Asus - Stylish Laptop with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology - Brown/Cream

I'm a gamer. This thing is a dream. Runs Doom 3, TES: Oblivion, WoW, Left4Dead on FULL SETTINGS without a skip. Unbelievable perfomance, no need to overclock anything. My previous "gaming rig" was a 2ghz singlecore CPU, 256 vram laptop, the thing was terrible. I figured this would run everything atleast okay, but it greatly surpassed my expectations. I can't believe how well this thing runs. All my gaming friends envy me for this computer. I can't say enough things about how well of a purchase this thing is. Cooling system is very efficient. Reinstalling the computer is as easy as tossing in a few CD's and waiting (not long) for it to redownload the files. The battery is the only thing I'd say needs work, but I plan on upgrading it at a later date. I've been commuting lately, (about 3 hours without access to a outlet) and this thing lasts long enough for me to get home (I play games and listen to iTunes the whole time). As I said, I love this thing, it is my life, and from my experience Asus brand stuff is dead on, so this thing is getting a high rating from me. Very pleased with this laptop (esp for $800, I'd pay 41200 for this thing).

I've been living on this laptop for about a month now, using it probably 12 hours/day either at work through a tethered phone, or wifi at home. Let me start by saying I think it was the right choice for me. I wasn't sure I'd like the patterned brown skin, but it' grown on me, and other's have commented that it looked kinda slick. The screen is smaller than most laptops these days, which is part of the reason I bought it. The smaller size makes it easier and lighter to lug around with me every day, and isn't really noticeably less convenient than a 15". The keyboard is decent, although I wish the arrow keys were larger. The FKey shortcuts are kinda stupid though, since half of them don't do anything. Theres no bluetooth built in, and if you use usb BT dongle, the button won't shut it off. It's not tragic though. The worst part of the laptop is the touchpad. The scrolling area is very finicky, even on the latest drivers. You need to scroll just to the right of the orange line, and not in the area between the line and the edge of the touchpad. I've put a thin strip of tape on the touchpad so I can find it by touch. Not sure why they didn't raise it or something more intelligent. Also, the buttons are super stiff, but I tap click and gesture so it doesn't really bother me. The built in web-cam is mediocre, but I don't use it much anyway. On the upside it's quite fast, and works part time as a home theater pc for catching up on missed shows on Hulu. The one down side to HTPC use is that sound will not go through the hdmi cable unless the laptop was booted with the cable installed. Sound out through hdmi is acceptable, but the image is a bit dim, so you'll need to do some color/brightness corrections or it defaults to dim and slightly green tinted. It decompresses hi-def at 1080 with no problems, including the stuff on hulu, which gets 0 hardware accel from the video card. Sound out through the headphone jack is thin and tinny, and becomes obvious when you go from ipod to itunes. The built in speakers are not great... but it's a computer, not a stereo system. I've never had a laptop I thought sounded good, since the speakers are always small and have no resonance space. Also the dvd sled seems to eject when shuffling around and bumping the side, Other than those quibbles, its been very reliable. I have not had any crashes yet. no problems with the network connections, or anything like that, which kinda surpised me since I'm usually a linux user and dont much care for evil empire software. Wifi range seems to be pretty decent, and signal strength seems pretty decent as well. Also, the power supply jack is built pretty beefy, which is nice because I've had to replace the on my last 3 toshiba's. I'd buy it again, or recommend it to friends/family. It's been fast, reliable, and was reasonably priced for the hardware included, and has been a fairly painless purchase.

Over all, a fantastic laptop. Comfortable key pad, very sharp screen, amazing graphic speed and the ability to have multiple programs running at the same time is just too good to be true. The shell is very sturdy and feels solid. Reading on line at www.asus.com it says it has a 2 year warranty that covers the lap top so buying extra protection for it is not necessary. Excellent components for under $1000 dollars; Centrino 2 chip, 4mb ram, 1g graphics card, etc etc It has a very quiet cooling fan and doesn't get very warm so it's not hot sitting on your lap... The only flaws are minor ones. The battery seems to last about 3 hours and is a little disappointing as it is suppose to have an 8 or 9 cell battery and with the Centrino 2 chip it should last around 5 hours. Obviously this computer is not ENERGY STAR rated. The speakers have very nice sound to them, but they don't get very loud (the Acer and Toshiba's are much better). The CD/DVD drive sounds like a jet engine taking off and I think it would be awful trying to watch a DVD with it. And the mouse click buttons are the stiffest I've experienced, good thing I used an external USB mouse most of the time. For a $1000 bucks this is a great laptop that is very fast and of excellent quality. Consumer Reports also rated it Top 5 laptops in the 16" screen category.

I read two reviews about thins laptop and those two reviews made enough sense to keep it even if they were only half true. Turns out that they were all true, the awesome power of this exceeded my expectations a bit, played the crysis demo on medium with a few high settings, plays crysis warhead easily with many high settings. Asus has well no real Bloat junk to uninstal. Played Far Cry 2 very very well with same settings as crysis warhead. is a little cooler with a load than i had expected. The boot time is slower than i thought but got faster when I moved programs out of the program files and into their own folders on the C drive. Much Better quality than all the other companies I tried out, Asus is Asus, not some other companies cheap stuff. Upgraded my tower to Asus after using this, and it has improved %55 over the old "supreme gaming machine. Also it does extremely well with Lightwave and Adobe. Another great thing i nearly forgot is the lid, it isn't all soft like all the other laptops i tried around this price range. so the likely hood of it getting poked too hard and damaging the screen is less likely. Charges quickly too, the anitvirus it comes with is actually as good as running three free programs so far. Like a lot of other people have had to do with Asus laptops is reinstall vista because the first install was corrupted and made the machine very slow and it got slower with the installation of more programs. There is nothing wrong with Vista at all, don't listen to everyone else, I have replaced all of my XP machines with Vista, and if a laptop like this has a 32 bit operating system leave it be get a 64 bit if you plan on gaming or anything intensive. 64 uses things better and faster and uses more memory and does it properly. This laptop uses programs designed for 32 bit vista/xp perfectly where as my 64bit tower doesn't use them all properly but none the less they still work. Update to the Beta video Drivers, they just keep getting better

The only problem is that i hate how it disconects with my wireless at home*WEP* but maybe its just mine other that that i pick up internet access from millions of places far *fast * internet is incredibly fast and connects easily. *remember only internet disconect issue ive had is with my own wireless.* This baby is a dream come true Bravo Asus what a great and confortable price i had the Hp dv5 , dv7 before i exchanged them and got my hands on this more economic and faster for anything. It play's Call of duty :4 on max at 30fps *AWESOME for a laptop*!~! Trust me i have 2 other Desktops pc xps 730x * and a custom one * and this baby here does not stay behind in speed for nothing .. I would recomend this to any one * Battery life is awesome if u know how to manage what u do usually i get from 2hrs heavy usage to 4 hrs - 5 low usage if u use it for a bit and make it go to sleep u can use it for a full day just like a cell phone ^^ ... Another thing the way it looks is great very flashy glitter and soft layout it looks dull in pictures but in person *wow* i recommend it * go try it for ureself you WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED* if ure just a web surfer person get the other version of this the blue one if ure a gamer get this one or the one above for 1k $ if u need to save those 200-300 dollars get this it wont let you down!!!

I did alot of research on this computer before i bought it and i can say that for this price is was the best pc i could find by a long shot. Looked everywhere, clearance club, tiger direct ebay and so on. Could not find a better deal on this PC. And now its even cheaper than when i bought it. I wanted to wait a while before i wrote this review because i wanted to give it a good test out first. Ive had the pc for a month. It does everything with ease, including most games. If you are a serious gamer maybe the next asus model up would be better suited but this thing is still a beast. Ive had no issues at all. The dvd drive is a little noisy at times. The muse buttons are a little noisy. But if you use a normal mouse you wont have this prob. The facial recognition is cool at first but i soon got sick of it and turned it off. The case colour wasnt exactly what i wanted but after a while you dont mind. You even start to like it. I havnt had any of the other issues other people have been having. And ive been using this computer everyday for about 6 hours per day. I will recommend this pc to my friends when they are looking for a pc.

I've developed a love hate relationship with this computer. When it works its awesome.. but there are a lot of problems with the o.s. I've only had it for a few weeks. I have owned half a dozen laptops and this one has the best hardware but is plagued by software issues. I have had to reload the drivers for the cd/dvd drive. It will almost never come out of hibernation with out a fatal exception and a rebooot. The smart login manager has developed a problem and will no longer load. And the system restore doesn't work it just freezes on the initializing screen. These problems all developed within the first 2 weeks. I own 2 other laptops a toshiba m105 and a Ibm t43. Both run xp and I have no issues with these. Maybe this is just a Vista problem. This is a great computer and I would recomend it to thoses who have at least some intermediate computer and troubleshooting skills. And do yoursef a favor and buy norton ghost and back the computer up every time you add anything!

Overall is great, except the wireless internet connection is horrible. Even my old Compaq laptop has better internet connection. It would drop in middle of web surfing/email writing. Or, I just walked away for few minutes, and came back with internet connection issue. I did all the troubleshooting, and couldn't figure out, even the laptop would indicate the connection was still good. No site could be displayed. I googled, and found the Asus members forum with the following suggestion: Download and install the recommended Intel update for WiFi - the IT Wifi Pro Set. Copy and paste the URL below into browser. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/17233/eng/12.2.2.0_Gen_SW.zip&DwnldId=17233&ProductID=3062&lang=eng Ever since I installed it, everything works wonder, despite all the tests I have done to ensure the conectivity. And it still works the wonder....;o)