So the HP Stream 11...What does the Tech Board think about it?

Someone in another thread ordered that (13-in version). The main drawback is not the celeron-- you are going to find that in nearly all sub-$300 laptops. The drawback is 2GB of RAM and is the reason people say it bogs down with multiple tabs open. Browsers are memory hogs nowadays, which is why I say 4GB of ram should be minimum in new laptops.

So I'm posting from the Stream 13 right now. My initial thoughts: not bad.

I have multiple tabs opened right now with some pretty large websites (youtube, amazon, Netflix, tripadvisor, TD), and it seems to be running smoothly. Even while playing video in other tabs and browsing around I don't see much lag.

I also have multiple programs running in the background (Netflix, Bing maps, IE, Windows games, and a couple more), and it still runs pretty smoothly. I normally wouldn't even have this much stuff running at once, but I wanted to test it out. So far so good.

The screen quality is very much lacking. They advertise it as having HD, but I'm not seeing it at all. Watching Netflix feels like watching an old tube tv. But I didn't expect HD quality on a $200 laptop, so it's not a deal breaker.

The computer itself seems nicely made. It's light, very slim and and compact (I would imagine even more so for the HP 11), and is aesthetically pleasing. You said you didn't like the colors, but the blue is nice, I think my gf will like it better than the standard grey and black that laptops usually have. It also has a matted texture to it, not like hollow cheap plastic that you would expect from a cheap laptop, so that's a plus.

The worst thing for me so far is the touchpad. It's pretty terrible IMO. I don't like the feel of the it, and it's aggravating moving the mouse pointer around. It also has this weird swipe feature, where you swipe on the left side of the touchpad and it allows you to swipe through your running programs, kind of like swiping a phone screen, but it's much more aggravating than useful IMO. Just in typing this I've accidently swiped over to different programs at least 5 or 6 times. You have to keep your finger in the middle of the touchpad in order to move around without activating this little feature. Maybe I'm just not use to it, but they could've left that out IMO.

That's all I got for now. I'll mess with it a little more the next few days. If you want me to try anything specific for you to let you know how it runs, just let me know.

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 My main focus will be outlook webmail with excel, and then doing some admin work on a website using Magento software. Light word when necessary

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Im gonna mess with Office tomorrow, I'll let you know it it goes.

**Update 2 for GFunk**

I've used the Stream 13 as my primary laptop for the last 2 days and I must say the experience has been enjoyable. I say this with a disclaimer though, because my primary laptop is no fancy piece of equipment, a 5 year old Gateway.

Nonetheless, I haven't experienced any troubles as of yet. I plugged in my wireless mouse and it instantly improved the experience drastically. Also, I took ILikeLSU's advice and disabled the aggravating touchpad feature of swiping through apps. Again, instant improvement when using the touchpad.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to use any Office programs. It requires a Microsoft account in order to activate the free year, and I'd rather my gf personalize everything in her own account, as this laptop is for her. But from the looks of using other programs, I don't think there will be a problem.

Due to ILikeLSU's help again, I reevaluated the video resolution, and he was indeed right. Netflix video was of poor quality because my internet connection was shitty (or something like that). I switched some youtube video's to HD, and voila, they were indeed in HD. Who woulda thunk?

Today I listened to some Pandora while working on other stuff, and it ran smoothly throughout. The sound quality is about what you would expect from a $200 laptop, but it's actually just as loud, if not louder than my other laptop.

Who knows how the experience will be in 6 months or so, but from testing it out these last few days I'm definitely keeping it. I think my gf will be pleased. I'd also consider getting one myself, if not for my photography hobby and regularly transferring large files, photo editing, and occasional video editing. But for everyday tasks it seems to do the trick.

*another disclaimer* I have very limited technical computer knowledge, and everything above is simply from my own personal use. Also, I've never really used any higher end laptops, so I don't have much to compare it to. If you are use to using a $1000-$2000 laptop, I'm sure you would be much more critical.

I bought the HP Stream 7, which is the same concept but in a tablet...full blown Windows 8.1 but only 1gb of ram. I don't know that I would do the same again. Having full-blown Windows sounds like a great idea in theory but if you don't have something powerful enough to run it then what's the point. In this case, once it gets going it's usually fine but I'm an open a browser with a bunch of windows kind of guy, and this isn't for doing that. Also tried to run a few games from the Windows Store and it didn't really like that either. I know this isn't the same product but just FYI if you were on the fence. For $100 I think it's priced about right but certainly not much more.