ASUS S46CA-XH51 14.1-Inch Laptop (Black)

With a shrinking number of ultrabooks with Windows 7 on them as shipped, this system offers a really good mix of hard-to-find features including VGA and HDMI port, an RJ45 network jack, and throw in a DVDRW drive and 1 USB 3.0 and 2 USB 2.0 ports. The traditional hard drive with small SSD cache is a good compromise on a low-cost system. Very thin yet feels solid with aluminum casing. Really the only negatives are lack of backlit keyboard and trackpad a little tricky to get used to (left/right buttons are integrated into pad), and no recovery media and no way to make them, a poor trend for most vendors.

ASUS was recommended to me as a good brand, this seems to be the best 14" with Win 7, Amazon had the best price through another seller Technology Galaxy. However, return policy for TG is once the box is open it's yours, no exceptions, my bad for not reading the fine print. Right out of the box the cooling fan ran fast and loud, you could hear it in the next room. When typing in Word, email or in a web text box, the cursor would jump around causing you to manually set it back to the end of a sentence to continue typing. That's enough for me to return it, but as stated above, the return policy won't allow it. I spent hours with ASUS tech support via chat (tech support was good) to download a chipset to solve the cooling fan problem and some other software upgrade to stop the cursor jumping. Fan is solved, it runs quiet now, the cursor is still problematic, but we finally figured out how to disable the touchpad, the laptop is primarily used with a mouse. Another review talked about the touchpad being the deal killer too, take note. Other than that, the unit works fine (now) for word processing, web surfing, and some simple psychology testing software. If you want to buy this brand/model, go find one that you can demo before you commit. Buy direct from Amazon so you can return it if you don't like it. Beware of sellers selling through Amazon, they might not let you return it if you open the box.

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this was by far the easiest setup of my 10? laptops -based on reviews i read here i chose this model (with win 7) over a new vaio with win 8 (my last 5 computers have all been vaios) -seamless, fast setup, speedy, lots of RAM -only caveat is no numeric keypad but i only used it to type accents, so --

downloaded browsers, software, printer drivers & updated versions of this n' that -no problem whatsoever. so far so good -it's only tweaking & transferring files now -from the previous laptop whose touchpad i drowned --

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I chose this laptop primary because it had a very fast processor and it was a Windows 7 instead of the new Windows 8. It was actually a little more expensive than Win 8, but I heard Win 8 has problems. I still prefer a full size keyboard, because I like to type fast. The keyboard on this laptop is too small and very flat. It is difficult to use and the pad is inaccurate. I spend quite a bit of type with the pad to try and move the cursor around. The mouse works a little better than the pad. The keyboard also has options that let you use certain keys for other functions. It is these extra things that make for a bad experience. Besides being hard to type, there are regular problems, where the cursor just flies all over the place when you are trying to type. The way the keyboard ends up working is more akin to a cell phone than a computer. It is just very frustrating to use. Start up to my surprise is very slow. It takes about 20-30 seconds to start. The internet connection was flawless and has worked very well. The area surrounding the keyboard and pad is a very nice aluminum finish. The rest of the computer feels and looks cheap. It is very light plastic and there are places where the plastic finish is pretty rough. The screen is pretty good, it works well even strong lighting conditions and even when it faces the window. I don't know why it got such high ratings. With the exception of the aluminum finish and the screen, it is very average and substandard in some instances.

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I was looking forward to using this computer I did a lot of research before purchasing it and finally found the best deal here on Amazon. A few people had said that they hated the trackpad (ASUS' new version of the mouse) but they just plugged in an external mouse and it was fine.

I tried for over a month to get used to the trackpad (I can't really use an external mouse because I'm not often sitting at a desk with my laptop), and I hated it so much that I finally gave up and returned it for a refund. The computer itself seems great, but the trackpad was a deal-killer for me. I'm unlikely to look at ASUS in the future and I am back to hunting for a new laptop.

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