Lenovo IdeaPad Z580 15.6-Inch Laptop (Grey Metal) - Windows 8 - 500 GB Hard Drive - 6 GB DDR3 SDRAM

I've been using a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge for the last two years for work and love it. So I bought my wife the Ideapad z580 the other day. For the money you can't get better specs. Intel core i5 processor, 8gb Ram, 750gb hardrive were included in a $499 deal at Staples. The other laptops of similar spec were at least $100 more and then some. The feel and handle of the z580 are great. But there are some key problems with this computer that have caused us to return it in favor of something else.

1. The track pad doesn't have separate buttons, they are integrated. I don't care one way or the other, but they have to work. The buttons seemed to work only half of the time. I soon just started to tap on the pad to select things because the buttons wouldn't do it. I even tried to adjust the sensitivity of them to no avail. It's also super sensitive. If you even remotely touch anything other than your finger to it, the pointer jumps all over. It also seemed to select things when our fingers hovered over the track pad. For me, the track pad has to work well since you use it for everything. If it doesn't it'll make your computer experience a disaster.

2. The network card would lose signal and we would have to reset the connection. This is unacceptable as well.

3. The computer, if left open goes into sleep mode, which is fine, but the problem is that it won't wake up. The only way to wake up the z580 if it goes to sleep with the screen open is to push the power button and restart the computer. There is no fix for this per the user forums about this laptop.

Between the poor track pad, poor internet network card, and a computer that you can't wake up; it made our decision to return it and look for something else pretty easy. those things just make the laptop experience miserable.

Good system for openSuSE Linux, which is a lot faster than 'Bloze 7 or 8. The wifi antenna could stand to be better, and of course, an Intel chipset is "mandatory" IMHO.

Fred

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The screen looks good and it runs well. The keys on keyboard are nice too.

Overall a good computer, especially for the money. I bought this computer for my son. I use a Apple Macbook Air with Windows 7 in boot camp and it is a bit nicer, but not by much. I would enjoy this computer for myself. The Apple is 5 stars, so this is 4 stars. The Apple is tighter feeling and a bit nicer in screen.

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Needed a laptop for school and this laptop did not disappoint!

Pros: Good keyboard layout even for people with big fingers like myself. Great sound from the built-in speakers. Quick boot up times and plenty of RAM for any student and the occasional video game. HDMI-out port for playing movies and Karaoke on the TV. Windows 8 is awesome in my opinion. Just watch an instructional video or two on youtube!

Cons: None that I've found yet!

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Excellent team with good performance and good looks in their finishes. The operating system is very intuitive with a nice home screen.

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MSI Computer Corp. G Series GT683DX-840US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

The product came new, in the original manufacturer's sealed packaging. Delivery took only a few days, on the early side of the estimated time for delivery. As for the product, it looks and works great so far. I have had no problems running Skyrim, which has very high requirements, on ultra hi-res settings for the last couple of weeks. Overall a great buyer experience, and a product worth considering for anyone thinking about purchasing a gaming laptop.

I bought this for my son for his Minecraft addiction ;). I did some research online and this came up as one of the most affordable gaming computers out there so I took a chance and bought it. It is a great computer not only for gaming but for all of our needs. It doesn't come loaded with programs so take that into account and the price when purchasing. For us it was a winner. Sorry I am not tech savvy and cannot comment on the specs.

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Lenovo E530 32597HU 15.6-Inch Laptop

Pros:

Sturdy, Nice space for palms, decent speaker, Easy Upgrade options for memory and hard disk

Cons:

Display can be better, Webcam is sub par

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Fujitsu LIFEBOOK AH530 15.6" Notebook - Core i5 i5-460M 2.53 GHz

I have had the AH530 since December 2010. Not long after I started using this laptop, I began experiencing problem with the laptop shutting down by itself for no apparent reason. I then took note on what happened just before shutting down. I downloaded and ran "Speedfan", and found out that the CPU was getting quite hot (>90C) but the cooling fan was pushing very little cool air out the left side of the laptop. I contacted Fujitsu tech support on-line. I have give credit to tech support which was always available 24/7. It was decided that the laptop needed to go back to Fujitsu for repair and they even sent me a pre-paid Fedex shipping label. Got the laptop back in 10 days but the problem still persisted. So a second call to the always available on-line tech support generated a second RMA for repair. This time the turn around was 7 days including shipping time both ways (Yay!). I checked the laptop again and found the exact problem was still there: it would overheat and shut down in under 20 minutes of idle time. Called tech support again and had to escalate the situation. I was informed Fujitsu did replace the motherboard AND CPU both times. It didn't take long for me and the tech support escalate agent to both realize the problem may be associated with the cooling fan/heat sink. So I have to send the laptop back a third time for repair. It has been 6 days now since I shipped it back and I am waiting for Fujitsu to tell me if they really fix my laptop. Since this is now November 2011, I sure hope the problem gets taken care of before my warranty runs out. BTW, I placed comments on Fujitsu website about their Lifebook AH531 which is similar to my AH530 but Fujitsu would not publish it. Previous Fujitsu laptops that were built in Japan were much more reliable than the current laptops which are made in China.

11/30/2011

Additional comment: Well, I got my laptop back from Fujitsu after about 10 days. They replaced the MB & CPU (again), and the heatsink/cooling fan. This time the laptop works very well, no more overheating, no more shutting down. I finally can use the computer like I wanted to. The i5 processor is quite fast and the display is very sharp with very good contrast. The CPU is running very cool at 39-51C. battery life is very good (almost 4 hours). The only thing bad: the tiny, tinny speakers have very low volume depite being turned-up at max. My work-around is to use external speakers or headphones. Fujitsu always has very responsive tech support online which makes up for the short-coming of their product. I can now recommend buying Fujitsu. BTW, I changed the rating from a 3-star to a 4-star.

I am a college student and have been using this laptop for the last 7 months. The specifications are good and you can definitely run many games and programs on it.

But aside from that there are many technical problems I noticed with this laptop.

The one I've been using is actually the 2nd time I've gotten this laptop. The first, I've returned after 3 days because it would often freeze up to the point of no return (can't even ctrl + alt + del). The second one I got had the same problems, but I decided to keep it. After about a couple months the freezing stop, I'm not sure why. But after one problem dies down, comes another. At around the 5 month -7 month (and counting) mark, it starts to overheat a lot and shuts down your computer. After 1 hour of usage my computer would shut down with no warning at all. It can get annoying if you are working on something that you had not saved. If you use Microsoft word, then you're in luck. But if you're working on other programs then it will not save and you've lost your work.

I would definitely not buy this laptop again, and would take the risk with another one.

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Bought this as a secondary laptop and with very light usage (4-5 hours per week) I ran into problems. The mouse click button broke after about 5 months then the hard disk crashed a few months later. This is ridiculous given the time I actually used it.

Never a Fujitsu again. Live and learn!

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I received the computer in wonderful condition. I have been using it for a couple of months and it has performed according to my expectations-it hasn't given me any issues that couldn't easily be resolved. Good seller. Would buy from again.

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I purchased the Fujitsu AH530 Notebook in November 2011. The one I purchased has the Intel I5 processor. For the first 8 or 9 months every thing was working like a charm. Occasionally, the screen would freeze up but after 5 or 10 seconds it would unfreeze and all would be well. About a year ago, I the notebook would start unexpectedly shutting off right in the middle of me doing work. Usually, if I had a lot of programs opened or was working with heavy graphics or video it would overheat then shut down. This was pretty frustrating as if I didn't frequently backup my work, would lose whatever I was working on. Last October, I purchased a pretty cheap Belkin laptop chill pad. That did the trick for about 4 or 5 months, then the problem started again. The chill pad/fan stopped rotating as fast as it did when I purchased it so I have to get a new one (this time, one with a little more gusto and not a Belkin).

I have an extended warranty from the place I purchased the notebook so within the next month or so, I'll probably take it in and have them replace the fan in the notebook. At the end of the day, I think Fujitsu just put in a crappy fan in the notebook. Otherwise, the notebook is fine.

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HP Pavilion DV4-2160US 14.1-Inch Laptop (Digital Plaid)

I looked for like a month before I bought this laptop (not sure what the difference is from the laptop on this page other than the color scheme).

Pros:

14" screen.

It has an impressive amount of features, including the intel i5-430 processor. I've had it less than a week, so we'll see how it holds up.

Fast

No problems with stuck-on pixels.

Nice keyboard. The DV4 has a full sized keyboard with full sized arrow keys. It actually has LEDs next to the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys. The num lock feature almost made me re-install the OS because I didn't realize it was on, and I couldn't log in. I had just used the windows easy transfer, and rebooted, and I was unable to log in. Lessons learned here: make sure you make a password reset disk, and make sure you make a second account just in case your first one gets locked out for some reason. Also burn your DVDs for system restore.

LED backlight for battery conservation.

Looks cool. The volume control and WiFi on/off switch above the keyboard are more of a proximity sensor, and are cool.

Comes with windows 7 home premium.

Wireless works well.

Cons:

The far right corner is dim, about a square centimeter area right in the corner. If I move my head to look directly at it, it's not very dim. You might not even notice unless you move the task bar like I do.

The screen is glossy. All laptops have glossy screens except for a few Dell business laptops. HP might have one too that you can special order.

The hard drive is a little noisy (but I believe any noise is too much), and a little warm. The fan spins constantly, but you can turn it off in the BIOS (it still cycles when it needs to).

Other:

The touchpad seems like it has a lot of friction at first, but it got better, and if I use the tip of my finger with light pressure it glides just fine. The touchpad screen scroll feature works well. Has a button to turn off the touchpad if you don't want to use it.

I have had this laptop for 1 week and have had no problems. I don't find it to be any hotter than my Toshiba Satellite. The Toshiba fan vents on the side, but the battery compartment was hot from the start. The Hp vents on the bottom left rear corner, but the battery area stays relatively cool so all in all it is about the same as the Toshiba for heat levels. My CPU usage stays in the 3% to 19% for all of the activities I have done so far (I use the "gadget" that came with the Desktop features to monitor the CPU usage). The keyboard has a nice firm touch to it and the touchpad is fine, just different it is a smooth metal surface. The one thing that I have discovered (which is why I only gave it 4 stars) is that the internal wireless adapter Atheros AR9285 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter caps out at a speed of 150 Mbps. I went online to the Atheros website and read the specs, because I thought something was wrong with it initially I was expecting a higher speed than that. I had purchased an inexpensive wireless N adapter from Amazon, for the Toshiba, that caps @ 270 Mbps and runs perfectly. I am thinking of using it with this HP, even though it is bulky, because I can see a download speed difference with large graphics. The speakers sound fine, far better than my Toshiba that stuttered everytime the fan turned on. I wish it had come with a longer life battery and a USB port in the rear. I am planning on replacing the battery with a 12 cell. I use a vendor on Ebay and have had good luck with their batteries prices are great. The DVD drive is a little noisy so that's a minus. I really like the dedicated scroll "bar" on the side of the touchpad. I did not realize when I was first configuring the Hp that there is a button to turn on the touchpad. Mine arrived with the touchpad turned off as the default and it took me several minutes to figure out why I could not manipulate the touchpad. Operator error clearly. So far, so good. I got this laptop for $649 after the $50 rebate that is not eligible through Amazon, unfortunately. So for $649, I am very pleased.

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I searched extensively for about a month before making my decision. For my price range, there was no computer that even came close to the "H.P. DV4 2160us", and i mean no computer. Whether I'm blazing around the Internet, watching or burning DVDs, labeling the DVDs there's power a plenty and it runs cooler than most. A really pleasant surprise was how well the laptop speakers sound. The new Intel processor is noticeably faster than there previous version. All in all, if your looking for a notebook, that does it all, and looks great doing it with a easy to use keyboard, look no further. I highly recommend this model. You won't find a better book for the price of this one. So make sure you check out this model before you make your final decision. You can't go wrong with this H.P.Laptop.

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This laptop looks good, is powerfull and does meet my requirements for a Win 7 performance. It is the only laptop that I have found, at that price level, that offers Intel I5 processor with 4 GB. Everyone knows that Win 7 requires power and memory. Win 7 performance on this machine is very respectable. I own a powerfull desktop and can hardly see the difference in performance. Overall I am pleased with this laptop.

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I did a lot of searching for a laptop and this is what I chose. For price, features and performance, this is a good deal. I found this at a local office store on sale for $650 after a $50 mail in rebate.

Pro's:

*"N" wireless -awesome speed! I am registering 150 mbps vs. 50mbps on my old "G"

*14" screen

*i5 processor

*4 gb memory

*320 hdd

*hd output

*built in, removable remote control for the dvd player.

windows 7 it is amazingly stable. Not a single crash since I bought this laptop 6 weeks ago!

*volume control uses a cool touch sensitive slide

*mute and antenna buttons are also cool and touch sensitive

*great plaid dark brown, almost black look

*removable cd/dvd drive reduces the weight of the computer. Also, may allow for easy blue ray upgrade?

Con's:

*battery life is fair at best. Maybe 2 hours with a full charge.

*unit is a little thicker than some of the more cooler looking thin laptops.

*Cooling vent is on the bottom. This deserves some explanation. First, I looked at this feature before buying and in my opinion, the new laptops with the newer "i" processors seem to run cooler than older models. Also, there is a vent on the top of the computer directly above the bottom vent, to the left where the base and screen are hinged. You can only see the top vent when the unit is open. It seems that when the laptop is on a pillow for example and blocking the bottom vent, the top vent takes over releasing the heat but not quite as well as the bottom when not blocked. At least it seems that way to me.

*the unit does run a bit warm when using on a pillow and I am careful to monitor the temperature since my last computer dies this way.

*hp should have put the vents on the side!

My brother bought a Dell just 2 months before I bought this and he got a pre-i5 processor and g wireless. In comparison, the hp is much better in performance and price.

Highly recommended.

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Lenovo G580 15.6-Inch Laptop (Dark Brown IMR/Metal)

This computer is perfect! the weight is ok. It sounds good, not that quite loud but good quality sound. Windows 8 is great on this computer. The speed is quite amazing. I have a gaming pc and I am very happy with this computers performance. I Definitely recommend this product. I did a lot of researching to buy a computer for college and for the price and the hardware i can tell you this is a great choice.

Fantastic piece of hardware. Can't go any better at that price. Good for daily grinding and homework for students. One of my few good decisions. :-)

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Pros: Great Price for a really good laptop. As stated by others, 5 hours on battery, beautiful screen, speakers are not bad and a beautiful keyboard. The unit feels good too, not cheap or flimsy. I only had this unit one day. The first customer that looked at it bought it.

Cons: Maybe the position of the synaptic pad being too far to the left.

Some folks may not like the shiny black palm rest and how your palm and finger prints show up so easily.

Other Thoughts: I wish I bought 2 or 3 of these. I found and installed third party start button software for Win 8. The customer loved it.

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Great little laptop with a keyboard that feels like a regular size keyboard. The speed is great and I don't think it is possible to find a computer of this quality for a better price. Like the man said try it you'll like it, no you will love it

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Nice processor and well built. I was concerned about all the negative Windows 8 reviews, but so far so good. No issues with any mechanics, including the touch-pad. Does all the basics with ease.

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Apple PowerBook G4 - PPC G4 1.67 GHz - RAM 512 MB - HDD 80 GB - DVD?RW - Mobility Radeon 9700 - Gig

I have used my wonderful G4 17 inch screen for several years; upgraded the RAM to 2GB and run Photoshop, Lightroom, etc, with no problems. This is a cheap way to get a great computer with a huge, beautiful screen.

Beta Mac has an a+ rating with better business bureau and I am pleased with their customer service. They put a new hard drive on the machine after and fixed a broken key. excellent company to work with

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It's a bit old, but it's a good bang for your buck! The only thing missing was a built in iSight camera, but apart from that it's pretty good :)

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its an okay comp for fun and music,, but if youre into youtube or looking for some good speed on the web this is not the one

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The Power book came poorly packed it was dented and broken the power cord would not connect to the power book, I would ask for my money back, but I think all buyers should be aware of this store and I chalk it up to lessons learned.

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Inspiron 15R Notebook 5520

I purchased this laptop during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. I paid $498.94 after tax.

I have the model with 8GB of DDR3 memory and the Intel Core i5-3210 @ 2.5Ghz CPU.

Everything on this laptop works great with the exception of the slow hard drive @ 5400rpm. It's a great amount of space, but I want my operating system and applications to load faster, so I'll be throwing in a Solid State Drive in this thing.

Through some research I've found that this particular model typically does not have support for mSATA devices, but there is a part # from Dell that you can order for around $15 that will allow you to install a SSD without removing the primary hard disk or the CDROM drive. The part number is N7JHH (Daughterboard w/ mSATA port) from Dell. Once you've installed this part, you can install an mSATA drive to the board to host your operating system, and leave the 1TB 5400RPM drive to host your data.

If you don't like the idea of buying the daughterboard from DELL and installing it, you can also buy a "2nd HDD Caddy" or a new "Disk Bay Adapter" for the laptop, which just replaces the CD-ROM drive with a SATA drive (its okay, you can use an external cdrom drive or just use USB drives for everything). A good place to look is newmodeus.com

I love how all of the USB ports are now 3.0 and it has the 3rd Gen Intel Chip w/ graphics.

I dislike how the power port and RJ45 now on the sides instead of the back like in the older models, but its a minor flaw.

I've had this laptop since Christmas of last year, and I really like it, but, it can be a bit slow at times, plus it takes me about about 10 minutes to get it into a useable state after already logging on, that may be just me, but I think it has something to do with the laptop.

Pros:

Good for students

relatively small

not windows 8 ;)

Cons:

a bit slow

pretty bad display

low battery life

loaded with useless dell media drivers that slow it down further

I'd recommend it if your on a budget, other than that... no.

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Apple iBook Laptop (600-MHz PowerPC G3, 128 MB RAM, 15 GB hard drive)

To put it simply, Apple's new iBook is an engineering marvel. The design is sleek and elegant, yet the case can stand up to a good beating. The iBook comes with an awesome set of features--pretty much everything you might need is already part of the package, including FireWire, CD-RW drive, and 10/100 Ethernet. Despite having a relatively small screen (12.1" diagonal) compared to some PC laptops, it still supports a full 1024 x 768 resolution at millions of colors. The screen is very bright, and the battery, while not quite the 5-hour powerhouse that Apple advertises, still manages about three hours doing normal operations. The 500-MHz G3 processor is spritely and gets things done quickly, although it doesn't have quite enough power to do a large amount of movie editing or graphics work.

A few drawbacks are as follows:

The internal CD burner is only 8x at this time, which is markedly slower than the 16x and 20x external FireWire burners available now.

The iBook comes with only 128 mb of RAM, which is just barely enough for most things. I would strongly encourage upgrading to at least 256 mb total, as RAM is very inexpensive these days.

The video memory in the iBook is only 8 mb, with a weak graphics controller as compared to what goes into the G4 desktops. As such, the iBook is only mediocre at gaming.

The 10GB hard drive is already pre-loaded with almost 5GB of software and sample mp3's, so I would highly recommend upgrading to at least a 20 GB drive.

In conclusion, the iBook is a solid purchase for anyone who wants many of the features of a desktop machine, but in a portable package. The drawbacks listed above are mostly forgiveable, as sacrifices had to be made somewhere to make this such a reasonably-priced machine. The new iBook no longer has a built-in carrying handle, but Apple has managed to trim quite a bit of weight and bulk, making it a joy to use on a daily basis.

Apple has reinvented the iBook as one of the best laptops. Not just Mac, but in all of the PC world. The second generation of this version has a faster processor, a larger hard drive, and still looks great. People are drawn to look at this machine from the time you pull it from it's case. I would certainly recommend a RAM upgrade. 128 is okay, but it is just barely getting by. I'd suggest at least doubling that. Since the iBook only has one RAM slot, you may want to do that on ordering. However, you can get quality chips for less from other sources, and since it's a fairly simple install you can do it yourself in a few minutes.

I use my iBook as a webmaster with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop, and iMovie 2. My digital camera mounts as an external hard drive. My digital video camera links through the Firewire port with no fuss at all.

Overall, I would highly recommend the iBook.

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Almost all of the SPECs on this baby are just what you want in a laptop -fast processor, just over 1 inch thick case, less than 5 pounds, 5-hour battery. In person, you won't believe how small and truly portable this machine is. It's great for reporters on the go such as myself, or for students in a dorm room. It has all the right ports, and appears to be made with quality in mind.

The screen is exceptionally bright as well.

My only two complaints: 1) The low-end model skimps horribly on the memory (for shame, Apple! They could have added another 64 MB). You can upgrade the memory easy enough aftermarket, but that's an annoyance (128MB is practically required for OS X, BTW).

2) The screen is a fairly miserly 12.1 inches, although it is active-matrix and high-resolution. Now, keep in mind that this contributes to the low-cost, svelte form factor and long battery life, but I wouldn't mine having a 13-14 inch screen when I'm squinting at text all day. I generally solve this problem by upping the size of the fonts, but still, this screen is rather small. If you buy one of the higher-end models, say the one with the DVD drive, you may find that watching a DVD on this small screen is not exactly the cinematic dream that you find on the amazing Titanium Powerbook G4 (with its glorious ultrawide 15.3" screen.)

Enjoy!

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First off, I think it is important to note that the rating I give the iBook is as a consumer portable. The iBook is NOT meant to replace a desktop machine. It is not designed, built or sold for heavy duty graphics, professional photo or video editing, or desktop publishing. The iBook IS designed to be very light weight, easy to use, and flexible. It is designed for the hobbiest, or consumer that wants the ability to edit their vacation pictures and videos, surf the internet, e-mail freinds and family, and generally do what any computer can do given the limitations that any portable will have.

The iBook comes with both OS9 and OSX pre installed. It also comes with a very usefull suite of productivity software that includes: 1. AppleWorks A suite of software that includes a more then competant word processor, A spread sheet, A data base, A presentation module and others. Basically a suite similar to Microsoft Office but not as robust and not costing 400-500 bucks. It also comes with iTunes, and excellent software for listening to and burning your MP3's. For those creative people it also comes with iMovie, the best consumer video editing softer available bar none. Also software listed is also OSX compatible (though it may require software updates.

Now that OSX version 10.1 is becoming available (I just upgraded my iBook to 10.1 today), OSX is a very viable every day OS. 10.1 adds an excellent DVD player and enhanced performance, however as any totally new OS, it will take some time for some software to migrate. It is also an exceptionally stable operating system. In the three plus months that I've had my iBook, I can honestly say that the operating system (OSX) has never crashed on me. I have ofcourse had applications crash, but I've never had to restart.

Yes, the lack of a 100Mhz+ front side bus might be considered a short coming by some, however for the average home user that does not do heavy duty video editing or other extremely demanding applications on a regular basis they will rarely if ever notice this. Another short coming some may consider is the lack of a PC slot or docking capabilities. However, with two USB ports, one FireWire port, VGA port (and cable included), built in 10/100 ethernet and a built in 56k modem I'm hard pressed to think what I would need them for. As for that reviewer that warned anyone from buying an Apple product due to their support all I can say is I've been using Macs for 8 years now. I've never had one of my computers in the shop for any reason. I suppose there is always that possibility of a lemmon. I have probably called Apples support line 4-5 times in that eight years and they have always been able to fix any problem I had while I was on the phone with them.

In short, while your millage may vary, in the 3-4 months that I've had my iBook I have had absolutely no problems with it and can recommend it whole heartedly with a clear conscience.

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I bought a 500 MHz ibook.

While it's true that the 10 GB model does fill up rather quickly be realistic a laptop is a toy, unless you're truly using it as a total desktop replacement. I actually do more of my daily work on my ibook now than my regular Pentium 4 station and that's a good thing. My ibook rocks.. now I just need an ipod. Granted, you will need to up the ram. I'm maxing mine out at 640 MB. I read one reviewer saying it was hard to exchange files between PC's & Macs... but exchanging files between pc & mac platforms isn't hard. Some programs haven't come to mac yet, but I seem to like the programs that mac has better for example, itunes rules...

Anyway, I'm not gonna ramble anymore just face the facts. Apple builds an excellent laptop (it's really eye-catching, and sturdy), and when you compare the two, there's no reason to get a PC laptop, in my view (though tons of people still do). :)

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Sony VAIO(R) VPCF122FX/B F Series 16.4" Notebook PC - Black

I'm giving this one 3 stars. I don't see the big speed improvement when compared to my 2 year old Dell. Then again, I haven't tried any games that would take advantage of the 1G video card or heavy processor intensive work. I mainly use it for everyday use like email, MS Office, browsing, running a web site, etc.

Things I don't like:

Keyboard: It takes getting use to. Typing on the raised keys is defintly diffenent then the conventional keyboards.

Hard drive: Not the fastest at 5400rpm. I might upgrade to either with a SSD or a 7200rpm HD. Also, you can hear the HD spinning, reading and writing under the keyboard. Clicking sounds are a little annoying.

Memory: Only comes with 4G when it could support max of 8G. Comes with 2x2G and if you need to upgrade, you need to pull out the existing memory. It's a waste of money.

Weight: Little on the heavy side.

Comes with a Blu-Ray reader and not a Blu-Ray burner

Bloatware: :Added Value" or not, I've uninstalled tons of unwanted software.

Back-lit keyboard (goes off after few seconds. Can't leave it on all the time)

Things I like:

Large screen, 16.4"

Ease of making backup media in case the hard drive crashes. You'll need 3 DVDs.

Back-lit keyboard (makes it easier to see the letters in the dimmly lit room)

Price; I got mine really cheap as I bought it as an opened box and it was a previously retuned item.

Bottomline: Not a bad machine; I wouldn't have bought it for the full price;

Bought this laptop a year ago and of course after the one year warranty, things go south.

The laptop is flimsy, as the majority of the case is made from plastic. When you pick this thing up, you can feel and hear this thing cracking and flexing. Not Good.

As a result of the flimsy case, components began failing. First the blue ray player went out, but not completely, it still plays blue rays and burns DVDs and cds. It just won't read regular US DVDs. I've reformatted the hard drive, installed all updates, and cleaned it and everything under the sun! After contacting sonny about the problem they recommended the drive needs to be replaced.

Second, the hard drive failed after I reinstalled everything after the failure of the blue ray drive. Luckily I had an extra 320 gig laying around. The disk drive's failure was mechanical, possibly due to the lack of internal support or shock absorbing properties of the case itself. I do not travel much; it's a shame after about 4 trips in a backpack the drive/s fail.

After the hard drive and blue ray drive failures, I was convinced things were ok again. Wrong. As I am Skyping the wife, in mid sentence, the keyboard and touch pad quit working. I'm thinking virus, although I have up to date Norton, driver failure or something. After troubleshooting every software possibility, it turned out the ribbon that connects the display buttons and keyboard, have a bad connection. I wiggled the ribbon, which is located under the speaker panel by the caps lock lights, and the keyboard came back. The touch pad, however still does not work. So I took it all apart to find that a manufacturing flaw caused the ribbon of the touchpad to be pinched between the case. Over the course of a year, the thin and flimsy ribbon wore through.

I use a Bluetooth mouse so I had to borrow a usb mouse to install my Bluetooth mouse, but now everything is working, except the touch pad of course.

With how unreliable this computer is, I would never use it to type an important document, you never know when this thing will fail you. I'm going to give it to my 6 year old to play with.

On the plus side, despite the slow hard drive, the processor, graphics, ram and esata port are great.

The display is fuzzy, not very clear.

Never again Sony.

Seth

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I purchased a Sony Vaio VPCF122FX and I'm not happy with it. It seems to be running hot all the time. The cooling fan is very noisy and you cannot watch a video or listen to music without this high pitch noisy fan running in the background. I've used a DELL E6400 laptop and it is super quiet by comparison, regardless of how many windows I've got open or applications I've got running.

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Dell Inspiron i17RN-6470BK 17-Inch Laptop (Diamond Black)

I bought this laptop through Dell. The only difference between the one advertised here and mine, is I have a 1TB HDD, and 8 Gigs of RAM.

Pros: VERY speedy processor. Big bright screen, with beautiful color reproduction. Full sized keyboard with numeric keypad. The mouse pad is smooth, and easy to use. This laptop runs cooler than other Dell Laptops I have owned. The graphics card makes for good gaming on even the most current games. The webcam is very nice, and is full HD. There are FOUR USB ports, two of which are speedy 3.0. Great battery life for a laptop of this size. Amazing sound for a laptop. Although some don't like the placement of the speakers, you will be impressed with what you hear.

Cons: VERY SLOW BOOTING. This was a known issue I was aware of before purchase. For those who don't know, all Inspiron 17s no matter what the configuration, take well over two minutes to be able to start surfing the web. (This is due to the slow 5400 RPM HDD.) This laptop is Heavy. The keyboard is not backlit. (Dell never claimed it was, but it is something I hope they remedy in the future) The finish is a fingerprint magnet. The screen is very reflective if used outdoors. However, as this is more of a "Desktop Replacement," I assume that wont be an issue for most.

Windows Experience is very impressive:

Processor: 7.5

Memory: 7.6 (That is with 8 gigs 1333 MHZ)

Graphics: 6.6

Gaming Graphics: 6.6

Primary hard Disk: 7.9 (Upgraded to a SSD)

(Six month review) The issue with slow booting is gone. I installed and cloned all partitions of the slow 1 TB 5400 HDD, (5.9 WEI) to a Kingston SSD. (7.9 WEI) Now my boot time is about 15 seconds from BIOS to ready to go! No issues, still works like a champ!!

(EIGHT MONTH UPDATE) 12-22-12: Had first issue with the Laptop. Several pixels ended up "stuck," leaving a line about an inch long, on the display. I messaged a Dell Tech On Line last Friday, and the defective Screen was replaced without question, on Monday. Granted, the new screen has two random dead pixels, but was a sealed, new unit so aside from that, am very pleased with the experience. The service was fast, and no money out of my pocket. Dell Support is amazing, and those who complain about about it, must just hate the Company. Thanks Dell, for taking care of the issue so quickly!!

All in all I LOVE this laptop. I truly hope this information helps you.

If you're like me and prefer the full keyboard over the minute boards they normally put into these laptops, then be sure to check this out! I waited for about a year to find something like this and voila, here it is! Tons of memory, a fast processor, and the full keyboard. However, you may want to check out the price on the local shopping network that begins with a q. I bought mine from them and received a TON of extras, programs, etc. for less than what they're charging here for just the computer and a battery. The battery has a tremendous long life, the memory is huge tons of gaming possibilities, you can run a million different programs at once, and the thing is lightening fast. We bought this to go with our AT&T U-verse subscription since our old 512mb old "dog" computer just couldn't keep up with all the live streaming, gaming, and research that we have to perform. Normally, we buy the larger 21 inch screens to attach to the laptops but this guy, with the 17-inch screen, REALLY helps and you really can do without it. I've had mine for 4 months now and it is just a wonderful purchase one of those things you know you spent "well."

Grab it but shop around first for price. Again, the q makes it a great value but their best values, if you can wait, is around Christmas. You just cannot beat the quality of a Dell, an Intel processor, and windows 7. HIghly recommend!

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HP DV6-3143US Pavilion Notebook PC

Beats an overpriced macbook easily i believe, never owned a mac but this HP packs a punch !

.................................................................................................

Positives:++++

.................................................................................................

+Looks super stylish like a macbook

+Has both Intel HD graphics for low power use and ATI Radeon 5650 for powered on use. Easily switchable with a mouse click. 5650 has 40% performance compared to the most powerful graphics available for laptops as per notebookcheck.net website. Good enough considering a 60% perfomance GPU like GTX 460m integrated into a laptop will cost at least $1250

+Windows Experience index WithouT considering low speed hard drive and 4GB RAM is 6.6 out of max 7.9. With considering hard drive/RAM it drops to 5.9. Though 4GB RAM is pretty much enough unless you plan to play intensive games such as Crysis for which i am getting 8GB 1333 Mhz corsair.

+ The installed RAM seems to be 4GB PC3-10600 which is a DDR3 1333Mhz. Should be at least good or even better than a 1066 Mhz RAM in other laptops of similar price

+ Intel HD graphics looks surprisingly good when compared to another laptop i tried with same graphics. Good enough for online browsing, videos and desktop use.

+Altec Lansing Dolby 7.1 speakers.

+Plays crysis super smooth at medium-high settings. Can play at high settings at around 30fps

+Esata/usb, Touchpad tap locking mechanism

.................................................................................................

Negatives:-

.................................................................................................

-A slightly lower ranked i3 370M intel chip. Would have been great if it were i5 4xxm with Turbo-boost. Nevertheless still good performance.

-HP clutterware, get your own copy of windows and clean out all that. (Students get it free from msdn alliance with your university).

-Could get really hot easily if using the ATI 5650 GPU. Make sure you use it only when at home and over a notebook cooler like Zalman2000 or Nzxt cryo. Otherwise stick to Intel HD GPU to prolong laptop life.

NZXT ACC-NT-CRYO-LX 120MM Aluminum Notebook Cooler Adjustable Fans (Silver)

-Monitoring with RealTemp Software tells me the CPU cores could get to about 70C degree celsius and ATI GPU to 64C (throughout averaging 64C and 59C respectively) under 5 hours+ prolonged gaming load (crysis) even when cooled by a high speed NZXT cryo Aluminium cooler with external DC adapter plugged in. The left side of the laptop is where all the CPU/ATIGPU/IntelGPU is located and thats where all the heat is generated. The left side of the touch pad and top of the laptop also gets hot and i recommend using something like "thermapak heatshift" over the laptop keyboard (if you are not using it) which should be help it cool down further for a good 4 hours+ of worry free gaming . Though make sure your ambient temperature of not over normal comfortable room temperature for good performance in cooling down your laptop.

ThermaPAK HeatShift Laptop Cooler 15 inch Black

-Havent found a way to make the laptop choose intel GPU by default at starup. The default choice is ATI GPU.

Got blue screen of death and restarted a few times by itself when trying to install a few antivirus trials with Zone Alarm firewall and Windows Defender enabled. Finally figured out Zone alarm works with Bit Defender 2011 Antivirus with everything except Antivirus capability turned off.

-No finger print reader, USB 3.0, PCIe Express Card Slot.

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

Nothing short of a steal for the price. I was upgrading from a dell inspiron 1440. Running on an out dated integrated graphics, and an outdated cpu. I wanted something with power in the graphics and processing department. Expecting to shell out some extra cash for something with a little more kick. That's when I came across the 3143, which I am actually typing this review on right now. I am nothing short of extremely happy with it. The price dropped since I got it, down $50, yet I still believe I got it at a steal. Anything else even close to the specs of this laptop is going to run you at least $800. That $400 savings that amazon put up there is no joke. I've been playing games like Crysis 2, Civilization V, H.A.W.X and Sims 3, like a charm. And they all run smooth and look beautiful, the 3143 can run them at great resolutions, and high texture details. Also a nice 15.6" screen makes it great for multi-tasking and programming. This laptop offers so much for so little and in no way sacrifices graphics, processing or portability for cost or any other reason. Don't let the i3 processor fool you. It one of the better i3 processors that can beat i5 processors in benchmark tests. Go to notebookcheck.net and search for the "i3-370M" to see for yourself.

Only con is that the gpu can get quite hot when playing games, however that is expected as is the decrease of battery life when playing high end games, about 1-2hours. But like I said that is expected. However, using the integrated gpu with normal usage will land you great battery life.

Overall I am extremely happy with this purchase. There is not one bad thing I could say about it without nitpicking.

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I was skeptical at first before I bought this computer. There were only 2 reviews so I decided to make this third one to assure people this is a good computer. Overall I am very happy with this purchase. I got this computer a few months ago and back then I would have easily given this computer 5 stars. I got it for $600 and it runs way better, faster, and smoother than any of my friends laptops. Most of them have Macbook Pros, and this was only half the price. So far out of all 96 games I have on steam, my computer hasn't had trouble running 1 of them. The majority can run on max settings with no noticeable lag. Even games that require a lot (like metro 2033) can run on this computer. Sure, not on max settings, but then again it's only a laptop and it's only $600. The only real problem I had with this computer was overheating. It would reach temperatures as high as 95 degrees! You couldn't even hold your hand out in front of the vent for over 10 seconds! There were a lot of steps I went through to overcome this problem. I got a cooling pad. It didn't work. I messed with a bunch of processing settings. It didn't work. Finally I got a can of condensed air. I sprayed it in the vent and a cloud of dust came out. My temperature was reduced by about 20-30 degrees. I suggest you just do that (also maybe get a cooling pad, if it's still hot) The overheating would be a bigger issue, but the performance I get out of this computer makes it worth it. I suggest buying this computer. Just get the condensed air and clean off the fan every now and then and you should be good to go. I also saw the price raised to $800, I still say it's worth it.

Read Best Reviews of HP DV6-3143US Pavilion Notebook PC Here

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Toshiba Satellite L355-S7902 17.0-Inch Laptop

The brief assessment

The Satellite L355 is a large, heavy portable I can't make myself call it a LAP-top machine that provides sufficient computing power to run Vista in full Aero mode, decent hard disk storage, good 17-inch display, adequate IO, a somewhat subpar near-full-size keyboard and a few bells and whistles such as 801.11g Wi-fi and integrated Webcam and microphone. The bundled free software includes Microsoft Works, Skype, some games and some annoying '60-day-trial' bloatware such Norton 360.

Overall, this is a good machine if travel is not its main purpose and if the relatively low price is factored in. It will replace a basic desktop once a mouse is added.

______________________________________________________

Detailed review

Delivery and physical setup

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

The 'laptop' comes securely packaged in a relatively small box. The package is easy to open and there isn't a lot of assembly required. Besides the laptop's body, there is the power supply, a couple of CDs and not much else.

Specs

-----

Dual-core Intel T3400 processor at 2.16 GHz

3GB SDRAM expandable to 4GB

250GB hard drive

17" display

802.11b/g Wi-fi

DVD drive

Webcam + microphone

3 USB 2.0 ports

Modem

Ethernet port

RGB monitor port

5-in-1 Bridge Media Adapter slot that supports Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, MMC and xD media

Near full-size keyboard with numeric keypad

Touchpad

On the Vista performance benchmark, the Satellite scores a 3.3 with 'graphics' accounting for its lowest scores 3.3 for Aero and 3.4 for 3D business and gaming and the CPU (5.1) and the hard drive (5.3) being the highest.

Setup

-----

Vista Setup begins as soon as the power button is pressed and it completes quickly. Once an account is created and after given permission, the Satellite was able to quickly find and join my Wi-fi network and download and install the latest mostly Vista updates over 40 of them.

To my surprise, there wasn't a lot of bloatware, Norton 360 60-day trial being the most annoying of them all its window pops up and it can't be closed, the only apparent option being to run the setup. I was able to get rid of it by immediately removing it and other unwanted 'free' or 'free trial' offers such as NetZero before touching their setup processes. The Google Toolbar installed itself before asking but a 'thank you' pops up when it's finished.

Explorer and Windows Media Player are present but it was easy to install my favorite browser (Chrome) and relegate the Explorer to the second-tier, 'backup browsers' status.

Once the Norton 360 is removed, Vista begins to complain about its lacking virus protection. One reasonable truly free offer, and this is what I installed, was Avira. Once Avira was installed, I was able to register it with Defender and Vista stopped complaining.

Other pre-installed but not '60-day trial' packages included are Picassa and Google Desktop. They can be easily downloaded off the Net but I don't mind them being there since they do not interact intrusively with the user.

Operation and Ergonomics

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

As I mentioned already, the keyboard is a little unusual. While large, some of the keys are not where I would expect them the Fn and Ctrl keys, for example are switched as compared with my familiar Thinkpad layout, the shapes of the 'Backspace' and 'Tab' are a little odd and so is the layout of the top row function keys. I would not type my next novel on this keyboard. Being a spoiled Thinkpad user, I missed the little knob that controls the mouse pointer movements. The touch pad works but it doesn't work for me. I wasn't comfortable until I attached a Logitech Nano cordless mouse by inserting its little dongle into one of the 3 available USB ports.

In my opinion, the display is the best part in the Satellite. It's large and it's bright. Wide-screen DVD movies play great on it but, sadly, this being a Toshiba (not a Sony) the optical drive does not support Blu-ray.

The integrated Webcam works well with apps such as Google Chat or Skype and it's well integrated and easy to use.

The Satellite weight really, really heavy does not make it suited for frequent travel. Its lacking a docking station add-on does not make it a good telecommuting choice.

______________________________________________________

Rating and evaluation

The Satellite 355's size and weight do not make it a good choice for anyone looking for a traditional 'laptop'. However, anyone looking for a 'sometimes portable desktop' that integrates just about everything other than the mouse, this can be a good compromise. This is exactly what I wanted for one of my sons and I am therefore happy with my purchase.

______________________________________________________

CUSTOMER SUPPORT (6 months later)

I am trying to find a not-so-harsh word to describe's Toshiba's attitude toward their customers but I must give up so I'd rather present the facts.

When this laptop's screen broke (apparently my son broke it so warranty didn't apply) Toshiba demanded that I paid almost what it took to buy the laptop NEW six months or so ago subtract 50 from the sale price and you'd get an idea. The alternative was to go directly to one of Toshiba's authorized repair centers but, after calling a couple, it was clear that they were going to bill me for even more than Toshiba demanded.

I will now have to decide between taking a gamble and buying the display myself (it's not too expensive and about 1/4 of what Toshiba asked to fix my laptop) or learn to live with a broken display attach a keyboard and a monitor to the laptop and use it as a desktop. By the way, Toshiba makes it VERY hard for 'regular people' to replace parts themselves. One must run a setup utility whenever parts are replaced and enter some codes to register the part. Both the setup utility and the codes are given to Toshiba's authorized centers only so that they can overcharge customers.

I find this to be completely unacceptable and this is probably the last Toshiba product I will ever buy. Consumers should be viewed as 'valuable customers' not helpless cash cows with big wallets to be milked over and over again because they don't have alternatives.

By contrast, other vendors are way better. Electronics don't break too often but here are my few experiences. I had a Philips monitor that broke in what turned out to be the last week of 'warranty'. Philips fixed it and, amazingly, all they asked from me was the monitor's serial number. I bought a Samsung DLP TV that had a VERY SMALL display defect. After several attempts at repair failed, Samsung replaced it with a new TV and they reset the warranty to the date the NEW TV was delivered. A Sony digital camera got drenched at Niagara Falls and the LCD display in the back stopped working. Sony fixed it for a VERY REASONABLE fee, even though it was no longer under warranty. These are companies I will continue to patronize. Toshiba is not one of them.

And, one more thing. The usual wait time on hold is over 15 minutes, and this is AFTER the offshore call-taker picks up the phone and makes some time-wasting, unneeded and annoying scripted chit-chat ("is it okay if I call you by the first name?" and "[first name inserted here], what are you using your computer for?").

I bought my laptop from another online vendor w/ 5 easy payments, so mine was a little more expensive than Amazon.com.

I love the color, It's not lightning fast, but quick enough, the keyboard is great for typing assignments, the number keys to the right are great, that is the main reason I chose a 17 inch laptop, plenty of hard drive space, and 3 GB is fine, but can be upgraded to 4. This is a very quiet laptop, the best I've ever owned.

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The computer works great

But the warranty is worthless.

Not covering the broken LCD screen and/or visable outside covers/plastic or powersupply is common. But Toshiba has wording (they donot share with you beyoned the small print) that allowes them to not cover internal brakage. Our $249 extanded on site 3 year warranty purchase proved worthless when the internal power connector got loose. At the Toshiba dealer site they wanted $425 to fix it. A power connector.

If you feel this is 'fair and customery" buy Toshiba. Otherwise go with Dell or Panasonic.

Read Best Reviews of Toshiba Satellite L355-S7902 17.0-Inch Laptop Here

I have had this laptop about three weeks now. First the good:

1. Amazon did a great job getting it to me fast and at a great price

2. Toshiba does a great job at the way they package this laptop. There customization and user manual is top rate

3. Toshiba service has been great to work with

4. Great ten key keyboard

5. I like have a manual switch to turn off the wireless card..cool feature

6. Nothing is in the back of the laptop making all connections very easy to get to

7. The performance and picture quality are wonderful

The bad:

1. The laptop is physically very big. I haven't traveled with it yet...but I am concerned with using it in coach on a plane

2. The finish is shinny black and it shows finger prints. I wish it had silver trim like in the Amazon picture. Mine didn't.

The ugly:

1. The DVD drive was broke on delivery. It worked but made loud noises

2. The NIC card broke after only one week

3. A local authorized Toshiba dealer repaired in about one week. It was like waiting for Christmas

4. I had the option of sending back to Amazon but elected not to because I had invested so much time in customizing it

5. I have had the laptop back one week now and it rocks. I am glad I had it repaired. The repair dealer highly recommended buying an extended warantee because of the expense of just having it looked at. I believe this to be sound advise. Also note that you need to do this right away because Toshiba only gives you a very short time to do it.

The moral of this story. Good things come in time.

Enjoy...it's still a great laptop.

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Good: Price bought it from Office Depot for $499. Fast enough, not for gamers, though. Very, very quiet. Easy to use, good memory and HD size, CPU for the price. Full size keypad. Outstanding quality of the screen. Excellent replacement for desktop.

Cons: Weight, battery life, portable enough to move it @ home, however, not for frequent fliers.

Overall, strongly recommended for quality vs the price.

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Samsung NP-RF710-S02US 17.3" Notebook PC

Ok, so I'm a radical computer geek. Have been for over 15 years. I'm partial to Windows PC, but before purchasing this Samsung laptop I researched price, capabilities, and speed for 3 months before purchase.

So, I picked up this Samsung on a killer deal $899. Comparable units sell for $1200+. As a computer geek I was intent on a Quad processor with minimum 4GB main RAM, and 1GB video RAM this unit has both. 4GB is just the minimum these days and this unit can support 8GB total. 1GB video RAM is essential if you are gaming or doing video/picture production. I to the latter doing photo retouches and video compilations. Of course I do some occassional gaming, but that is not my primary function.

Samsung TVs are renowned for their LCD/LED technology. The screen on this laptop is CRYSTAL clear, vibrant, and combined with the video card and video RAM snappy and responsive. It support full HD as well. And given that this unit comes with a Blu-ray player oh, baby. One of the key items I searched for was a powerful quad processing latop with a fantastic display but yet light weight. Most 17" laptop weigh in at 8-9lbs with the battery. This Samsun unit is just a little over 6lbs with battery. It is light weight and easy to move around with despite the 17" display. Nor does this unit heat up on your lap cool and comfortable. While the battery does ok, I also did buy a 8 cell battery either. Yet is easily handles my writing sessions when I kick back on the couch and don't want to be tethered.

Another feature I like as an IT person is that Samsung has carved out at 17GB space on the hard drive for the restore/recovery function. No DVD to boot from or risk of getting lost in the office. You can restore to factory shipping in a snap. Further, Samsung is innovative enough to provide the Samsun Recovery Solution. This is an app that, in the form of a wizard, guides you through creating a snapshot of your system that you can restore from. Now isn't that handy.

The keyboard is well made and has raised keys just like a Mac. Good idea and glad that Windows PC makers have finally embraced this design. The keys aren't backlit, so if you are a gamer who wants that, it might limit you. But let's be honest, if you are a gamer with any skillz, you won't need backlit keys it is all muscle memory, right? The sound on this system is crisp as well. First time my wife has ever told me to turn down the sound on a laptop. So, movies on the go won't require headphones or additional speakers for car or hotel use. No additional gear to lug around. The other enhanced features finally on Windows touchpads are scrolls and swipe shortcuts. The Samsung touchpad supports many of the typical Mac swipe short cuts, but the one I find most endearing is the scroll function that activates on a web page when you touch your finger along the right border of the touchpad. In doing so, with just the slight movement of your finger, you can scroll up/down the active page. Now that is handy, no?! :-)

Look, if you are looking for a combination laptop that is high performance, with sharp looks, a cutting edge display and some nice usability features, this Samsung unit will fill the bill. It is a "gamer performance" laptop but elegant and priced like a high end business laptop. And honestly, if you look at comparable units with similar displays and h/w specs (at $1200+), you'll see the the Samsung unit is well priced below the competition and even more so if you find it on sale like I did.

I love the computer... I am never buying anything less than 17 laptops again. THis PC is great for its cost. Be aware, you may need to update the nvidia software for the screen though... easy install...

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I searched for a laptop to replace old one.

Afrer comparison, I chose this one from Samsung.

It is silent, has a wide secrren, clear resolutin.

For the bucks, it is a recommendable product.

But, key pad is quite annoying, as it

lost its direction in the middle.

Read Best Reviews of Samsung NP-RF710-S02US 17.3" Notebook PC Here

Powerful processor. Same graphics as the Macbook Pro

Trackpad with Mac like advanced functions, however lacks touch sensitivity

Direction pad arrows overlap 10 key, making it annoying to navigate in word documents, Spreadsheets, flight sim, other games, or areas requiring key inputs.

Does have exception processing power as stated above. Can run a flight sim with full detail, on top of 30 tabbed out windows on Firefox, with 10 other applications running in the background. Will get occasional hiccup on video under these extreme conditions, but generally I can close some other programs to free up system resources, and in most realistic scenarios I will only have Word, Misc program and heavy Web Browsing, with no problems at all running a maxed out flight simulator.

SD CARD READER DOES NOT SPRING EJECT BY DESIGN TO SAVE MONEY. This is one annoying corner to have cut. You have to pick up the front of the laptop chassis and fish your card out using your fingernail. SERIOUSLY Samsung, what does the CARD EJECT SPRING SET YOU BACK IN PRODUCTION? No more than a Dollar, tops, maybe 50 cents. Its small subtleties like that which make me wonder how long this machine is engineered to last to begin with. Clearly this laptop is disposable in their eyes, and I would expect forced obsolescence well before Moore's Law would have it.

Lack of PCMCIA card bus slot, I guess I could live with out it, and most people probably don't utilize one, but I have some odd projects that now I must use my old laptop for (which was a Gateway NX860, and in my opinion, a better quality built keyboard, chassis, and with an eject-able memory card reader)

I really bought this thinking the i7 would help me keep up with the rest of the modern world, but it seems that the faster computers get, the more windows OS will demand of it making the improvements marginal at best.

I did like the dual HDD bay, as I was able to pull my old one and run them both with some degree of work. You can go into the BIOS and set HDD boot priority, loading into your old computer, considering you have the drivers available to do this, so before you put your old HDD, burn the drivers to CD, as the SD will likely have other drivers, and NIC will likely not work to DL them. Shutdowm, switch HDD, boot to new Samsung W7 64, make driver disk, shut down, switch to old HDD... It can become time consuming is all.

Works well with Ubuntu which I have on my other HDD, dual booting alongside my 32 bit version of Windows 7 on my old 500GB 7200 HDD Giving me over 1TB. I still would like the simplicity of XP, and may install that at a later date when I have time to do my massive HDD and File migration and reorganization project.

Screen seems to get marks from transport against keys. USE A CLOTH OR SOME BARRIER TO PROTECT YOUR SCREEN.

The Laptop will fit snugly into an OGIO Mastermind 17in Laptop bag.

http://www.amazon.com/Upscale-Mastermind-Messenger-Laptop-Backpack/dp/B00332MA1E/ref=pd_sbs_a_3

(the one I got did NOT have the White piping around the smaller outer pocket)

Will not fit the OGIO Metro.. FYI.

The Laptop has sharp corners that snag while trying to insert it into the Smaller Ogio Metro, overall chassis design is poorly laid out IMO.

Not really any bloatware to mention, one program to uninstall, which is nice, compared to HP, and if you have ever had one recently, you know what I am referring to.

Fast start is awesome.

Charging via USB, would be nice if it were accessible from a laptop backpack, more toward the edge of the corner where you might be able to leave slightly unzipped to have access to USB port, and to be able to plug AC Adapter in to charge the laptop in with minimal effort while on the go. As it is, you must remove the laptop to charge it (at least in my bag) my old laptop had the power AC plug located behind the corner. And on the same token, my classic car didn'd need smog or seat belt chimes either...

My next laptop will likely be a mac, as they integrate the i7 chipset into the 17" models, and they just work. This seemed like the next best thing, but with no stores I could try it in person near my house, or even state for that matter, I had to go off of the TigerDirect reviewer's push on YouTube.

This is a generally all around very decent laptop that I am using to go thru my Flight School and University endeavors, with short battery life, some corners cut to save money on production, 5400 Rpm HDD, etc, in otherwords, some compromises made on quality to be able to push an i7 chipset... Call me picky, but, stuff like the SD card reader and bulky protrusions on the edge of the laptop would have been easy fixes, as well as fixing the 10 key and D pad. I wouldn't return it, because at the time, there were no better laptops comparable to this for a grand. Biggest complaint is the Card reader and D Pad where the 0 should be on the 10 key. Oh, and the fact that Samsung seemed clueless when I called them to ask if the card reader had a broken spring and needed repair, or if it was just a poorly designed feature.

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HP Pavilion G7-2220us 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

I am partial to 17 inch screen laptops and to HPs. I was both excited and a little bit hesitant to try a Windows 8 computer on a non-touch screen laptop. So far though I have found Windows 8 to be very enjoyable and the computer itself has met or exceeded my expectations. Online reviews for Windows 8 on non-touchscreen laptops make it sound almost like a disaster. This has been far from my experience. With just a little trial and error and web searching for solutions I have quickly become a fan of Windows 8 on this computer. And for the price there is a lot going on here.

I use laptops mostly at home so I enjoy having a larger screen for media consumption and work related, MS Office related tasks. But having a laptop lets us move it from room to room and take it on the go when wanted. This is also my 4th HP and my previous ones had AMD chips also. They performed well without any hiccups or failures ever. So my personal go to choice for a laptop is HP. I also like their customer service. I have always been able to get someone on the line at any time with virtually no wait.

For the computer itself its construction is very well done overall, but a few things stand out as exceptional. The screen is very high quality: videos and movies look great. There is nice depth to it, good contrast and clarity. My wife and I loved looking at videos we had shot and Netflix/Amazon movies are a treat. Next I have always liked HP laptop keyboards and this one is no exception. The 17 inch screen allows for a full keyboard with full sized keys. The keys are relatively flat but raised just enough and they have a nice cushioned feel to them. The mouse pad on Windows 8 computers is even more important than before. HP made this one have a nice textured feel that provides a nice grip and feel to it. There are a number of Windows 8 related functions you do on the mouse pad such as swipe right and left and zoom in and out and the mouse pad works well on them. Also of note is a very fast card reader: Really Fast. I personally have never had a faster one. I had 400 photos on a card I inserted many of them in the 5 to 7 meg range and it downloaded them in a minute or so.

Now to Windows 8. I am baffled by the negative responses on non-touch screen laptops. Especially as it is very easy to get to a `desktop' view that mimics a Windows 7 environment pretty closely. In any case when you start off you will have what Microsoft calls the `start' screen. This is in what I think of as 'Tablet View'. A series of `Apps' are displayed. Some of these are actually Apps you would have on your tablet or smart phone. Others take you to `traditional' windows programs such as Word or PowerPoint. You can get out of the `tablet view' by clicking on the desktop `App'. Now the start menu is gone. If you put the mouse in the top right corner it brings up search and some other `charms'. You also have the files icon pinned to the task bar so you can get to my computer easy. Strangely it is not easy to shut down or restart. But a quick search of the web showed that hitting the windows key and I gets you to the power option. Windows 8 easily let me create a control panel `App' so I click on that and go straight to control panel.

I have found Windows 8 to add another layer of enjoyment after figuring some things out. I use my tablet a lot and both enjoy and take for granted the great visuals and ease of use of Apps. Well you get that same user friendliness now on your computer for Apps that work with Windows 8 as true Apps. And then when you want it, a more traditional desktop environment for non-App programs like Word.

I downloaded and installed Office 2010 Professional Plus and it has worked picture perfect and the Apps I have downloaded so far have worked great as well. And you have easier access to pictures, videos, all the items you use a home laptop for easier than before via the `Apps'. Just give yourself a couple of hours and use the getting started with Windows 8 app or searching for information on the Internet to help you along. I couldn't find the desktop App for instance as sometimes the lettering on apps is small, but once I did knowing you have a more familiar option lets you explore the `Tablet view' more and enjoy it more.

I haven't drained the battery yet and I will update it when I do on battery life, but it has been going down pretty slowly for a 17 inch computer. The webcam is also very good, the best pre-installed one I have used. Programs start up very fast. The computer itself starts up fairly start after a full shut down and closes very fast when shut down is chosen. At times some programs have been a little slow though. But the specs here are for a value oriented computer. And from a value and enjoyment perspective the 2220 delivers. I personally feel most people will enjoy Windows 8 on a non-touchscreen laptop. And HP took that into account with the 2220 giving a very good mouse pad and keyboard which makes working with Windows 8 just that much more enjoyable. Don't forget the Windows key-I combo, the ability to switch to desktop mode, and the charms you get to by putting the cursor over to the top right. Bottom line good value for a family computer, especially one used mostly at home where a smaller/lighter size is less of a concern.

This would be an even better computer if it had shipped with Windows 7. Make sure your software and printers can handle Windows 8 before you buy. My HP OfficeJet will not even work with this new unit.

This laptop, or at least the one I received, has very good WiFi range. The LED screen comes up to your programmed brightness level right away, instead of starting off dim, like many LCD laptops. Button and control placement are good, with volume, brightness, mute, etc. available with just one key-press. This was a Christmas present for my 12 yr old. Battery life is better than stated.

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I've been pretty happy with this laptop so far.

Physical appearance: It's a bit large and on the heavy side for a laptop, but it's a 17.3" so that's to be expected. The design is very good and I was very happy that all of the obnoxious "Look at my awesome hardware!" NASCAR-style stickers were easily removed to make a more sleek appearance (save the HP logo on the back of the screen). It's a lot thinner than I expected, but again, this is not a Macbook Air. Only about an inch and a half thick means it should be an easy fit in most cases or bags compared to other models.

Performance: The first thing you have to realize is that this is not a gaming laptop. I'm not a big PC gamer, but the video card on this specific model is very good but uses onboard memory, so it's not going to give you the same performance. It did outrank my custom-built desktop with a 2gig video card with dedicated memory in the Windows Experience score though, so it might be better than my guess. I've only used this for casual web browsing, video watching, and typical business tasks (Word, Powerpoint, etc.) and it's performed great with no lag. It even handled a visit to TVTropes (which means I had about 20 or 30 Firefox tabs open at once) without any significant performance degradation. If the 4GB of RAM isn't enough for you, though, be glad to know that the installed memory is a single chip, so you can easily buy a second stick to install. It can be a pain to find out exactly what memory to get, so I'll save you some time: DDR3-1600MHz PC3-12800. Only place I was able to find that was on page 20-something of the 107 page Maintenance and Service Guide, buried in a list of product codes for replacement parts for various bits and bobs like the CMOS battery.

Video: The screen looks great. It's got a good resolution for the size and videos look great on it. The screen's so big, though, that you might have problems getting the viewing angle right, causing the lower half of the screen to be too bright or the top half too dark. Best solution? Set the computer on the table when you're watching a movie, since you'll be far away anyway.

Battery Life: I'm going to be honest here, the battery life kind of sucks. Thankfully, the charging cable is small and light, so you don't have the massive brick you get with companies like Dell if you want to take it on a trip. I'm sure there's things I can do to extend the life, but it tends to get dangerously low on me after only 2 hours of constant use. Considering Amazon rates the battery life at 3.5 hours, this is about what I expected.

Keyboard and Touchpad: It's been a while since I've used a laptop, so this is taking some getting used to. I really like the touchpad. It's textured rather than smooth, so it's easy to figure out where it is without looking, and it gives you a textile indicator of how you're moving the cursor. It's also placed perfectly to allow you to type without accidentally sending the cursor all over the screen because your hand's on the touchpad. The keyboard itself, though, has a few annoying things. The layout's a bit odd, such as the Delete key being above the Backspace key. There's also no break between the Function keys either, so if you're a dedicated Ctrl-F4 browser like I am, it can get frustrating. The biggest annoyance, though is the rightmost shift key. It's actually half shift and half pause. What good is the pause key? It doesn't even do anything in most applications! So when you're typing, you find that half the attempts to write a capital letter doesn't work because you're on the pause key side of the key rather than the shift key side. I guess I'll get used to it eventually. Or I'll figure out a way to remap the keyboard, one.

Operating System: Okay, here's a sticking point for a lot of people I bet. I agree with you. Windows 8 sucks. The hard part? Getting Windows 7 on this thing. Even though I have a legitimate copy of Windows 7 with a legitimate product key, I couldn't get it installed because of protections built into the system against "malicious software". Thankfully, Linux users are great about sharing ways around blocking products like this. First, you have to go into the BIOS and disable "Secure Boot", then enable "Legacy Boot". This will stop the BIOS from hounding you every time you try to book from a DVD. Next, you have to completely remove ALL the partitions. Every single one. So if you don't know what you're doing, keep in mind that there is NO WAY TO RESTORE WINDOWS 8 TO YOUR COMPUTER AFTER THIS POINT unless you pay HP about $20 for a recovery disc set. Yes, it's really friggin' annoying. Anyway, after you delete all the partitions, you're ready to install your OS of choice. Now comes the final roadblock THERE ARE NO WINDOWS 7 DRIVERS FOR ALMOST ANYTHING IN THE SYSTEM. When you install Windows 7, the only hardware that's going to work properly is the touchpad, keyboard, monitor (kind of, at a horrible resolution), sound card, and the wired ethernet port. No USB, no wifi, 800x600 resolution. HP does not have any drivers for Windows 7 available on their website. So you have to install the Windows 8 drivers. Then run the installation again. Then run it a third time in some cases for the driver to actually install. And that's just for the wifi and video card. You want the chipset drivers? Good friggin' luck. It took me three hours of searching to finally find that the chipset is specifically the AMD A70M chipset, and you're going to have trouble finding drivers for it. I had to use a third party website of dubious reputation to get some (always make sure your antivirus and adblockers are up, kids!) So after about six hours of banging my head against a brick wall, I was FINALLY able to get Windows 7 installed on the system. So it IS possible, just not for casual computer users.

Overall: Once I got the OS I wanted on the thing, it's pretty good. It looks great, feels great, and (aside from a few little quibbles) runs great. You're going to be hard pressed to find a 17.3" laptop in this price range. Trust me, I looked. If you're really concerned about any of the issues and want to pass, know that you're going to pay around $200 more for similar specs or you're going to be forced down to the 15.6" screen size. It's not the best laptop on the market, but it's the best value I've seen in the month I spent comparison shopping.

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Got exactly what I needed in a laptop at a great Cyber Monday price. Still look at the weekly adds of local store and glad that I got this one at the now sale prices of smaller and less featured laptops. The 17" screen and full size keyboard were the selling points for me as I have gotten way to used to my old desktop computer with big monitor.

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Great price and the unit is great. Windows 8 has quite a learning curve and unit itself is more than needed for family member but larger keyboard and screen is just what the doctor ordered. No problems at all with the unit, setup was problem free.

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ASUS X201E-DH01 11.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

Ratings Summary: 4-Stars for the technically capable. 1-Star for the novice.

The ASUS X201E is like, what I call, an Ultra-Chromebook. It is in the price range of a Google Chromebook notebook computer. I bought mine for $299 with free shipping. There are indeed some serious issues with the stock product that required an easy solution by a technically capable person. However, this product is a poor release with abysmal product testing with regard to WIFI connectivity. ASUS should have caught and resolved some serious software problems prior to being available for sale.

The big problem: WIFI

I struggled with WIFI on this computer with the stock Ubuntu 10.04 release. The WIFI took a long time to connect, and then it would 'hang' periodically. The remedy that worked: A stock install of Ubuntu 12.10. So, the WIFI issue has been resolved with a fresh install of the latest Ubuntu OS.

It has now been two weeks, and I still am working well with the WIFI solution that worked for me.

Performance: "Great!" (for it's intended purpose)

This computer is like a Chromebook or the class of computers formally known as a Netbook. That means you can use it to perform nicely for you for office work, web developer work, travel, communications, music, and watching videos. If you want to play any 3D FPS games, don't even go there. It is not meant for 3D FPS games or video editing. But that is not why I want a highly portable notebook computer.

My real-world (well, sort of) performance tests:

I played 4 videos simultaneously with a dozen open browser windows and tabs. I had a couple of games (Sodoku and Mahjongg) opened, and I had one browser window playing a YouTube video. I also had one Virtualbox open with windows Vista in it with a browser opened (I am a web developer so, I do need to test on IE browsers). Overall, that's way more going on than I will typically be doing at any given moment by far.

With all of that my CPUs were maxiing out at 90% of capacity, and my memory was about 2GB of the 4GB available. The computer still performed satisfactorily, and I could move about with almost no noticeable issues (the YouTube (flash) video did have a few problems competing for it's time-share slot).

In a more realistic tests of the somewhat troublesome YouTube playback in the "stress test", I closed everything except a couple of browser windows. One played a YouTube video, and it did so without flaw.

Battery Life: pretty good

I get about 4.5 hours of real world usage on the battery. Overall, that meets my requirements. My typical use without plugged in power is a meeting at a coffee shop or something for an hour. So, it the less-than stellar battery life is well within my operational needs.

When I am on a plane, I really only use my Nexus 7 tablet for reading, audio books, videos, and games. The tablet is much better for a plane than even a small computer like this, IMHO.

Ports and Connectors: Two USB 2.0 ports; One USB 3.0 (sweet!); One HDMI (full sized); One VGA; Multi-card reader; Ethernet! Combo headphone / mic

Other very good qualities:

* The case is very nice, with a textured feel that is nice

* The keyboard and track-pad work very nicely, and the large track-pad worked perfectly

*The sound system is very loud. This is far superior to many notebook computers I have owned. It is a bit wanting in the base, but there is no problem with the volume .. I think it goes to 11.

*The screen is excellent for viewing straight on, or on there lateral periphery. It gets washed out in the tilt quite a bit, but I wouldn't use it that way any way.

This Computer is Good For:

*General office work: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, browsing, etc

* Developer: web-development, edit source code, browsing, browsing in virtual box (like Vista, Win7, XP, ...)

* Server: Apache server with PHP, etc; local storage server, music server, video server, etc.

* Travel: lightweight enough at 3 pounds; power adapter is multi-voltage/freq, SD slot for camera photos, USB-3.0 for fast external storage; wifi a/b/g/n + ethernet. And with a "Chromebook" cost of under $300 not too painful if it were lost or stolen.

* Simple non-3D FPS games: Solitaire, Mahjongg, Sudoko, etc.

Simple to moderate image processing. Excellent for casual user for editing travel photos

* Nice for listening to music with the speakers. No need for an external set like many laptops

* Videos play flawlessly from the hard drive, and streaming video worked without any hiccups or problems

* Google-Earth no graphics problems the rendering of the 3D images worked well

Not Good For:

* Gaming of any type where 3D and FPS is important at all

* Video editing

* Serious/Professional Photoshop work

Ratings for the market this notebook serves (5-Star scale):

Design: 5 Stars: nice size, nice feel to cover

Portability: 4 Stars: under 3 pounds is great (2.5 would be better!)

Build quality: 5 Stars: it feels pretty solid

Keyboard & Trackpad: 4 Stars: keys feel good, trackpad works nicely. It would have been nice to have a back-lit keyboard

OS and Software: 5 Stars: I augment my Ubuntu experience with the Cinnamon desktop, but that's the beauty of Linux: "to each their own".

Overall:

FAIL: 1 Star Overall Rating for a Novice computer user because of the out of the box WIFI issue. This product meant to work out-of-the-box and it didn't. All you will do with this abysmal failure is turn people off to Ubuntu. Shame on you ASUS!

For me, and any technically capable person, it is a solid 4-Star device. But I thought since it came stock with Ubuntu, this would be the first time I wouldn't need to tweak a computer to get it working for me. This was a disappointment.

In the end, I am satisfied. Frankly, I wish it would have come installed with a minimal crippled version of Windows-8. That way, I would have simply installed Ubuntu 12.10 from the start, and I wouldn't have had any WIFI problems. However, with the savings of the "Windows Tax", I can use that money to buy my lift ticket at Mt. Bachelor today.

This laptop manages to be both sleek, and offer considerable connectivity. You get one USB3 port, two USB2, one Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, and SD card slot. Then there is Bluetooth. That's pretty good for a cheap machine.

I purchased this for my wife, who prefers the XFCE desktop. Unfortunately, the XFCE power management seems to fight with the power management in the Unity desktop. Upgrading to XFCE 4.10 (via a PPA) seems to have helped. There have been wireless problems, but upgrading to kernel 3.2.40 seems to have helped (the latter upgrade was automatic).

When power management works, the computer suspends, but doesn't hibernate. Since the computer uses Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset, suspend uses very little power. There is also remarkably little space on the drive, given it's capacity (320 G). That can be traced to an empty, extended 105 G NTFS partition. I suppose you can mount it and put stuff there (like Windows?), or you can use GParted to resize it and the other partitions, or possibly delete it and resize the other partitions. It's a strange disk arrangement.

This is not a netbook. Yes the Asus uses a wimpy Celeron, but that Celeron is more powerful than the Intel Atom CPUs that resided in netbooks. Further, this machine comes with 4 G of RAM. Perhaps the greatest speed boost comes with the CPU's support for virtualization. That means a five fold speed increase over what an Atom based CPU can do when running Virtualbox.

The other big improvement over a netbook lies in the screen. It's bigger (11.6", instead of 10.1") and sports a higher resolution 1366x768. This is a resolution found in all sorts of cheap laptops. The difference here is that such a resolution looks good at 11.6".

Battery life is something better than 4 hours. You can't swap the battery, because it's built in. The keyboard works, and has the typical, poor Asus layout. There was room for dedicated PgUp-PgDn, Home-End keys, but Asus chose to ignore this and make them all function key based. On the plus side, the touch is OK, and there in no keyboard "bounce."

What you get is a cheap machine with no "crapware," update capabilities that are second to none, and that runs quickly. That said, since it is running Linux, it will continue to run quickly.

Update 3 Apr. 2013: Issues with power management on XFCE when installed after Ubuntu's Unity interface persisted, so I installed Debian. This marked my first 64 bit install, and my first install on a UEFI machine (all the previous machines had a BIOS). I burned a Debian Wheezy netinstall disk to CD, and rebooted. Holding the ESC key when booting brings up the UEFI menu. There were two CD boot options, one that listed my drive, and the other that listed it with UEFI. You want the latter, trust me. ;)

If you want to add Skype, or any other 32 bit only software, the command given as root, "dpkg --add-architecture i386", is your friend.

What did I loose by going to Debian? The screen brightness and touchpad disable function keys. I typically set up the touchpad with Synclient, and add palm detection, so the touchpad toggle is no great loss, but the screen brightness is. The package xfce4-power-manager-plugins adds a slick widget you can add to your panel (taskbar) that lets you adjust the brightness.

What did I gain? Speed. As usual, Debian is a lighter weight distribution by default. I gained a more intelligent partitioning, with about another 100 G for data. I also gained the ability to hibernate the machine.

To sum up, I'm still scratching my head over some of Asus' choices when offering this machine. Why they included an unused, 100 G NTFS formated partition escapes me. Also, I'm not sure why they did not include hibernation support. In general, Ubuntu, even with their long term releases is buggier than Debian, but if you don't like to "play" with your machine, and you are satisfied with the Unity interface, this remains a good buy.

Update 14 April, 2013: An update to Debian Wheezy has fixed the screen brightness keys.

Update 15 May, 2013: Received a second unit to set up for another person. Part of the setup included a Debian install with most of the drive encrypted. I used an encrypted LVM (logical volume manager), and it went fairly smoothly, except when the installer announced it was erasing the drive. It was an extremely thorough erasure, as it took 18 hours. Only then did the installer proceed with partitioning the drive.

The encryption is largely transparent in operation. The only time you realize you are running an encrypted disk is when booting, or resuming from hibernation.

Update 1 July, 2013: A third unit developed wireless connection issues. These included difficulty connecting, spontaneous disconnects, and strongly fluctuating signal levels. I finally removed the back of the unit, and discovered a loose antenna wire. The plug used (I'm assuming it's an industry standard) is extremely small, and hard to line up properly, but once properly plugged in, all issues went away.

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The Good:

+ Low Cost

+ Easy Setup

+ Fast Boot

+ Lightweight

+ Ample Hard Drive

+ Decent Keyboard

The Bad:

Wonky Trackpad

Popular Streaming Services Require Workarounds

Spotty Printer Support

No Exchange Sync (At Least For My Company)

Erratic Bluetooth Performance

Poor Android 4.1 Support

Overall: While it is not perfect, the ASUS X201E-DH01 is an excellent Windows and Chromebook alternative.

Background: I was looking for something more portable than my 15.6" Windows laptop and more work oriented than my Android tablet. I've actually soured a bit on the tablet experience, and I'm trying to decide if I need or even want one. I was actually looking at the Acer C710-2055 when I stumbled across this model from ASUS. The specs are quite similar with the exception of the OS (Ubuntu Linux vs. Chrome). For the extra $20, I decided to get a machine with a full-fledged OS that works offline by design.

Setup: Unlike what some others have reported, my X201E came with Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed. When I powered it on, there wasn't a whole lot to do. However, the initial boot does take a while. It guides you through a simple process collecting some basic information such as language, time zone, etc. It also asked me to create a user account with a password, which is easy enough. From there, I was ready to roll after a reboot. I had no problem adding my wireless network (or subsequent networks). I have connected to hidden and enterprise networks without issue. As long as you know the settings, you get in. If setup were the only consideration, I would say that this laptop is for any user level.

User Input: The keyboard of the X201E has the common "chicklet" style keyboard, and it feels good to type with. It has enough resistance so that it doesn't feel bouncy. However, it is not overly stiff either. The layout is pretty good, yet some may find the lack of dedicated page up, down, etc. buttons a disappointment. They are available through the function key, but I do find that I miss them on long web pages. The trackpad, on the other hand, has fewer positives. Actually, it is really no worse than most trackpads, and I really think these were invented to promote mouse sales. The trackpad doesn't have separate buttons, and it just doesn't feel comfortable. However, my biggest gripe (with trackpads in general) is the accidental touch during typing that sends your cursor to some distant place on the page away from where you intended to type. For serious typing sessions, I use a mouse and disable to trackpad. This does create a tradeoff for portable use. Do I fight through the wonky trackpad or take a mouse with me from conference room to conference room?

Web Browsing: Unless you are a die-hard IE fan, you have good options for browsing the web. The X201E has Firefox installed by default, but I preferred Chrome. It was easy to download and install from Google's site. With limited exceptions (that I will note in a later section), it is indistinguishable from using Chrome on a Windows machine. It is here that I access both my Gmail and Corporate email, and I also use Evernote to go paperless in meetings.

Office Software: Ubuntu comes with LibreOffice installed by default (although there are a couple of other options to try if it is missing your favorite features). Here's the bottom line, though. No matter what you choose, nothing is going to work seamlessly with docx, xlsx, pptx, etc. files. Microsoft doesn't want this to happen, and they have done a good job of keeping things this way. For my purposes, however, I generally only need to be able to view documents on the go, and any MS Office alternative does a good enough job. One last note item in this area is e-mail. There is not an Outlook equivalent in any of the other office suites, and Thunderbird is the default email client. I looked for Exchange support, and found that a Thunderbird plug-in was supposed to work with Exchange Web Services (EWS). I installed the plug-in, but I could never get it working. This may have as much to do with how my company has exchange setup, but the lack of support for corporate email is nonetheless disappointing.

Media: As I mentioned earlier, I have my entire music collection copied to my X201E. The default music player for Ubuntu is Rhythmbox, and it is sufficient for my needs. You do have to go through some extra steps to enable mp3 decoding because this requires proprietary drivers. This is a Linux philosophical issue, and true open source distributions do not enable proprietary software out of the box. This is the first feature that is likely to trip up the Linux novice. Googling reveals easy to follow steps, but the X201E just became work for the lay user. Video playback is another story. Both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video streaming are non-functioning out of the box. There are workarounds for these, but I was only able to get Amazon Instant Video working in Firefox. My Netflix has sound but no picture, and this was after a lot of work. Even with Amazon Instant Video, it doesn't look good when maximized. The streaming quality seems to be set for the "in browser" sized video. YouTube works well enough. I don't really watch stored videos, but support for this is available through clients like VLC. However, as with mp3 formats, you may need to install proprietary software in order to watch a particular format. This will definitely be the case if you connect an external DVD/Blu-Ray player. Perhaps video (streaming at least) is something better left to the likes of a Kindle Fire HD.

Bluetooth: This is not a core feature requirement for me, but I decided to test it out and report my findings. First, I tried my pairing with my HTC Rezound. Things started out rocky, and they never really got better. My first attempts at pairing were unsuccessful as neither device could see the other after making them both visible. I tried again on a subsequent session, and I was able to pair the devices. However, they didn't agree on the profiles that their pairing supported. My Rezound wanted to send phone and media audio to the X201E while the X201E wanted to send and receive files. As you might expect, ne'er the twain shall meet.

Other: So far, this might not sound like much of a differentiator from the Chromebook, but there are other uses beyond my core requirements that others a likely to find appealing. Linux has a good array of photo and video editing software that the Chrome OS just can't come close to matching. It would also be trivial to grab Eclipse and other Java development tools although I'm not sure how these would perform on the limited hardware. The point is that have a full-fledged OS gives you a lot of options. There are also a fair number of games, but that is not really my area of expertise.

Overall: This ASUS X201E is a unique device. It is one of two current laptops (the other is from Dell targeted at software developers) from major manufacturers that comes with Linux installed. Depending on your needs, this might be the perfect low cost, portable alternative to Windows that you are looking for. Potential Chromebook users should definitely give it a look.

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This is not a laptop to do heavy lifting with, but for web surfing, a pretty close to perfect ssh terminal thin client.

BIOS can be upgraded without needing any boot CDs or Windows installs, which is nice.

Laptop came with Ubuntu 12.10 [nothing wrong with it], but I removed it right away and put Fedora 18 on it. The only thing that doesn't work 'out of the box' is the gigabit ethernet, but the driver can be easily compiled and loaded by following these directions:

One heads up, even though the title says 'Grey Aluminum' the body is made out of plastic, but it is very sturdy, much better quality than HP Pavilions as an example.

The two cell battery can be a bit a of an issue to some, but I have gotten 2+ hours on it so far, even though I am not on battery power a lot.

The only downside I've had with it so far is that Suspend/Resume [on Fedora] is still a bit buggy, it works sometimes, but sometimes it failts to suspend... I have a hunch it may be related to the gigabit ethernet extra kernel module, but haven't fully tested yet.

Anyway... I much rather spend $325 or so on this machine than on a tablet, much more useful. There are ways to watch Netflix on Fedora [google for it], and it works OK.

Pretty happy with the purchase.

Want ASUS X201E-DH01 11.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Discount?

Everything worked right out of the box. Came with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and after initial user account creation it downloaded some 350+ updates and legacy driver for the wireless card and things were much smoother. I have a Ubuntu machine running my HTPC so I am familiar with the OS. The screen is perfect for web browsing, email and word processing and presentation. Spreadsheet work can be a pain die to 11inch screen. Small package, solid feel, no flex, the hinges are sturdy and have no play. Overall real good construction. Was not expecting a stellar screen at this price but even in lowest brightness setting it is not a problem to work indoors.

Took off one star for photoshopped product pictures posted everywhere. All product pictures are taken from a high angle that hides the thickness and makes it look slimmer than it really is. I am not complaining that it is thick but simply stating that the images are a deliberate attempt to make it look slimmer.

I am getting battery life of 3-3.5hrs at lowest brightness setting with web browsing and no flash video playback. This could be a Ubuntu issue as Ubuntu battery optimization is not as good as windows or Mac. Will have to load WinXP or Win7 to test that. However you will need a $10-15 external DVD drive to load any other OS, unless you are good in doing it off a USB drive.

Overall I am happy with what i got at the price I paid.

Update: April 14th 2013

The wireless connection was not reliable and it would just loose connection without reason. So I upgraded the OS to Ubuntu 12.10 from within 12.04. Wireless problem got fixed and battery life looks like it improved a tad to 4-4.5hrs. Also installed a power management software.

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