ASUS A53U-AS22 15.6-Inch Laptop (Mocha)

I ordered this laptop about 30 days ago and have been solidly satisfied ever since. I desperately needed a new laptop for home use and wanted a machine that was stylish, updated and could handle a basic level of tasks. I use this as my primary and only home computer (which doesn't say much, after work, I go home to veg. I needed a machine I could use while watching TV, use while half-sleeping on the couch and something to answer emails in bed after I wake up late for work/other commitmentsagain).

Pros:

It looks great! It has a distinctive mocha case with a nice detail on it. And, no it's not as light as the MacBook Air or something, but is easy to handle, travels well and looks sleek.

The screen is solid and is a nice size.

The laptop runs very, very, cool. I don't think that mine has even warmed up a bit.

Windows 7 looks great on this laptop.

ASUS has some interesting programs (crapwarebut not that crappy).

I can run MS Office programs, Google Chrome, IE, VPN access my work computer, edit web pages and listen to Pandora at once just fine (occasionally the Pandora skips, but that just might be the connection).

Cons:

The keyboard takes some getting used to. . . it's very wide, I tend to favor the buttons on the left and some of the command buttons are in areas I did not expectand on the way right. With that said, it's a little annoying but easily solvable (I just look down more when I am typing).

The speakers are really not that good. But not a big deal for me because I mostly use this laptop for general home use (to finish projects from work, catch up on volunteer stuff and to check email and my FB). With that said, if I ever felt the need to watch movies or TV shows on it or something, I would just plug in speakers.

This is my first computer with an AMD processor. It's alright and works for me. I can tell the difference between this an Intel processor thoughespecially when playing basic games and do worry that this laptop will become dated sooner than its Intel counterpart. But the computer has never crashedjust some of the games run a bit slow (READ: I am not a gamer, I am talking about basic silly free games). I saw a review that mentioned the screen cuts out or something like that. . . I noticed that it did reset once or twice while I was loading my files and programs onto the machine. Nothing major though, and this happens on my desktop computer at work too. . .

You have to make your own recovery disks. It took 12 DVDs for meand A LOT of time. Painful.

But all and all I am super happy with my purchase. Totally worth the price and totally stylish.

I purchased the A53U-ES21 but stumbled on this product with a poor review. This is exactly the same laptop that I purchased, this just has a larger hard drive (500GB instead of 320GB). Yes, this laptop is not lightning fast but it is a great laptop. I have not noticed any lag or times of no response. I did, however, format the hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 7 (not included) because there is a lot of preloaded garbage on there.

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For a desktop Linux user, this laptop is perfect. It is virtually impossible to purchase a laptop in the U.S. without an operating system; however, Microsoft apparently charges OEMs so little for Windows Home installed on cheap hardware that it doesn't really impact the price.

I installed the latest version of Ubuntu alongside the factory Windows install. In two weeks of heavy use, the system is holding up well. Some sites, such as Google Maps in streetview mode, render slow because of the weak hardware. If you're a gamer, you probably should not be buying this. If you're using it mostly for ordinary business tasks, this laptop is more than sufficient, at least under Ubuntu. Of the 4GB RAM, I have yet to see more than 2GB used at any given time.

I would consider other alternatives if you are planning to become a Windows 8 user, as I'm sure that system will be heavy on resources.

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I have owned a ASUS laptop before and was happy with it. I felt pretty safe getting another. I am afraid that I am going to have to return this one though. It is very slow. Very slow. Trying to load the Huffington Post can take well over a minute.

Playing the Microsoft version of Mahjong will give error messages of an overloaded cpu. I am not anywhere near being a power user with this machine. It is used primarily for surfing the net, checking e-mail and listening to music preferably at the same time. Sadly this thing is unable to keep up with that,

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I bought an ASUS laptop in 2006 and it is still going strong, including the DVD drive. I can't say the same for other brands of laptops that I have owned (after two years, the drive on my Compaq crapped out and HP was no help at all in trying to recover the driver). Windows runs a little slow sometimes and I get a handful of program not responding, but I'm not attributing that to the computer just yet (I'm still running an old version of office). What I really like is the light weight frame; I travel with my laptop and use it in the field so that is definitely a plus. The screen has great resolution as well.

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Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q870 TruBrite 18.4-Inch Gaming Laptop

This review is broken into several parts for those that would like an in depth review, or would like to know specific details.

Seller: Best Custom P.C. LLC

As soon as Amazon allows me to, this company will be receiving five stars. They are the best company that I have ever dealt with (this includes offline stores as well.) They answered all of my questions quickly, and were polite and personable in their responses. I received a handwritten thank you note with my order (I ask you, when have you EVER received a hand written anything from a business, much less from the owner?)The system they sell you is double checked by two computer professionals, and everything is tested. They ship quickly, and are one of the few third party vendors that will provide you with tracking information.

Qosmio x505-870:

General:

First off know what you are getting into. This machine is not some cute little Vaio. Don't misunderstand me it looks awesome, but when Toshiba says desktop replacement they MEAN desktop replacement. To put this in perspective I have a Macbook Air which is a thirteen inch laptop. I can literally put it on the Qosmio in the upper right hand corner and it will come to the "w" key to halfway down the touchpad. To put it another way, I can open the Mac's screen and still watch a youtube video behind it on the Qosmio's monitor. There for, I don't understand some of the other reviews where they complain that it is heavy. This isn't a netbook. It isn't completely immovable though. Just understand this thing is HUGE, and lugging it around isn't going to be fun for long walks in Manhattan. The keyboard is backlit, and full sized with a numeric pad. On your left there are touch media keys that I like. Again, I have read some complaints that they are too easy to hit and I do not understand this either. Unless you are terribly uncoordinated or your hands are the size of Kobe's I don't know how you will hit them accidently. The battery has 12 cells, and with Eco mode will last a good amount of time for a machine this large (3 hours give or take.)

Parts:

The monitor is clear and crisp with a 16:9 ratio, the keyboard is snappy and comfortable, and the speakers are great for a laptop. The i7 processor is a beast, but the Qosmio handles the heat easily. I have yet to feel it get hot at all ( and I do use it as a "lap" top.) It has 4GB of RAM @ 1066MHz which is not the fastest, but good enough for just about anything you'll throw at it. The Blu-ray player is a steal for the price, and will flash labels onto burned DVDs (does NOT burn Blu-ray.) Computer has three USB ports, an eSATA/USB port with sleep/charge for your phone. One firewire 400 port, Bluetooth, one HDMI port,10/100/1000 ethernet, 5 in 1 memory card reader, PCI slot, and 2nd hard drive bay for another HD. Hard drive is a 500GB @ 7200 rpm. My only nitpick is the touchpad, it supports multi touch, but is tiny. However, wireless mice aren't really expensive, and the pad isn't horrible, just kind of out of place (The ones on the Macbooks are about twice as big). This is an amazing piece of hardware, and if you want a powerful computer this is your machine.

After exhaustive research, I decided the Toshiba Cosmio x505-870 powerhouse had the best specs for the best price. This was the next in a long line of Toshiba laptops for me. I was hooked after my first one about 10 years ago. Due to the design, durability, price, and support, Toshibas have always been my first choice and I would, and do, recommend them to everyone that asks. The Cosmio X505-870 is my new passion. My only complaints are minor and cosmetic. The slick surface of the keyboard and the awkward multimedia and power buttons are the only hindrances I have found. The new, positive design elements far outway the problems though. The toned-down color scheme, the disable button for the touchpad, and the beautiful 18.4 screen(although not full 1080p) to name a few. There were some issues with the BIOS that Toshiba addressed directly, so I would suggest updating the BIOS immediatly after creating your restore disks. I don't think it would be possible to regret the purcase of this system, and I recommend it whole-heartidly.

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For the price this is 1 amazing laptop! I've thrown Star Trek Online, Bioshock 1 and 2 at it and everything played fully maxxed out w/ great frame rates. Left 4 Dead 2 even looks impressive on it! The Blu Ray drive has come in handy as well for watching movies and shows. The only complaint I have is that it is a fingerprint magnet...but honestly it is only a small complaint.

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I bought this laptop about couple of months ago, from Tiger-direct cause for some reason or another Amazon price jumped overnight on that particular laptop, and tiger offered 12 months no interest and for an additional $29.00 they guarantee they will buy back the laptop for at least 40% of the purchase price depending on the shape it's in at that time. Anyhow, this has nothing to do with he review.

The review:

I'm not gonna sit here describing the machine, the specs are well listed by the MFG. Let me start by saying that I consider myself a computer savvy, I'm not stingy when it comes to buying a good system, and I've always bought Toshiba laptops, and it seems to always be the case, the machines are beautiful well built but always have out of the box drivers issues, and stupid little bugs that arise from negligence, more than anything else, and I could imagine how frustrating it would be for the non computer savvy. I always tolerated this fact hoping that my next Toshiba won't have these minor annoying stupid bugs, such as bad Blue-tooth Driver, Bad Graphic card driver, Bluray Drive with no supporting oftware, bad BIOS that causes blue screens,only three USB outlets, etc.. etc...

As far as this system goes, I was able to upgrade the buggy BIOS, downloaded new one from Toshiba site, I got the blue-tooth headphones to work (needed to roll-back to an old driver? then about a week ago Realteck posted a driver that worked), but the most serious problem that this machine has is a bad driver for it's Graphic card, the machine and during light operations, goes blank, then wakes up with a message DISPLAY DRIVER STOPPED WORKING AND HAS RECOVERED, then comes back to life. Worst of all, is when watching a movie or doing some CAD drafting, the SCREEN OF DEATH COMES ON (The blue screen) and shuts your system down. I downloaded the latest driver NVIDIA had, still didn't work. All and all the machine with little more attention could be a five star. I do agree with the other 3 star reviewer, that the machine has a five star potential if given a good support team.

In conclusion here are the Pros and Cons of this system

PROS:

1Machine well built, nicely designed, love the lighted keyboard.

2Bluray drive worked great after the software update.

3Love the off switch for the tablet.

4Sound crisp but can use more amps.

5There is room for another HD (Solid state if you wish)

CONS:

1Bad graphic card driver (-1 star)

2Bad bluetooth driver (-1/2 star)

33 USB outlets not enough, 2 located where the mouse pad needs to go for right handed (-1/2 star)(external HD, mouse, ZUNE Charging, done no more USB).

4To upgrade to 6 gig RAM you have to get rid of 2RAM to make room for 4 RAM or replace both 2GIGs with (2) 3 GIGS. Marketing BS everybody does it, I'll let it slide.

5Have to go through BIOS to turn off the control keyboard and keypads lights and to enable the USB charge while asleep.

As for the Size, it's huge, what I would like to have done, and hat what I would do next time, is to buy a smaller 15 inch high power system and when a bigger screen is needed just plug in a dam 22 inch monitor, they are cheap enough. Buy the way the Targus 17" back-pack worked great.

UPDATE:

The BIOS and Graphic updates fixed the problems. Well that's my point why the problems were not fixed before release.

Still out of the box it is a 3 star system. Toshiba needs to start debugging it's systems before release, especially the expensive ones. Well they won't do that if everyone keeps on giving them 4 stars.

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This is an awesome laptop!!!!!! Im computer stupid and it makes use easy. The keyboard is a dream to use the dvd/blueray player is as clear if not clearer than my TV.

For gaming the laptop is the best computer i have ever had the pleasure of using, the graphics card can handle the highest settings in any game.

If i needed another laptop this would be the one i would buy!!!!!!!!!!!

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Dell Inspiron i15RM-1765BK 15-Inch Laptop (Diamond Black)

I don't need much from a computer besides a word processor and the internet, so this computer is perfect for me. It came before it was estimated to be delivered. It was easy to start up and get running. At first, I noticed that it started up really slowly, but that has improved greatly in the last couple of weeks. It has a sleek design, and I love the fact that you can change the lids. The only thing that I have noticed that is strange about this computer is that sometimes when I am playing music, the sound will go up or down a bit randomly. I am not sure what this is about, but it's the only complaint that I have! All in all, I love my new computer!

I bought this laptop knowing it was cheap and expecting a minimal utilitarian experience. I also knew I needed the professional version of Windows to get the foreign language support I wanted. I did not expect that Dell would break the ability to do a simple on line upgrade or that Microsoft would take a full day on the phone to let me install the better version I paid for. The cost in my time would have made it worth it to buy an very high end machine instead. Alas, if I hadn't had my airbook with me I wouldn't have been able to get this machine fixed. I give it 2 stars not 1 because it did finally work. It baffles me that Dell and Microsoft can get away with selling intentionally flawed products. If they just sold one OS the problem would go away. This one didn't even boot the first time. I had to run a "recovery" just to turn it on.

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This Dell Laptop was a christmas gift for my grandson. He wanted a Blue laptop but the awesome price for the Dell i15RM in Diamond Black came with switch lid option. It came with the 10 key pad which is rare in most laptops. And i purchased the laptop, a wireless mouse the Blue switch lid and a carry case all under five hundred dollars. What a great deal!!! My grandson couldn't believe he got what he wanted and more!! I would highly recommend this laptop.

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everytime i get one i am never dissapointed!!! its easy to get and easy to sign up for, not that expensive and will recommend to everyone. BUY THIS DROPS and SPILLS WARRANTIES THEY WORK, THANKS SQUARETRADE NOW GO BUY YOU USUALLY GET THE CONTRACT EMAILED TO YOU WIHTIN AN HOUR

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This laptop works for a couple hours and then start giving blue screen, so i figure i would give it a couple of day but it keep doing the same thing so i returned it. I love this machine, everything else was great except for the blue screens. they return it without a problem thanks.

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Macbook Pro 15 Inch, 2.4ghz, 4gb Ram, 200gb Hd

I'm going to start by stating that I have some biases. I've been a Mac user since 1995, and this is probably my umpteenth Mac laptop. My previous MacBook Pro (Core Duo 1.83 ghz) was bought used at two years of age. I just retired it in favor of this one. That computer was unstoppable, reliable, durable, and dependable. The only issues I had were with the battery but with LiIon batteries if you get more than a year out of one you are lucky. (I use mine on the road heavily)

Now, on to this laptop. The setup is the same as it has been since 2006, albeit with some updates a firewire 800 port, faster CPU, more video memory, etc. It is much faster than my old laptop and works great. Highly recommended.

Now, if you're buying this model now odds are good that it is second hand. Expect the battery to be dodgy but don't fret new ones aren't expensive the BTI aftermarket batteries work good. Otherwise, it's a good durable laptop that will serve you for years to come.

Very disappointed in this laptop, only after 2 months I need to replace the keyboard and mouse pad. Not a good purchase and unfortunately will probably never buy from here again.

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Samsung Series 9 NP900X3C-A05US 13.3-Inch Premium Ultrabook (Ash Black)

I spent several weeks researching laptops, specifically ultrabooks. I had the misfortune of spilling coffee on my Macbook Air, rendering it a very expensive paperweight. As happy as I was with the Air, I went in search of alternatives.

Although I was unable to find a Samsung Series 9 in a physical store, I went ahead and ordered it anyway. I am glad that I did, it is the perfect size, slightly smaller than the air in both length and width, and as for thickness, it's thinner at it's widest point, but thicker at it's smallest. Overall, it's a match for the size of the air, it just doesn't come down to such a fine edge as the air in the front.

As for the machine itself, it's great. Below are some pros and cons I've experienced so far.

Pros:

Screen is bright, 1600x900 is a great resolution. I know people are holding out for the 1080 version, but this is enough for me.

The keyboard is great, some reviews talk of bad feedback, or that the press is too short. I don't have a problem with that at all, I find typing on the device to be simple.

Speed. Wow, is this thing fast. Restarts are

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Dell XPS 14 XPS14-1864sLV 14-Inch Ultrabook (Silver Anodized Aluminum)

This is a nice looking laptop... but that is all it has going for it.

Pros:

1) It's pretty

Cons:

1) Damaged from factory (scratches on lid)

2) Poor performance, it is slooooow.....

3) Poor display, unless you are looking directly at the screen. Bad color washout at any angle.

4) Periodic mouse pointer freezes

5) Mine blue screened 2xs before I decided to return it to Dell

6) The bottom of the laptop is made of carbon fiber which is fragile, mine broke while Dells tech attempted to remove the bottom.

I definitely do NOT recommend this product

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Toshiba Satellite C655d-5300

The quick description says this computer is an intel computer, but the processor is actually an AMD E-300. This is not a negative. I have an laptop running an AMD E-350 and the price/performance rato is amazing. Just wanted to let you know that you will not find an "intel inside" decal on this.

Nice surprise......all you need plus duel core.....fast for a 1.3ghz ...Very sharp picture.......Windows 7 home premium

great value for the price.........

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This is a fantastic sub-500 laptop that features a CPU marked at 1.3 Ghz but rated to 1.95 Ghz, and a very nice graphics card for the money. The hard-drive is relatively small, but is sufficient for most office and school needs. The 4.5 GB DDR3 RAM is nice also, good for multitasking. the 15.6 inch screen is fantastic, and has great color depth and, being covered with glass, is easy to clean. The full sized keyboard is nice, though some buttons are in un-orthodox positions, but they are easy to get accustomed to. The island style keys help to avoid typos. The battery life with display turned down is approximately 6 hours with light use, with heavy use (playing medieval 2 total war with volume all the way up, graphics settings all on max, and brightness all the way up) yielded a battery life of about 4 hours, which is phenomenal. All that being said, the speakers are very sub-par, a trait I have noticed on several of my other Toshiba laptops, and it is recommended that you purchase external powered speakers. Another minus is that they volume controls and brightness are controlled through some Toshiba program that displays a dark gray bar over things you are working on, and fails to properly initiate sometimes, forcing you to reboot or disable the software (this seems to be one of those flashy things laptop makers include for the "wow" factor, similar to HP's quick launch garbage). It comes loaded with a bunch of useless and near-useless bloatware from the manufacturer, like "Toshiba book place" which launches by default, and Norton internet security is on there, which is an awful choice, so I just deleted those things and disabled them in start-up through msconfig. For those interested, it features a wireless card capable of packet injection, works great with Backtrack 5 live CD. It comes with Windows 7 64bit edition, though it works flawlessly with Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and FreeBSD (haven't tried Fedora, sorry). No complaints so far, except for the speakers. Very professional product, great for students and business applications, though gamers will be disappointed, as this can not handle titles published within the past 3 years, but it will run older titles beautifully. I would recommend it, especially to parents looking to buy their kids a good laptop for college. Hope this review was helpful.

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I got this for Christmas 2011 and here it is July and it is already broken. I am sticking with Sony from now on, never had any problems with their laptops and they are only a little bit more, but it was a gift so I didn't want to complain. You get what you pay for I guess, and that seems to follow over to customer service as well. For a company that has been sued before for hinge problems (), you would think they would be nicer to customers calling about them, but no. Because it doesn't matter how short of a time you have had the laptop, it is apparently normal wear and tear. So understand Toshiba only expects there laptops to last up to seven months before there are problems. You have been warned. Spend about $100 and get a better laptop.

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In the 7 months I have owned this, I have gone through 4 hardrives. Toshiba refuses to acknowledge an issue with the motherboard and says hardrives are unpredictable. Customer care could care about the amount of time this has cost me and they actually charge you for shipping back to you even when they repair it under warranty. Toshiba is a classic company that has forgotten that the little guy got them to where they are. Based on my experience, I will not buy any Toshiba products because their attitude toward the consumer is horrid.

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Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 15.6-Inch Laptop (Metal - Dusk Black)

I will come back and update this review [done, several updates have been added below] as I have more experience with this laptop, but since there are few reviews, I thought I'd get something up quickly to help others out as they do their comparisons. More details later, for now, let's talk about gaming performance, as I suspect that's what most people will be wondering about.

Simply put, the gaming performance is excellent and beats any comparably priced machine I am aware of currently (March 2013). The dual Nvidia 650M SLI GFX cards will outperform a 670m and usually be snapping on the heels of a 675M (even beating it on occasion, though very rarely). The 675m is usually about 10-12% faster, but in some games like Skyrim, the 650M SLI combo actually wins (by a hair). Let's just say that nearly all games will run in their high/ultra settings with a few tweaks, and even the tough games will run on mid to high settings at full HD resolution. Turn down a few settings or lower the rez and almost anything will run smoothly at high frame rates. As Nvidia improves their drivers (this is still a very new config) performance should only get better.

So, in short, you get exceptional gaming performance at this price point, especially considering the 1920x1080 HD resolution (most comparably priced rigs will have lower rez displays). This is a TN display, not IPS, but it is a good TN display with excellent color, good viewing angles, and good contrast ratios. It is also bright, though the glossy screen does show reflections, the glossy finish does help with color saturation and contrast. Indoors, it will usually not be a problem. And here's a good place to say that this is a *portable* notebook, but one that will usually be tethered to A/C power for gaming. It's more of a desktop replacement than a laptop. Still, only about 6 lbs., so not bad to grab and move around. Update: Also, when on battery power, only one GFX card is available, you must be on A/C power to run in SLI mode.

It has a sleek looking case (aluminum), truly great red backlit keyboard (one of the best I've used), and red accents on the speakers (which sound pretty good for a notebook). All the basic ports, bluetooth, HDMI, USB 2.0 (1) and 3.0 (2) -however, no optical drive, that bay holds the second GFX card instead. A special DVD/Blu-Ray module can be purchased and swapped out with the second GFX card if you wish, or you can use an external optical drive which works fine and is what I do, as I already had one handy.

Gamers will nearly always be using a mouse, so the iffy touchpad (not awful, but not too good for gaming) won't be a problem for most. The keyboard is very nice and even has a numeric keypad scrunched in. Typing feel is above average. When you are not gaming, this unit makes a nice high end work rig as well (think video editing, photoshop, audio, etc.). It doesn't hurt that you've got an exceptionally fast CPU and a bunch of RAM stuffed into this thing, either. Benchmarks are great.

The 5400 rpm hard drive gives many pause, but it is a good quality Samsung drive with an SSD cache and, really, it works pretty well and is faster than I expected. In normal use, I hardly even notice any lag compared to my SSD rig. No, it's not as fast all the time, but it's perfectly fine and not something that bothers me at all. Not yet anyway. For gaming, I doubt it will be an issue. The new windows 8 secure boot BIOS make it harder to swap out for an SSD (though it can be done, it's not trivial), so this may still be a consideration for some. I'm happy to leave the HDD in place, myself.

Great gaming and media performance, great performance overall, really. Nice Full HD screen, Good speakers, Plenty of storage and memory, plus good, solid build quality make this an attractive choice and an excellent value.

Update: Five weeks in and I remain very happy with this rig.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some notes that I think might be useful to those considering the Y500:

- On CPU performance, the Y500 beats many more expensive gaming rigs thanks to the newer Core i7-3630QM 2.40 Ghz quad-core processor capable of running 8 threads, and equally important, capable of single-thread burst modes up to 3.4 Ghz.

- Not all games support SLI GFX, some will run only with a single card. Even then performance is pretty good as the 650M used runs at a slightly higher clock speed than usual and Lenovo has used the faster DDR5 RAM and plenty of it, so even a single card has strong mid-range performance. Luckily, almost all newer games *do* support SLI mode.

- I have posted an image (gallery "user" images at top left of product page)showing some benchmark results for Skyrim where the 650M SLI tops a 675M in med and high settings and ties it on ultra (full HD) settings. See notes on image for more info.

-There are tweaks you can apply to make Windows 8 look and act more like Windows 7, if that is your preference. I see no need to install Win 7, though I do prefer it, being more used to it. Gonna have to accept Windows 8 sooner or later. ;)

-Most often noted "cons" by others, battery life of only 3-4 hours, not an issue if you're plugged in most of the time (as I am). Hard drive at 5400 rpm not as bad as many make out. It's a good performing drive even at 5400 and you get less noise and heat. The SSD cache works well. Having 1 TB of storage is good for gamers, too, given the size of newer games and media (music, videos, photos, etc.). No DisplayPort if that matters to you. Not an IPS display, but a pretty decent TN panel. Some have complained about the exhaust ports, not an issue for me, but could be for some depending on how you use and position your notebook.

I wanted so so much to love this computer. Its specs are unbelievable for the price, and the ultrabay and backlit keyboard are major bonuses. It has a great array of ports (side note: the product description says it's got 2xUSB2.0 and 2xUSB3.0 this is incorrect. It has only one USB2.0 port on the right side), and the screen is simply beautiful.

I knew ahead of time that the trackpad and the keyboard might leave something to be desired, but I was not prepared for the degree to which this affected my ability to use the computer. The trackpad is just...straight up aggravating. There is a clear lack of spit and polish with the user friendliness of the keyboard/trackpad.

Let's take the trackpad -

Good:

*Nice texture

*Synaptics, so at least theoretically a good piece of hardware

*Two finger scroll

Bad:

*This is a circular problem. There is no physical button you have to push down the trackpad; if you want to *click* the trackpad, you have to put just a few more pounds of pressure down on it than seems reasonable, and the computer seems to agree, as doing this appears to actually depress the entire pad into the body of the laptop by a few mm and sometimes make a disconcerting creaky noise; since you don't want to have to try to click the pad, you want to tap it, and here is where software fights you right and left for control of the computer. Granted I have my mouse sensitivity set very high, but it has been really frustrating to tap or double tap on things and find that for whatever reason the mouse has moved in some direction during that action. Unavoidably, there will be times where you HAVE to click and hold something while you drag it around or resize a window or something, and this is next impossible without turning on the click lock feature buried in the mouse settings, which you will then have to flip on and off every time you plug in a mouse, which you will DEFINITELY be doing because it's the only way to make mouse interface with this computer in any way a pleasant experience. It's enough to make me say that it's a shame this computer didn't come with a touchscreen so I could just avoid the trackpad for clicking things, which should say something.

*Even the fastest tracking speed seems a little sluggish to me. This may be a Windows problem and not a Synaptics problem, but I thought I'd mention it.

*Major smudgefest. Doesn't bother me all that much, but it sure doesn't do much to preserve the sleek look of the machine.

Now the keyboard-

Good:

*Backlighting is GREAT. I LOVE having a backlit keyboard, and having a couple brightness options is pretty handy too.

*Good solid keyboard. It feels great to type on. Not mushy or wiggly. For a laptop, I think this is a totally acceptable keyboard.

*Number pad! Hooray!

Bad:

*I don't know who the hell patented what that causes Windows PC's to hide all their most helpful function buttons BEHIND the function keys, but it's stupidly frustrating. Basic things like brightness, volume, keyboard backlight, and all the fun little additions lenovo gives you for quick access to search functions or program switching or whatever they're all spread out in, I guess, contextual places on the keyboard. That's great except /why aren't they on TOP of the function keeeeeeyyys/?! Who uses those flim flammin keys so frequently that they take precedent over these basic, extremely important things? Why do I need two hands to turn down the volume. Also,

*WHY IS THERE NO MUTE KEY?

*The right shift is fun sized. Since my last keyboard lost it's left shift to someone spilling water on it, this is very hard for me to work with. Not a deal breaker, but again, a needless minor annoyance.

Maybe all these things are significant to me because while I am a gamer, I am also a person who likes to browse the internet and get other stuff done, and these sorts of basic UI problems significantly impede my enjoyment of this computer. Basically, I *need* a computer for all sorts of communication reasons, and these sorts of things can be done very easily and very well by a huge variety of computers. I have a 2006 Macbook Pro that fills my computer *needs* really well. It sends emails and skypes and clicks the stuff I intend it to click and even scrolls down in the direction that feels natural to me, which is all I ask of any computer. I also have computer *wants* i.e. I *want* a computer that I can play Skyrim, and Tribes:Ascend, and Starcraft 2 on, and I presently have a Y500 that yawns in the face of these challenges. I was really hoping that it would cover my *needs* as well, but it falls flat on its face in that department, so I can't really justify the combined 15 or so lbs of computer it now takes to cover all my bases here can I? And which do you think is still under a return policy? *Sigh*

EDIT: I forgot to mention, that I had a few technical problems with the SLI cards. I installed and played enough games from my Steam and Humble Bundle accounts to fill up about 65% of the hdd, which, since it's a terabyte, I believe is impressive. Several of the games had some very strange, very quirky problems that are hard to describe. Weird stuff like not scaling text properly at some resolutions, or not behaving normally unless run in a windowed mode. Some games refused to work at all, and one even refused to explain itself it simply closed without comment every time I tried to run it. I also had some graphical issues outside of games, specifically while using Chrome. At least two dozen times during the month I owned this computer, the screen would randomly black out, then pop back on at full brightness (not awesome in a dark bedroom watching TV) reporting that the graphics card had crashed and had been recovered, followed by Chrome locking up and needing to be force closed and reopened. These are all likely driver related issues that Nvidia will likely (hopefully) hammer out in the future, but it's worth knowing if you're thinking of buying this computer.

Buy Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 15.6-Inch Laptop (Metal - Dusk Black) Now

When I bought this unit from Amazon, the description indicated 2 USB 2.0, but there is only 1 USB 2.0 continuous on. Also includes 2 USB 3.0. Nice machine. Hard drive could be faster (5400). No CD/DVD disc Drive. Ultra bay nice feature and can make for a faster hard drive or CD/DVD solution.

Read Best Reviews of Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 15.6-Inch Laptop (Metal - Dusk Black) Here

I bought the nvidia 750m SLI version of this from Lenovo which is the most recent version of this laptop with the 1 tb hdd, 16 gb ram, and SSD.

Pros: The all black notebook looks good. The red backlit keyboard looks wicked and is functionally practical for typing in a dark room. It's really eye catching too. It's surprisingly thin for such a powerful laptop. The price point of $1200 for SLI simply blows away the more expensive competition especially if you get it on sale. The ultrabay swap concept is great.. The screen is high quality and games look fantastic on it. The SLI is a beast and can handle pretty much every current game at least on high if not max settings.

Cons: A few parts of the notebook feel remarkably cheap such as the plastic bezel frame around the screen. (they couldn't use brushed metal??) The trackpad is odd and the response feels off. The indicator lights are too small. The two vents blow directly to the side on your mouse hand if you end up using a usb mouse. They should have gone with a rear heat venting design. It's a bit heavy at 6 lbs but not too bad. One major concern I have is how hot this laptop runs when playing games. I'm really hoping Lenovo lives up to its reputation for quality components and this notebook doesn't eventually burn out. I'll update this review at a later date if that happens..I hope I won't have to ever make that edit.

Other than that this has been a great laptop so far and lives up to its hype as a gaming machine.

Want Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 15.6-Inch Laptop (Metal - Dusk Black) Discount?

First off, for the price, this laptop is great. SLI, backlit keyboard, 16gb of ram, and 1tb of hd space are all the great features in this laptop. The screen is beautiful at 1920x1080 and pc gaming is amazing with the screen and gpu. Other complaints on here state the lack of optical drive or a crappy touchpad, the touchpad does sound rather cheap but works fine. I use a mouse so I don't use the touchpad very often. The lack of optical drive is understandable because its replaced with an extra gpu. The ultrabay allows you to switch between an extra gpu, a fan, another hdd, or an optical drive. Windows 8 gets some getting used to. After a week it feels natural and with the installment of software like pokki or startisback, this gives you a start button and the option to boot straight into desktop mode, bypassing the metro UI completely. I thought the 32gb ssd was for the operating system for fast boot times, but its just for cache. Not that this laptop needs an ssd for a faster boot, I still get 8 second start ups everytime. If you are looking for a computer similar to this but with a bluray drive and 3d, check out the toshiba qosmio, similar price but bulkier. Gaming on this is a breeze, and with a 3d monitor, games and movies look amazing. Every game so far has had optimal settings for ultra high, crysis 3, metro:last light, and tomb raider are some examples of games that play without stutter. The JBL speakers are some of the best laptop speakers I have ever heard, sound is clear and crisp. I feel as if this computer is lacking some ports, I thought I would have had more than 3 usb ports. I ordered the toshiba dynadock to compensate that though, it gives me 6 usb 3.0 ports 2 video cards for extra displays, 5.1 surround sound, and extra usb 2.0 ports for the hell of it. This computer has some nice features like a 1-button back up system, energy management tools and dust removal program that puts fans on high and pushes out dust from inside. Don't have many complaints about the laptop, except maybe the battery life, but with the amount hardware the bad boy is powering, its expected.

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Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7895BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish)

**This review was originally written for the M17xr4 with 7970m graphics, 1600x900 screen, i7 3610m processor, and 6gb RAM, which i own. That being said, the rest is the same and the processor difference is very, very minimal since the 3630 is simply the "refresh" of the 3610, and NOT a new generation of processor. Anything marked** may not apply to the model you have purchased.

Now, on to the review. I will try to give an unbiased opinion as I have done months and months of research, comparing and contrasting every modern gaming laptop. This review will be fairly in depth (Should be for a $1800+ laptop), and I will try to be detailed, but also universal in describing details, so that you don't have to know any extreme technical jargon to understand the review as well as giving an up-to-date one. Enough said.

The Build:

First things first the build quality is excellent, and this will be the first thing you notice as you un-box and remove it from its protective casing. I researched for months on purchasing a high-end/Gaming computer, and i have learned very much about numerous modern gaming computers and components. Most of the reviews on amazon and on review websites have stated its build quality is of the highest grade and that it is one of the biggest selling points for this laptop, and for good reason. The laptop feels solid, secured, and a bit heavy (weighs in at about 9.5lbs). In my opinion, not overweight considering the amount of components stuffed into this thing. The rubbery matte texture compliments it's sturdiness well, and to me was a great material choice for this laptop as it resists fingerprints rather well and will not show scratches as aluminum or plastic will. Not to mention keeping the laptop light, and relatively cool. I dare you to find a better looking laptop (my opinion) that is more sleek and with better build quality (not opinion) than this one. The reason i put up with the weight over say a Sager NP9170 is that this M17xr4 is the thinnest 17inch gaming laptop with these components i could find. I'll take thinner to lighter any day considering, i will be hauling this in a excellent backpack (Everki Beacon or swiss gear) Where the 1 to 2 pound gain over the NP9170 will not be noticeable. Your port selection is numerous and above average, even for gaming laptops. 4 USB 3.0 ports (2 on the left, 2 on your other left), 1 USB 2.0/Esata combo (right) which is also a sleep and charge port which does just that (allows you to charge your phone, iPod or usb charging device while the laptop is asleep or even completely off). VGA, HDMI and Display port video outs (all left), 2 headphone jacks, 1 mic input, as well as an SPDIF optical out (All left). One cool feature is that the Soundcard software included can be used to configure the audio ports to do anything, For example configure all 4 ports to be headphone jacks, or 2 line -in ports. An HDMI-in (right) (not existent in any other laptop I could find. Trust me, I looked. More on this in "other features" below). Last but not least a 9 in 1 card reader above the optical drive (right) and a Kensington lock (left). The cooling system is well engineered with 3 intakes on the bottom, and 2 exhausts on the back, the left one being for the processor, and the right being for the graphics card. I can't tell you how nice it is having the exhaust shoot out the back instead of the bottom into your lap. You might think you lap will block the intakes but they are almost designed with a peak and valley structure, to allow lap use without block to the intakes. Don't get me wrong this laptop can get warm on the bottom especially during gaming, but it is rare I game on my lap. And when using a laptop pad or cooling pad, you won't notice it at all . The individual laptop exhausts are nice, first they limit noise to 1 fan most of the time, secondly they are effective and accurate at temp detection (i.e. Gaming, the GPU fan ramps up, Heavy app use or multitasking the CPU fan ramps up) not to mention the entire system is silent during basic and medium use.

Components:

I will go into greater detail of the components i have added separately or replaced later in the review. For now, the components it comes with. First off the processor, The Intel i7 3630m is the baseline mobile model for i7 cores in laptops. It is snappy, and has no problem devouring numerous tasks at a time. For gaming an i7 core IS MORE than enough considering most games don't utilize 4 cores to begin with (exception: Farcry 3). In fact you would do just fine for gaming if this laptop had an i5 core and you would not notice a frame rate difference.

**On to the Graphics, this laptop uses a combination of AMD Radeon 7970m ( Nvidia 675m on this model) discrete or dedicated card, in concurrence with an Intel HD 4000 integrated chip. First the 7970m, this is a nasty card that destroys most any game, modern or old. You can comment on this review, and I can test a game you might want me to play and let you know how it preforms. To name a few recent ones it preforms extremely well with that I have played. Black ops 2 (not very difficult for any machine), Battlefield 3 run great maxed out, Arkham city runs great, Farcry 3 runs insane on this laptop due to its great scaling on all 4 processor cores (all though I have had some crashes with this game). I've even played as recent as the Crysis 3 beta which runs great since the new drivers update. I cannot stress this enough, the ability to play such high-end games with such good results, all on-the-go, is a crazy feat to me. I run this laptop to a 27 inch monitor most of the time and it's hard to believe the graphics are coming from my laptop and not a desktop. Comparing it to the GTX 680m recently released by Nvidia, the 7970m in my opinion is on par with it, and even runs certain games better according to benchmarks. That being said in power consumption and cooling is better with the 680m. The biggest difference is the price. When I looked to configure my laptop on Dell or Xotic PC, the price difference is over $350 which is simply not justifiable, even for a Nvidia fan boy. I knew and researched both the 680m, 7970m before I even wanted to purchase here, so seeing that amazon had the 7970, it only pushed me further to buy here. Intel HD 4000 is simply an integrated graphics chip which is used for anything but high-end games and uses MUCH less power. Heck, it will even run older games or less resource hogging ones great. AMD uses "Enduro" technology to switch between the 2 graphics solutions based upon your power source (battery or plugged in) and application (Video game vs. Google chrome) this all can be configured manually, but by default your computer switches to the Intel HD 4000 when on battery power EVEN if you are trying to run a high-end game. But like I said, this can be changed manually with a combination of power and graphics setting changes. All that being said, the drivers are a bit faulty, especially with windows 8. I could not decide whether to install AMD's drivers for the 7970m from their website or Dell's which seemed outdated. I spoke to a few Alienware techs on this issue. All said that it is preferable to use Dell's drivers, but AMD's should be compatible. I noticed some performance loss using Dell's driver version, so I cleared the drivers completely and installed AMD's 13.2 version which had updates for the Crysis 3 beta.

* For your hardrive and standard 7200rpm Seagate 750gb drive. Nothing special here. See my upgrade.

* For RAM you got 6gb** (8gb on this model) of 1600mhz DDR3 ram in one 4gb stick and one 2 gb stick** (2x4 probably on this model). Fine amount of Ram,I was going to upgrade anyways so I didn't care.

* Wi-Fi card is an Intel Centrino 2230, great reception, great speeds wireless N as well as 2.4ghz/5.8ghz bands. Not much else to say

* Standard DVD/CDRW that is a slot-load drive. I happen to prefer slot-load over tray load because: one, sleeker looking, and 2 no worrying about having a clumsy tray slide out and hit something, getting stuck, breaking, etc.

* For your sound card you get a SoundBlaster Recon3Di instead of a basic sound card, paired with a pair of Klipsch speakers, it sounds great. Where it really shines is when you hook this laptop up via optical or analog (stereo out) and tweak settings in the SoundBlaster control panel. I found the Rock preset to improve the sound even more. This excellent sound card is a rare and welcome addition to a gaming laptop. The speakers definitely aren't booming loud, but they are crisp, clean and have decent bass and are plenty loud for nearly any use. I think they could have used a slight volume boost in playing music, but with laptop speakers, it's tough considering power provided and space to put them in. The speakers are definitely above average and much better sounding than Sager or MSI laptops alike.

**(This laptop does have the 1920x1080 Full HD Screen)

The screen as stated before is 1600x900**, decent colors, so-so viewing angle. Before you write this laptop off for the screen resolution, consider these two things. First, at only 17 inches (yes only) you won't see a ginormous difference between 1920x1080, and 1600x900. You will probably see it. But is it worth 200 dollars extra upgrade? Your call. Secondly, I personally route to a 27 inch monitor for gaming which I display 1920x1080 on. If your majority, or even part of your use is to an external monitor: just another reason you don't need 1080p on the actual laptop screen.

Personal Experience/Other selling points/Tips

**The 3 largest selling points that had me choose this laptop over the Samsung series 7 gamer, MSI GT70, and the Sager NP9170 (in my opinion its top competitors) was first, the powerful graphics card which beats the 675m and lower cards (670m, 660m, etc.) by a large amount. I was aware of the driver issues with the 7970m but I decided to take the risk, trusting they will be updated (and they have and will continue to be).

Secondly, the slim profile of this laptop. It beats all 3 mentioned AND has more powerful components. Now this laptop is nowhere near thin at about 1.98 inches but its as thin as its going to get for these components. You want super thin? Razer blade is $2599, and you get less powerful components than this laptop, but the razer blade is super portable (6lb,.88 inches thick).

Thirdly, the icing on the cake for me (it might seem strange) the HDMI-input port. Why? The simple fact that being able to hook a console, Blu-ray player, or nearly any device to use this laptop, solely for use of its screen, is genius. Now I understand that some people do not have use for this feature because they do not own consoles or any form of device to utilize this feature and those that could have use for it might say, "Why would you want to hook a console-a less-powerful system--up to the screen of a more powerful system" well I personally have many friends on console and we often have "system link parties" the idea that my laptop could serve as a screen instead of having to haul a TV or monitor to play on is awesome. Not to mention you feel as if you have full control over your laptop to do as you choose and knowing that by the time the computer gets outdated (not for many, many years), you could still always use it as a screen! I have used it with my Xbox 360 and it is excellent, just the right size, and the Xbox's sound even routes right through the HDMI and out the laptops speakers (HDMI carries audio and video). It was a huge selling point for me and NO OTHER laptop has one of these that I have found.

Another minor cool feature I like is the speaker placement. Since I do use this on an external monitor I prefer to shut the laptop screen when doing that. This might not matter to most, but for me, when I do shut it and just prefer to use the excellent speakers on the laptop it will not block the sound. Why? The speakers on are the front of the laptop (the colored, grill looking things). With most laptops you have a sound bar near the media controls and if you were to shut the screen the speakers would get blocked. Being able to use the speakers with the screen closed is a cool feature for me.

Another selling point for me personally, is it came with components that are hard to upgrade in a laptop that I wanted (7970m graphics**, i7 processor) and nothing I didn't want (6gb ram**, basic HDD). The laptop's accessibility is great. Pop the battery out, unscrew 2 screws, and you're in to most of the system. 2 of the 4 ram bays, HDD bay --which it has 2 of by the way--, fans, even your graphics and your processor can be seen. Again Alienware is giving you nearly full control of the system. Even the Wi-Fi card, other ram bays and optical drive are accessed through a little further, but not too difficult dis-assembly.

Here are the upgrades I have chosen and installed myself easily:

-Samsung 840 250gb SSD (purchased from Newegg for $150 with Farcry 3 Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 250 GB Sata 2.5-Inch) an SSD is said to be the single best system upgrade you can make that will grant you the most noticeable performance boost to your system. And after installing one myself, I am a firm believer in just that. Honestly with processors so fast these days your limiting factor comes down to your HDD and good ol' disc drives can only spin to access data so fast. I would even go as far as to say if you don't get an SSD you're missing out on a chunk of your system's performance especially with a processor such as the i7 3610m. Not to mention SSD's silent, cooler, more reliable, and less power consuming operation than traditional HDD's as well as SSD prices dropping like crazy and 1 open bay in this laptop, what have you got to lose? Unleash your processor!

-16gb Corsair vengeance laptop RAM (purchased from amazon for $84.99 Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)) I wanted more than 6gb of ram and if you go higher than 16gb its near impossible to stress it. This RAM had great reviews, fast speeds and seems reliable.

-Killer Wireless N 1202, Faster 2.4/5.8 ghz speeds.

-Windows 7 professional OEM (purchased on amazon for $102) I had a feeling I would not care for windows 8 (and I did not that much, not to mention the drivers for the 7970m are nearly unusable on win 8). Bought this fresh OEM copy at a steal price, popped in my new SSD did a fresh install, Used "Sean's Windows 7 installation guide for SSD's" Which you MUST checkout if you do similar configuration as I, with the hard drives. I then formatted my original 750 GB HDD to use for storage space, and boom. My system flies with cold boot times under 18 seconds, and massive amount of storage space. In the future I will definitely move to windows 8 once graphics drivers are updated and the OS becomes more stable. But for now, it's windows 7 professional for me. Your system didn't include Windows 8 recovery disks for when you want to upgrade? No problem. Call up Alienware, and they will 2-day ship you your recovery media on a handy, dandy flash drive.

-One of the many accessories I suggest for this laptop is the U3 Coolmaster cooling pad Cooler Master NotePal U3 Laptop Cooling Pad with Three Configurable 80mm Fans (R9-NBC-8PCK-GP). The reason I liked this for my desk set-up is it seems of good material mostly aluminum which is naturally cool without fans! It uses USB power, fits the M17xr4 perfectly, and the fans are even movable, and Removable. I lined all 3 fans up directly with my m17x's, 3 intake vents which really keeps this thing cool. You do not need a cooling pad, just a personal choice for me! A cool system, is a happy system. The compatibility with my system made this one a winner for me, but I do use it as a stationary "dock" at desk, it's really too big to lug around. For more accessory suggestions, Comment!

-Personally I use this laptop for school, web browsing/multitasking, high-end gaming, and a screen for my Xbox . Even though it is heavy, and many will say it is only a desktop replacement. It is still portable and I have no problem using this computer around the house, on my lap, or "docked" at my desk.

For purchasing locations I would suggest either here or Xoticpc.com. I chose here mostly because of the standard price and the partial refund I receive for the screen mess-up issue.

I do highly suggest this laptop, and encourage you to research more sites for yourself to see if it will fit your uses. I only wish it took me less than 3 months to figure that out. But at such a high price I wanted to be 110% sure this was the one I wanted.

Please feel absolutely free to comment with any at all questions, regarding why I chose the upgrades I did, or anything on the system I didn't touch on well enough, Specific Game performance, purchasing options, how to configure anything, component or accessory suggestions, or other laptop comparisons. I will do my absolute best to get back to you. Also let me know anywhere to improve on the review besides grammar (after a few pages I gave up ;). I will update this review with new info, and corrections.

You have reached the end, congrats and thank you for your time if you have stuck with me, and if you did not stick with it, Hey, I don't blame your skimming.

Thanks again.

Id like to first tell you that when you buy this Labtop your getting an excellent mobile gaming pc Ive owned a alienware in the past before Dell bought them out and they really stepped up there game. The build quality exceeded my expectation of the newly owned alienware. the soft touch finish has a good feel to it. the lighting effects are awesome and had many comments from people about it. I am a pc builder my self and wanted a gaming labtop for once and i have to say its not a disappointment. The battery life is considerably good for what it does and has. I'd say a few hours on high performance setting. and 6+ on balanced . I play wow and battlefield and on good to high settings i was getting 65+ Fps on BF 3 and 90-100 fps on WOW.

I opted to buy the 1600x900 resolution which is perfect display very nice and bright I cant see the bargain for the 1080p vs the 900p. for gaming its perfect plus its a 17" screen and 1080p is not necessary. Good luck to you!

Notes to builders/customizers: Ive wiped windows 8 clean off drive and replaced module 0 bay with Samsung SSD with windows 7 pro and works flawlessly and put physical drive is module 1 ( extra bay) bay and took out Msata bracket. please note for this system you will have to disable secure boot and enable legacy boot option in the bios for putting windows 7 on the new drive.

Buy Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7895BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish) Now

After we had a house fire in which my custom-designed PC was destroyed, I decided to bite the bullet and finally get myself an Alienware. I didn't buy it from Amazon but directly through Dell. First off, once I got the laptop I was over the moon. The system was awesome and it ran my games beautifully. The problem was and still is the flimsy keyboard. I'm not sure how it happens, or why but the keys pop off and if you don't place them back properly they break because they're so sensitive. I contacted Dell about the problem and they decided that I was abusing my system and no matter how under warranty my laptop was, I would still have to pay to get it fixed. So to sum it up Dell has the worst customer service available. Nothing was done so I found myself having to buy my own replacement keyboard and install it. Same thing happened and I'm now having to use an external keyboard that I had laying around. The keyboard is the only major complain I have. For all its bells and whistles they could have made a stronger keyboard for a very expensive laptop.

Read Best Reviews of Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7895BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish) Here

I has been broken after 3 day. It was a gift; I bought it in Houston and took it to Europe as a present, and what a shame it has been broken.

I am going to return it

Want Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7895BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish) Discount?

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Dell Inspiron M5030 2800B3D 15.6-Inch Laptop (3D Black)

I got this laptop recently, why the 5 stars? Because its Functional for my needs. Most Important Specs are:-

Windows 7 Home premium, AMD Athlon Dual-Core 2.30GHz,4.00Gb RAM,320 GB Hard Drive,4.1 Overall windows Experience Index. This is NOT a laptop for Gamers, or persons who want to run applications like AutoCAD, ARCGIS, or Adobe Photoshop, Why? because the processor is a Dual-Core its wayyyy behind in today's terms. This is a great laptop for young children, university students (those who are serious about schoolwork and dont play games like HALO,Dragon Age etc. lol) I use it for checking my emails on the go, and for typing reports and my occasional chess game. Other specs are listed on this page (scroll up). It has a nice patterned finish and comes with built-in wi-fi and a dvd burner. I will update further as i monitor the performance and durability of this laptop.

**UPDATE** 22nd June 2011

I have decided to give a 3 month update. The laptop still continues to perform well. No noticeable cracks (as yet) on chassis as is customed with SOME DELL laptops especially around the corners (my DELL Inspiron 6400 has cracks). Yes it has no HDMI,no bluetooth a downer but not critical features to me. Some reviewers have misconceived my opening statements, I never said you cannot play games on this laptop, I'm saying that given the laptop hardware specifications certain applications (listed above) and games (not going to list too numerous) will either not run or run with slow frame rates especially newer titles.I use Autocad and ArcGis and when working on rendering 3D drawings (AutoCAD) or Queries for Analysis (ArcGIS) the laptop freezes but these are huge files.Your experience may vary depends on your type of usage.

One commenter made the point about the memory, its stated that the laptop comes with 4 GB installed DDR3 RAM (1333 MHz, 2 DIMM slots). Yes it comes with 4GB, however in the BIOS the frequency of the memory is 1066Mhz. Now some might say that this can be changed by doing this or by doing that, that's not the point (it cannot be changed by the way the fields are read-only) its advertised as 1333 it should come that way. Keyboard shows no signs of fading but sometimes i get delayed keystrokes could be software related though.

In summary still a good buy (I paid 399.99),I have no regrets with this purchase SO FAR.

I bought this laptop on sale recently, and so far, I have no real complaints. Set up was simple and fast, and it connected right away to my WiFi. It's obviously not a gaming machine, but I installed some of my favorite (though not current) games (Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and 2), and they run just fine. Overall, it works as advertised, and for the price, I don't have any serious complaints.

The "3D" finish might not appeal to everyone, but I like it. It hides fingerprints very well, and it plays with light in a nifty way.

I haven't had any reason to use the webcam, but did test it to make sure it works. It's low-res, but good enough for basic things like chatting.

The software dock in Windows is a nice touch.

Pros: a nice bright display (I actually had to turn it down a bit), a roomy keyboard (I consider the lack of a number keypad a definite plus), and Windows 7 64-bit Home runs very fast.

Cons: no HDMI port (it has VGA), plastic case feels a bit flimsy, and the speakers are rather tinny. These cons are minor, in my opinion. Bloatware wasn't too much of a problem, either (I uninstalled only a few things). I do wish the memory card reader included CompactFlash for my older DSLR camera, but that's just a personal preference. Most devices don't use this type of memory card anymore.

Other notes: all the various ports are on the left side of the machine (one of the USB ports is at the very front of that side, which might get in the way for some), the DVD drive on the right, the memory card reader on the front, and nothing but the battery compartment on the back.

Buy Dell Inspiron M5030 2800B3D 15.6-Inch Laptop (3D Black) Now

Good value at $399 my sale price. I found it fast but heavy and upgradable. The "3D" finish is not attractive to me but will prevent fingerprints. I needed this laptop to run VMs for demos and development and this was in my price range. I found that the memory upgrade to 6GB was no problem($43) and keyboard removes ok for the memory access. Windows anytime upgrade got it to Windows 7 Pro for $89. Right now it is running an XP machine in virtual-pc and a 2008 server in virtualbox but having trouble running both at same time. The dvd writter works great and 3 USB 2.0 ports are handy. The wireless network is g and wired is 10/100 not 1000. I think networking could be better and the other external port is only vga should maybe be hdmi

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After ten days or so of using this computer I have not encountered any problems with it. This is my first laptop but my fourth Dell computer so I am not anticipating any major problems. Setup was a breeze and I especially liked the way it found my existing router so I can use wireless internet. Just make sure you have your routers "security key" available to complete that part of the setup. Now I am able to sit in my backyard and be online at the same time which was the reason I purchased this particular laptop. I have very nice Dell desktop so I did not need a top of the line laptop loaded with bells and whistles and lots of great features. If that is what you are in need of then I suggest you buy something else. This machine makes a great secondary computer and really for the price you can't expect it to be much more. Three USB ports is sufficient for me, a Cd/dvd burner that so far is working very well.The three in one card reader is also a nice feature. Now as far as the battery goes it charges up pretty fast but the charge does not last that long which I guess applies to most laptops. Sound quality is not so good, I mean if you're looking to play music you might want to invest in a pair of speakers to hook up to the front audio port. Picture quality seems just fine to me, brilliant and sharp and easy on the eyes. There is no HDMI connection but does anyone really connect their computers to a television? As far as the pattern on the case (small circles) that I have seen some other reviewers not so happy with I don't think it's any big deal. I'm just happy this computer is working as nice as it is so far. It starts right up and loads up quickly every time I turn it on. As for preloaded applications/programs, you really don't get much. There are the usual free games that we are all familiar with in Windows and some others that I'm pretty sure you have to pay for to play most of them on line. There is also a popular CD burner program (won't mention the name) that if you really want to use then you must upgrade to the premium version and that is going to cost you. So basically it's useless. For me, for my needs this was money well spent for a secondary computer. I did not expect to get all that much for the price but what I did get was a computer that works and so far that I am really enjoying.

One Year Later: After using this laptop for one full year I still feel it's worth the price for a good secondary computer. In my case as I've already mentioned I needed one to take outside with me. I have had absolutely no problems with this laptop as far as performance goes but of course there is a reason for me to update my review. The one and only reason I'm updating this review is because of the battery life. To put it as nicely as I am allowed, it stinks! The battery life just stinks! On a full charge I'm lucky to get two full hours from it. Sure I can tone down the brightness to get longer battery usage but who wants to look at a dull, dark screen? Now perhaps the battery that came with the laptop wasn't very good to begin with, I have no idea of knowing that. So this morning I am considering purchasing the replacement battery sold by Amazon thinking maybe I will get longer battery life. I just don't know if I want to risk spending over thirty dollars on a new battery only to find out it did not solve the problem. The idea of a laptop is to be able to take it with you, into the back yard for instance. Less then two hours on a full charge just does not work for me and I'm not about to start dragging extension cords out the window. So once again this is a nice laptop as far as performance goes and hopefully anyone thinking of purchasing it will receive a better battery with it than I did. Unless of course all of the batteries that come with this computer stink!

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I am floored to read all the reviews on this computer stating motherboard failure. My computer is 18 months old and won't turn on. The screen is black and then a series of 7 beeps follows. After much time on the phone with Dell I've discovered it is the motherboard and a repair would cost over $400. I am just one of many many people having the same issue. Shame on you Dell for no addressing this issue and making it right for all your customers. There needs to be recall on this model due to so many having problems with the motherboard. So here I am about to shell out come $$$ on another laptop. Buyer beware!

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Toshiba Satellite P775-S7236 17.3-Inch LED Laptop (Black)

This laptop is incredible. The specs are simply ridiculous for the price, and it's pretty much ready right out of the box. There IS a fair amount of Toshiba preloaded apps, but they don't get in the way. There is no bloatware that continues to pop up and ask you upgrade. If its presence in your Start menu is that much of a problem, they are easily deleted and uninstalled from the laptop. And then that's it. What's important is the performance of the laptop, and it delivers really well in that department. I often run many different programs, and the 6 gigs of RAM, along with the 2.0 gHz quad-core processor, really give you a lot of elbow room to play around with all of the features. I don't understand why people have problems with the look of the laptop. You can clearly see, this is a large machine. It looks pretty sharp with it's black finish, but it IS a little on the heavy side. It's screen is no joke, and produces beautiful images with great contrast. Since this is a laptop best suited for media, good audio would be a necessity. This laptop came with Harman/Kardon speakers, which produce extremely clear audio... Which is impressive since laptops generally don't have the best sound. They can also get fairly loud, which is a nice touch. The keyboard has separated keys, much like a Mac, which in my opinion, are much easier to type on.

Overall, I'd say the only problem I have with this laptop is the battery. Depending on what you're doing, it can range from an hour and a half to 4 hours. There's a nice ecoUtility feature that can be turned on easily by pressing a button. It dims your screen and cuts down performance in the places where you don't need it so you can prolong the battery life when you really need it. I highly recommend this laptop if it's in your budget.

Pros:

-Simple, fast response times for most non-3D based programs.

-Uses system resources well, doesn't lag horribly with simple tasks such as internet, email, word processing, etc. (That's mostly the i7 processor and the Windows 7 processing power.)

-Straightforward and easy-to-use shortcut buttons.

-Keyboard is very smooth and responsive.

-Battery life is impressive: 6.5 hours on maximum performance settings and minimum brightness settings.

Cons:

-Does not perform as well as I would like in 3D programs such as games (League of Legends, Sanctum, and Left For Dead 2 all performed at minimum settings with an average of 30FPS).

-Comes with a metric mathton of bloatware from Toshiba, all of which is completely useless. Update programs, Service stations, all of it is a load. Moderately easy to uninstall, but I would recommend a clean install right off the bat.

-Blu-Ray required an update to the software before I could play any BR discs at all, was very inconvenient.

Overall this product is a bit overpriced, but with the free Xbox 360 I called it even.

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So I have had this laptop for over a week and I must say I am impressed. One of favorite features has to be the keyboard, nice big smooth separated buttons it really makes typing on a laptop much easier. The webcam is stellar and takes good pics. I love the big 17in screen very clear picture great for watching movies on your laptop. The blu-ray player worked fine with out requiring any updates, The sound with dolby advanced audio with Harman/Kardon speakers is some of the best compared to any laptop I have ever previously owned. This laptop also features harddrive protection that protects your laptops harddrive if your laptop is bumped or moved. I appreciate some of the Toshiba pre-installed software, especially the eco utility. The computers performances seems excellent with very little lag time. I am really pleased overall.

My only complaint might be that my battery life only seems to be about 2 hrs fully charged without the eco utility on.

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I am very happy with my purchase of this laptop. When I received it I was a little worried as there were a few mixed reviews. Also, I have never purchased a Toshiba before, and I have purchased a lot of laptops and desktops over the years. I am very impressed with the speed of this laptop even with the fact that the internet service provider in my small town has poor bandwidth it flies through the internet. The key board is great including the number pad. This is something I missed with my smaller laptops. Also, there was much less bloat ware then I was expecting and it was easy to get rid of. The screen is large and has brilliant resolution. I also am impressed with the way it hooks up to my TV and my receiver. I get a great picture and the surround sound works great. I am not a professional computer programmer; I am just a mom with lots of kids, fulltime college student, small business owner and volunteer addict. I get a lot of use out of my computers and since I purchased this one it has seemed to fill the spot very well. I would recommend this to others.

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Has all of the features I was looking for in a laptop and is a good deal for a system with Ci7. The screen is bright and fantastically big, and the overall speed/computing power is admirable. The touch pad feels right and your finger doesn't stick to it like some HPs I've used. The bluray drive is nice and I havent had any issues with it. Will definitely recommend this system to my friends.

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Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E530 15.6" Notebook PC - 6272-55U

I bought this laptop with hopes it would suit my small business needs when I travel.

Let's talk about the pro's first.

Pro's:

Keyboard is nice, has the numberpad and fingerprint scanner which I liked

The computer is very fast, with the i7 3632QM processor it never felt like it was trying, everything responded very quickly

Con's:

There are lots of con's I don't know where to begin.

On first start-up fresh out of the box, it crashed. I restarted the computer and tried installing updates and then it crashed again, upon start-up.

I contacted my seller Laptop Authority' and they walked me through how to fix this issue using a special software update from Microsoft. Once updated with this 'special' update the computer crashed less, I guess that was a good thing?

Anyway, the computer was unreliable when it came to overall system stability. I never knew when it was going to crash next.

It would always freeze when it went to sleep so I had to put my sleep mode to 'never' and just pray I had battery life while working.

It had problems connecting to the internet all the time, some places I go it would connect right away, other places that had WiFi (work offices) everyone else had their connection but mine would stay unconnected 90% of the time as it dipped in and out of connectivity, this was by far the most frustrating thing for me to handle. I had 3 IT personnel look at this issue and they were all baffled.

It was not a hardware issue because it would connect for a few seconds at a time, if it was hardware it would not connect at all.

The mouse trackpad was a pain in the butt, it was overly sensitive and difficult to use because it was like an on/off switch.

The sound quality wasn't the best, since I am on a Lenovo hating rampage right now I will add that little tidbit of disappointment.

I spent hours trying to diagnose all these little problems and in the end I was fed up and just returned it.

Laptop Authority was responsive to me and sympathetic for my frustration and I was issued a full refund in a timely manner, although I did have to pay shipping back to the supplier.

Overall, this computer left a sour taste in my mouth and I don't plan on going with Lenovo in the future.

I bought this laptop for my daughter. I-7 quad core processor, extremely fast and great at multitasking. She should make it all the way through college with this laptop. The crispness of the screen is amazing. It comes pre loaded with windows 7 and includes disks to upgrade to windows 8, though personally I have no intention of going to 8. Great laptop great price:-) I love the quality products that Lenovo makes!

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VIZIO CT15-A5 15.6-Inch Thin + Light Ultrabook

I was considering purchasing the Vizio laptop CT15-A5 only as choice #2...the Samsung Series 9, similar to that of the Vizio except for the 8GB RAM memory, was my primary focus. However, taking into consideration Vizio's specifications, its price, and Amazon's association, I decided to proceed with the Vizio acquisition.

The shipping/delivery packaging, both by Amazon and Vizio, was excellent, neat, tidy, safe, and simple. The laptop's stunningly unique appearance, [lightweight, slim] and durability cannot be denied. The manufacturer's future considerations and modifications must continue regarding opening the laptop with one hand, currently it can only be done with practice and patience. But this should not be a dealer breaker.

I cannot say enough about the boot ramp-up time, absolutely phenomenal with a threshold of 3-7 seconds. Additionally, Out of the box you will have approximately 200GB of free space. Let's not forget that Vizio has a MS signature allowing for no bloating software, I applaud this initiative.

Historically, from my own personal research, there has been significant negative reviews pertaining to Vizio's `track pads'. Not so with Vizio Windows 8, all functions are readily available, easily accessible, two finger scroll [up, down], zoom [in, out], double touch throughout, [right, left] click, etc. This is by far one of the best track pads I've ever used.

I compared the screen with the Samsung series 9 which is owned by a friend, the S9 is superior, especially while viewing in daylight. Saying this does not mean the screen is bad, I watched several movies and the screen did not disappoint me at all, it was adequate.

The battery charger's cable houses enough length extending its usage to outlets immediately out of reach. It also provides visual indicators such as `yellow', `green' notification during the charging process. Depending upon usage, battery life is approximately 3 hours on MS Signature Power Plan.

WIFI reception has not been an issue, it has actually been outstanding. Proximity during usage in my home, which is relatively spacious, far surpasses that of the Samsung 9.

I have yet to max-out speaker volume...Vizio has provided more than adequate sound during my recent movie viewing.

Amazingly, Vizio's heat venting and dispersemant system is incredible, I have not experienced any unnecessary grills during operation and the fan's performance is barely audible.

In conclusion, as its name implies, Vizio is visually impressive...it looks cool, feels cool, runs cool, and most importantly my fingers are happy dancing around its keyboard. On that note, Vizio, Visual that is, back-lit keys should have been implemented improving its night usage.

Congrats to VIZIO for getting the the windows 8 ultrabook right. This is the cheapest ultrabook of all core i7 that has a 256GB SSD. Start up is truely instant.. something around 1-2 secs. The design make it so slim that you don't mind carry it everywhere. It beats my old hp. The screen is great to watch movies, do work, read email. I love the multi-touch trackpad, especially with windows 8 gestures.

My only recommendation to Vizio is to offer a upgradable storage option. I would have enjoyed a 500gb one.

UPDATED 11-21

I want to add that if you update the synaptic touchpad driver to the latest (go to Synaptics website), you can enable 3 and 4 finger windows 8 gestures built specifically just for this large touchpad. It is really awesome!

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I previously owned a 15" Macbook pro i5 (about 2 years old) and moved to this vizio. I've been using the vizio for about a week and can comment on most important aspects of it in comparison to my old mac.

Pros

Designfeels great. Fantastic build qualityeasily on par with my mac. very light too! The chassis feels very solid with very minimal flex. I think I remember reading vizio is using some unibody-type construction like the macbooks do.

ScreenFantastic. I got so sick of the glossy screen on my mac so the matte screen on the vizio is a very welcome change. The resolution is fantastic and viewing angles seen to be better than most laptops.

SpeedI am doing mostly document editing, lots of web browsing and some video watching. Most computers are plenty adequate for this and the vizio is definitely overkill here. The SSD is incredibly fast (both in real world use and benchmarks). One of the best thing about this computer to me though is that it is so fast and does NOT get hot. My macbook would literally burn me if I played a flash video or anything slightly intense. This vizio doesn't have ANY heat problemsI'm really impressed here.

Neither pro nor cons:

Battery lifefor web browsing and document editing you should expect to get about 4.5 hours. This is fine for me but it simply can't compare to the 6.5 hours I got with my mac.

Speakersgood for laptop speakers, but they lack a lot of lows and are definitely inferior to my previous mac's speakers.

Touchpadit is probably the best touchpad you will find on a PC! That being said, it still isn't quite as good as the apple touchpads. What I think I miss the most is how fluid the scrolling was on the macthis vizio can't quite compare although I think it is more a limitation of microsoft windows.

Windows 8Windows 8 is just plain weird. I'm slowly adjusting to it, but this is seriously weird. I've used PCs for all except the last two years (when I got my mac) and have had quite a few confusing moments with it. I think I will get adjusted fine eventually though. The good news is that Windows 8 appears to be very efficient power and speed-wise.

Cons:

Keyboardit kind of sucks. The key travel is very low and there is a small amount of flex. Put these two problems together and it is definitely not the easiest computer to type on. You will end up accidently double-typing a lot of letters. I think this may be something I will adjust to though. It just will require you to adjust the way you are used to pushing on keys though. The keyboard on the macbook is the best there is on any computer and it definitely beats the vizio. Note the samsung 15" ultrabook has similarly low key travel issues too but I found it more comfortable to type on that this computer.

ChargerTwo problems: 1. It is piano gloss blackwhat this means is after 1 day of use you will already have plenty of scratches on it and it is going to look like crap after a couple of weeks. 2. I really wish more comopanies would design their power bricks so they can be directly plugged into the wall like apple does. As someone who always commutes with my laptop it is really annoying to have to pack not only the charging brick but ALSO a huge annoying cord as well.

Overall, I'm very happy with this computer though. I did pay significantly less than retail during a blackfriday sale but you will be very hard pressed to find a 15" ultrabook with specs anywhere near this for the price. Unless you really need the extra space and speed of the CT15-A5 the CT15-A4 may be a much more affordable option and likely has even better battery life.

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I finally bit the bullet and bought it from microsoft store for $799.

Mainly because I thought that for 1080p IPS Laptop with Core i7 and 256GB SSD is pretty good deal and I can live with any downsides. And I think I am justified.

The main feature of this laptop is 1080p IPS MATTE SCREEN. Very vibrant and well color balanced. I am absolutely thrilled how good it is. I had a think pad x201 tablet and it was difficult to work with in direct sun but this one is workable even at the half brightness. The brightness is a little bit more than SONY VAIO S series 15" notebooks.

The second most important feature is 256GB SSD. It is not a whole lot of space to store your media. But other than that it is more than adequate. I run two VMs off of it and have documents and other stuff and does the job. Pretty snappy boot time. I had a samsung SSD SATA-II based and it is easily twice as fast as that.

If these two features haven't made you fall in love with this then third one is large trackpad and bloatware/trialware free windows. It looks nice and very sleek and lightweight and has a neat look. Boots in 3 seconds.

Great. Now stop here and go buy the laptop!!!

Okay Great you bought it!!! Honeymoon is over and now work on the compromise and respect each others's feeling. Stop complaining about the keyboard! Yeah I know you don't like it. The old thinkpad had a pretty good keyboard...but live with it. After sometime you will begin to like it.

Yes my only wish was dedicated PgUp and PgDown key and full size arrow keys. The key does misses sometimes. But hey that black spot above your nose doesn't look right either.

Okay I know your next complaint, Windows 8... well it is not too bad. You will get used to it. Learn a few gestures and with good trackpad you will have the honor of educating your friends on how to use windows 8 and start convincing them to drop their iProducts and make a switch (as if they will ever!! after all they earn for apple).

Battery life is what everybody said. And I am comfortable with that. The only complain is that to replace it is a pain when time comes. Good news is that replacing battery yourself will not void the warranty. Does it matter if it wasn't covered? Hell no. Because you will most probably be replacing the battery after warranty expires in one year. If you buy additional warranty, check if they will cover battery replacement or you may end up losing your warranty. You have been warned!!!

On warranty side, A three year warranty on this thing will probably cost you about $200 with ADP. So once you pay $200 and anything happens you get back $799. But that means you effectively netted $599 to get a replacement. So save your money ($200) because after two year you will want to buy a new laptop anyway. Hey Haswell is just around the corner. Isn't it?

For those brave souls who want to install Virtual Machine. The key to get to BIOS is F2. (to save yourself time to search). If you are unable to get to BIOS after repeated shutdown and pressing F2 then you are probably just resuming windows not restarting. Use the restart option of windows 8 and then press F2 and enable Virtualization in BIOS and you will be good to go.

Will update if I notice any problem....

**UPDATE 2/1/2013 **

Spilled some coffee on the laptop. But was quick in drying it out so didn't encounter any issues. The key felt sticky for next two days but became fluid again.

The keyboard feels fine now..that I am getting used to it. So folks .. it takes some time but you will eventually forget about it.

The screen still feels very good... I work with about 30% brightness and still think it is very bright.

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**EDIT April 10 2013: After deliberating for 4 months and looking at the latest 15.6" laptops, I finally settled on the HP dv6t-7300 Quad Core with 1920x1080p 15.6 inch screen. The HP is a serious powerhouse with 2.4-3.4GHz Quad Core CPU and state of the art Nvidia GT-650m 2GB graphics card. It has all the ports I wanted, and a DVD/BlueRay drive plus backlit keyboard. I ordered a 1TB hdd with it, and you can easily add a mSATA SSD (up to 480GB) if you want, providing a total of 1.48TB storage. The total cost after discount is still under $1K! The only negative is weight, the HP is 5.6lbs, but I think the additional weight is well worth it for the features I get in return.

----------------

Original Review:

Purchased this from Amazon a week ago, tried to like it, but the defective battery and questionable design choices ultimately doomed this laptop. A bit of background I am a laptop aficionado, after all I have owned close to a hundred laptops over the years, from a 4.5" Sony Vaio UX to 17" gaming machines. I simply think if you are going to shell out a grand or more for a machine, you should expect a lot from it. Here are my observations for the CT15-A5:

Pros:

1. Thin and relatively light for a 15 inch laptop

2. Cool industrial design striking to look at

3. Nice rubberized bottom

4. FAST Toshiba mSATA SSD (Windows experience index 8.1 -fastest I have ever seen!)

5. Nice, sharp screen with good viewing angles

6. Windows 8 really made this machine fly boots lightning fast, shuts down quickly, a pleasure to use

7. Great WiFi I am getting 300Mbps connection one floor up from my WiFi router, using 5GHz band. This is the best result I have ever seen amongst all the 20+ laptops I currently own.

8. Solid chassis and lid. The chassis is solid with no flex, and the lid is almost perfect no matter how hard you press on the lid, the LCD screen will not show the slightest bit of waviness. The chassis should be very good for frequent travelers.

Cons:

1. Defective battery this brand new laptop is already showing 13% battery wear (using battery meters), and only lasts about 3.5 hours on a full charge, instead of the advertised up to 7 hours. While I don't expect a full 7 hours, I was hoping at least 5 hours. This is really disappointing.

2. It feels a lot heavier than it looks, probably due to its large, thin form factor. When you hold the edge with one hand, the size makes it unbalanced and hence feels heavy.

3. Slow CPU/Graphics speed for a Core i7 they killed performance by using a single channel RAM (below par graphics and memory speed that could be easily rectified by using 2x2GB instead of 1x4GB RAM)

4. Touchpad STILL not the best difficult to get charms and double finger scrolling (yes I upgraded the driver to the latest version)

5. No backlit keyboard would have really made the design great

6. Wrong screen color balance too much green and red hue on the 15.6 inch display, had to adjust it in Windows calibrate color to make it look neutral

7. Proprietary AC connector good luck trying to buy any 3rd party power accessories like AC adapters or external batteries none will work

8. Aluminum design means it will scratch, ding and nicks easily

9. Machine is not upgradable in any way, form or shape. You are stuck with what you have.

10. Not enough ports just two USB ports, HDMI and headphones?? Why can't they add more ports and an SD card reader like the CN15?

This is a nice, fast machine for day-to-day usage (not games), but the defective battery forced me to return it. This is really sad, as I had high hopes for this machine and was excited for its potential. However I am still in the market for a 15" laptop, and these are now my choices:

A. Sony Vaio S 15.5: Nice backlit keyboard, light 4.4lbs, internal DVD/Bluray, lots of ports, but I don't like the numeric pads that skewed the keyboard, and standard battery life is not much better at 4 hours. Around the same price as the CT15-A5. Optional sheet battery will increase the battery life to 8 hours at the expense of 0.5lbs weight and 1/2 and inch added thickness. Crummy speakers.

B. Samsung Series 9: The lightest, thinnest 15" at 3.5lbs, but no optical drive nor HD screen and pricier at $1500 average configuration, but even sexier than the Vizio. A really nice machine, but I want full HD on a 15" screen.

C. Vizio CN15-A5: power hungry 45W Core i7 runs hot (The Vaio S is 35W and the CT15-A5 is 17W), no backlit keyboard, heavier at 5.2lbs and still no optical drive, but slightly cheaper with 32GB SSD accelerated 1TB drive and more ports, same battery life, Not quite sure about this guy.

D. HP Envy 15: slightly older design, thicker and heavier, but built like a tank, nice optional full HD screen and lots of ports, may have been discontinued though. I think there is a new 15" Envy with full HD screen, lighter but weaker battery.

E. There is always the ultimate MacBook Pro 15" Retina display laptop, but it will burn a big hole in my wallet.

Not sure which one I will get eventually... leaning towards the Sony right now, will have to get the sheet battery and live with the extra weight + thickness. Just hope I can learn to tolerate the skewed keyboard.

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