Discount Alienware ALW17-6869sLV 17-Inch Laptop (Silver)

Customer Ratings:

Let me start off by saying this is the first review I have ever written. I don't want to write a book or anything, but I would like to try and help some people looking at this laptop. First we bought this computer mostly for my son. He is slowly becoming a gamer and does robotic programming. We wanted to buy a computer that was upgradeable but powerfull with its own stand alone specs . We looked for about 2 months . Looked at the Toshiba Qosmio, Asus G750 and Msi. All seemingly worthy of purchase. But after agonizing for two months we decided on this particular alienware model. This computer is everything we thought it would be and more. First I will talk about the packaging. The packaging could have been a little better. The Amazon box was damaged on one end and the AW box inside had a minor ding on the same end . Looks like loose industrial paper wrap could be upgraded to something more substantial. But there was no damage to the laptop. We received the shipment as promised within a few days of ordering. Great service! Now to the computer. The start up is quick and easy. The first thing we did was check the internal specs of computer and everything checked out as listed except one minor bit of wireless info, this model comes with 802.11 ac instead of the 802.11 bgn which we thought was a bonus. We were pleasently surprised at how clear the display was for an anti-glare screen. We have always had glass type screens so we were a bit leary but this is much more easy on the eyes. This being our first gaming type of laptop we were concerned about the overheating nature of these type of laptops but we have not experienced that type of heat from this computer. The ventilation on this is excellent, the center of the keyboard gets slightly warm after about an hour and fifteen mins. The fans are hardly noticeable and are very quiet compared to what we had. We are just getting started with the gaming but my son said their is no lag on what he has played so far, mostly Minecraft and StarTrek online gaming. This laptop is one of the most stoutly built designs I have ever seen. It is very solid, and looks wonderfull or bad ass whichever you prefer. The battery charger is a bit on the big side but at 240 hrz it has to be. But oddly enough its not very heavy.and has rubber slip pads on the bottom corners to prevent slippage on your desktop. I read that someone wanted to know if this model had a webcam. It does have one but haven't had a chance to use it yet. We have a friend that has a computer repair business to look our new laptop and was nice enough to check the cpu performance levels and said that it had peak performance standards and told us it was a good buy. We are very pleased with this laptop purchase and hope it lasts several years. Thanks Amazon !!! I thought I should mention that we did purchase a laptop cooler just in case. But we hardly use it. but doesn't hurt to protect your puchase. fyi, it was a Cooler Master Note Pal U3 model. Fits it perfectly.

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Its a little bigger than i expected but I'm a big guy so this definitely wont be a problem, I have already opened it up and installed a 128Gb crucial mSata card and reloaded OS to that.

I would be carrying this around and was thinking that it might be too heavy but after getting it I don't see it as being a problem, it would go from the house to the car and from the car to another house so no subway or taxi or far walks. I saw someone complain about the touchpad but the sensitivity can be adjusted which makes it usable. I would advise anyone who is going to purchase to actually get their hands on a 17inch so they have an idea of the size or use some cardboard and rough out the dimensions.

If anyone has questions feel free to ask I would try to answer them best I can.

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First off I wish to state, I was an Alienware hater. I only bought this one as I was having bad luck finding a laptop I was happy with and this one was clearanced out at a local store. I ALWAYS went with a "lesser" brand. Asus, Toshiba, Samsung. As they were priced lower for the same specs. But now...

I just got this model from a different retailer that was local to me. And boy am I impressed! For comparison I will list my previous laptop:

Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C-S01US

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Series-NP700G7C-S01US-17-3-Inch-Laptop/dp/B006MX0WHU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1381587049&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+series+7+gamer

Now, I will list comparisons:

-The Samsung is more flimsy, the screen wobbles more and the entire chassis just seems more flimsy. The Alienware is lighter but more sturdy, thanks to the magnesium alloy framework and aluminum outer body. The screen doesn't wobble, the keyboard has no flex, or if it does I don't feel it.

-The Samsung is fairly closed up. 1 screw and you can slide off a bottom panel which allows access to the 2 bottom sticks of ram, and the hard drives and optical drive. The Alienware on the other hand you remove 2 screws and the ENTIRE bottom slides off! You can access the bottom 2 ram slots, the HDD's, optical drive and what a concept, everything else, easier to clean the fans on and everything! Heck you can even replace most of the components yourself as the Owners Manual has a full step by step guide on replacing EVERYTHING! (Of course while in warranty I'll let them worry about it.) But it's nice to know that for the future when out of warranty I can replace core components much easier.

-The Samsung has a 120Hz display and the Alienware doesn't (it's only a 60Hz) but I honestly can't tell the difference, so while spec wise the Samsung wins this one, for my personal tastes, the Alienware is perfectly fine.

-It is unfair to compare last years specs to this years specs, but suffice it to say, it was an upgrade. But this one I won't label any winner as it would be one sided with the Alienware winning in about all categories. But it's also comparing Apples to Oranges.

-Samsung is a little fatter at it's fattest point (Rear). But is thinner at it's thinnest point (Front). The Alienware is pretty much uniform from front to back. Believe it or not though, the Alienware fits much better than the Samsung in my bag. An Everki Beacon Backpack. http://www.amazon.com/Everki-Backpack-Console-18-Inch-EKP117NBKCT/dp/B002WOBBVO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381587845&sr=8-1&keywords=everki+beacon+laptop+backpack The Samsung took some fighting to get it in the bag and the bag zipped up. The Alienware just slides right in!

-Samsung Power brick is thicker, but smaller in the width and length than the Alienware. The Alienware power brick looks like a giant sat on the Samsung one and squished it some! But it does help make the bag not be as thick. Thus allowing a little more ease of zipping the bag up.

-Samsung wins in optical drive department as it came with a Blu-ray drive stock and the Alienware doesn't. Nothing that buying an external won't fix (or ordering an internal and upgrading yourself) I already had an external Blu-Ray drive for another laptop I no longer have so I'm not bothered by this, but it may bother others.

-Samsung also may seem to win in the HDD department as it has 2x Seagate 750GB 7,200RPM HDD's. But if I wanted for about $80 more I could have bought a 1TB 7,200RPM HDD for more capacity. Instead I went with a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD for boot and turned the included 750GB into the data drive. Another note, if your welling to pull the Alienware apart almost all the way, underneath the keyboard is an Msata slot for an SSD, so you could have a Msata SSD and dual HDD's in the Alienware. The Alienware also has built-in RAID. So while the Samsung may give you more HDD space upfront, most likely your be putting in an SSD like I did on both machines. (Samsung has an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD in it.) Also with Alienware's capability of over time going to Dual HDD's and an Msata SSD, in the longer run the Alienware wins. (I could have say a 250GB Msata SSD and 2x 1TB HDD's for over 2TB of data and a ultra fast boot drive in the Alienware. So the Alienware wins this one in my books.

-Alienware wins customization, as you can customize the lighting in 10 different zones: Numberpad, 3 zones in the main keyboard, the touchpad is backlit, the Alienware name under the LCD lights up. There is 2 bars and the Alien head that lights up on the lid of the LCD display, and there are 2 bars that wrap around from the side to front that can be colored. The lid is one whole channel and side/ front lights is 1 whole channel. Plus the Power LED (1 channell) and HDD, Wifi and Caps lock leds (shared channel) can be customized. The power LED can be fixed to use one color for when it's plugged in and a completely different color when not plugged in and operating off battery.

-It is a tie in sound as the Samsung has a little more bass, thanks to the dedicated subwoofer, but the Alienware can get far louder and fill a large room with sound fairly easily and without much distortion. Though it does lack some of the bass, but not all the bass. I am hard of hearing an am finding that about 40% volume is decent on the Alienware, whereas I would need about 60-70% on the Samsung. I am planning on buying a bluetooth speaker system to help with the bass. I found a decent one that will do bass really well while not taking up too much space.

-The Alienware also has 4 macro keys that you can map to different functions and keystrokes, the Samsung doesn't..

-The Alienware has far better cooling than the Samsung, with practically the entire back half of the bottom being vents. The gpu gets fan AND passive cooling thanks to the vents over the gpu heatpipes. So it gets double cooling when you have a cooling pad.

-Temps wise, The Samsung would need to be lifted about an inch (at max) to get decent airflow. The Alienware doesn't need this and really doesn't need a cooling pad, though I did buy a Coolermaster Notepal U3 to help out on the hot days or such.

-Reliability, is something I will have to review later. And I will in a few months. But the Samsung needed to be sent in twice! Not once but twice in the year I've had it for repair and I have had nothing but issues when it came to hardware reliability on the Samsung. About 3 months into ownership on the Samsung it had to be sent in, then about 2 months after getting it back it had to be sent in again. Both times where for faulty hard ware. (Cpu first, then the GPU second). (This could have very well been a lemon, but it ruined it for me.) I spend a lot of money on something I expect it to break much later on in life. I hold this standard on all high ticket items. So the Alienware is and will be held to this regard as well.

All in all I am extremely impressed. The Alienware was designed for power users. You have full access to the components. Heck even the User's guide has a guide for all that! The build quality really seems to be there. Looking back, none of my other machines ever where this sturdy. You can also see it when you remove the bottom. Overall I am really impressed and have been converted from a hater to someone who will really, really consider an Alienware in the future. But this also depends on how reliable this machine is over the course of the year/s.

Any questions, just ask me/ comment me or whatever. Thanks for reading!

Honest reviews on Alienware ALW17-6869sLV 17-Inch Laptop (Silver)

Like the appearance of the alienware laptops and configuration, performance is very good, play cool. Amazon promotion orders, price is dell's official website cheaper a lot, and not wait a long time to take the arrival of the goods.

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There is a little problem with the computer. The mouse pointer will shake when the computer is busy processing assignments.

Best Toshiba Satellite L455-S5000 Notebook Computer - Intel Celeron 900 Deals

Customer Ratings:

I bought this around 6 months ago. I have to say so far I have been very happy with it. I knew it was not the biggest and baddest laptop out there however, it fit into my price range and had the features I needed (everything a netbook is missing!)

I have been very happy with the Windows7 operating system on this guy. It runs smoothly and quickly and I have yet to run into any issues (even minor ones...)

The screen is beautiful crisp and clear much better than my old Dell Laptop. The size is awesome!

I also appreciate the (almost) full keyboard. Its one drawback is the home, page up, page down and end keys being on the very far right side. It took me awhile to get used to hitting enter instead of page down button but now that I have gotten used to it it isn't so bad.

One of my fears when I bought this laptop was running to much on this little guy at once. It is a 3GB Notebook which isn't all that great in the world of laptops but I have to say I have been very surprised by it. I can often run multiple applications without running into any slowing or issues.

My one MAJOR issue with this laptop is the sound system. I came to this Toshiba laptop from a Dell that I had had for almost 8 years! The sound on the Dell was amazing and still is. However, the speakers on this little guy are tinny and can hardly be heard when turned all the way up. I use this laptop often for streaming TV shows online and watching movies and find that I have to plug in a separate set of speakers just to be able to hear.

With that said that issue isn't enough for me to not love this computer. I have been extremely happy with it.

Obviously this laptop isn't for anybody who is a hardcore gamer or some one who requires major amounts of RAM but if you use your computer for normal use (i.e. chilling on Facebook, listening to music on iTunes, watching the occasional movie) then this is a good buy. Just be aware that a set of speakers might be needed as well.

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I just bought one of these having owned older Toshiba and Dell laptops. My other Toshiba was quite reliable and functional; it lasted about four years trouble free except that I had to replace the battery once.

This new one has been less than impressive. It is a reasonably priced machine but some of the design features are simply poor.

The speakers may as well be absent; their maximum volume is like a whisper far off in the distance. You have to use audio accessories (headphones, external speakers, etc) otherwise you will not hear anything.

The USB ports are placed on either side near the front of the laptop which means they are right in the way. I prefer when they are at the back of the machine, or if they have to be on the sides at least near the rear.

This machine does not have an internal microphone.

There is too much unnecessary "advertising" and junk on the machine. Prepare to have that removed at some cost.

Overall I am ok with the purchase so far, but not as happy as I'd hoped to be. Seems newer is not always better.

Best Deals for Toshiba Satellite L455-S5000 Notebook Computer - Intel Celeron 900

I got this laptop after comparing its price with quite a few others on amazon and a good deal of store websites to see which had the best price, but this one was a leading canidate also for the price you get an hd screen, dvd burner and a computer that is fast. I have been using a Tower for years since my last laptop met its unfortunate end and now it is just going to sit and gather dust because this laptop far exceeds its performance. This laptop is not only great for games but also watching movies (I heard some had noise issues I am still waiting for them) working on picutre albums and almost anything you could want to do on here. Also I do have netflix which this computer is a perfect fit with when streaming movies.

Honest reviews on Toshiba Satellite L455-S5000 Notebook Computer - Intel Celeron 900

I actually recived this laptop free from a friend. He said the DC jack was broken and not chargeable anymore. So he gave it to me. I took it in, and it turned out the DC jack just broke from the bracketing and was inside the device when my friend dropped it off of his bed. It was a quick and easy fix. Now that i have it running great I can review it. It may only have an Intel Celeron CPU, but it runs very smoothly. Windows 7 Home was on this, and it ran fine, but i decided to install Ubuntu 10.10 on this to get even more performance. And i can say, i love Linux Ubuntu on here, it runs super fast, i can have all the nice desktop effects running, several applications, and several browser tabs open in Google Chrome and it doesnt slow down. Its also nice that is has 3GB of RAM aswell. It may only have a Hard drive just over 200GB, but thats fine, since my desktop has a 2TB hard drive, i wont be using this laptop to store all my music.. The display is great, no problems, the keyboard its great, the wifi works perfect, i dont have any complaints. Its not to heavy, and its not to light, and its a perfect size. The battery life is, eh, but its expected with about a year old laptop, and that is being a laptop. I would recomend this laptop to anyone wanting to get a great cheap laptop. I would personally recommend having Ubuntu Linux on it instead of Windows, but thats my opinion.

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Bought this laptop at best buy, in less than a month (27days) the hard drive crashed. Took it back to best buy they replaced the hard drive (since it was still under manufacturer warranty) two weeks later the new hard drive crashes. Took back to best buy and they replaced the hard drive again but this time they replaced the motherboard as well. Have been waiting over three weeks for Toshiba to send the start up disk (cost $25) since it does not come with one you have to make one. Customer service at Toshiba is horrible, "it's not our products fault, what did you guys do?," are u serious,"that's why you need anti-virus"(we do have anti-virus) and "you should have made the disk when you first purchased your laptop." Well maybe you should not make defective products.

I bought this 4 months ago and have only been able to use it for about a month and a half. Never again will I purchase a Toshiba product no matter how great a deal it is.

IBM Thinkpad T40 Reviews

Customer Ratings:

The IBM Thinkpad T40 is a great product, did not realize that it was not wifi but has a ethernet cable that can be linked to router. Bought for my 7 year old daughter to learn to type and play her CD-ROM games and she loves it -and I do not have to worry about her going onto the internet and finding inappropriate websites.

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I was not expecting too much so was very pleased when I got a high quality lap top for an extremely good price. The purchase far exceeded my expectations!

Reviews of Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983 Notebook - AMD AthlonTM II dual-core

Customer Ratings:

This by far is the best laptop out there for the price. The AMD Athlon II x2 works perfectly and can handle a lot of tasks. Windows 7 is a amazing improvement from vista. I bought it mainly because of the expandable ram (up to 8 gb) which is great and the 320 GB HD!! An incredible value! The keyboard is very comfortable and it is very light weight for its size. The look is sleek and the screen is perfect. I like the fact that it comes with a SD slot. The touch pad has a nice feel and it responds fast and smoothly.

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I've had my laptop for just over a week so I will come update this later. So far I'm really enjoying it. It connects fast to the internet. I like the number pad on the right. The touch pad works great (though I prefer using a wireless mouse). I love the SD slot which is so much better than having to hunt down my camera cable. I like the wide screen. I like the silver color of the keyboard. About the only thing I have as a con so far is the sound isn't loud enough at times even when I have it up all the way, but that might partly be because of whatever program or application is running. I wish the battery lasted a little longer, too. I ordered a skin for the lid and a keyboard protector to keep it free of dust and debris (and cat hair). I'm hoping to upgrade the RAM, too, after Christmas.

Best Deals for Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983 Notebook - AMD AthlonTM II dual-core

This will make my 3rd purchase of the Toshiba Satellite; fortunately this is a keeper for me. The other 2 purchases were gifts to family members. They both raved about their computers so when my Acer Aspire bit the dust I decided to purchase this one for myself. First and foremost, you simply cannot beat the price, exceptional value! This came as a bundle, to include a wireless optical mouse, 4 gig flash drive and a Targus case, all for under 500$. The design is slick with a beautiful silver striped finish. The keys are a nice size to where I am not hitting other keys around my fingers when I type. As others have noted, it has a numeric keypad off to the right, which is great. Running Windows 7 home premium which I love compared to Vista on my Vaio, which I really just could not get into that much, 7 is way more stable and less complicated to navigate.

It is solidly built, not too heavy, a 15.6 HD widescreen display which shows beautifully. I had a hard time installing incredimail due to it's incompatibility with Windows 7 but eventually found a version that supports it, runs great now. Smooth sailing with the mouse pad. It is heavy with programs I don't use/need but that comes with the territory. Battery life, I can't remark about that to date as I rarely use just battery power. It does have energy efficient power settings designed to preserve battery power though.

The fan is a bit noisy, but not a big deal I find that I tune that out over time anyways; I have had other machines that were much louder. I also like the placement of the power cord adapter, on the right side; I'm right handed so it works well for me as opposed to being in the rear or left side. Was able to connect to my home network smoothly and began using it right out of the box. The speakers are a bit "tinny" sounding; so far I really have no major complaints about anything else. I would highly recommend this computer for the daily task of email, surfing, word processing, games that are not heavy on the RAM, etc... It is definitely a great value from a trusted name in quality electronics. Oh yea, I did receive 2 recovery disc with my purchase.

Honest reviews on Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983 Notebook - AMD AthlonTM II dual-core

I wanted a laptop as a backup for my desktop and didn't need all the features of a full laptop, but more than a netbook. Although I've only had it a week (Best Buy $399), I've been spending a lot of time deciding whether I want to keep it since I have a 2 week limit to return it. It is much faster than my desktop, especially accessing the internet. Windows 7 has been a frustrating learning curve (been a heavy XP user)while in a hurry to try out features, access home network, etc. Some of the Toshiba assist programs are helpful in finding features before finding them in Win7. The system has performed very well except for a couple of lock-ups while using Intenet Explorer 8. It did seem to recover ok on reboot. The touchpad took some reading and adjusting (both computer and me) to use the features. The scroll feature is nice, but for some reason, it won't work in all windows, but clicking on the scroll bar seems to get it working in them also. It actually has 3 USB ports (one is a shared eSATA/USB port that I wouldn't have realized if saleman had not mentioned it.

Now for the surprises... the system comes with only a small printed pamphlet for instructions. Toshiba has a user guide on-line which is helpful, but does not provide any help on actually setting up wireless, being sure it is protected using WEP, or joining a home network. Good luck if you aren't a computer guru or have a neighbor/friend that is. Despite what the salesman told me, this is a 32bit system and will only boot up in 32bit Win7 mode, although the cpu is capable of 64 bit. It does not give an option for 64 bit Win 7. Toshiba tech support claims that if I add memory to 4 GB or more, then the option to "restore" to 64bit will show up, even though Toshiba site does not show this model as supporting 64 bit (due to 3GB ram or license limitation?). You might have to buy an upgrade version to gain the option of choosing 32 or 64 bit Win7, so do some checking if you want a 64 bit system. The sound/speaker system is terrible. Besides the speakers sounding like a cheap childs toy, the volume (at max "wheel" adjustment and 100% selection on sound control) is not enough to listen to music, youtube, etc. I had read reviews about poor volume and sound, but thought it couldn't really be that bad..... but it is even worse than described. Sound through earbuds/phones is ok if you don't mind having to carry them with the portable.

Although battery life is short, I have it set on "eco" setting and I get over 2 hours, maybe close to 3 hours, with light usage, such as surfing internet, reading email and help files, typing documents, etc. Since fan only intermittently up to 35% speed with this type usage, I suspect battery time would be much less than 2 hours for high cpu usage games/programs. Over 15GB hard drive is taken up with the hidden recovery partition and the video card uses ram for it's video memory. You can create recovery DVD's, but I haven't determined whether this will actually make recovery DVD's that backup your system at current state (including programs) or just copy the factory setup that is on the recovery partition.

Overall, I decided it will serve my purpose, but be sure you know what features you need. If you want to share/listen to music/youtube etc, plan on using an external speaker or earphones. If you want to utilize the capabilities of 64 bit Win7 to access more memory or run 64 bit software, plan on buying a retail upgrade version.

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I bought this laptop 12/31/09 for at . I am very pleased with my purchase! I had been looking for a laptop for net surfing and to run MS Office so I wanted more than a netbook but didn't need a top of the line machine. I had pretty much decided that an older, single core processor without an optical drive and maybe an 11-14" screen which would fit my price range and needs. I still can't believe I got this laptop for . It has an AMD dual-core processor, is very fast (faster than my desktop, at least) has a wonderful, solid feeling keyboard, beautiful 15.6" screen AND a DVR-W drive. I love the number pad for my soapmaking calculations and for MSOffice.

If there are any downsides, they would be the speakers and battery life. I'm getting about 2.5 hours of battery life but it doesn't bother me. I keep my charger plugged in at my end table and just plug it back up when it's getting low. I don't plan to take it out of the house anyway. The speakers and the volume control are mediocre at best so if you're looking for a machine for multimedia, gaming, or music, it probably wouldn't suit your needs. Unlike other reviewers, I have no problem hearing YouTube videos or audio on websites, it's just that the quality is not that good. I may invest in some external speakers at some point. I do agree with other reviewers that instructions/documentation was somewhat lacking but since mine came from Best Buy, it had been fully optimized by the Geek Squad so all I had to do was plug it in and charge it and it was ready to go.

Overall, I love this laptop!! It's a great buy...go get it!!

Review of Lenovo U310 13.3-Inch Ultrabook (Cherry Blossom Pink)

Customer Ratings:

I bought this laptop on a whim when my acer timeline x broke.

It was the cheapest ultrabook that I've ever seen, $490 is what I paid including shipping.

First of all, this laptop is extremely fast and very attractive in person.

I am NOT disappointed at all. I kept seeing reviews about a wifi issue.. ?

I do not have one. I'm about 60 feet away from my router, and my speed is like lightening.

Anyone considering getting a Windows 8 pc should know to disable the gestures.

It is not the laptop with the problem.. its the windows 8 software that's annoying.

If you swipe the trackpad the wrong way it will pop into something else.

Once I disabled the gestures, I no longer have any issues.

Loving my new ultrabook YAYYYY!

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Edit on Feb 6, 2013: I reduced number of stars from four to three because of a small bug and lenovo has not found a solution for it yet.

If you start using MS Office products, the synpatics touch pad loses its advanced ability to scroll, gestures etc. This makes scrolling very annoying. In general the touch pad program exits and does not come back until you manually restart it from the Program files or restart the computer, and then it loses the ability as soon as you start working on MS Office. There have been several complaints about it online, but it has not been resolved even in the latest update.

End Edit

I bought it on Frys for $598. It is still expensive at most stores. This is a very light and good computer. The battery can actually last for more than 5 hours. I have still not gotten used to Windows 8 so there is no point in reviewing that. The laptop is light and doesn't get warm.

Review of Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop

Customer Ratings:

Simply put, the best laptop I've ever owned. I configured it through Apple with the 128GB SSD and apps install incredibly fast and launch instantly. The screen is a marvel, 1920 X 1200 with LCD backlight. I opted to go with the glossy, so there are some reflections but only when using directly in front of a bright window, otherwise its not a problem (for me anyway).

Bear in mind, this is a BIG laptop...its a tray table...but very sturdy and NO flex in the chassis. The trackpad is also very useable, although I still opted for a mouse (Logitech M555b Bluetooth, highly recommended also).

It doesn't heat up much and has incredible battery life...if I switch to the 9400M integrated graphics (which is fine for most uses), I can get 6 hours on a charge no problem, with WiFi, Bluetooth, brightness at about 60% and the SSD as the primary HD. With a different config YMMV, but I'd bet 5-6 hours is the norm for this machine.

All-in-all, a great laptop. I'll have this 2-3 years no problems.

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This is my second Mac, an upgrade in size and disk capacity from my first Mac, a MacBook Pro 15 with Intel processor. There was nothing whatever wrong with that old Mac after 3 1/2 years I just needed more area on the screen for my work and did not mind the much greater disk capacity of the new model The most telling aspect of my first Mac had been that it never "crashed", unlike generations of PCs I had used. If I managed to do something really "naughty" to my Mac, it sometimes closed a software program but without noticeable loss of data. In stark contrast to my PC days, I never had to scramble to recover data. The worst I ever did was to inadvertently delete some ancient email messages. They proved easily recoverable from the external backup. Yes, initially it took a few hours to re-learn keystrokes that are different on the Mac than on PCs. I saved that back in no time, then received big dividends because my Mac never crashed. It just always works as it is designed to do.

The most amazing experience with the new Mac was the transfer of my "stuff" from old to new Mac. I went at it with some trepidation because it had taken seemingly endless hours to migrate "stuff" from old to new PCs. By contrast, everything had migrated from old Mac to new Mac in less than one hour via firewire and all worked perfectly. By 'everything" I mean not just all data files, records, contact information, photos, calendar, etc.but also all software I had installed on the old Mac. And, everything was exactly where and how I was used to it, and everything worked as it should on my brilliant and larger new Mac. It is now backed up by even greater memory and processor speed, and runs on Snow Leopard which is just as flawlessly reliable as the previous operating system but faster and more efficient, with a few neat new features strewn in.

I can still hardly believe that it took years, no decades, before I got fed up and dumped PCs and their flawed operating systems and incompatible software and data bases for something that works. A student in my family just "took the plunge" to Mac when she inherited my first Mac she is thrilled. Before that I had loaned it to friends decades long PC users who promptly made me a nice offer for it and who have since bought new Macs from the local Apple Store. They are extremely conservative and frugal folks but it did not take them long to figure out that one Mac every decade that always works is better than a new PC every three years that frequently "crashes". Macs serve their owners and serve them well. PCs work sometimes and expect their owners to serve and service them.. Who is master and who slave? There is never a doubt with a Mac!

Best Deals for Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop

One year ago, disgusted by dismal experiences with multiple PC manufacturers (Dell, Acer, among others) in terms of their terrible support for Windows (along with poor hardware reliability issues and very poor servicing of hardware), I took the plunge and decided I would buy a Mac. I basically have to have windows XP because it's required to interface with various hospital systems, but I thought if the Windows partition went down (a virtual guarantee with Windows XP at some point), at least I would have a reliable Mac system as a backup. I expected a far better experience, given the customer service ratings of Apple, which are far better than any PC manufacturer. Little did I know what I was getting into.

The XP partition blue screened on a regular basis, from the first moment it was created. Microsoft of course makes it anything but easy to figure out why XP is bluescreening part of their effort to duck and cover around the OS being a buggy mess. (Any misbehaving driver will bring it down.) And Apple's position on this consistently was that "this is not their problem." Adding insult to injury, I was charged for support by Microshaft (despite this partition being built from a new copy of Windows XP professional). Well, what else is new this is standard PC fare, and the primary reason why so many people are switching to Macs.

What was a revelation was to discover (after using a great little program called BlueScreenView that not even Microsoft was aware of) that the driver causing ALL the blue screens was Apple's proprietary mouse driver for the touchpad/mouse. Even more stunning, I found out that Apple apparently was aware of this all along (12+ months), but failed to contact users, and failed to correct the mouse driver issues for over one year, despite numerous complaints on the part of numerous boot Camp users about the mouse driver causing major problems. Apple's position on this is that all Windows issues have nothing to do with them. That might be true . . . except for the small fact that Apple was writing the XP driver software for the mouse that was causing all the problems. This kind of "it's not my responsibility" attitude is something you expect from Microsoft, or perhaps from Dell, but you don't expect from Apple.

After roughly one year of difficulties (blue screens almost every day or every other day, bringing down the system and causing loss of work and endless grief along with two corrupted C drive partitions), I was able to find a fix for this, no thanks to Apple. It's been a shock to see Apple operate the way that every other big corporation in America appears to operate. The Mac side of course works just fine, but I bought this system to use it primarily as a PC (with Mac OS X capability as a backup). If you are never going to use as a dual OS system, this is a fine computer and OS. However, I would strongly caution anyone against buying an Apple laptop or desktop system if they intend to have serious dual boot capability and intend to use some version of Windows more than 10% of the time. What you'll find is a serious lack of support and a position of complete denial of responsibility by Apple for anything that happens under boot Camp. Although they finally provided a viable mouse driver (hence I upgraded this review from one to two stars), they could have not stonewalled me for a year, and simply admitted that their driver was buggy and crash-prone, but they didn't.

Given that this dual operating system capability has become one of Apple's strong selling cards and responsible for a significant fraction of sales, this position by Apple has to be seen as egregious, and totally unacceptable. My discouraged conclusion is that if you intend to use this system to operate any version of Windows, you have to be aware that you will be on your own. Microsoft will regard all OS issues under BootCamp as Apple's problem, Apple will regard them as Microsoft's problem, and in the final analysis, they are all going to be YOUR problem. Watch out!! (and unfortunately the virtual emulation of Windows under Parallels or VMWare is no solution either earlier versions were massively buggy!!)

I am confident that this review will be unpopular with the Mac faithful (leading to poor ratings!) attacking Apple is about like insulting someone's mother in some people's eyes. Such loyalty is admirable, and speaks to some of Apple's strengths which make this experience all the more puzzling. But for anyone that has struggled with an XP, Vista or (soon) Window 7 partition on a MacBook, this experience should be a MAJOR caution. For those who will never cross into the unreliable and buggy world of Windows on this hardware (a most fortunate majority of owners spared all the headaches of the PC world), this is probably a five star system. But it is striking to see such disparity between Apple on these two sides of an issue (OS X support vs Windows support), and it's really a shame. I had hoped for far better.

Footnote April 2010: After finally getting updated drivers from Apple, I have now have four months go by without a single blue screen of death. For this reason I am updating my rating to three stars. I wish Apple had made the updated mouse/touchpad driver widely available earlier, and had informed users of the fact that this driver was very buggy and crash-prone. The Apple side is a five star product, and between that and the restored functionality of the XP/Windows side, I am changing my overall rating upwards. Hopefully Apple learned something that will ensure that future BootCamp users not have to go through what I went through.

Honest reviews on Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop

Defnitely the best laptop you can buy. It's almost perfect and hats saying a lot considering how great their products are already. They just keep getting better and better, but this machine is so great it will last me a long time before another upgrade. Bravo!

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop

The best and the right decision that I made! I used a friend's mac for couple of hours last month (when he showed off) and immediately realised why MAC was a cut above the rest. When I decided to buy, thought as well should go for the best in the MACBOOK Pro range. I had so many Windows based laptops over the last decade but this I can say is a prized possession! No more crashes, viruses, firewalls, messy uninstalls, painfully slow startups, blue (or black) screens, registry headaches etc.,

After using this, I definitely made a decision not to go back to Windows again. If I did want to use Windows for whatever reason, bootcamp gives the option but not sure why would one want to? After seeing me praise the MAC some of my colleagues have either bought or in the process of buying one. The others who have bought it already say the MAC is 'just awesome!'

If you're reading this with a view to whether you should buy or not, don't waste your time! Just go for it you won't regret your decision.

Best ASUS Republic of Gamers G73JH-A2 17-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black) Deals

Customer Ratings:

In short this computer is amazing. You wont find anything else under $2000 that can beat this. It comes with a standard 2 year warrant and 1 year accidental damage warranty plus a 30 day zero bright dot policy. The included mouse and bag are also great. So far I have been playing crysis and bad company 2(a great game for your new computer) on near full detail with amazing frames with the ati radean 5870(best single graphics card for laptops), 8gb of 1066mhz ram, and the new blazing fast core i7 processor. Although the computer is the size of some 18 inchers, I found that it looked and felt amazing. The whole back, palm rest area, and keys are rubberized which provides a great feel and grip. The keys are also back lit and the speakers on the computer are very loud and provide good audio The one thing I did not like about this computer was the touch pad buttons (not the touchpad its self which is great) are combined under a plastic cover which is really hard to press down on.

Pros:

Best for the price

Back lit keyboard

rubberized feels great

Best single graphics card ati 5870 with 1gb gddr5 ram

8gb of ram is more than enough

Great processor

Cool unique look

and i can just keep going on and on..

Cons:

Touch pad buttons I find hard to press down on

Number pad on keyboard feels squished

Overall 10/10

And as I said before this is the best!

Update after about 3 months

of use

I have already lost nearly all the rubber feet which do not seem attached well (medium problem). The keyboard has a lot of light bleeding through under the ` key (minor). And the worst problems i have experienced, my computer overheats! It shuts its self down randomly and i do not believe that the fan over the CPU is working (very major). I have sent it in for RMA with asus and will post an update later.

If i could change my rating I would give it 3.5-4 stars.

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I had the G73JH-A1 for almost two weeks before it shutdown while playing a game. A web search for G73JH and shutdown showed it could be overheating problems. I installed desktop gadgets that monitored the CPU and GPU and tested by playing various games. While closely watching and frequently checking the GPU temperature, it was generally anywhere from the mid 90s to just over a 100 and at times would reach 107 degrees.

After reading more on the web, I downloaded the FurMark benchmark utility and tried the stability test. In less than 3 minutes, the laptop reached 110 degrees and shut down. If the GPU ran hotter than a "normal" 95 degrees, but remained at a constant 100 or 101 degrees without reaching critical temperature, it might have been acceptable. Perhaps by using a cooling pad and making sure the ambient room temperature wasn't higher than 90 I could do without having to send my G73JH for service. But the fact that a gaming laptop could overheat to shutdown with GPU intensive programs meant an unstable video card.

Just to make sure it wasn't the benchmark utility, I tested it on my desktop computer which has an ATI 5770. It ran at a constant 96 degrees for 15 minutes. A friend installed FurMark on her laptop with an nVidia 360m and it was stable at 85 degrees.

I'm glad this happened during my first 30 days. Instead of having Asus replace the video card or entire laptop with possibly a refurbished one even though I had just purchased it new, I had Amazon issue me a RMA for an exchange. Hopefully there's one in stock when it reaches them because I really did like this laptop and am willing to give it another chance.

Aside from the GPU overheating and having to deal with an exchange, there were some minor cons. I won't bother with what I liked because it's been covered by plenty of other reviews.

The screen is way too glossy, causing lots glare and reflection on the monitor.

After a week the spacebar sometimes made a squeeking noise.

Dedicated volume buttons would have been easier than having to use both hands to press two keys, the Fn + F11 or F12.

I wish the Numlock light was on the right side of the keyboard near the number keys. Instead it's on the left side of the laptop, beside the Capslock key.

On the Numberpad, the right arrow key is under the 1 and the 0 is under the 2. I'm used to pressing 0 with my thumb and have been trying to get used to the shorter 0 key.

The touchpad bar for the mouse buttons is difficult to press. I'm glad I use a separate mouse.

This laptop is so big it doesn't fit in my old 17" laptop case. Asus provides a decent backpack but it's on the thin side and won't hold more than one or two textbooks. Be careful and make sure you buy a laptop case or backpack large enough.

4-stars if the laptop didn't overheat but 3-stars because of the lemon. If Amazon is able to send another for an exchange I'll update this review again when I receive the replacement.

Update July 9, 2010: Received my exchange today. I have to really commend Amazon's return service. It was very easy to request an RMA and they even refunded me the shipping costs for sending it back to them!

After initial setup, the first thing I did was install Furmark and then I held my breath. I can let out a sigh of relief. After 5 minutes it was at 90 degrees, and after 20 minutes this new G73JH-A1 was running at 93 degrees. It might have hit 94 or even 95 but I think 20 minutes was enough to confirm it's stability.

A couple of other things about this laptop:

The included mouse's buttons are very sensitive. My fingers sometimes press a top or side button when I pick it up to move the cursor. Will take a little getting used to since the buttons are so delicate.

I wish Asus had included recovery discs with this laptop. Perhaps it was a cost cutting measure. After all, this is a $1650 laptop that other companies would easily charge $2100 or more. Regardless, I don't mind because if I uninstall the bloatware and run Windows Update, I can have bloat-free updated recovery discs.

Despite all the nitpicking, this is an incredible gaming laptop. Quad-core CPU for future programs and games, 8 gigs of RAM, Blu-Ray player, and one of the best laptop video card currently available, the ATI mobility 5870.

Best Deals for ASUS Republic of Gamers G73JH-A2 17-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black)

You can find a ton of reviews regarding the hardware and you can compare similarly configured gaming notebooks and you'll see that this is HUNDREDs of dollars cheaper. I've had the machine for almost 2 weeks, gaming about 1-2 hrs a day.

Pluses

-have not had a single technical issue

-function keys for volume and brightness do not bring me to the desktop when playing games (like it did my previous HP)

-HDMI to HDTV is plug and play (video and audio)

Now for the Gaming part

I play around with AA (anti-aliasing) from highest and then bring it down until very smooth playability. These are the games I found to push the notebook the most (settings to be very playable at native 1920x1080, I don't use vsync):

Crysis/Crysis Warhead no AA, almost all on High/Gamer settings

Batman Arkham No AA, All Max

RE5 All Max

Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions HDR at medium, No AA, almost all at max

Prototype All max

Wolfenstein All max

Borderlands All max

Red Faction Guerrilla No AA, almost all at max

Just Cause 2 No AA, almost all at max

L4D 1 and 2 All max, even vsysnc

Every other older game (even newer ones), the G73 just breezes through, (such as GoW, UT3, Dark Void, L4D, TR:Underworld), I've found it handles the Unreal engine quite well.

I can't believe how this notebook handles games at 1920x1080. Stays cool and quiet. Audio is pretty decent, even takes care of Prototype's low volume issue (just crank it up!). I've been gaming on laptops for more than 12 years (no space for desktop rigs) and I've never had a gaming laptop, always had to compromise the graphics. Not anymore. Playing at 40-50 frames/sec is surely a welcome change.

Honest reviews on ASUS Republic of Gamers G73JH-A2 17-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black)

OK so I've been using this for about a week now. The laptop was originally preordered in march 8,2010 and was received on march 13,2010...not bad of a wait. A lot of people who preordered on other sites are still in a waiting game. So anyhow let me get on with the review. P.S. to make a summary short the gaming laptop is really a 3 1/2 stars in my opinion but I am hard to please and would recommended this laptop? yes I would.

The casing: The casing is all black with different materials composing the laptops exterior. The top of the laptop has a heavy and thick rubber that feels good to touch, stays cool, looks good and provides some gripe, but the bad thing about it is that it scuffs easily. Now you might not think this is a big deal but when you start to see scuffs on your new laptop out of no where well... the armrest has a different feel from the top of the laptop and less rubbery more like a semi plastic version which is by no means bad. There is a grill that covers the speakers at the top of the keyboard. Because of this there will be a lot of dust that may accumulate there and is hard to clean. There is no volume rocker or other media controls on the outside casing which makes it hard for anyone watching a movie or playing games. Two vents in the back which drives the hot air out and also a couple of vents underneath the laptop to draw in cool air. The panels to the casing is not that good for normal maintenance, what I mean by this is when you have to clean the two fans out which your supposed to do every month or so, it will be difficult because the access is on the top, so you will have to remove the screen and the keyboard to reveal the fans. The bottom side do however have easy access if you want to upgrade rams and hard drives.

screen: the screen is all glass not that edge to edge design but still pretty good. It is very bright... makes my old gateway laptop screen look dark and faded out. It's 1920x1080 resolution is awesome, however if the laptop is ever outside it will produce a annoying glare. Plays bluray movies and game all beautifully. A 2.o Mp webcam sit on the top of the screen.

Keyboard: the keyboard is kind of bad. At around the middle the keys when pressed will flex and the keys will have a kind of spongy feel. There was a guy on youtube who said that it prevented him from typing too fast and I laughed at him, that is until I got my unit and started typing on it. The keyboard in particular has a long response time so when typing there will be a lot of compound words being formed. Is the keyboard durable and will it last? well I think it will last if you take care of it but I highly recommend a external keyboard if you are planning on typing on this laptop alot. Still it sure is nice looking when lit up though, well my friends and family were impress by the look of it anyway. The other bad thing about the keyboard is the arrow keys. For some reason asus grouped them together between the qwerty keys and the number pad so it makes it kind of weird.

performance: well the performance depends on alot of what you do even though it is heavily spec. If you are planning on playing games and running intensive programs on this computer than you will definitely see alot of improvements depending on how old and under spec your computer is now. My old Pentium M gateway is still running strong but when I tried to load up batman arkham... well it was so slow the computer just kind of gave up trying to install. The g73 however loaded in about 15 minutes. When surfing the web Youtube videos loads a few seconds faster and the responsiveness of loading pages are a tad faster as well compared to my old computer. In short if you are planning to use this computer as a hardcore gaming or multimedia entertainment system that I think you will be impressed, but if you just go online and use standard office products well maybe you should just save your money and get a cheaper computer.

track-pad: huge track pad that has multi touch and scrolling feature on the side. Not very well positioned but you can disable it so your thumbs don't accidentally activate it while typing. The track pad itself is smooth and glides easily but the double tap can sometime be unresponsive and the single click button can be hard to use as it takes a bit of pressure to actually click on it.

For me I had to spend about a day deleting bloatwares and tweaking the computer to my preferences. So software wise well once your done you will have a barebone laptop with windows 7 home premium 64 bit and some utilities support. One of the biggest gripe for me was even though there was a ton of useless bloatware there was no bluray playback software. So basically you can't play bluray movies on the laptop from stock. You will have to download 3rd party software like powerdvd or windvd to play movies. Asus free windvd 8 was a bad program and caused a lot of pause and skips during the movie. It does come with trendmicro and windows firewall but I had deleted and use other 3rd party software which they are much better.

The computer stays cool for the most part but summer haven't come yet so I will have to wait and see. The ati graphics card tend to be hotter than the cpu so the fan on the left side gets little more noiser but overall I can't complain about fan noises. For those who wonder if you need to upgrade thermal compounds than the answer is no unless it makes you feel better and you got the money to blow.

There is 2 hard drive both partitoned into 2 parts so when you look under specs it will show up as 4 parts. At 7200rpm the computer booted up in about 45sec. I have seen people upgrade to ssd and boot up in less than 20 sec. But for the price I think I will stick with the 7200rpm seagate hard drives.

ATI HD 5870 mobility runs good and though I have yet to upgrade to 10.3 catalyst the system still plays most games I throw at it with great fps. However the gpu can run pretty hot. For those than wonder if you can upgrade the gpu, well it is no soldered to the board so....?

My laptop came with 8 gigs of Kingston 1333mhz rams so that will probably last for the life of the laptop without a need for upgrade even though you could take it up to 16 gigs. From my use I have not experience any latency problems.

The speakers are good it actually gets pretty loud without distortions but the sub-woofer at the bottom is barely noticeable.

The backpack and mouse that comes with the A1 and A2 are pretty good, for people who said the mouse cannot be use for regular purpose well I have to disagree.

well I doubt I have cover all points since this is my 1st review ever but overall I like this laptop even the keyboard really bothers me and I will have to plug in a external keyboard the machine itself will work great as a gaming and entertainment system. Make sure to have 6 blank dvds to make the recovery disk as Asus did not include one. If you have any question just ask under reply and I will update. Hope this helps

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for ASUS Republic of Gamers G73JH-A2 17-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black)

So here's the things that ASUS did right with the laptop, in my opinion:

1. Didn't make it look absolutely tacky (like their G51 series with some lame graphic on the front).

2. Matte black surfaces (no more fingerprints!).

3. 17.3 backlit LED screen (great colors).

4. Full-size chiclet keyboard (lights up, too).

5. Choice of specs Intel i7-720QM, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB x 2 hard drives.

6. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, which is currently the 2nd fastest graphics card ever made for laptops (only recently superseded by the NVIDIA GTX 480M).

7. Runs almost all games with high-quality settings at 1920x1080 (includes new games, too).

7. 2 megapixel webcam.

8. Great sound system (comes with a subwoofer and is LOUD).

9. Awesome cooling system that works by taking in air from the vents under the screen and directing hot air to the back of the laptop (little fan noise, even at max load)

10. Free backpack and gaming mouse (with adjustable DPI settings).

11. All for under $1799.99 (I got mine for about $1580).

Here's the problems that I have with the laptop:

1. Standard manufacturer bloatware (I removed most of them).

2. Ports for the laptop (no USB 3.0, eSATA however there is HDMI, VGA, 4 x USB 2.0 and card reader).

3. A single rubber bar for the touch pad's left/right click. Lack of tactile feedback and distinction from the left/right button may cause confusion to some users (good thing there's a mouse)

4. Roughly an average of 2 hours for battery life (This is to be expected but I put this here for your reference).

5. No hardware RAID.

Finally, here are some tips if you are buying this laptop:

1. Register with ASUS online immediately after receiving your product. You are entitled to a 2-year warranty for defects and also a 1-year warranty for accidental damages (requires mailing in some paperwork).

2. Update your BIOS to 209 as this fixes some issues with the laptop. For example, BIOS 206 (what mine came with) has a bug where if your laptop is on battery power, the CPU stays underclocked even if you plug in AC power later. You will have to restart to fix this.

3. Go to AMD's website to install the latest drivers for your graphics card.

4. If you install Steam and are experiencing crashes, Creative's audio software may be causing your problems. Uninstall it to see if it solves your problem (Realtek will continue to provide audio support for the laptop).

5. Referencing the cooling system earlier: Since the air intake vents are under the screen, and you're the kind of person who likes to plug in an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, it is not recommended to use the laptop while it's closed.

I hope this review helps you. If you have questions that weren't answered here, Google and NotebookReview are great places to help you. There are many solutions, tips and tweaks to everything related to the G73JH series and they're out there.

Cheap ASUS N53SV-EH71 15.6-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Silver

Customer Ratings:

The quality of this laptop far surpasses its price. In addition to having great specs, this laptop is also really well-built. The fans are silent and efficient. The laptop barely gets warm even under during gaming. The laptop chassis is solid and compact. Th brushed aluminum cover is elegant and does not suffer from fingerprint build-up.

Unlike the earlier version which I returned (n53sv-xe1), EH71 does not have its predecessor's disappointing keyboard flexes. The screen is vivid and bright, but the viewing angle can be a bit better. My only complaint at the moment is the huge, easily scratched plastic screen bezel. I decided not to go with the high resolution model because the text gets a bit too small.

Also, I was amazed at the battery life of this laptop. Using power-saving mode, this laptop lasted 5-6 hours.

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It's unfortunate that they moved the price up to $940. It was $690 when I ordered it and was an awesome deal at that price. I didn't look at too many laptops in the $900 range, but it's probably still a reasonably good deal at that price.

The system runs current games smoothly on "high" settings, and games over a year old run smoothly on the highest settings. So this won't cut it for a die-hard gamer, but it's great for casual gaming.

I quickly upgraded the ram to the 16GB max with 2 of these Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 Memory Module (CT2KIT51264BC1339) (totaling 4 sticks of 4GB). Swapping out the ram took all of 2 minutes. I work from home online and often have several programs running and over 100 tabs open in my web browser. So having enough memory to run smoothly for hours with a heavy load without having to reboot is awesome.

NOTE: Amazon's specs lack detail here. They should point out that the ram is PC3-10600. A lot of laptops in the

Cheap ASUS G51JX-X5 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop PC - Dark

Customer Ratings:

The "ultimate gaming machine :) " arrived in the original box , shipping was very fast as always , but ofcourse it better be , because I had to pay 14$ for shiping.

The laptop had no deffects , no dead pixels( something I was very woried about).

I have been using it for about a week now and I can say that I am impressed . Very fast machine , I wish it came with an XP tho , but thats fixable :D

It does get very hot on the left side , but poor thing is just trying to get the heat out! No problems so far from that except some burned leg hair :D

What's intresting is tha price changeing. I bought it for 1279$ , a few days after I recieved it the price went down to 1150$ , and now it's 1380$ or so. You better time your purchuase or you might end up paying more for something that actualy costs less.

I recomend this product to anybody who is willing to pay that much for a laptop , I couldn't find a better deal.

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I just bought this from a week ago. The $100 rebate is what motivated me to buy this particular one. The cost is $1,150 after the rebate. This is an excellent deal for the type of hardware loaded. I tried to create similarly configred laptops on Dell site and Sony site. The cost was usually over $1500 for the same type of hardware.

I am taking one star off due to three minor issues (1) weight, (2) bulk, and (3) no multi-touch touchpad. I believe Asus could have make this model (15.6" screen) smaller and lighter and put on a multip-touch touchpad. One of the main reasons that I like Asus is its multi-touch touchpad. I had no idea this model does not come with one until I received it. I was somewhat disappointed and thought about returning it a couple of times. But now, I think I can live without a multi-touch touchapd because its touchpad feels quite solid and high quality.

I am no gamer and I may never play any games with it. But, I need a fast CPU (i7 720 QM) that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. I need generous amount of RAM (6 GB). BTW, both the BIOS and CPU-Z reported that it has the 1333 MHz RAM instead the advertized 1066 MHz RAM. I believe this may be arbitrary depending on the supply and cost of RAM at the time of manufacturing. I also need a fast hard drive (7200 RPM). I also want high resolution (1920x1080) to see more content on the screen.

I know its supposedly game-grade graphics capability will go to waste for the way I use it. But it has everything else I want. So, I think I can live with its somewhat cheesy Republic of Gamers deco/logo/lighting on the lid.

Best Deals for ASUS G51JX-X5 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop PC - Dark

Pros:

-----

Well capable machine indeed, I've played Crysis, Battlefield III, Assassin's Creed Revelation and others with no problems, I also have done some 3D rendering with quite a good performance.

Illuminated chiclet keyboard is a plus specially in poorly lit areas, some people would love having a numpad as well.

Screen is beautiful (if you're looking at the right angle!)

Cons/areas of improvement:

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

Keyboard: Well, if you're a gamer (and you ought to be if you're buying a machine like that!) speed is important, and usually if you lose your contact to the arrow buttons it's easy to get back to them on any other keyboard, since usually there's an empty space around the arrow keys in standard keyboards, unfortunately not this one! I mean why ASUS?! why have you chose a keyboard where the arrow buttons for some unknown reason is quite embedded around the rest of the keyboard keys??! now if you're navigating in game menus, or using the arrows in even some word processor you have to actually look to the keyboard to locate them with your eyes. that wasn't a smart choice of the keyboard layout -period-.

It gets HOT! I wouldn't say this is a major con, if you're a gamer you want your machine to perform and you'd expect some heat to get out of it. I'd strongly suggest buying a cooler along with it.

I don't particularly like having the power socket right beside the network socket, they get in the way of each other when you have one plugged and you want to plug the other.

Screen: the vertical viewing angle (screen tilt) is a major setback for me, if you haven't aligned your screen angle at its best you might be missing some wonderful details in the game, or have an overall 'darker' view. Vertical viewing angle should have been worked on before releasing this strong machine.

Sound: Sometimes the speakers aren't loud enough, I think the sound card is capable though as it becomes really loud if you're using headphones. I had a Toshiba Qosmio before and never had this problem. ASUS should have invested a little bit more in the speakers area as well.

Honest reviews on ASUS G51JX-X5 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop PC - Dark

God this was a great laptop! Glad I got it while it was still available. Though my power cord had some kinda fuse thingy and now the adapter wont worked and I dont know how to get a new one! Can anyone help?

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for ASUS G51JX-X5 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop PC - Dark

Came from a Toshiba Satellite I had bought from BestBuy. I returned that for $693.03 as this was my replacement. That had an integrated 4200 mobility and a dual core AMD Phenom II. You can't even play games on that or watch 1080p video smoothly. The screen is 1600x900 and was amazing looking but this 1920x1080 is far better. I can even play games with 60 fps if I'm not greedy with graphics. I'm in the process of switching out this CPU from a 720QM to an 820QM. I only spent up to 10 dollars for the switch. I got an 820QM ES for the price I sold the 720QM. In the future I see I will need the 5870 Mobility. It's far better than the 360M. The watts of my laptop is only 120W max. I can't go higher than the 5870 because the watts would exceed 120W. That Toshiba only had 4GB of ram this has 6GB and is way faster and way more bandwidth. It's also 4 core and 8 thread. Clock for clock it's faster too. The difference was up to $150 for the switch to this. The fact I didn't really spend anything to make it 820QM is a huge plus and the fact I can put a 5870 which is far better than the 460M in the $1,400 laptops today for the same price to upgrade now if I choose is another plus. I'm going to wait until the 5870 price drops then I will get that and put it in. This laptop is MXM 3.0b. You can drop a 580GTX in but it's too bad the powersupply cannot power it.

When I first opened the box and saw how amazing the top cover looked I already knew it was worth it. I even see the keys have backlight and light around the keys that are white which no PC keyboard has and has LEDs on the top cover that light up the side and the logo wow. The feel of the touchpad is amazing and the buttons surrounding it as well. The stickers on the palm rest and the palm rest itself look and feel great. I feel the Toshiba, which was already good, is like a Toyota compared to this BMW. Those who been in both and know the difference between those. Screenshots don't say anything like the real thing. I was very reluctant on buying this laptop. I thought it looks bad. See it in real life and damn. I'm glad I bought it.

Discount ASUS X301A-EB31 13.3-Inch LED Laptop Windows 7 home premium

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List Price: $569.00
Sale Price: $479.95
Today's Bonus: 16% Off

Just got this laptop a couple of weeks ago! The screen is pretty nice (1366x768), because its so small the 1366x768 screen looks pretty crisp. I cant complain about the keyboard its very good, however I would like it to be back-lit! The performance is what I expected it to begood for almost anything except for games, I'm a student so i use it for writing and surfing the web and it does the job well! Battery life is great reaches 5 hours however that depends on how u use it! Its fairly light, its not as light as an ultra book, however its lighter than a typical 14 inch laptop and can be carried in a bag easily. It has a great selection of ports. I would like to add that it looks much smaller and thinner than it does on the above pictures. On the negative side it had a lot of bloatware! I installed a fresh copy of win 8 Pro and now it runs smooth. In addition to that the black version is a fingerprint magnet, i cant say that for the white version. I did have some issues with touch-pad driver and the Bluetooth is nonexistent, but i didn't try installing it because i never use it -I don't know anyone who does! The track pad does the job well, its not a MacBook but its smooth and precise! Otherwise i would recommend it to any student that wants a light laptop with solid battery life.

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At $430, this is definitely the bang for your buck.

* BUILD

Although the frame is constructed entirely out of plastic, it has a sturdy feel to it. It's not flimsy. Not heavy but not ultrabook-light either, pretty thin. However, this thing is a fingerprint magnet. Using rubbing alcohol and wipes removes them. The bottom of the laptop tends to get warm, but this "IceCool" sorcery manages to keep your typing space cool. This laptop does not have an optical drive.

* BATTERY

The battery life is decent you can get a good 4-5 hours of usage. The charger comes in two pieces, the power cord and the adapter. There's no velcro strap :(

* KEYBOARD

The keyboard is very nice chiclet style. No numpad, the home/end keys are nested under the arrows. I'd recommend putting one of those silicone covers over it to prevent dust/crap from getting in.

* POWER

@2.4 GHz & 4 GB of RAM, this will handle all of your basic office/web browsing needs. To give you an idea, I'm running iTunes, Skype, 10 tabs on Firefox, 7 on Chrome and some background processes. This amounts to ~75% of the RAM being used. Should be ok for light gaming (e.x. Minecraft), don't go crazy.

* SOFTWARE

This is where it (and most mass-manufacture brands) sucks. It's loaded with A LOT of bloatware. You can uninstall it manually or just install a fresh copy of Windows (USB boot though; no optical drive).

Additional note(s):

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I was looking for a light weight laptop to get everyday tasks done but didn't want to spend too much money. This felt like it fit the needs perfectly.Alas' once I got the product, it was such a big disappointment. I have used ASUS tablets and thought this laptop will be of similar quality like them. But this laptop is made of plastic and doesn't feel well built at all. Moreover, it takes a while to boot and the key board is not very comfortable. I could go one but whats the point, it ended up going back to Amazon.

Honest reviews on ASUS X301A-EB31 13.3-Inch LED Laptop Windows 7 home premium

Love the fact I could purchase this computer with windows 7... Has been fairly easy to

adjust from windows XP since I am not computer savvy..

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for ASUS X301A-EB31 13.3-Inch LED Laptop Windows 7 home premium

The first item I received came with a defective battery and a defective power source. The laptop would go off after I disconnected the charger, also the touchpad was damaged and not properly attached to the laptop's structure. I then requested an exchange on the same item. The second laptop arrived with a defective monitor, when I turned it on I would only see grayish colors with low brightness and low contrast. That is it; I had a really bad experience with this Asus product and will not be buying any other product with the Asus logo ever. Although I want to point out the excellent costumer service I received from the In-amazon store I purchased the laptop from. They were very responsive and handled the exchange and the refund in a professional way.

Reviews of Gateway Refurbished NV57H43u Notebook PC

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It works well. The CPU is not so powerful because even a very common program can take a lot of its RAM and CPU. It's not fast even if it's a second generation of 64 bit i5. From time to time, you can hear the sound of hard drive. I am always worried about its downplay. I recommend this laptop to those who just use laptop for web browsing and reading.

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This order includes everything besides a monitor and ethernet cable or something to connect it to the internet [wireless card] though I can not say anything abd about it considering the good price for such a good desktop. I'm am satified.

Review of Acer Aspire V5-131-2629 11.6" Laptop (Black)

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List Price: $440.53
Sale Price: $348.23
Today's Bonus: 21% Off

Long story short. I wanted an inexpensive 11.6 inch notebook with Windows 7 to travel with and use in and around my home. I found it with the Acer V5-131-2629.

When I discovered this Windows 7 laptop, I was excited to find that it was still available in mass quantities. In fact, mine was manufactured only a couple of months ago. I really didn't want to go the Windows 8 route for what I was trying to accomplish with this laptop.

This laptop had everything I was looking for; Windows 7 Home Premium, Intel Celeron 1007U 1.5 GHz dual core processor, 11.6" screen (1366x768), 4GB DDR3 ram memory, 500GB hard drive, Intel GMA HD Graphics, WIFI A, G, N and Bluetooth 4.0. It also has three USB ports (2.0) and not 3.0 as advertised along with HDMI, VGA and Ethernet ports. It also comes with a 6-cell lithium ion battery with a battery life of 6.5 hours. The battery does protrude at the bottom of the laptop, but in turn gives it a nice angle to use. You can order a four cell battery replacement if you want a slimmer and flush look to the laptop at the expense of battery life. I ordered one and will use the 6-cell battery as a spare.

The laptop itself has a great design and form factor. If you have seen Acer's Chromebook C710 11.6" laptop, this is the same exact laptop, but in black and the inclusion of Windows 7. The chiclet keyboard and screen are very good. It is very easy to open the back panel for any user upgrades such as upgrading the ram or hard drive to an SSD. All you have to do is remove one screw and slide the back panel off.

After using this laptop, I'm very pleased with it. The Windows Experience Index rates it 4.4 out of the box with no upgrades. It is very fast and has no problems streaming 1080p video. I have noticed no lag at all.

If you want the flexibility of a laptop without the limitations of a tablet, this Acer laptop offers lots of bang and a real good look for the buck. I strongly recommend it.

I have a video of the laptop hands on. Check out my youtube channel HDiNDEMAND.

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I am upgrading to this unit from an Aspire One 751, which was also based on a dual-core Celeron but from the Core2 generation. Other than not being a fan of click pads (industry standard these days) and the lousy internal speakers, it's hard for me to find things about this notebook I don't like, especially considering the $350 price tag. I was surprised to see that Acer didn't cheap out and provided a nice 6-cell battery.

I had pretty specific criteria when considering a replacement for my old model:

-A low-end CULV ivy bridge intel CPU that doesn't produce too much heat

-RAM expansion up to at least 8GB

-11.6" Matte LCD screen

-Windows 7 or Linux

-Decent battery life (4+ hours per charge in real world use)

-Low Cost

This was really the only one out there I could find that met all my demands.

I also learned that Celeron 1007U in this model has Intel HD 2500 graphics, which is supposed to be supported in OSX 10.8, so this could possibly be a good contender for running OSX86.

I'll give this one 4.5/5 stars for the lousy speakers (you get what you pay for)

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Although I only got this laptop this week I am very pleased with it. I was looking for something in between a regular laptop and a tablet and this is it. It only weights about 3 lbs which is perfect. It still has a full keyboard and a 12 inch screen so it is not hard for me to use but it is light to carry around. I did order a case for it. It came easy to set up for a wireless network. I got Skype loaded right away and it is great b/c it has a camera installed so works well with Skype. I wanted Windows 7 and it has that so I am also pleased with that. So far the battery life seems decent and I am trying to keep it charged up for when I leave the house with it.

Honest reviews on Acer Aspire V5-131-2629 11.6" Laptop (Black)

My three plus year old Acer Aspire one Netbook started to cause me problems, slow and overheating.

I found this Acer Aspire V5-131 on Amazon for a good price with Windows 7, which I wanted.

They advertised 3 USB 3 ports. Which it did not have, only 3 USB 2 ports. That is why I gave it only 4 stars.

It seems like a very good Notebook, small with full size keyboard.

Boots in 45 seconds.

Battery life is over 5 hours.

I ran a two hour movie from the hard drive 2 and 1/2 times until the battery dropped to 10%. (a little over 5 hours)

Screen brightness was on at almost full for the duration of my test.

Windows Experience Index is 4.5. Plays, with no problems, all the video types that I tried including .mts files from my camera.

Audio from the small speakers is poor but I expected this.

HDMI work good, Bluetooth works good, and the WiFi sensitivity is good.

I tried converting my camera video (.mts files) to .wmv. Processor ran at 90 to 100 percent and CPU temp never got over 60 C.

I would recommend this laptop it to anyone who needs a simple computer.

You should have good eyesite for this small screen though.

I might install a solid state drive to give it more speed and longer battery life.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Acer Aspire V5-131-2629 11.6" Laptop (Black)

I've had the laptop for a few days, so this is just a first impressions, but it seems pretty good so far. My last laptop was a 17" ASUS gaming machine, which performed admirably, but having since built my own desktop and really settling into the college life, I found myself wanting something smaller and less cumbersome, not to mention that the ASUS had been slowly developing problems ever since I bought it about 4 years ago.

So for this purchase, I was looking for something cheap, mostly as a mobile programming terminal, and this thing performs quite well in that aspect. It's quite small and lightweight, and has some really good battery life. I turned it on this morning at about 11 o'clock to check a few things before going to class and have had it on -or at least asleepever since (for reference, it's about 5:30 and I still have 28% remaining, which the computer claims is still well over an hour). It's certainly better than my old laptop which only just recently (thanks to a driver update) managed to pull just over 2 hours.

The only downsides so far are that the speakers are pretty awful, but then again this should be expected and is easily counteracted by some earbuds or external speakers, and the mousepad is a little hard to use if you have big hands, but I pretty much always carry a wireless mouse with me anyways, so that still hardly an issue.

Overall:

Pros-

* Good battery life (easily 5-6 hours, more if you put it to sleep when not in use and dim the screen)

* Nice keyboard, even for those with large hands

* Decent boot time (takes about 45 seconds or so; could be made faster with an SSD)

* Comes with Windows 7, for those of us that still enjoy the interface

Cons-

* Speakers are bad (but why would you be using them anyway?)

* Touchpad is mediocre and takes some fiddling to work with, but workable

Will update if anything of note comes up.

Buy HP ProBook D8C10UT 15.6' LED Notebook - Intel Core i5 i5-3230M 2.60

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List Price: $799.00
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This laptop made me appreciate my three year old Lenovo nonThinkpad z560. I wish I could buy a new one at its current market value which is about half the price of this HP. There really was no bloatware with this HP so I have no idea what those negative reviews all over Amazon are talking about. I was really worried about buying one of only two American laptop brands left based on those reviews. I didn't find this to be shoddily built at all BUT it is peculiar. The wifi bars are never full, usually at half full but there hasn't been any delay in loading pages so that is mystifying. Is it PRETENDING to be slow?

This is not a good keyboard for gaming with very small arrow keys but I installed the started edition of WOW to test out the graphics and it is fine. This is definitely a laptop for work and it has an AMAZINGLY irritating requirement that you hit the Return key if you wish to "click" on a link when browsing the internet. I'm amazed that something so annoying was actually designed into the system it's like something out of Neil Gaiman's Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

Acer Aspire NX.V6ZAA.010;TMP453-M-6696 15.6-Inch Laptop has the exact same processor, same hard drive but is one hundred dollars cheaper because it is only expandable up to 8gb whereas this one goes up to 16 gb. I do just fine browsing the web on a 1gb Thinkpad.

The upside is that you are Buying American. Acer is Taiwanese and one hundred dollars cheaper. IBM/Lenovo's THINKPAD is fifty dolllars cheaper BUT since 2012, Thinkpads have been made in Japan and they still haven't gotten their story straight about how dangerous/prevalent is the Fukushima radiation.

Check with Crucial or Corsair to determine which RAM set is right for the laptop e.g. Crucial Technology 16GB (2 X 8GB) 204-Pin SODIMM, DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 Memory Module Kit CT2KIT102464BF160B.

This is the B series viz. 6570b and HP ProBook D8E70UT 15.6' LED Notebook Intel Core i5 i5-3230M 2.60 GHz Tungsten seems to be the same build but five dollars MORE because the Windows 8 Pro has not exercised the downgrade rights to Windows 7 Pro that's what it looks like from the HP comparison page.

ETA 9/24/13: Laptops aren't shipped in anything more than original packaging anymore. One of the stickers on this HP's box states:

"This system is preinstalled with Windows 7 Pro software and also comes with a license and media for Windows 8 Pro software. You may only use one version of the Windows software at a time. Switching between versions will require you to uninstall one version and install the other version."

and inside the box, I found five discs in sealed(!) white paper sleeves viz.:

(1) Operating System DVD Windows 7 Professional SP1 32-bit version

(2) Operating System DVD Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit version

(3) Application and Driver Recovery DVD for Windows 7

(4) Operating System DVD Windows 8 Pro[sic] 64-bit version

(5) Application and Driver Recovery DVD for Windows 8

And that feels like Christmas because if I had ordered a laptop from Dell, they would have charged me a few dollars for recovery disks and they wouldn't have given me disc copies of the OS. That's NICE of HP.

According to the sticker on the box, this laptop was made in Chongqing (Sichuan) China home of Kung Pao Chicken, long spouted teapots and much more. The address for returns is in Lavergne, Tennessee which is also the home to Taro Aso's Firestone/Bridgestone. This made me feel better about not buying the more popular, better reviewed Acer because I feel that if Corporate Headquarters is culturally American than the customer service/repair outpost is also American than it feels more coordinated.

The documentation in the box consists of Windows 8 installation instructions and ziploc bag containing an advisement that MMC and xD media cards are not supported by this device, a foldout of notebook accessories, HP worldwide telephone numbers and simple setup instructions (graphic) on glossy paper which do not show an HDMI port which may necessitate the purchase of a USB 3.0 to hdmi adaptor in order to screen the laptop on a bigger screen tv. My three year old Lenovo has an HDMI port and I could have sworn when I was researching this laptop that this had an HDMI.

HP customer support is a nonevent like most of them except Dell. No one answered my weeks old prepurchase email questions but I have never really had any luck with pc support in the nearly 20 years of owning PCs.

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