HP Windows 8 Lappy feedback

[Jefferson]

Looking to replace my 5 year old 17" lappy.........obvioulsy it's been a while and now am looking at migrating to Windows 8 from XP Pro, not to psyched about that, but.....it's time and hard to find a comparable deal with Windows 7.

I have questions about hard drive, memory SSD cache and the choices you have to make......It appears you can get a lot, but can't have it all with this one.

No 7200 RPM drives available but it is the latest and greatest Intel Haswell chipset and 2G video card, with up to 16GB memory. The rub is if you order the 32GB SSD cache, for reported very fast booting etc., you can't go higher than 8GB on memory. I have reservations about that, but maybe the tradeoff is worth it. I really don't know! I have read briefly that you can configure Windows 7 & 8 machines to use a plug-in drive for the same purposes......... could use some hardware savvy advice here which way to go.

The body is aluminum and reportedly good quality, and I have had really decent luck with HPs even when some have not. And it looks to be the most bang for the buck. My build with port replicator, 3 year on site extra warranty & extra AC adapter comes in right around $2100. But I only have a few more days to buy it with the offered discounts.

Here is the build it link:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/E4S78AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpI...

and the specs I am thinking about:

ENVY 17t-j000 series

Operating system Windows 8 Pro 64
Processor 4th generation Intel Core i7-4900MQ Processor
Included Warranty Services Included 2 Year Warranty t
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M Graphics with 2048MB of dedicated video memory
Display 17.3-inch diagonal Full HD Anti-glare LED-backlit Display (1920 x 1080)
Memory 16GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Hard drive 2TB 5400 rpm Dual Hard Drive
Hard Drive Acceleration Cache NO mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache

Primary battery 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery
Primary optical drive Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
Keyboard Backlit Keyboard
Personalization HP TrueVision HD Webcam w/ integrated digital mic
Networking 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R)

I would REALLY appreciate some feedback. Especially if someone can tell me that Windows 8 will be OK and mean it.....TIA!

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

All looks OK with exception of hard drive, I would swap out slow hard disk and relate with a SSD

Scott