I've been using this computer for about 3 weeks now and am very happy with its performance and battery life. It has switchable graphics and automatically switches (unless disabled) between integrated graphics on battery power and dedicated graphics (ATI HD6550) when powered by the Wall Cube I don't use this computer for gaming, but the HD6550 is a pretty respectable card. Battery life is listed as 7.75 hours. Originally I was seeing around 6 hours in my typical usage scenario (see change note below). I'm also pleased with the thermal management. It gets warm - but not hot - with hard work. The air vent is on the left towards the back of the case, which is an acceptable position. Given that it's billed as an "entertainment" laptop, that's a significant one Lots of HP software installed to manage audio, video, photos, etc. I thought I'd remove most of it, but found it relatively harmless and even useful at times. The hard drive is a generous 750GB, so I didn't worry too much about freeing up space. I used the built-in backup Management software disabled to add a second 750GB hard drive (this required purchase of an HP4000 series drive caddy and cable). I made the new drive (7200 rpm) the primary drive and this banned the slower 5400rpm drive that came with the 4280 for backup. Two hard drives obviously reduced the battery life a bit, but I still get about 5.5 hours - not bad at all. I can now backup in- situ via partition imaging as well as daily backups to an external USB drive.Regarding this - the HP4280 has a powered eSATA port (combo USB and eSATA) which I use with a Sea gate GoFlex Pro 750GB hard drive with eSATA interface - and it's fast (GoFlex pro uses a 7200RPM hard drive, same as the one I swapped out) and creates my boot drive). There's also a fingerprint scanner to log in with (password entry is still an alternative). You'll need to spend a few minutes registering your fingerprint (plus an alternative printout) - but after that you can log in by simply typing swipe your finger over the scanner. It took some getting used to, but I almost exclusively log in this way now. A little trick I found - place your finger over the scanner, then just hesitate a little (about 1 /4 to 1/2 second) before you swipe, and it reads much more reliably. At least that's how it is for me - maybe that's how I "trained" it. ;-) My only real complaint is that the touchpad implementation - well, it's just awful. As others have noted, it's almost impossible to position the cursor and click to select without removing the cursor from the target and when you're near the case de s touchpads moves the cursor. Really annoying. I added a Logitech M705 mouse that uses their tiny unifying receiver (I leave it plugged in all the time) and it works pretty well, even with the receiver on the opposite side side of the computer (this position works best for my carrying case). .One last note - this beast has a Blu-ray player and Beats audio - a very nice combo for watching HD movies. Overall I'm very happy with this computer. Lost one star for the schizoid touchpad and slow hard drive. Update 05/10/2011. Recently updated Synaptic Pointing Device drivers and there have been significant improvements in touchpad operation.
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- HP Pavilion dv7-4280us 17,3-Zoll-Notebook (2,6 GHz Intel Core i5-480M Prozessor, 6 GB DDR3, 750 GB HDD, Windows 7 Home Premium) Silber