HP's rebate scam

This is the customer review I wrote of the laptop and tried to post on Newegg, but it didn't go through because I already wrote one. So, here goes, with more text and a special attention to American companies extracting free loans from their customers, and then not wanting to pay it back. Maybe they're bankrupt?

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Pros: Very good and large display, wide keyboard, nothing plugs in the rear, sleek look, stereo microphone, decent battery life, surprisingly good sound from the tiny tin cans. Touchpad can be switched off, nice. Looks quite nice altogether, specially the piano finish.

Cons: Vista. Bloatware.

HP promises $50 rebate, but when you send them EVERYTHING THEY WANT, all you get is a letter, months later, that one of the items is missing and you aren't eligible. I was scammed like this, several years ago, by ColdFusion - the receipt from their website somehow doesn't count as an invoice (!), they want an invoice from a shop (but why did they advertise the rebate on the website then?). HP takes this a step further - they offer even less explanation, and if they claim you didn't send the UPC code, you're done - you sent it already and have no way of either sending it again, or proving that you did. So not only did I give an interest-free $50 loan to poor HP, they are now claiming that I cannot prove I gave it to them. My only recourse is to post the facts here. And if I notice an extra stream of computer related junk mail coming my way, I may even take this further - just waiting for any symptoms of them selling my data.
The remote didn't work at all, and the blue light buttons are tightly coupled with Vista's players, they can't run anything else. They can serve as an ON button, though - when you want to boot, just wave your hand over them, Star Trek style.

The UACs for everything that HP installed were not set - one would expect they'd give their own software the rights. Generally, I had one day of struggle with Vista and then just drove over it with XP - read details in my blog previously.
Allowing inclusion of Symantec's racketware is a disaster - but that may be Microsoft, not HP, I wouldn't know.

Other thoughts: The size of the machine makes it nearly impossible to use in an airplane, it pretty much supports your lower ribs, but I knew that in advance. The keyboard is actually quite good, the layout is miles above Dell's (which is ridiculous). The numeric keypad is actually a must - I never wanted to buy a laptop without one, and it's only an inch shorter than my regular keyboard. The right shift is sort of stuck in a less-than-intuitive position, so I too keep hitting up-arrow instead.

The screen isn't glare-free, but you won't see yourself in it unless your head is under straight sunlight. I tried it with dual monitors, and the driver (for XP) is quite intelligent.

After downloading all the possible drivers from HP's site, I still can't get the camera to work under XP (I gave up), and some of the other hardware is still unrecognized - don't know what, it doesn't even display any names. Setting up the wireless took a lot of install-uninstall-try again, but it worked in the end.

To conclude, I'll keep it. That's a lot of good hardware for the money. I wish Vista could have been opted out of, and the stupid bloatware.