And it was a seriously impressive debut. The HP Stream 11 laptop has something fairly remarkable about it. Yet that isn't what's remarkable. I'll get to it in a moment. The laptop isn't "great" to the point of being a desktop replacement, but that isn't the point of it. It only has 32 GB flash storage (though the system can be expanded with a Flash storage card), no touch screen, and doesn't have the power for significant multi-tasking, nor a great deal of RAM memory, just 2 MB. The keyboard is also a little light and slick to the touch. It's a pretty good computer. It also comes with a few HP proprietary apps. Some aren't necessary, and I got rid of those, but I kept a few. There are a few oddities. To "right-click" and bring up context menus, you don't "right-click" at all, but rather tap with two fingers on the touchpad.
It works well, though was undocumented and I had to discover this by digging into an HP support app. I also found the right and left-click buttons on the touch pad were a bit sticky, and a few things I thought would be accessed by clicking were, rather, swiped. Also, though the speakers are surprisingly acceptable for something at this price, they're under the computer and more muffled than they'd be if on top. But working with it went smoothly. It boots up extremely fast, in only about 15 seconds. And switching between programs was smooth. I didn't load as many "memory resident" programs as I would with a desktop-replacement computer, since memory is limited. When I loaded a favorite memory resident program, ClipMate, I would periodically get an error message to close a program, so I uninstalled the program, and the messages went away. And I didn't load the hard drive with a full array of programs, either, since storage is limited, too.
Though after installing Office365 and with all the pre-installed apps, I still had 10 GB left. And then, after loading the most-important programs I wanted, there were still 5 GB. But limited storage isn't exactly what it seems here. One of the things about this computer as it relates to storage is that, in many ways, it's supposed to compete with Chromebooks, which means the Stream 11 leans heavily on cloud storage. That's why it comes with a stunning 1 terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage. It's expected that most of your storage -- documents, photos, music, video and such -- will be stored on the OneDrive cloud, and one terabyte is more than plenty for most people's lifetime. And reports are that soon Microsoft will up that to unlimited storage. To reiterate: this is not a workhorse laptop or even close. The system runs on a Celeron processor which isn't the most powerful, but allows for a long battery life, and it's rated for an impressive 8 hours. Even if you don't get that much, since those are ideal conditions, it's a long life. And light and thin and very portable.
But though not a workhorse, I still gave it a heavy workout, taking it to the Consumer Electronics Show, where it performed admirably. There was just one glitch which I'm not sure was entirely on its end. Its WiFi connected fine in the main Press Room, but I had difficulty connecting in two secondary Press Rooms. 199. For a real (and respectably good) Windows 8.1 laptop. Yet most of that has nothing to do with what makes it so remarkable. Here's what's remarkable - depending on your usage, you could probably make money buying it even if you never use the thing! 25 gift card for the Microsoft store. Let me put that in perspective. Because it also comes with 60 minutes a month - every moth - of Skype world minutes, which is another savings if one uses it. 54. AND, as I mentioned, it includes a terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage.
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