HP Pavilion g7-1204sa 17.3 inch Laptop PC (AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M Processor, RAM 6GB, HDD 750GB, Windows 7 Home Premium)

I (after much searching) luckily managed to bag one of the last hp g7 laptops in stock in Britain a few weeks ago. It's slim, lightweight, pretty powerful, and is remarkably efficient at cooling.

What I like:
The processor: There is now an update to take the I5 up to a 2.7Ghz dual core, and it is the best processor I've come across in a laptop for this price, I used to have an Acer 7530g, which has a pretty hefty processor, but the g7 is in another class. There will soon be another update to kick it up to 3ghz.

The Design: As I said, it's slim, it's light, it's in a lovely colour, and it's been engineered to keep cool under every day usage.

The cooling: Well, my G7 1255sa idles at 29 degrees in power saver, and 37 in high performance, runing most tasks (video calling, low end games etc) you will very rarely see the temperature rise to much over 55, it's only when you give the 4gb of ram a good push does the temperature go up, at 80% load it'll run mid 70s, seems hot, but it cools in moments after you finish.

The Monitor: 17.3" widescreen, barely any need to use my TV, it's nice and bright, very easy to see.

The Graphics: There's around 1900Mb of graphics capability, but this is tied in with the ram, so you may want to upgrade to 6gb of ram to actually get the most out of it, but it happily runs Sonic Generations on 800x600 resolution at 4gb.

Drawbacks:

Sound quality: After having the brilliantly unreliable surround sound on my old acer, this new one looked like a godsend, but it's lacking a little prescence, either use headphones, or buy some speakers.

The rarity: At the time of writing, it is out of stock in so many places, finding one is a nightmare.

Overall: The g7 is easily the best laptop I've owned, happily running almost anything the average laptop user will need without any trouble at all. If you're looking for a budget gaming laptop, this is still a good choice, but you might be better off with one with higher ram. There is a quad core available, take a look at that, might be a better call.

10/10

6 month update:
My G7 has seen alot of use recently, it's on for most of the day, 7 days a week. So I thought potential buyers would be interested in an update on how the laptop is getting on.
The first thing I would say, is get an external mouse. I hadn't really noticed it initially, but the mouse isn't well designed, it is very easy to accidentally zoom in when you try to scroll.
Other than that, I can't say I have any complaints. The processors are working well.
The Ram, whilst not quite enough to play some games is still more than enough for day to day tasks
The screen is going well too, no problems to report there.
Speakers are fine, lacking a little presence as I said before, but have given me no problems.
The casing has proved very durable.
The Intel HD graphics aren't the best, but what it does run it handles with no trouble at all.

Overall, still very pleased with the g7, and would very happily buy another if the need came up.
However, my advice right now would be to wait for the prices to come down, to put it into perspective, my g7 was £450, not £625 as it is now (at time of writing).
I think the rrp is something like £429, so take a look around and see who stocks it for what price first.

superb laptop. only got it on the 20th, but now had 3 days to play with it. Very fast with it's 4GB ram. was going to upgrade to the max 6GB, but see no need at the moment as it works great as it is. I would recommend this for anyone wanting a new laptop for everyday use. I watch sport online and it has no problem with any streaming. The HDMI port is an added bonus for streaming to your tv.

Basically an all round decent laptop with an excellent price tag..

It's slower than I expected taking a while to load up and Hp features are a waste of time - i.e. Magic Desktop very annoying but easy to remove. Benefits are that it barely heats up (v. good efficiency), is light, and after using 15.6" laptops an upgrade to 17.3" makes a huge difference for general browsing, watching films/ programs and boasting!

Guaranteed next day delivery: didn't come, called amazon and were helpful sending out another laptop with next day and money back but it still took a couple of days. Blame citylink Glenfifes stuff goes missing is like the bermuda triangle of scotland!

Spent quite a while comparing, i.e. against i3/5 15.6" laptops for same price, and after testing/ given the option again would probably go for this laptop again - biggest competitor was the quicker acer 17.3" but the G7 efficiency has sold it to me.