Pros: I am a processor architect that designs microprocessors for a living. The main reason that I bought this laptop is because of the process technology node (22nm FinFET by Intel). Literature states as much as an 80% reduction "leakage power" by using 3D transistors (FinFETs), this improves battery life and allows for more aggressive clock rates. The price for a new laptop with a 4th generation core i7, with 12GB of DDR, and a 1TB HD was incredible. The laptop is sharp looking ... slim, sleek, and is very light weight. I didn't really care about the touch screen at purchase time, but it is nice to have when showing presentations. I decided to ditch the magnetic hard drive for a solid state drive and the performance sky rocketed! To the end user, this is the biggest performance boost in the last 10 years. I would highly recommend upgrading to an SSD, your boot up time will only take a few seconds.

Cons: Windows 8 - I assumed that I could downgrade (upgrade in my mind) to Windows 7 64 but as it turned out HP doesn't provide driver support for Windows 7. I am hoping that they will eventually give up on Win8 and back port the drivers to Win7. I don't really like the Mac like touch pad, if I wanted a Mac I would buy one. What was Microsoft thinking with trying to turn my PC into a phone? I would have given 5 stars if the laptop had a windows 7 option!

Overall Review: All things considered, this is the best laptop I've ever owned!

Pros: I've had this laptop for nearly 10 months now and I am very impressed with the hardware for the price. I immediatly upgraded the harddrive to a Crucial 500GB solid state hard drive (SSD). HP actually made this fairly easy with the recovery image that I flashed onto a USB stick. My boot time is around 1-2 seconds!! SSD's are the best system performance boost in the last ten years. I didn't care about the touch screen but it has been nice to while showing a presentation. I believe that the 4th generation haswell chips are Intels first low leakage power FinFET processors (also known as 3D transistors) and it seems to have a very extended battery life. Over the holidays I connected the HDMI port to a big screen while streaming movies and TV shows. With just a wireless mouse, this was easy to do from the sofa since the HP has a built in software based keyboard that can be used with mouse pointer. USB 3.0 is blazing fast, I was clocking 120MB/s transfers to and from my external drive.

Cons: The interface on Windows 8 is very stupid! They attempted to merge the tablet experience with the desktop experience and failed miserably! There are no drivers (as of January 2014) for Windows 7. I decided to deal with Windows 8 because I want to use hardware specific drivers instead of slow generic drivers. The no button mouse pad is also stupid! It is hard to use which is why I bought the wireless mouse. If I wanted a mac, I would buy a mac.