Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Surprisingly mediocre effort by HP, when I first took it out of the box I was enamored with this $99 marvel. I agree with other peoples first impressions with the device. Runs full windows? Awesome! Small and light? Great! The screen? The screen is gorgeous. I knew there would be some sacrifices like it having a significantly shorter battery life than most tablets, I was ok with that. However, two weeks in, now that the honey moon is over. I've really started to feel where HP cut corners to deliver the product. If you check the HP forums, there are tons of people with issues. My first issue is the charging situation, this bugger is picky as to which charger lets it charge to 100%, every charger you plug in works for a little bit then it stops. Unless you use the official HP charger & cable... which as of this writing they don't sell in the US store, so if you need a spare you're SOL. To add insult to injury, HP in their wisdom has elected to not put in a charge indicator on the device, so to check the charge you have to turn the device on, navigate to your desktop and check the taskbar icon because the battery indicator in the windows modern UI doesn't give you percentages. Next Wifi keeps dropping and that's related to the current software drivers (hopefully), I've resorted to using a USB wifi dongle attached via the OTG port when I need to do things where I won't get disconnected. I think for most people, they'll think the wifi drops are just slow internet, but when you're VPN'ed into work and the bugger disconnects your VPN every few minutes, it's hecka noticeable (and I have tried it from many different Wifi networks where my (full sized) laptop has had no issues). Third there is that as I like to call it, "touch sensor, audible biofeedback," the headphone buzzing other people mention? It gets louder and softer, depending on if you're touching the screen or dragging your finger across it. HP actually told me that I shouldn't experience this issue if I were to switch to bluetooth headphones, which is true but is beside the point. Remember how I said I didn't mind the short battery life? Well, yes but, here's the thing you have to remember, this isn't a true tablet like an ipad or nexus, it is a computer without a keyboard. What does that mean? Unlike other device, when you hit the power button those devices actually stop using battery however, the stream 7 is different. Even when you think your device is sleeping, it could be awake running something in the background killing your battery. I've had more than once, put the device to sleep, gone to run a task and come back to a super hot & drained device, because some app didn't let the system go all the way to sleep. Once it was windows media sharing that did that, heck that's a MS program! Normal issue of a laptop/desktop, kinda of something that throws you when you're dealing with a tablet. Now negatives aside, here is what I do like, I like the USB OTG so far as long as it isn't a high powered device like a hard drive, I've been able to plug it in and use it. From a wired ethernet adapter, 4G LTE modem, USB memory card readers, and USB biometric readers; as well as the aforementioned USB wifi dongle. As i've said the screen is gorgeous and is bright, I have no problems using it outdoors at my local starbucks and it gets dim enough that I can read a kindle book in bed. I love being able to run my normal windows applications, real office, real chrome, real VPN with real putty, on a tiny little device. I like a few of the media consumption apps like Hulu, Plex and netflix, which just work better in windows modern/metro mode than they do on the desktop (mostly). I'm still not sure this is a keeper, it feels like there are one too many sacrifices you have to accept to make it work. Granted it is early days for a lot of the components in this device, that with time & new drivers issues like the wifi drops will disappear. What I mean is, that the wifi component for example, was only released by the chip maker to manufacturers in Sept and drivers were in beta/pre-release until mid October. If you aren't an early adopter, not a self troubleshooter, it might be best to leave this until version 2 comes out or at least until the drivers mature in 7 or 8 months.