HP Smartbuy 250 Core I3-3130M 4GB 500GB 15.6in HD DVDRW Windows 8 64Bit Notebook

Comment:
I got this on sale for $429.99 and I'm pretty happy with it overall. The core i3-3130M is pretty fast for this price, and was the main factor in me buying this model. 4Gb of RAM seems sufficient, and I believe there is a slot available to expand to 6 or 8.I do not like Windows 8's default interface and was a little worried about buying a Windows 8 laptop, but installing classic shell got rid of most of the interface-related headaches and makes it feel much like a windows 7 interface.The keyboard is a bit on the small side, it feels like they could have used more of the available space to make it bigger. They keys feel a little cheap - not too bad, but not as nice as some. Aside from this, the layout of the keys has a couple of oddities, including half-height up/down arrows that take some getting used to.The touch pad could be better or worse. It does support multi-touch gestures, and I like being able to use 2-finger clicking and scrolling, but once in a while it doesn't pick up on the multi-finger gestures. The options to configure the touchpad are a little limited, and I actually had to change a registry setting to get 2-finger tapping to translate to a middle-click instead of a right-click.The built-in speakers actually sound better than I would have expected, certainly very nice for a budget laptop like this.Battery life is ok, nothing spectacular.I would have been hesitant to pay the full $579.99 price but for $429.99 I am very happy and impressed, and would definitely buy this model again.