then double click to get them back. - The audio is very good for a laptop. It has a subwoofer on the bottom of this laptop   Of course, it can't replace your external speakers with external subwoofer. - I also like the Desktop Gadgets. There are many free and good apps from the web. I recommend the talking clock, zCalendar, WeatherBug, and couple radio apps. I wish I can run Google Honeycomb 3.0 on this laptop. It would be even faster. M.S. Windows tends to slow down the more you use it. It just collects more and more garbage and makes its register huge with a lot of mess. I need to find a good clean up software for it. Don't forget to install some type of anti-virus and auti-spy software. There are some good free one out there. There are not many blue ray laptop out there. This unit is one of the best deal for a 17.3. I checked the smaller 15.6 model at Amazon, it is only $50 less. So which one do you choose ? The same model with Intel iCore 5 is about $200 more w/ 6GB memory. Hummm, I chose AMD quad cores  That is all for now. One month update: My mistake. I checked the spec again recently, the USB is 2.0 (not 3.0 ;- So I reduce my rating by half star .. I also noticed that the function keys are not  normal . Each function key can do 2 things. Its multimedia control is the primary function. If you need the F1 to F12, you need to hit and hold  fn  key first. Since I use this lap top mostly for entertainment, so I like it   As a result, I add half star back to my rating :-0 If you need the F1 to F12 functions very often, then you may want to think about it  Few days ago, I connected my laptop to a 21  external LED monitor and I noticed that this laptop screen is not  white  enough. Again, it is ok for entertainment (kind of like movie mode in my projector). But if you need a very white color (like some graphic design), then this may concern you too . But I did not notice the difference in whiteness and brightness until I put them side by side.