Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I purchased this laptop to use as a dedicated software development machine and couldn't be happier.
Everything about this laptop seems oriented toward function rather than style. The performance seems up to the quality specs of the individual components, and there is certainly nothing flimsy or cheap about the look and feel. There is no keyboard flex at all, and the feel of the keys suits me just fine.
I think this laptop was designed through and through as a business machine. Not only does it have a "business" look to it, reminding me of the old-school IBM laptops favored by my former employer, but has other business friendly features.
The hard drive comes partitioned with the C: drive for the OS (about 75G) and the rest for data storage. Very smart. It also has various security features that businesses love: antivirus, encryption, fingerprint reader.
Don't get the impression this laptop is a business-only machine. Savvy computer users love all these "business" features. You should care as much about protecting your personal data as business care about protecting theirs, and this laptop is eager to oblige out of the box.
What this machine is not: fashionable is a cosmetic way. It is not small, thin, or light. It doesn't have a lighted logo, stylish graphic on the case, or other eye-candy bling that will impress friends and strangers. In fact, airport and coffee shop thieves will be looking for targets elsewhere.
This is one design element that doesn't make sense. With the performance of this laptop, and the capabilities of the dedicated graphics, it would make an outstanding Photoshop computer. Unfortunately, I don't see the stylish, graphic designer types going for this type of laptop. Why put all this capability into a machine that will get overlooked by most of a large group of potential buyers?
There several nice touches that don't get talked about in reviews of this laptop, such as the manual on/off switch for the built-in camera and the caps-lock light positioned right next to the caps-lock key.
I don't know yet what the battery life is like, but I suspect it might disappoint some people. It is not an issue for me, since over 95% of the time I will be using this as a desktop replacement PC (wall power and hard-wired networking). The battery life certainly is sufficient for the couple of hour stretches in airports here and there.
This laptop is one zippy machine. The ExpressCard slot and SD slot come in very handy, too.
Here are the out of box Windows Experience numbers for my specific copy of this laptop:
Processor: 4.3
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 5.1
Gaming Graphics: 6.3
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9
The processor score seemed low, so I disabled virtualization (used for the "instant-on" functionality).
I reran the experience index and the Processor score moved to 7.0.
Since this is a development laptop running a database server, web server, and development environment, I decided to upgrade the memory to 8GB and go to an Ocz 240GB SSD for the primary drive.
The current Experience numbers are:
Processor: 7.0
Memory: 7.0
Graphics: 5.1
Gaming Graphics: 6.3
Primary Hard Disk: 7.7
I don't know why the desktop aero graphics scores are so low, but maybe because I've disabled most areo features. It might also be using the built-in Intel graphics instead of the ATI graphics. In any case, the desktop graphics on this machine SCREAM.
For grins I added a 48GB ExpressCard drive for the windows paging file, windows temp files, and logs to save wear on the expensive SSD. Grins-a-plenty.
Out of the box, this is an exceptional machine for doing development work. My upgrades push the capabilities to the extreme, making it pretty much future-proof.
My only gripe whatsoever is an occasionally touchy "w" key. Every so often the "w" doesn't register on the first press. If I can't fix it using compressed air, I may have to look into using the Asus support.
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