Customer Ratings & Reviews

Purchased this laptop a couple years ago for my son in college. He put it through a lot and it finally had to be replaced. The updated version has a larger screen, lighter in weight and cost half the price. It's not the newest techie toy but a real workhorse. My son loves it.

Been using it for 3 years and other than the occasional ram and cpu usage alerts it still works fine!

Since this is a long review, I'll provide an Executive Summary: BestBuy Order Fulfillment: A+ HP 17" Laptop (Hardware): B Microsoft Windows 8.1: F Not so good: fairly slow in operation non-ergonomic (dead flat) keyboard no backlit keyboard no wifi button or light (software control only) lid is very hard to open unless you have big fingernails to fit in slit windows 8.1 unstable and missing many functions Much better: good price for what you get screen is large and reasonably sharp unit is quiet (for now, anyway) but no quicker in operation than my 5-year-old Compaq with Celeron Processor. That was a bit surprising, but then again this is a cheap machine. The keyboard does not appear to be replaceable which is a shame since a couple keys are already sluggish in responding. Monster hard drive 700GB I doubt I'll ever fill that up since I don't save movies etc HP SimplePass is primitive compared with FireFox password minder. BestBuy was amazing at getting this computer available to me for online-order and local-pickup...less than 30 minutes and this was at closing time. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- As you may have heard, Windows 8.1 is a HORROR SHOW. All it's about is making your laptop computer look and work like a giant smartphone, and then selling you stuff. Yeah, I was well aware of how bad everyone said it was, but I figured they were just dramatising. WRONG... If you read the fine print in the EULA when initiating 8.1 for the first time, you'll see that you're giving MS the right to take any information it finds on your computer and transmit it to MS for any purpose whatever, and you also sign away your rights to sue MS for anything it chooses to do with your personal information at any time. No 'recent documents' and no 'pinned notepad' docs. File preview pane now only works for associated Microsoft programs. Another colossal selfish step backward. One function after another takes over your whole screen, does not permit an exit of any kind, and leaves you desperately pointing at the corners of the screen--total futility--finally you realise that the windows button on the keyboard is the only means of exit. That of course takes you to the annoying Metro touchscreen. Incredibly slow to open folders, just as Win7 was. Essentially they kept only the bad things about Win7. Basically MS wants everyone to convert all accounts over to microsoft. Sign into your Microsoft Account to accomplish anything. And of course everything, from both Microsoft and HP, is all about the Cloud. We all know how well that works out.. Broadcast all of your personal business to the Universe! no 'recent documents' ... recent places comes up empty every time... MS workaround: So, what used to take seconds now takes a minute.