http://www.lmc.com.au/products/Notebooks_and_Laptops/HP_Compaq/585477/HP_Pavilion_15-n215tx_[F6C71PA]_Laptop

I am keen to learn very basic coding - it would be nice to play some games, and of course I would do some work productivity and watch HD videos.

Can anyone spot any glaring issues?

Any idea whether I could feasibly sub out the HDD for a faster one?

My brother had one of these. It's pretty solid for a laptop, and if you look past the fact that it plays most of todays games at around 30 fps @low graphics quality and @768, it's a pretty nice laptop. I'd recommend checking this out though: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-740M.89900.0.html those graphics options...

HDD is very slow. Find a version with 7200rpm.
i7 is way more expensive than i5 and not that much better (you would be better with quad core i5).

Replacing/upgrading hdd is a piece of cake, best thing to do is remove it when new, without ever using it, put in an SSD or 7200rpm drive and fresh install, throw on all new drivers (download from mancufacturers page) then you can swap out for the old drive if ever you want to sell it or return it, or just slap the drive in your ps4/ps3

As for the laptop itself, the CPU is a bit on the weak side, bearing in mind that 3ghz is the turbocore speed, unless youre doing heavy use it'll sit around 1.8ghz, i would look for something quad core personally.

http://www.affordablelaptops.com.au/contents/en-us/d43_gaming-laptop-notebook-standard-size.html

This is roughly $200 more, but it has the following advantages

GPU : GT 740M to GTX850M
CPU : 1.8ghz - 3ghz dual core to 2.5ghz - 3.5ghz quad core
DISPLAY : 1366x768 led to 1920x1080 lcd
Warranty : 1 year limited to 2 year manufacturers global warranty

Specs for the GTX850M - http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-850M.107795.0.html
Specs for the GT740M - http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-740M.89900.0.html

Just my 0.02$ of course.

At the bottom of that laptop page you can customize the loadout too, if the only thing you change is the SSD to a 1tb 7200rpm mechanical hdd, its the same as the one i linked above but faster hdd, for $1 more, or just leave it as is and pay the $50 extra for a 256gb ssd.

If you are fixed on the price then I suggest looking at this one:

http://www.ncix.com/detail/acer-v3-772g-9643-intel-i7-4702qm-8gb-6c-83177-1009.htm

I think its a much better deal and I know its acer but HP isn't that much better than Acer when it comes to branding imo

But, if you some budget room, I highly suggest something like this

http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-rog-intel-core-i7-4700hq-42-98211-1488.htm

Apart from the better specs, it comes with 1 year FREE accidental damage warranty from Asus that covers fires, spills and a whole load of other things and I highly recommend it! It comes with a blacklit keyboard, Faster Hard Drive, Faster GPU, FHD Resolution, and an IPS display. And the Speakers on the Asus Laptops are just soo good!

Also for example GTX 680M is btter than GTX 770M. Look for laptops with older but faster GPU.

Thanks, thats a very useful 2c.

I will have a look at my budget and see if I can squeeze something out and look at your and jizzbeard's suggestions.

At the very least it appears there are sufficient potential drawbacks that I should be considering options other than the laptop in the OP.

Only problem is Canada...I'll hunt around for the equivelants here, but the cost there will be less!

Somehoe I did not know that! thanks, I will check some benchmarks!

Another thing to consider is that prebuild model specific laptops usually have some sort of vendor specific driver requirement for the graphics card and will not take standard nvidia/amd issued drivers, it can be circumvented with modified drivers, but it's often easier to simply go with a laptop manufacturer that allows you to customize the loadout, because they generally take OEM parts and slot it all together rather than vendor-specific parts, Toshiba does the lockout thing a LOT (had to use modded drivers on most of the toshiba laptops ive owned).

The shitty part is most of the time they all but abandon driver support for laptops when they reach about a year old, so if you don't go modified driver you're stuck with really old driver versions.