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The U845W-S430's backlit keyboard is generously sized, thanks to the system's wider chassis and Toshiba's decision to forgo a separate number keypad. At the same time, the keyboard yields disappointingly shallow keystrokes and ultimately makes typing a somewhat frustrating endeavor. A similar problem arises with the touchpad, which was often hit-or-miss when it came to two-finger scrolling. Worse yet, its small size often confused basic scrolling with Windows 8 gesture controls. For instance, swiping from the left inadvertently switched between apps while swiping from the right would bring up the so-called "charms" menu. Given the ample amount of room available on the palm rest, it would have made sense to have made the touchpad a bit bigger.
Port selection is more or less on par with that of other ultrabooks, so there aren't too many connectivity options. The right side of the system features the obligatory headphone and microphone jacks and an HDMI output. The left side, meanwhile with battery such as HP WQ001AA Battery, HP HSTNN-DB1U Battery, HP HSTNN-IBOI Battery, HP Envy 15 Battery, HP Envy 14 Battery, HP LF246AA Battery, HP Pavilion dv9005 Battery, HP HSTNN-OB81 Battery, HP 504610-001 Battery, HP HSTNN-IB99 Battery, HP Envy 13 Battery, HP Pavilion ZD8000 Battery, sports an RJ-45 LAN port. There are three USB 3.0 ports, one on the right side of the system and the remaining two on the opposite side. Nestled beneath the edge in the front of the system is a Memory Card Reader (SD/SDHC/ Mini SD/MS/MS Pro/Micro SD/ Micro SDHC).
The U845W-S430 also supports Intel's Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, so you can ditch the HDMI cable altogether if you've got your TV hooked up to an aftermarket adapter along the lines of the Netgear Push2TV ($99 list). Regardless of how you'll connect to your TV, though, you'll need to adjust the S430's aspect ratio if you plan on cloning the display to a high definition television, another quirk that results from the S430's less-than-ordinary 21:9 aspect ratio.
The U845W-S430's 500GB, 5,400 rpm hard drive comes preloaded with a solid chunk of software. They range from unnecessary (WildTangent games) to useful (Microsoft Office Starter, a yearlong subscription to the 2013 version of Norton Anti-Virus), with some trial software (30 days of Norton Online Backup, 60 days of Norton Anti-Theft) and proprietary programs (Toshiba Software and Utilities) sprinkled in between. The U845W-S430 also features a 32GB SSD cache, although that operates behind the scenes to allow for faster boot times and cannot be accessed by the user. The U845W-S430 is covered by a standard one-year warranty on parts and labor.
With a 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5-3317U CPU and 6GM RAM, the U845W-S430 stacked up well against others in its class, though it's not a very large pool of competitors since Windows 8 systems are still relatively new. Its PCMark7 score of 4,237 points edged past the HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4t-1100 (4,093 points) and, by a larger margin, the Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 (2,523 points). The S430-U45W performed similarly in our 3DMark 11 benchmark tests (1,196 in Entry-level settings; 213 in Extreme-level settings), chugging past the Lenovo Yoga 13 (1,056 in Entry-level settings) as well as the HP 4t-1100 (1,043 in Entry-level settings).