HP ProBook 4320s - review

I wasn't able to find any decent review of HP's ProBook 4320s despite searching on Google for some time. It is ridiculous how many sites list the device on review pages without even having hands-on experience. I have an oportunity to work with this notebook for couple of days so I can try to describe my personal experience and feelings to help potential buyers with their decision.

General description
According HP's product description, notebook is targeting home small office-home office market. What you get, however, is decent look at the first sight and some decent components inside which you can read about in next paragraphs.

Body
Most parts of the 13.3" notebook body is made of plastic material, especially the bottom and keyboard. Back of the display and palm resting area around touchpad is made of brushed aluminum with hp logo engraved. Downside of brushed aluminium are visible fingerprints which surprised me fairly.
Interesting observation of the backside is absence of any screws or openings. In this category this is rather unusual and makes eventual memory or hard-drive upgrade little bit more complicated. Battery is replaceable without any tools, however. Above keyboard is a decent "grill" with just power button, back-lit with white LED which is lit during normal operation and flashes when suspended. There are no other LEDs or buttons. The only other white LED indicating hard drive activity is on left front side. No big lamps, just small illuminated dot. Simple, clean and elegant.

Keyboard and controls
Keyboard is "chicklet" type with big key surface making it easy to hit the right one. It should be safe to spill cofee on it since keyboard contains drains. Keys are very easy on typing and are quiet enough. Surface between keys is made of highly polished material. This looks very good but attracts fingerprints and tends to be a bit difficult to clean. Some keys (caps lock, f5, f6, wifi on/off) has LED indicator which is lit when the function is on. I appreciate especially dedicated right-most column of delete, home, page up, page down and end keys.
Touchpad should support gestures but I didn't have a chance to test it as I am running Linux most of the time. There are no dedicated touchpad buttons there. Instead, touchpad contains prescribed areas which you can press. There are real buttons underneath and click is audible. What I don't like on this idea is some minimal movement of the cursor when pressing touchpad buttons as the surface under the buttons is touch-sensitive as well.

Display and graphics controller
Surface of the display is anti-glare which is appreciated. Frame, on the other hand, is highly reflective around the display. Display is attached to the main body with two bar holders integrated to the lid. This solution hides party the lid behind the main body when opened.
Above display you can spot 2 megapixel web camera window, microphone and small LED indicator when camera is on.
From image quality perspective, this is my first hands-on experience with LED back-lit display so I can not tell whether good or not however, I must admit viewing angle is little bit narrow and does colors are not very vivid.

Sound and video
Reviewed unit was equipped with ATI Mobility Radeon 4500 graphics controller which is far enough for desktop effects and possibly for some games too. I am not aware of any possibility to switch of external GPU. Typical ProBook 4320s comes with CPU-integrated so make sure which one you are going to buy.
Grill above of the keyboard covers a pair of speakers which are loud enough for basic audio. I love to have HDMI output for connectivity to large PDP or just LCD display with integrated speakers. No more mess with bulky VGA cable nad extra audio jacks.

Heat production, cooling and noise
I was scary and wondering about noise and heat production, however, I was delighted. It is absolutely quiet on condition it is not under extreme load. The only noise is produced by hard-drive spin. Remember, drive is spining at 7200 RPM so it is still audible. If you are absolutely interested on zero noise you can replace HD with SSD to bootstrap the system and let data store on external or network storage.

Networking and connectivity
Reviewed unit came with standard dial-up modem to be surprised. Now I understand why it is so heavy (just kidding). WiFi network adapter is capable of a/b/g/n standards of 802.11. In front of the main body are jack connectors for headphones and microphone, slot for storage cards. Device is equipped with 4 USB ports, one of them is combination of eSATA and USB.

Weight
Tested unit has weight of approximately 2.15kg which is upper boundary of every-day wearing to be not unconfortable. I believe without DVD drive notebook could be lighter at least 100 grams. Unfortunately, drive is not removable.

Linux note
I am operating the unit with ubuntu 10.4 and up to now I didn't find any complications up to now. Even the most troublesome feature such us suspend to RAM or hibernation works out of the box. ATI Mobility Radeon is supported directly by ATI. Alhough proprietary, installation is very easy comparable to Windows version. I had to proceed with installation of ATI driver otherwise main fan started to run quite fast even with no evident user load.

Summary
Although looking at this unit with skepticism at the begining I can say it is definitely worth of money. You will get notebook with 1) very decent and professional look, 2) sufficient CPU power with i3 350M at 2.27 GHz processor, 3) more than enough graphics power for business use, 4) uncompromised connectivity.
On the negative side, you will get notebook which you will have to keep clean regulary as it attracts every single fingerprint. I believe built-in components such as modem or DVD drive is not absolutely necessary these days in modern notebook, especially of 13" form factor.
At price below 1000 USD I believe you will get reliable buddy for you small business for quite some time.