Pros: THis laptop is very fast with 2gb ram and onboard graphics. This applies if you are running XP. I deliberately purchased an XP License and downgraded to XP MCE so I can "have my XP back". The display is great, the keyboard layout is great, wireless is strong. Weight is just right of the overall notebook, and the ac charging port is a nice tight fit. battery life pretty good with "Stock" battery. Not sure if there is an EL battery option. I hope to have this laptop for the long haul.

Cons: Vista is still slow; with 2gb ram, a very fast dual core AMD processor, good graphics integrated doesn't make this a speedy system. To my point, I installed XP separately on another drive, and tested the performace. XP BLOWS away Vista's performance on everything; booting up, web surfing, changing screens, even file transfers from external USB Drives. I don't get it why Vista Home premium with 2gb ram can't fly. It just doesn't. I think it runs better on desktops but that is just my opinion. I am still an XP junkie and don't want it to go away.

The only other con that was created by me was that ALL manufacturers now of systems (Dell, compaq, gateway, etc etc) will all be restricting certification of drivers for systems that are released on Vista. This laptop is no exception. To find the drivers for XP for all the devices on this laptop was like having 10 root canals in 1 sitting at the dentist. I hated trying to find the drivers and have pretty much given up on 2 of them.

Other Thoughts: Great system, will have it all running perfect on XP, is super fast. I would buy another .

Pros: I've owned this laptop for about 8 months now, and I've never had a lick of trouble from it. I bought it from a local computer store for $499, dropped 4Gb of Kingston Dual-Channel DDR2 667 and a 200Gb 7200RPM SATAII HDD in it, and this baby SCREAMS! I am not much for gaming, but boot times of just under 16 seconds speak volumes to me. Also, the ability to encode a full-length DVD to a 2Gb MP4 in under an hour and a half is not something to be scoffed at. This thing will run Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, iTunes, and any other productivity app you can think of. It's the perfect size and weight, and I LOVE HP/Compaq's keyboards! Every key is where your fingers think it should be! I also like the integrated card reader and Expansion port. I was shocked to find that this laptop also includes a new ExpressCard 34/54 slot. Overall, A great buy. Runs UT2004 at Med/High settings at full res. ; )

Cons: Only think I can think of is the glossy finish. It DRIVES ME NUTS! I hate having to polish off fingerprints and smudges every 5 seconds. Also, integrated video is somewhat lackluster, but what do you expect for a bargain-basement laptop?

Other Thoughts: I love Newegg.

Pros: very light, crisp display, quite thin, s-video out, lightscribe, excellent value,

Cons: no firewire and audio output is lackluster (as is all off-the-shelf notebooks anymore)

Other Thoughts: i was actually shocked at how solid a system this was for the price. excellent fit and finish.

Pros: First time with a Vista system. Very impressed with speed, picture quality, design, weight. Great system. Althought I purchase the majority of my computer stuff from Newegg, one of the national office supply stores had it on sale for $429.00.

Cons: Maybee need more memory. I ordered 2 gigs from Newegg. I wish it had a firewire port.

Pros: This notebook is one of the laptops that I use for the business. I work for a general contractor, and our field guys need laptops. It is my job to find a cheap and productive solution. This laptop fits the bill perfectly. We have purchased 10 of these so-far, and they have been great to us! No problems with the hinges, no issues at all!

Cons: The 1 gig of ram is low, and we do not upgrade to 2 gigs, I just go through them and remove all the programs that HP installs on the computer. And it runs great! If you remove all the bloatware that it ships with, it will run Vista pretty well. This is ofcoarse for basic work(internet, pictures, email, word, excel, ect.)

Other Thoughts: If you need a good cheap laptop for basic office functions, this is your laptop. It can withstand everything our field guys put it through, and it has held up great. We have these laptops on jobsites across the US, and they work flawlessly. 5/5 good buy!

Pros: Awesome laptop for the cash. Runs 95% better if you install your own OS and add another GB of ram.

Cons: Needs more ram. Both ram slots are full.
No external volume control.
Buttons are not very firm.

Other Thoughts: I installed my own OEM version of Vista Home Premium with the laptop's key. It runs WAY faster than HP's bloated Vista. Whatever you do... Install your own OS! I also upgraded it to 2BG of ram later. That made it run even faster. 1GB is not enough for Vista unless all you do is browse the internet. Its only costs $40 for 2gb of this ram.. You must upgrade. It plays Wow at about 35fps on medium/low settings. Not great but its playable.

I see everyone talking about the hinges and the LCD being crooked in previous reviews. I am not sure what they are talking about unless compaq has fixed this problem. My LCD is straight and the hinges are solid.

Pros: What I've already said

Cons: What I've already said

Other Thoughts: So I got it back from HP, while they did fix the angle when the screen is half open if I put it on my lap and open it all the way then it's basically crooked, lol Oh well I give up, just make sure your hinges on your laptop are going to be 2 seperate ones and not a long one like this thing seems to have, bye

Pros: Read previous

Cons: Read previous

Other Thoughts: I'm sending it in to HP for repair, I just got the darn thing but I'll tell ya those hinges are a pain. The thing is it's hard to tell the LCD isn't straight unless you turn it on or rotate it in your lap. Then you can see it though. I'll tell you whether they fix it or just send it back without having done anything, keep watching. It'll probably 3 weeks before I see the thing again!

Pros: The features are many and it even comes with a built-in microphone which they neglect to mention! Weird huh?

Cons: I've researched this abit, it seems Compaq has issues with their laptop hinges, especially the 700 series. Now this one is certainly newer but I still think they have the problem mainly because you can see it in the picture. If you goto the front view and look for the ribber stoppers near where the lcd begins, well, they should be equally showing, but here we clearly see the right is higher than the left. In the photo it may not look like much but really it is pretty substantial when you see it up close, the right raises slightly.

Other Thoughts: It's good, fast, fun, but why bother sending it to HP for them to put in a used LCD screen for one that's already brand new. Considering the photo here shows the same problem I really don't care anymore, it was 530 bucks when I bought it. Now if it breaks then I'll send it to HP, I even found guides about taking apart the thing to get to the hinges. I suspect even if I got it replaced the hinge situation would resurface. My advice only buy a laptop when you've seen the hinge system it uses and are certain it's reliably strong to withstand use.

PS OH yea I'm convinced the mousepad sucks!

Pros: Vista SP1
Recovery Manager Disc Creation
CyberLink DVD Suite
AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 1.9GHz
1GB DDR2
160GB
LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
NVIDIA GeForce 7000M
5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader
Modem 56K
LAN 10/100Mbps
WLAN 802.11b/g Wireless LAN

Basically these items make it a good laptop, the system is very well tuned and fast upon initial operation. You can of course remove the software you don't plan on using and free hard drive space, etc. I suggest if you require a larger hard drive an external is the viable option here. The speed is apparent and it's clear you have a fast system. The videocard is not that bad and runs Gothic 1, Morrowind. I would try higher-end games in the future when I'm done with those I have. I'd guess Half Life 2 would run on it given that it's so well developed it runs on just about anything.

Cons: The real issues with it:

LCD is slightly higher on one side causing the display to seem angled. The effect is annoying and bothers me, it may not bother you. I've reviewed other laptops at Best Buy however and find they all possess this attribute in some fashion.

Mouse is flimsy at best, the touchpad itself is ok but the buttons are like leaves and would easily wear out IMO. I'm not pressing my luck so got an external mouse. I've also read somewhere the paint on the touchpad actually wore off through continuous use, lol So again don't press your luck.

No dedicated sound controls, you have to use the fn key. While not abnormal I just wish there'd be a cool button or touchpad to change the volume level.

Bloatware is insane at initial operation. Basically you get a stupid HP game center but it has all trialware from another online company that thinks you'd pay 20 bucks for their pathetic game instead of going to buy a real one like Halo 2. What a joke.

Other Thoughts: While a good laptop in operation it suffers from hardware faults that simply can't be accepted in todays markey. Namely the LCD not being perfectly straight when sitting on a flat surface, come on now :P And of course the mouse buttons are just to poor to illicit a sense of confidence in them.

Overall performance is satisfactory and may go beyond this with upgrades, the primary interests here would be whether you'll pay for a great laptop with a few faults, I did...

Considering my review of other laptops this one measures up in many factors, if you want to devote 1k to a laptop go right ahead but I won't be joining you.

Pros: Takes your portable computing experience further into the new millennium. Set it up correctly and you'll be spoiled for anything else, for at least six months. Like a diamond in the rough, it needs some time and effort to bedazzle you with its responsiveness, stability and speed on a beautiful display. Stable and quick Wi-Fi function. Microsoft Office works so well on this system, that it's almost scary. Bonus! This, under 4 lbs, laptop is extremely energy efficient and runs refreshingly cooler than the predecessors that I have owned.

Cons: Burdened with crapware and a 32 BIT operating system. You have to be comfortable to rework the operating system and to upgrade the RAM to 4 GB. Why buy a car with a V6 engine if you're going to run it on only three cylinders?

Other Thoughts: I'm not a big a fan of Windows XP. It's time to go with the 64 BIT Vista with the SP1. It flies beautifully for me. Here's the good part . . . If you can borrow someone else's disk that contains Vista 64 BIT software, your "OEM" Microsoft Activation code key on the sticker on the bottom of the laptop case, will activate the new 64 BIT Vista software. I loaded the 64 BIT Vista before activating the "stock" 32 BIT operating system that was preloaded on the hard drive. Then, take some time to load programs like Mozilla Firefox, Avast Antivirus Pro and all the other software that you like. iPod users will need the 64 BIT iTunes. The NVIDIA 7000 series video card is quite agile and easily handles photo editing, videos and basic gaming. While the heavy duty, obsessed gamers can stick with their "liquid cooled, maxed-out," desktop, muscle systems with strobes, the rest of us can revel in pure joy, using this laptop for all our home and office computing needs. Nice job, HP!

Pros: Great price, nice LEDS, Nice finish, Good speed, good size, good writer, good connections available

Cons: Mouse pad not sensitive enough - I turned it all the way up because it's not very sensitive otherwise.

Speakers weak - Not that it'll matter but the sound volume isn't very high, what a joke. I like to blast music but not on this thing, you'll need headphones with an audio tuner like mine. Also consider speakers for real music.

Other Thoughts: Would I have bought this laptop had I know about the monitor being angled like it is? I don't mean forward or back I mean side-to-side. Well from what I can tell there's no way of adjusting such a thing and even if there was most laptops LCD's won't stay perfectly straight all the time so I give up on that.

The question might be is this worth it with a 7000m videocard, and all the other things. It's also got an nForce chipset so it's no clunker.

I'd write more but am tired having been up so long:

Vista SP1
Bloatware that is insane - removed
And more... however it was worth the price when I got it for 530!

Pros: I'm on it right now as I type this, basically it's great. It's fast, light, has a ton of features. Vista SP1

Cons: LCD isn't exactly on straight, reviewed images from Newegg to compare and theirs also isn't straight perfectly, not terrible because when I checked my sisters hers also isn't perfectly straight. On this the right side raises slightly while the left is lower. If you see the picture up close looking straight you even see this fact. It might be hard to notice but you can tell by looking at the rubber pads how off it is.

Scroll wheel on mousepad not to sensitive, hard to scroll, will see about changing it.

Other Thoughts: While good and nice I wish I knew how to adjust the LCD angle, do bad it's on there with no easy way to angle. Oh well, expect laptops to have this problem since nothings perfect.

Pros: Well it looks great right? $530 dollars for a laptop that is this good can't be wrong. I'll tell you what it's like when I finally get it, right now I've been using my sister's laptop but she's abit fussy about what I do to it. I just hope she never ends up having to use mine since it would be totally configured in a weird way. I plan to tweak the hell out of it since Vista is a resource hog :S I must admitt though these specifications look excellent for the cost and it's sure better than buying a big clunky desktop.

Cons: None yet but I'll let you know.

Other Thoughts: Buy it, don't bother trying to max a laptop out since it'll cost a fortune. Settle for the middle-ground like this one offers. I'm sure you'll like it and the things pretty cheap making it a real deal. That processor ain't half bad either, and let's not forget if you can load Linux on it (since it's got an nVidia graphics card) then you'll love it even more.

* Suggest PCLinuxOS