I've owned a few high spec laptops over the last 4/5 years including a small Sony Vaio, Dell M1330 and currently the new MacBook Pro.

The Elitebook is my work laptop, so it gets a lot more abuse and use than my personal machines. The build quality from HP is very solid made up of a mixture of plastic and brushed aluminium. This mix of materials also creates a stylish look and feel about the machine.

The spec isn't overly impressive; the processor is mid-range and so is the graphics card. The amount of RAM is low in my opinion especially since prices have really dropped over the last couple of years.

Other features include a memory card reader, bluetooth, wifi, touch sensitive buttons, biometric finger print reader and a small pop out light at the top of the screen where you would expect to see a camera.

The machine works well for my daily needs including Visual Studio, large numbers of open windows and all the security stuff my company have installed.

Screen resolution is great for the small screen 1440 x 900 - this allows you to fit a large amount of information on the screen, however some may struggle reading the smaller sized text.

Battery life is superb, you can get a good 4-5hours heavy use without power.

The weight of the Elitebook is great, much lighter than my previous work laptop - HP nc6230.

Even though I've found this laptop superb in my work environment there are some reason I definitely wouldn't buy it with my own money... The laptop feels solid, but it also feels cheap... Matt plastic is already starting to turn shiny, the clips which close the lid feel like they will break or struggle to close properly. The touch sensitive buttons are pointless and lack the immediate response you expect....

....and finally, the price for the spec is crazy. My MacBook cost less than the advertised price for this machine and the spec is almost exactly the same.

HP have made what appears from the offset to be a great machine, but live with it for a few hours and it's weaknesses start to show. For the spec, just 2GB of RAM, the machine is extremely overpriced when compared against their consumer range.