Best Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook Deals

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $1,199.99
Sale Price: $870.00
Today's Bonus: 27% Off

I've been waiting for a thin, light windows subnotebook that was powerful enough to run modern software. My needs were: small footprint, light weight, >WXGA+ screen, intel core processor, backlit keyboard, USB 3.0. I've owned Vaio Ps, Vaio Us, Viliv N5, Vaio X (this machine sort of replaces that model for me), Toshiba Libretto, Fujitsu U820, Thinkpad 240x, Thinkpad X61. After looking at the various crop of 2nd-gen ultrabooks (Asus UX21a would have been a contender but cannot find it anywhere) I was excited when the 11.6" S7-191 finally showed up on Amazon. This machine is almost perfect. First things first:

LIKES

1. It's gorgeous. 12mm thick. Under 2.3 lb. 1080p touchscreen. Two USB 3.0 ports and microSD slot. First laptop that doesn't completely ape the offerings from the fruit company. I'd say aesthetically it is one of the most original and stunning designs of any PC laptop in the last few years. Fairly restrained, clean design with minimal branding. It feels solid and doesn't flex. Hinge has nice resistance. Build quality is very good. Kudos to Acer.

2. Screen is incredible. I've waited a long time for a high-res screen on an ultraportable and this screen does not disappoint. Fantastic viewing angles. Sharp and bright. Almost too bright (I keep it around 50% most of the time). Photos and videos look amazing. I'd venture to say this is the best screen on any laptop that i've owned. My only nit is I wish it were matte instead of glossy...I'll have to see if there is a screen protector that can solve this. Touch and swipe are accurate and snappy.

3. Keyboard is great for what it is. I'm typing this review on the S7 and although the key travel is a little shallow it's reasonable considering the 12mm thickness of the laptop. There is just enough travel to register the keystroke. It takes a little getting used to but the keyboard has gotten very comfortable to type on i'd say it's as comfortable to type on as my macbook pro. The electroluminescent backlighting is a really nice, soft light blue. Keystrokes register pretty accurately (thankfully, I haven't had any issues with super sensitive keystrokes as reported by some users although i'm sure it affects some keyboards) and the keys themselves are relatively quiet.

4. Performance has been surprisingly good. Cold bootup and shutdown takes seconds. I've run Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, Acrobat 11, Outlook, Sketchup, all perform without a hitch so far. Windows 8 requires a learning curve but it's not bad, coming from Win7. I've also noticed that it seems like the fan barely runs and when it does it's barely audible and the laptop stays cool...barely even gets warm (I can't hear it running as I type this review).

5. Accessories...It's barely mentioned but this configuration includes the following in the beautifully packaged box:

a vinyl/pleather carrying sleeve. It works and i'm glad it's included. Doubles as a nice mousepad.

an extra battery! I'm not sure why it's barely mentioned. It's a little cumbersome to attach and remove, but i'm glad it's an option. The battery can be recharged on it's own, and it seems that when it is attached to the laptop, the laptop will draw the power from the external battery first and then from the internal battery second. There is a battery indicator light that can be pressed on the external battery to indicate the amount of charge left

USB 3.0 to VGA cable

USB 3.0 to ethernet

screen wipe/keyboard cloth

Bluetooth mouse with batteries. I haven't used it yet but i'm glad it's included

DISLIKES

I wish there were more than 4GB of ram. It's been adequate so far but I would have paid extra for 8GB. Also the 128GB SSD seems a little small capacity nowadays. Again, I would have paid extra for at least 256GB. Like the other reviewer, I too bought a 64GB class 10 microSD SanDisk Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card 30MB/s with Adapter SDSDQUA-064G-U46A and it lives permanently in the microSD slot. I also would have liked the i7 option as I know it exists (i've seen it in many videos and i'm pretty sure it's available in other regions, just not in the US). Acer's website is lacking of any information. Keyboard has some odd placements (delete key, tilde, missing function key row so F1-F12 must be accessed using the Fn+ key) but this wasn't a dealbreaker.

What WAS nearly a dealbreaker was the flaky wifi issue that showed up early on. Wifi would disconnect from sleep and would indicate it was connected but websites wouldn't load. After reboots would temporarily fix the problem it'd show up again upon wakeup from sleep or have erratic connections after a few minutes (wifi would show as connected but "limited"). After scouring the internet for solutions, I read about a setting for the Atheros wireless (always on, don't allow computer to disconnect from sleep) and a power setting for wireless (placed on maximum while on battery and while plugged) and I haven't had the flaky wireless issues since (crossing my fingers). Battery life doesn't seem to have taken that much of a hit in this new setting.

So the S7 has met all of my expectations, It's currently the best combination of portability, power and usability for my needs (all specs being equal to most ultrabooks, that 1080p IPS touchscreen plus microSD slot really is what sets it apart from most comparable 11.6" ultrabooks).

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Just a minor update to the review below from a few months back....

I've now been using this machine for a while now and my opinions havent changed all that much except with respect to the battery life. It's really pretty horrible. The secondary external battery is included and doubles the time but are you really going to carry that thing around everywhere? And its somewhat hokey plugging it in. So while I still am impressed with this machine, I really am dissappointed that they would release it with a battery life this short.

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So I've been waiting for an ultrabook like this to come to market. My requirements were size (wanted something smaller than standard 13.3), weight (under 2.5 lbs), touchscreen, and higher res than typical 1368x768

This is a tiny and super lightweight (2.2 lbs) laptop. Very impressive craftmanship and packaging. Almost apple-like. Also included is an external extended battery and a nice faux leather portfolio that perfectly fits the laptop (although not the charger).

Here's what I really like about this machine.

1. Amazing screen resolution 1080p which you would think is almost pointless on an 11.6 inch screen. It's actually pretty awesome. Video looks great. Text is CRYSTAL clear albeit super small. I opted to leave res at 1080p but increased font to 125% (under display settings). That's the perfect setting for me.

2. Touch screen is responsive and pretty accurate not as perfect as an ipad but very respectable. Unfortunately i dont yet find myself taking full advantage of the touch screen since I'm pretty picky about fingerprints. And you def see them after a session of touching the screen. The touch screen has come in handy so far for swiping to diff screens and for scrolling. It's almost like a hybrid experience at this point, like using the best of touch and the best of keyboard/mouse. I hope that moving forward I'll find myself using the touch screen more often since thats what Windows 8 was designed for. Call me an old school PC'er for now but i'm progressing.

3. Screen hinge is very cool. Easy to open to a certain point and then gets rigid after that. Useful since you dont want the screen to push backward while touching it. I will say though that initially opening the screen is a bit difficult since there's very little to get your finger under to lift it up (due to super thin top and botton and how they are flush to each other when closed).

4. The performance is impressive for such a small and lightweight machine. Super fast bootup (obviously due to i5 and SSD drive) and resumes from hibernation (not sleep) in just a few seconds. (Sleep is almost instantaneous)

5. The keyboard is small but actually very usable. Much more so than any other undersized laptop that I've ever owned or used. Its responsive, the keys are solid with great feedback, and they light up automatically when its dark. Literally a bright spot I wasnt expecting.

6. Battery life seems pretty good, but honestly I cant make any judgements about it since I havent really put it through its paces yet. From what I've seen so far, it's on par with what you would expect from today's ultrabooks. Likely somewhere in the middle of the road. The nice thing though is that if I'm in a situation where my battery is running low, I can plug in the little external battery for more juice. I have no idea how long that additional battery is supposed to last but I assume you can get those specs from Acer if you're interested.

Here's what I dont like.

1. SSD is only 128GB. I can live with that but only because I'm forced to. I picked up a 64GB micro SD and that will now permanantly stay in the machine to raise the storage up. I'll be looking forward to higher capacity micro SD's but they dont exist yet as far as I know. I'm told in the spring some time they'll be available. I would have really liked for this machine to include 256GB but it is what it is.

2. There are 2 usb 3.0 ports which is fine but there is a mini hdmi, a micro SD (instead of standard SD), and no ethernet port. They include an adapter for ethernet however. I suppose on a machine this small, thin, and light, you have to sacrifice some ports. Would be nice if I didnt have to though.

3. Edge of the palm rest is a bit sharp. Once in a while I find myself having to adjust my hands so the edge isnt digging into my palm. They prob could have slightly rounded off the edges although understandably that would take away from aesthetics. Still an oversight on Acer's part.

4. The trackpad is great (big, smooth, and responsive) although every once in a while it fails to respond for about a second or so. Hasnt really bothered me yet but that could change over time. Hopefully a driver update will address this.

In summary, there arent a lot of options (in fact I actually dont know of any other than this machine) that meet the criteria for the laptop I was looking for. I assume though that more will be popping up in the coming months (i.e. Surface Pro). This might be the first laptop of its kind but it certainly doesnt disappoint. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that it will be tough for any competitor to top it. It's an amazing technological achievement and I'm very happy with my purchase. Hope this is helpful to anyone considering to pull the trigger but couldnt yet make a decision.

Best Deals for Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook

I've been waiting for a 1080p LCD in a 11-12" form factor and the Acer Aspire S7 does not disappoint. The IPS screen is bright and the colors and angles are excellent. Yes the font is very tiny but I have perfect vision and the fonts can be adjusted in any case. It's the best LCD screen I've ever owned in a laptop. As the other reviews have noted I'm disappointed in the max amount of memory (4 GB). I would've liked to have seen 8 GB but the difference in everyday use for me is negligible. The laptop is plenty fast with the SSD and Windows 8 boots up very quickly although I would have preferred Windows 7. The built-in battery lasts about 3 hours but I haven't tried the add-on battery. The keyboard is ok. Keys are a little flat but the backlight is nice.The touchpad could be better but I'm sure future drivers will take care of that. Nonetheless it is very usable as is the supplied Bluetooth mouse which included 2 x AAA batteries and connected right away. Lastly, the audio sounds awesome for a machine this small. You'll get a nice velvety sleeve to protect your computer. Overall a well worth it machine that I highly recommend.

Honest reviews on Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 11.6-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook

This is a revised review of the acer s7 191 11.3 inch model.

Have had this laptop for over a month now. Can definitely say it is the most asked about laptop I have ever had. While take it out of it's provided acer suede grey envelope sleeve, many people do a double take and many have come right up to me and ask where did I get it from. Many asked if it was a new MacBook pro or MacBook Air. After I tell them about it they are amazed at the brilliance in the screen and the thinnest and solid build and pure simplicity of the design.

The ultrabook is light, very light. The design is much more stunning then the MacBook air, im not just saying this, many of my friends that have a MacBook air admire the design and are envious of the touch capabilities, micro hdmi on the rear (missing on the MacBook air 11 inch), 2 USB 3.0 ports and a provided micro SD card slot (also missing on the MacBook air 11 inch). With the provided VGA adapter and usb Network Adapter (not included with a macbook air) it is an all in one design that just works. Amazing design. Throw in the touch screen and full HD 1080p display and I could not say no. The 128GB storage space may sound small but If you grab a 64GB Micro SD card and have it live inside the MicroSD slot, it is a huge help, also another add-in solution (although it does take up a usb slot) is a nano micro sd adapter that () can help add more storage.

These solutions above do require the purchase of extra cards but save the write loads to the HD and will save it some life over time. A 64GB micro SD card was on sale for 49$ on sale and is very reasonable for use as a download hard drive and file storage. The micro sd usb adapter only accepts 32GB cards but 32 GB cards are extremely cheap now and can be purchased for not more than 15$ on eBay. Again both solutions save the SSD from extra writes and give it more life over time.

Some things I would like to mention, the fan on this laptop will turn on, although it is in no way loud, its something to note, the fan exhausts and intakes from the back so make sure it is not blocked.

It also has a flaky Bluetooth Mouse that has a problem connecting.

There were reports that the wireless adapter drops signals, this was true until they released a newer wifi adapter driver that fixed the issue. Make sure you get it, as long as you have the latest one you should be good.

Secure Boot cannot be disabled on this system, it uses EFI system and uses two 64GB LG SSDs setup in raid 0. The reason why I mentioned that secure boot cannot be disabled is for those who are looking to install Windows 7 and dual boot. Unfortunately, until Acer releases a new bios update that allows the secure boot feature to be disabled, you will not be able to install Linux or Windows 7. This is also true about the 13 inch (391) model.

The brightness, as pointed out earlier uses intel's adaptive brightness feature which is glitchy and will reduce your true brightness, and prevent you from getting to true 100% brightness until you turn off the feature in Control Panel>Power Options>Click on any power option and select "change plan settings" then click "change advanced power settings" from here expand the "Display" category and you should see "Enable adaptive brightness" Turn both settings to "OFF". Do this for all three power profiles, High Performance, Balanced, and Power Saver.

Also something else to mention, the screen, because it is a touch screen, and a beautiful and useful one at that, is prone to attracting dust. Make sure you keep one handy as it collects lint and dust very easily. The screen is made from Gorilla Glass and does not scratch easily but I wouldn't want to test it either.

The keyboard on this ultrabook is very nice. Very simple and clean. As mentioned by others, the F keys are accessible only while pushing the Fn key and the corresponding key. You can turn off the touch pad, mute, put the computer to sleep, rotate the screen, turn off wifi, increase or decrease and also turn off the backlit keyboard as well. One nice feature. Delete key is placed between the space bar and arrow keys, beside the option key.

The sound is amazing on this laptop, the down fire-ring design really immerses you in the sound. You can really tell that it is stereo and with the provided dolby digital home theater software enable, it is not just more immersive, it is noticeably louder and music sounds much more high quality. It is literally amazing and not gimmicky like the older Sound Blaster software found on older PCs. One tip I will add is to disable "volume leveler" and "dialogue enhancer" and enable and "intelligent equalizer" and "surround virtualizer". The sound is amazing and you can adjust three different profiles for quick switching.

Other than that, the battery is not the greatest, I get about 2.5 hours on high performance and 3.5 on power saver and somewhere in between on balanced. The extra battery is kind of cumbersome to use first time, but make sure you take the time to look at how it attaches as doing it wrong could be painful and break or snap the battery if your not careful, it is not flimsy but just a bit cumbersome. It can be charged independently of the laptop which is very nice and also has a visual meter to tell you how much life is left in it. It does pretty good adding an extra 3-4 hours on modest use.

The speed of the ultrabook is also fast and snappy with the provided ssd and is much quicker then my 2009 MacBook air T9800 Dual core 2.6 Ghz Intel Processor. 1080p playback is flawless, looks amazing and clarity and color is great.

The touchpad is multi gesture capable as well and comes with the elan software to configure it.

Other than that, like others have stated, it is a great true laptop, perfect for on the go use. I can carry it one handed without fear of fatigue and is very portable. I thought the 1080p screen would be hard on my eyes but it has really worked out beautifully. Make sure you pick up a nice HD wallpaper from interfacelift.com to really show it off.

I think this laptop, if secure boot could be turned off would get 5 stars no problem, but because it does not allow me to install any other OS's, I will with hold it, but considering not too many people will care it truly is an ultimate portable laptop, the size of the iPad but with much more full capabilities.

Amazingly light, beautifully designed, wonderfully full featured and 100% worth it. Nothing on the market at the moment compares at this form factor and all of its features. Extremely happy with the purchase and have been recommending it to everyone that asks.

I am work for a large technology company at a corporate office and everyone here has been looking to get one as well upon my recommendation.

Thank you amazon and acer! Great Job.

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I've had this laptop 4 days now. First off, I knew the battery life wasn't going to be great, but it's awful! Max of 2.5 hours when web surfing and word processing. It also takes a full 2-2.5 hours to charge it. The advertised life is grossly exaggerated.

The external battery back is not very seamless and looks ugly. I'll add some photos of it. The battery pack doesn't show up as an extra battery in Windows so you can't see the life on it without pressing a little button on the side of the battery. It's also cumbersome to attach. It was definitely an afterthought.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/permalink/mo3UQFB8H829JIG/B009H2CL8Q/ref=cm_ciu_images_pl_link

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/permalink/mo39OIVHVVWYO4W/B009H2CL8Q/ref=cm_ciu_images_pl_link

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/permalink/moBOGEJ4KDTHBG/B009H2CL8Q/ref=cm_ciu_images_pl_link

The wireless issue that others have talked about is certainly a problem. I randomly have my wireless connection stop working about once every 2 hours of use requiring me to turn airplane mode on and off.

The keyboard has extremely low travel. My Microsoft Surface Type keyboard has more movement in the key press. I'm willing to sacrifice that for size, but some may not. I'm a fast touch typist and it hasn't really bothered me. Warning, if you buy this laptop in Canada, you will end up with the french keyboard which has split up the shift and enter keys (not recommended).

The touchscreen is amazing. It works better than I could have hoped for and using a combination of mouse and touch is very efficient on this device. Text can be a little small at times especially for those web browsers (Chrome) and applications that don't scale fonts. This is my first glossy screen laptop and I haven't found it to be annoying yet. In certain light you can see your fingerprints though.

The touchpad is one of the best ones I've used. It's roomy and I like it just as much as the one on my Macbook Air. It responds great, the gestures work, and it clicks nicely. There is no separate right click button, but clicking in the bottom right area will result in a right click.

There are plenty of accessories with this too. A bluetooth mouse, a high quality sleeve, micro(?)-hdmi to VGA and a USB ethernet adapter come with it. The bluetooth mouse it comes with works great for me. It has a notched wheel which I prefer and the wheel is also great as a middle mouse button. See the url below for a photo of the accessories. The slip case also exposes the AC input while stored and will accommodate the external battery too.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/permalink/mo3HVK8EZD8KOI4/B009H2CL8Q/ref=cm_ciu_images_pl_link

The aluminum finish is awesome

The system is very quick, even with only 4gb RAM. My main workstation has an i5 @4.5ghz, 32gb RAM and a high end SSD, but this isn't much slower.

I can't think of any alternative notebooks to this if you want something of similar weight and size with a high res touch-screen display. The Zenbook prime would be a good candidate if they ever come out with the touch-screen version they promised. However, this thing will probably go back to the store for its awful battery life.

Buy HP® Pavilion g6-2106nr 15.6" Laptop 4GB Memory 640GB Hard Drive

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This laptop is a very solid, well built machine that runs very smooth. It has a dual core AMD 2.7ghz processor which delivers pretty good performance overall. The only thing is if you use it for gaming or add more memory you might want a laptop cooler since it does tend to get very hot at times. I recommend adding another 4GB DDR3 memory module (it has 4gb already with 1 more slot free). This will make Windows 7 run alot faster and smoother.

The laptop comes with the A6 AMD built in graphics that has 512 mb onboard and use up to 3.5 gb of system memory to compliment it, for a total of 4gb video memory (512 mb onboard & 3.5gb shared).I played Tomb Raider 2013, Crysis 2, Black OPS 2 and believe it or not, they ran very well! (At medium graphics settings). Movies play very well in High Definition.

So in conclusion I would recommend this laptop for first time users or for users that have a limited budget. Enjoy...

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So far this computer has worked great. No issues. It booted right up and is pretty fast. I am not thrilled with the touchpad. It is fairly large and I tend to touch it with the sides of my hands making the cursor skip around the page. But, overall it is a good value for the price.

Review of Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5076 LED TruBrite 15.6-Inch Laptop

Customer Ratings:

Worth every penny when it comes to looks, performance and display.

I've owned a Dell Inspiron 6400 before this, so my entire review is influenced by my personal experience with that machine.

The Dell I owned was a highly customized laptop with some of the best specs available to me 3 years ago. But the battery sucked. (Only time will tell how good the battery is on this TOSHIBA)

The one thing I miss in my Toshiba is Bluetooth, since I'm used to transferring pictures and taking back up from my phone all the time, over bluetooth. A conenience definitely, but its absence in Toshiba is definitely not a Limitation.

Pros:

The Display is brilliant. At its highest setting, the screen looks bright enough to be able to read even in bright sunlight in a park (not that I do it, but its just an example to give you an idea of how bright it is)

The Multi-touch fingerpad is quite useful once you get used to it. You can tweak its settings from the properties, and I have my 'Right Mouse Button', 'Middle Mouse Button', two finger scrolling, pinch zoom, picture rotation, all set on my fingerpad. I barely have to use the buttons under the finger pad. A lot of other settings enable me to control my mouse pointer like a well seasoned chef playing with a chef's knife!

The processor, albeit a tad noisy, does perform the way it is supposed to. I mean hey, its a Quad core, and so I tested it out by having Firefox and Chrome with 4-5 tabs each open while I played Left 4 Dead. I could never do this on my Inspiron (Core 2 Duo with a 2 GB RAM, but here on TOSHIBA it was a breeze!!! (Touchwood!)

The battery lasts me a good 2.5 3 hours with lots of applications running, some videos, and gaming (all of this at 50% screen brightness) which I think is pretty decent.

I like the little button above the fingerpad which lets me lock/unlock my fingerpad; so if I'm merely typing something, I can avoid mouse interference when my wrist or palm brushes over it mistakenly, by simply pressing that button and locking the mousepad.

Cons:

The fingerpad is placed on the left half of the computer, so using it with my right hand is a little inconvenient. I am ambidextrous so it isn't too big a deal for me, but still I wish it was a little more to the center.

There's no depression or demarcation of the fingerpad from the rest of the body (except that it gets a little rough textured) so my fingers tend to run out of the fingerpad when using it to scroll or do fancy stuff.

A little noisy at times. The fan starts running and doesn't give up... It doesn't happen all the time, and its not a big problem to me, but its just something I noticed. (Considering the fact that there are 4 processors at work here, I think high fan work is expected)

Definitely a finger print magnet.

The keyboard and mousepad buttons seem a little delicate and too plastic-ey!

-Lack of Bluetooth!

Loads of useless software comes pre-installed, but you can always remove it, so its not a major problem to me.

Summary:

Overall, I think this is a very good machine, perfect for someone who is not into extreme computing or super rich!

Good price, more than a decent performance, and good battery life.

I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to buy a nice processor at a nice price!

The reason I've given it 5 stars despite a not too short list of cons is because none of those cons are a deal breaker to me, nor do they even remotely outweigh the pros of this product.

UPDATE (6/4/2011):

The battery life is not so great as i expected initially. It lasts me exactly 2 hours, when using on power saver setting or eco mode. This is not too good specially considering how I don't use a lot of applications at the same time, but mostly browsing. All in all, I say if you don't mind plugging your laptop for charging every now and then, this is a good choice considering its performance. but if portability is even the remotest concerns you have, this one's not the best choice. Would I still buy it, probably not, since there are other laptops with almost as good a performance, but a better battery life at a close enough price.

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I've had it for a couple weeks now, it runs great, the graphics for my video games are awesome, and it was easy set up. I got this machine for gaming, surfing, keeping in touch while traveling. It works perfect for all those things; I have no complaints at this time.

Best Deals for Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5076 LED TruBrite 15.6-Inch Laptop

Pros:

Decent gaming power

Runs Premier Pro with some HD video

Adequate storage space

Relatively fast processing

Cons:

Unreliable-Hard drive failed in less than 5 months. Sent back to toshiba a second time 6 months later to have failed motherboard replaced.

Less than 2 hour battery life. Even when only using an internet browser. Less than an hour if using more than 70% cpu power.

Customer Service Representatives are Outsourced and Incompetent! Several communication errors. Payed $14 dollars for "speedy warranty service". All you really get is next day air shipping to the repair facility. They spend a week on the laptop and sent it back ground. "Speedy service" took a total of 1.5 weeks(in the middle of finals).

Overall: I would strongly recommend against purchasing this laptop.

Honest reviews on Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5076 LED TruBrite 15.6-Inch Laptop

Good laptop with economic price.

However due to AMD cpu, CPU fan is always working to cool down the CPU.

Also Average CPU temp is higher than 50C.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5076 LED TruBrite 15.6-Inch Laptop

Okay, this is the first time we have purchased a computer or laptop that wasn't from Dell, and I guess we picked the wrong computer from toshiba. I totally agree with the other poster that gave this item a 1 star review. We have encounter poor customer service, they tried to get us to buy another warranty for the software saying that was the problem & wouldn't fix it since it was a software problem. We informed them that we had a diagnostic scan & that it was indeed the hardrive... again. They took it & fixed, twice. We have had it back for less than a month & now there is something else wrong with it. We have never had trouble with the other 4 computers/laptops that we have owned.

HP ENVY dv6-7245us AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M 2.30GHz Notebook PC Reviews

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List Price: $799.99
Sale Price: $640.00
Today's Bonus: 20% Off

I picked up this laptop from a local computer store, and I'm loving it so far, the advertised 4 speakers (5 if you include the subwoofer) sounds better tan all my other laptops, maybe it's the beats speakers, or the subwoofers.

I didn't see the finger print reader, so that was a real plus, the hp fingerprint software is fast and easy to use, no problems so far.

The core runs at 1400mhz idle, 2300mhz with a decent workload, and 3100mhz with turbo core/turboboost, it's a A10, which means its a quad core

Details

A10-4600 APU

radeon 7660g APU 3GB dedicated memory

(note that the core and gpu are combined (APU)

6GB (4+2gb) DDR3 1600mhz (PC3-12800) 2 slot

Expandable to 16 gb (2x8gb)

1366x768 (720p hd) screen

640gb 5400rpm HDD

12.7" Sata II DVD (kind of flimsy, convinced me to give it 4/5)

Replaceable with universal 12.7mm caddy (google it)

Full size keyboard, island style (not backlit)

I belive a 720p HD webcam

Dual mics

Power2go 8 included

HELP:

To disable fn keys: settings>change of settings>general>advanced startup, you can acess the bios from there (yess, windows 8 has a bios, it's just well hidden)

Can't connect to network, disable and reanble the wifi adapter va network and shavings center, there seems to be a glitch

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Simply the best computer to get your schoolwork and gaming done in. I purchased this because as a college student things get demanding sometimes and every once in a while you get bored so this is where this baby does the job!

Best Deals for HP ENVY dv6-7245us AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M 2.30GHz Notebook PC

If you need maximum power for a low price this is the way to go. gets schoolwork and gaming done right quick. With the quad core processor you play almost all new games and windows 8 makes it even better.

Honest reviews on HP ENVY dv6-7245us AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M 2.30GHz Notebook PC

I like the laptop. I like the finger print password feature. Makes it easy for me to log on without the hassle of correcting typos.

The colour is fantastic.

6 GB RAM, 5.67 GB Usable. Not bad. Pretty fast at first but have slowed down a little even though I don't have much on it yet.

It's easy to carry, and I absolutely LOVE the audio output from this machine, which is much better than my Toshiba.

It used to stay cool at first. I've had it for about a week and I can already feel the hardware heating up even though I'm not gaming or running demanding applications. I hope this won't be a problem even though I'm using a cooler with it.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the product. I hope it will last.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for HP ENVY dv6-7245us AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M 2.30GHz Notebook PC

Really fast start-up, had it up and running in a few hours. Windows 8 takes some getting used to, but I got the hang of it in 1 use.

Buy NEW ASUS Zenbook Prime 13.3" 1920x1080 FHD Touch-Screen Ultrabook

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List Price: $1,699.99
Sale Price: $1,225.60
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DESIGN

Very sleek, very strong and very lightweight. Asus says, "Inspiring Innovation"? This point is questionable, since it so closely resembles a thin-profile laptop of another OS, but it is a good design nonetheless.

Some people complain that this particular model with a black finish `attracts fingerprints'. Really, it doesn't attract more fingerprints than anything else you touch, but does show them quite prominently. For me, this is very low on the list of complaints, especially since it does not affect `normal use' of the laptop. I may even prefer the black finish to the silver-gray, since it looks more professional.

I would prefer that Asus would make their "ASUS" logo at the bottom of the screen smaller, but this is also a minor point.

DISPLAY

Let's get this out of the way: You're buying this laptop because of its great 1080p screen, right? Make no mistake; Asus has serious build-quality issues with their Zenbook displays. It has been a known issue since the first UX31A models and before, and, unfortunately, they have not fixed it on the latest touch version.

Light bleed is rampant on all of these units, and I have yet to see a Zenbook without light bleed around the edges of the screen. If this is a potential issue for you, do not even consider buying this laptop. For me, I can tolerate (but do not like) this light bleed, so long as it does not interfere with normal use. But on this point--normal use--I have had additional issues. My 1st unit had so much light bleed in the bottom-left and right corners that it caused white backgrounds (word documents, websites, etc.) to appear yellow in those areas, several square inches into the screen on both sides. My 2nd unit had less of the corner yellowing, but a significant orb of uneven backlight in the center of the screen, extending several inches upward. My 3rd unit (and hopefully final) I would call the `least problematic' of the 3, though certainly not perfect by any means. There is some irregularity of the backlighting, and light bleed on the edges, of course, but nothing so jarring that it will prevent me from normal use.

IF you can find one of these laptops that has few enough issues with the display, you may then proceed to enjoy the clarity of the high resolution, 1920 by 1080 pixels. It may be of concern to some that the high resolution might interfere with comfortable use of the computer in Desktop mode. With Windows scaling set at 125%, however, and Google Chrome default zoom also set to 125%, I have not found this to be an issue at all.

The IPS display allows for very good viewing angles, which helps alleviate the age-old problem of constant readjustment of the screen. The brightness is also very good, compensating greatly for the glossiness of the display. A note about brightness: I noticed that the display would `flicker' when on battery power if a screen with a light background was switched to a screen with a dark background (as if dimming, when auto-brightness and adaptive brightness were turned off), and vice versa. It turns out that there is a setting in the Intel Graphics software called "Display Power Saving Technology". I unchecked both of the "Power Conservation Features" in the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel to alleviate this problem.

The hinges on the display are questionable. They allow for easy opening of the screen, which is good, but also tend to allow the display to fall backward once open. Any time I give the computer a good bump or pick it up quickly, the display opens to its full extent. Fortunately the good viewing angles of the IPS screen make this less of an issue.

KEYBOARD

The keyboard is above-average for an Ultrabook. It is not as good as a ThinkPad keyboard, but actually better than the Lenovo Yoga keyboard. The keyboard itself does not flex in the middle, very solid. Key travel is short, but it is pretty crisp. Coming from a ThinkPad myself, the biggest adjustment has been the short travel of the spacebar. Nonetheless, I have found my stride within a few days and now type almost as well on this one as I did on the ThinkPad.

Backlighting on the keyboard is a big plus. As many users have noted, once you have this feature, you will find it hard to go without it. Three levels of brightness allow for some variableness if you like.

The secondary functions of the Function keys (F1 thru F12) require use of the "fn" key on the keyboard. What adds insult to injury is that there are no dedicated volume button elsewhere. So adjusting the volume always requires 2 hands, a big pitfall if you like to keep one hand on an external mouse.

But! There is a remedy... until Asus is willing to fix this. Download and install a key-remapping software (such as KeyTweak), and remap f10 to Mute, f11 to Volume Down, and f12 to Volume Up. You won't have use of those f-keys anymore, but if you're like most users, you probably never used them anyhow. I further did a re-mapping of the Context Menu and Right Control keys to dedicated Home and End keys, respectively, since I use Home/End keys frequently and do not care for them being relegated to second-class functions of the arrows.

TOUCHPAD

The touchpad is average. It is not great, it is not terrible. I find pointing to be pretty accurate, but two-finger scrolling to be abhorrent. Note on this point though: There are currently 3 touchpad drivers available for the UX31A from Asus' website. The oldest of the 3, version 32, has much smoother two-finger scrolling than versions 35 or 36. The newer versions may have more accurate pointing, but worse two-finger scrolling, so pick which is most important to you. I am using version 32 for now, and it works okay. Adding a smooth scrolling extension to your web browser can somewhat improve the experience as well.

The surface of the touchpad is not the smoothest for gliding your finger across. I find it to be a bit 'sticky', even though the surface appears to be smooth. Maybe adding a slight texture to the touchpad would improve the situation.

SOLID STATE DRIVE

It says "128 GB", so how much space do you actually get for you files? Less than 70 GB. It's a shame, really, that over 45% of the supposed space is eaten up from the start. Manufacturers need to become more forthcoming about this truth, and do a better job of partitioning the SSD if possible.

WIRELESS

Unlike the Lenovo Yoga, this model includes a professional-grade dual-band Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 wireless adapter for 802.11agn networks, which supports 5 GHz frequency for reduced wireless congestion. I have not had any issues with wireless performance.

NOISE

One of my favorite features about this laptop is how quiet it is. The fan is running most of the time, though very quietly, even in a silent environment. I was not very impressed with the high noise levels of the fan on the Lenovo Yoga.

WRAP-UP

There are a host of other features on this laptop, but other reviews can provide information on their function. I have documented the particular aspects which I found to be of particular concern. Overall, the positives still outweigh the negatives, and in every respect, this laptop is FAST. I plan to keep it, even though Asus still has a long way to go in fulfilling the second half of their motto, "Persistent Perfection". It still has a lot to offer compared to the competition, and, if they would get their act together with the display defects, I would even recommend it to a friend.

OTHER MODELS CONSIDERED

Lenovo Ideapad Yoga, Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Dell XPS 12

UPDATE 2013-02-11

Overall I am still very pleased with this laptop. I did have an issue with the CTRL key 'sticking', which may have been due to remapping the CTRL key to a dedicated END key. I removed this remapping and reinstalled the keyboard driver and have not had this problem since.

I have also been much more pleased with the touchpad since installing a more generic version of Elantech's touchpad driver available from Acer's (not ASUS's) website. I am currently using the Elantech Touchpad Driver version 11.6.8.001 (found under Acer Aspire S7-391). Touchpad sensitivity is better, palm rejection is better, and overall there are more customization options than what ASUS provides with their touchpad drivers.

UPDATE 2013-03-25

Now using Elan touchpad driver version 11.7.8.5. Pointing is smooth and accurate.

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Amazing notebook. Asus has really stepped upstart with all of its design. It's directly competing with thin MacBook Air, which I almost got but this is what beats the Air:

-screen resolution is 1920x1080, very crisp, bright display

-128GB flash drive

-touchscreen

-windows 8

Here is what I love about this zenbook/:

-all metal, durable design. This is no cheap plastic materials

-glass, touch screen

-ultra cool to touch, silent

-ultra fast USB 3.0, mini HDMI, display port

-only 2lbs

-fast, responsive Windows 8, boots up in 8 seconds, back from sleep in 2 seconds

-good battery life

-comes with a very nice Asus case

Here's what I didn't like:

-only 90GB of free space

-when screen is all black there are light leakage on all sides

-wish the power charger was magnetic or simpler like Vivobook

-bloatware that no average consumer needs

This is by far the best notebook I've ever owned. I've installed Adobe CS6, and it runs like butter. Much better than Samsung quality and even the overpriced Sony. Asus really gets the value, design, and quality. Would recommend to anyone who's looking for an awesome notebook.

Best Deals for NEW ASUS Zenbook Prime 13.3" 1920x1080 FHD Touch-Screen Ultrabook

I travel a lot for my job and I thought I would give an Ultrabook a try with touchscreen capabilities, even though I like my trusty Sony Z series lightweight 13" laptop I've had for 2 years.

Bought this on the road at Best Buy and my initial impression was great until the next 5 hotels and other buildings I used it at. Whenever there was even a 2 to 3 bar signal the wifi slowed way down. I even brought out my aging Sony and my Samsung 10" tablet to be certain it was an issue with the computer and not all the crappy wireless signals you can get at certain hotels. It was this computer. Every time I compared it, it was painfully slower than the other 2. Downloads, and playback of video news stories were constantly stopping and starting, while my Sony and tablet just played and downloaded the same files without a hitch.

So I called tech support, downloaded the latest driver, tweaked the power settings to all max, did it all to no avail. Returned the unit and bought another one a few weeks later thinking maybe it was just "that" Asus, and wanted to give it another chance. Same exact problem occurs at every hotel, and now, even at home with blazing fast wifi (50mbps). As soon as I take it even 20' away from the router it fails miserably in general wifi performance. I am a pretty accomplished techie guy and researched the hell out of this noting wifi adapter strength settings in the power settings that I read in other forums. Nothing works to eliminate this problem. Unfortunately I will be returning this one as well.

Too bad really, because in most other ways this is a great ultrabook, which is why I've been trying so hard to make it work. Just have to wait for something better around he corner.

Honest reviews on NEW ASUS Zenbook Prime 13.3" 1920x1080 FHD Touch-Screen Ultrabook

first of all, i did not purchase this from amazon. i bought mine at bestbuy for $1099. i have also read that this particular ux31a model is a BB exclusive. i thought about leaving my impressions here too. so here we go. i love the screen. it is what got me to buy it. i spilled coffee on my macbook pro 2012 and was deemed unrepairable, so they told me they would exchange it since i bought insurance with it. i was looking at the macbook air 13in as my exchange. but came across the asus UX31A-BHI5T11, the screen caught my attention. wow! stunning screen. and the design is excellent. black, not the typical dull grey. touchscreen made it more appealing (great with windows 8). this laptop is fast and sleek. has great battery life. great keyboard thats on far with the macbooks (just wish it had dedicated brightness and volume controls instead of the FN+key combination). a great replacement for my dead macbook pro. and did i mention i love the screen lol.

the issues i have encountered (reasons why i rate it 4 stars) are:

-FINGERPRINT MAGNET. the color, the texture of this laptop allows so much smudges to appear. fingerprints on the screen is understandable as this is a touchscreen.

-128gb only gives you 60gb free space to work with (im guessing thats because of the windows 8 install (plus boatware) and theres a 20gb space partitioned for recovery thats hidden). this can be removed if you want more space. someone has managed to get 114.24gb

-light bleeding in screen. i have small amounts of light bleeding from the bottom edge of the screen. noticeable on black screens (not to bad on mine). some people reported returning their ux31a because of excessive light bleeding out. and replacement would have tolerable amounts.

-trackpad not as great as the macbooks, but good enough for me. the latest drivers reverses the two finger scrolling (mimicking how the macbooks two finger scroll is...which is what i want). for a windows machine, the trackpad is good. i have not seen a great trackpad on a windows laptop. i also wished asus should have just copied apple with the trackpad. make it bigger and minus the right and left click buttons. more room for finger magics.

-DEFAULT DISPLAY SETTINGS. i found the program POWER4GEAR limiting the screen brightness. adjust the DISPLAY SETTINGS to your liking. i personal turned of the POWER4GEAR. screen is also more on the yellowish (warmer) side. i personal would like it to be whiter. i will update this review if i find a way to get the screen to display whiter whites.

overall, a great windows 8 laptop.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for NEW ASUS Zenbook Prime 13.3" 1920x1080 FHD Touch-Screen Ultrabook

I own ux31A, Love it. Also have 2 ux31E, no comparison. Once you set up the computer, you can make a back up copy of the system onto a flash drive then delete that system back from the hard drive. I have made the back up. but so far not needed the extra space, as i store a lot of stuff on mem sticks .. Volume can really be enhanced in the mixer control panel. My screen bleed is minimal, but mostly only with solid black screen, which is almost never. Two finger scrolling is a bit skippy, I find if i turn the unit OFF once every few days, a lot of things reset, and work better.

Sure this is a copy of the Mac Air, But is not the Mac a copy of other units too, just made smaller?? Cheap memory and new battery storage configurations has made this happen. But and i say But. The Asus is a Windows Computer. not Apple os. I also own a "new" mac air, and never turn it on any more. There is no comparison in the Asus and Samsung series 5 or 9 for battery power usage. The power cord is on the right side, and a bigger plug than the older model so you can feel a bit more secure with it in your lap.

I am not a big fan of Win 8 operating system, I did download Clasic Shell and got my task bar back. Opening a photo in win 8 is still cranky to me. and wish for the win 7 system. I do wish for the old media player..

Travel is great. have been on a couple of trips and the Asus performed as well as if home in my lazy boy.

I do like the unit a lot, and with a lot of trial and errors with many units, have settled on this to be the BEST for ME.

Review of Alienware M14x R2 AM14XR2-7223BK 14.0-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $1,399.99
Sale Price: $1,248.00
Today's Bonus: 11% Off

For your perspective into my review, I am a middle aged professor of Computer Studies that still enjoys gaming and owns several gaming laptops. I received the Alienware M14x R2 laptop in good condition and have been testing it out for the last few days. I will give in this review my first impression of this gaming laptop.

I picked this laptop mainly for it weight and size. Most gaming laptop exceeds 9 pounds this one weighs in at under 7 lbs. with the battery and charger included. Be aware that most sellers list weighs on their laptops without the battery installed or charger included.

Hardware:

Size is 13.25 x 9.5 x 1.5 and the charger is 6 x 3 x 1. (inches)

The M14x R2 included a 750 GB hard drive even though the listing on Amazon stated a 500. It is a 7200 RPM which is faster than the normal 5400 RPM that most laptops have.

The 1366 X 768 resolution 14 inch monitor is clear and sharp. You can run either the integrated graphics (Intel 4000) or the 650m NVidia depending on the application. When using a 14 inch monitor you will not see much difference by going up to a higher resolution. If you want to check out the difference there are several YouTube's that run side by side comparisons to the 768 and 900 resolutions. Really the 1366 X 768 is a sweet spot for 14' monitors. You can always connect it to an external monitor and run it at higher resolutions but for portability the 14 is a good carry size.

The sound on this laptop is best that I have ever found. Uses a Creative labs Soundblaster TRX. I am really impressed with the sound quality from the laptop speakers. With headphones it is even better.

The laptop contains very strong Wi-Fi card. This Wi-Fi picks up signals from down the block that none of my other laptops will and on campus my signal strength is much stronger than before.

Software:

The laptop comes with very little bloat ware. It came with Steam preinstalled, trial version of Office 2013, CyberLink Media Essentials, Creative labs software(for sound card control panel), McAfee antivirus 30 trial, and with Alienware applications that allow you to control the color screens on the keyboard and case. There are 7 zones of lighting and each can be different, set to pulse or morph modes, and can be activated by an application. For example I can have the 2 front case lights pulse red for incoming email or change the colors of the keyboards lights depending on which game I am playing. They can also be turn off.

Windows 8 is installed but it will boot into the desktop after you logon allowing you to skip the normal and very annoying Win 8 Metro screen startup screen. It would have been better in my opinion for a gaming laptop to have Windows 7 installed. I can understand the sales reasons behind installing the newest OS but Win 8 does not play as nice with games as Win 7. The only problems I have encountered in playing games are all traced back to Win 8. I am aware of this from having worked with both operating systems and dealing with my students and their problems. (I teach a class that uses gaming toolsets and creations of game modules). Hopefully these will be corrected in the service packs.

Gaming Benchmarks:

Games I have played in testing: Borderland 2, Metro 2033, Tomb Raider (new release), Skyrim, Bioware Infinite, and Fallout 3 New Vegas. All games played at medium to high resolutions. All these games average 39fps to 60fps. Infinite benchmark tested at high setting with average of 54fps, Tomb Raider benchmark tested using game installed setting and got 39.7fps. At custom setting in Tomb Raider I got up to 45fps easily.

Cons:

Very short battery life as expected with any gaming laptop. The battery is an internal design. You cannot switch out or remove the battery. In running Borderlands 2 in Very High mode I got 63 minutes of play before the 10% battery warning came on. If you run applications that use the integrated graphics only you can get over 2 hours of operations.

The hinges on the lid are more center based instead of being set to the outer edge. They are set 3 inches in from the outer edge. This makes it weaker than other styles. You should never pick up or move your laptop from the lid and always open and close it from the top center. The most common case breakage on laptops is the hinges. I don't see this as a real problem for me since I treat my computers with reasonable care.

There are no easy access panels to swap out hard drives or memory. You have to take the case apart.

Some may think the fan is loud at full loads. It is louder than a normal laptop but not for a gaming laptop. I have an XPS and an Asus M55 which are both louder at similar loads.

Conclusion:

High quality hardware that runs modern games at reasonable and very playable speeds. This laptop is a little high in price for a 14 inch but very portable at this size and weight. If you don't mind a few extra pounds and a larger format then go for the 15 inch Asus or MSI gaming computer for around the same price but with lower specs in some areas such as the processor, hard drives, and video. Don't be misled that larger numbers in video cards mean better performance. A 650m will outperform a 730m in many areas and a 750 takes an enormous power brick to run it. In my opinion, at this time the 650m is one of the best all-around mobile video cards on the market and pair with the 3630Q i7 CPU and a 750GB hard drive make this a solid laptop in this price range.

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looks great, runs perfectly, and i love the rainbow keyboard, it is better than what I was expecting!! great buy

Best Deals for Alienware M14x R2 AM14XR2-7223BK 14.0-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black

Okay just to start things off I was a MacBook Pro guy for over 4 years, and well loved almost every moment of it.

But I hated not having great specs but they were built really well.

My last MacBook Pro was a 13.3" and my M14X makes that computer look like a useless paper weight. I mean that too, I was so happy when I went to a local store and played with this computer for the first time. I was blown away by how amazing it was.

Alienware does have a somewhat bad reputation of being overpriced. Honestly I feel like it was money well spent. I bought mine at a local store for $1,118 after tax! The specs and build quality are top notch! Do not hesitate to buy this amazing machine!

Things I really like about it:

The Build quality is amazing! I know it is not the pretty aluminum that my old MBP had but still I honestly like the feel of this much more! It feels like it has a rubbery feel to it.

The keyboard is amazing I really love the feel of it, very responsive and not loud at all! Yes I do love the AlienFX too! I was glad I could put my own little spin on my Laptop it really draws some attention too.

The trackpad is great I really like it.

Tons of ports something I really didn't have on my MBP

Screen is really nice I honestly think it looks better than my old mbp.

The battery is decent I mean it is a gaming laptop

I can run all my favorite games at high spec with no problem, Dead Island, Crysis 2, Saints row 3, fallout, Left For Dead 2, Borderlands 2, I mean I can run everything I have tried and never been disappointed in the performance.

Specs on my Exact unit:

Intel Core i7 3610QM

16gb of ram

500gb hdd @7200rpm

2gb Nividia Geforce GT 60M

BUY THIS LAPTOP YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honest reviews on Alienware M14x R2 AM14XR2-7223BK 14.0-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black

I've been a Dell customer for over 10 years. Purchased an Alienware M14x R2 February 2013 to replace my old Alienware M11x. I loved everything about it... until a month ago. Less than 6 months after spending close to $1,700 on a top of the line gaming computer, which was extremely well taken care, it broke. During late June/early July I noticed that the left hinge was getting stuck and making a popping sound whenever the laptop was closed and/or opened. Two weeks after the noise/problem began, the left hinge popped out of place and split the case (around the screen) apart. The laptop still worked fine, however, I decided to call Dell customer service and get it fixed. It is after all a six month old laptop, that is still under warranty until 2015. Apparently I was wrong. Yes, it's under warranty. But after customer support checked it, they informed me that the repair is not covered under the warranty that I have (apparently I needed the complete customer subscription). I asked what could cause a hinge on a laptop, which is less than 6 months old, to break and was told that it was MY fault. That I mishandled the laptop and that I have to pay for them to fix it. I was also informed that there have been no complaints (at all) on the M14x hinges, however, a quick search on Google will show that this is not the case. There are hundreds of other complaints, which Dell has chosen to ignore. This is the first time that I've had problems with Dell customer service. I never expected to pay top dollar for a "quality" laptop and have it break so quickly from normal wear and tear. Do yourself a favor and do a quick search on "Alienware M14x hinge" and decided for yourself. I'm personally never again purchasing from Dell. I rather take my money and business to a retailer that listens to their customers and sells a quality product.

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Alienware M14x R2 AM14XR2-7223BK 14.0-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black

This is my 3rd Alienware and boy did they hit the nail on the head here. This is a fantastic piece of equipment for gamers. Rumor is that this model is out of production and the new one they made is cheaper in materials and performance lacks. So get this one before they run out! Highly recommend! Cheers :)

Reviews of Acer Aspire V5-552G-X414 15.6-inch Laptop (Cold Steel)

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $629.99
Sale Price: $599.99
Today's Bonus: 5% Off

To start off, this laptop has good build and high grade plastic surface. It feels sleek and slim much akin to a Macbook pro. From a distance, it can be mistaken as a Macbook. The laptop, although slim, surprisingly packs a great deal of power for most recent games.

Pros: The A10 processor is built for powerful performance paired with Radeon 8750M with a DEDICATED 2GB memory. As seen on Youtube, this laptop can play 30 fps on FarCry 3 on high settings, 30 fps on Battlefield 3 medium settings, and Max setting on Team Fortress 2 or any older games. I've been playing Starcraft 2 and Team Fortress 2 on max settings with no issue.

*Be sure to update the video driver to Radeon Catalyst 13.8 Beta, it will give at least 20 more fps.

I tried to order this exact laptop from Newegg previously as next day shipping but it took them 5 days and they never shipped the laptop. I cancelled the order immediately, ordered the laptop from Amazon for next day shipping, it arrived on time in one day! NEVER buy from Newegg, shipping and processing is a joke, they are no match to Amazon!

Cons: There aren't much cons to the laptop in general, the keyboard is an exact replica of the Macbook pro. It may frighten PC elitists at first but it works and functions well. The laptop has a weak battery, expect to keep it plugged in. It will automatically boost performance for gaming, might as well keep it plugged in at all times.

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Let me start this by saying I have a personal bias against Acer laptops.

Back in college I owned an expensive Acer netbook (expensive for a netbook, I mean), and it had a cheap plastic shell that was flimsy and the processor was prone to overheating. The heat was so bad that over time the netbook warped slightly. I was in the market for a laptop after said netbook's hinge snapped off from daily use. Granted, it took it nearly 3 years to bust. I thought/hoped a more expensive and premium product from Acer would not have this problem, but I'll save that for later.

I have been all over this machine in the last 5 hours I've had it. I've run tests, played games and checked temperatures. Here's what I have to say.

Performance Pros:

I have an Intel desktop with an i5-2500k at 4.8ghz, and merely just browsing the web or watching video, I can't tell any difference between it and this laptop. It just simply works. I know AMD's quad-core A10 APUs just barely stand their ground against Intel's dual core sandy bridge chips, but it's still more performance than most people need for their daily facebook rituals. The Radeon 8750m was better than I expected, and can even work in conjunction with the integrated graphics to boost performance.

Minecraft was snappy and responsive, Phantasy Star Online 2's benchmark hit an adequate 2600 in medium settings, Bioshock Infinite was playable at medium settings and their wasn't enough stuttering that I couldn't handle it. Blacklight Retribution played solidly. If you're going to play WoW or any number of older hardcore or newer casual games, this'll play them great at medium settings. It even plays Farcry 3 at low settings.

It is easy to switch between the iGPU and dedicated GPU and choose which applications do so automatically. Hybrid crossfire is easily disabled.

Performance cons:

As easy as it is too see which graphics are running, integrated or dedicated, it's very hard to see when hybrid crossfire is active. Even when only the Radeon 8750m is being used, you can still see spikes in activity from the iGPU.

The system is also picky over which games get the crossfire working, more often than not I found I was only using the dedicated card or iGPU, not both. When you do get hybrid crossfire working, the performance boost can vary greatly from game to game, even with the latest Catalyst 13.8 beta drivers. This inconsistency is a turn off and I recommend sticking with just the iGPU for light gaming (minecraft, Valve's source games) and dedicated GPU for the heavier stuff. Also, the dedicated Radeon 8750m, despite using AMD's latest GCN architecture and having dedicated memory with a nice clock speed advantage, isn't too much faster than the iGPU. I found the iGPU only to be about 20% slower, but in the range we're dealing with, that's not a whole lot. Rather than say the Radeon 8750m disappoints me, it doesn't, I'd like to think the Radeon 8650G iGPU surprises me. Acer could have made this a much better gaming platform with the GDDR5 version of the Radeon 8750m and dropping the dual graphics gimmick, as having the memory run twice as fast generally leads to much better performance.

Build Pros:

The screen is vibrant and has no dark spots that stick out like a sore thumb. Most of the shell feels solid and not flimsy and best of all, heat is vented out the back of the laptop and not to the sides where your arms could be. The internals only got as hot as 75c for both the dedicated GPU and the APU, and all the heat is concentrated in the back of the laptop, not the front where you rest your palms. This was a very good design move and one of the most appealing aspects of this systemhappy hands. I don't miss the lack of DVD drive as I download most of my games and music or stream them from the cloud.

Build Cons:

I hate the keyboard. The keys just barely stick out from the shell and require little pressure. If this was your first computer and you didn't know any better, you may come to prefer this style over all others, but to those of us that have used computers all our lives, this will take time to get used to. I can't say after the time I've spent with the machine I'm a fan of it.

As I stated previously, most of this machine feels solid. Most of it. I was simpy removing the protective tape the manufacturer places along the plastic rim of the monitor and ripped off said rim around the lower left corner, also taking the inner hinge covering with it. The plastic bordering the screen is VERY flimsy toward the bottom and I advise slowly and cautiously removing the protective tape rather than give it a quick pull like I did. Now I have a laptop with a partially detached hinge cover and loose screen rim. So much for premium cost equaling premium build. This was probably a simple oversight by Acer's design team, but this should be corrected as soon as possible. Unless my unit had a faulty screen or it was left loose on accident when it left the manufacturer, I'm sure I won't be alone in screen rim problems.

Also, one stick of ram is SOLDERED into place. The most ram this laptop can handle therefore is 12gb, not 16. This seems like an odd choice to me, but most people won't need more than the provided 6gb.

Oh, and I don't like the touch pad. It's big and roomy, but I like to leave a finger on the left clicker and doing so confuses the movement of the pointer. I wish the buttons were seperate from the touchpad. I also found the right click to be finicky and only work when you press toward the center and not the outer edge.

Overall:

Maybe I'm still recovering from the shock of nearly ripping off the edge of my screen, but I'm not completely happy with this laptop and returning it as faulty. Don't get me wrong, performance-wise it fulfills all my needs. This computer shows no sign of potential overheating problems after hours of gaming and stays pretty cool, but if just removing the protective tape around the screen can detach the rim, I don't want to know what other surprises are waiting for me in the long run. I don't take chances with $630 purchases. It's just that I've had Acer before. I've had build quality issues with them before. Well no more.

Other notes:

As advertised, this comes with AMD's second best mobile APU, the A10-5757m. Yes, second best. The best is the A10-5750m. What's the difference? The A10-5750m is unique amongst AMD's APU lineup in that it can take 1866mhz ram, allowing better integrated graphics performance. A10-5757m only takes up to 1600mhz, which is exactly what Acer uses in this laptop. The difference is almost negligible in perceived performance when gaming with the iGPU, so it's hard to complain. It's not going to make the unplayable playable. Just know you can't upgrade to faster ram or adjust ram timings/settings in the BIOS, Acer has that completely locked down. Accessing the BIOS also takes some finesse and is required to install an OS other than Windows 8, but it can be done.

Oh, and while this laptop can support a mini-display port monitor and an HDMI monitor, I miss the VGA port option, but this can be remedied with an active adapter.

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Unfortunately, I forgot to note that this computer doesn't have a disk tray before I bought it. Nothing that's too difficult to work with, and it's definitely my fault for missing that, but just a note. Otherwise, computer is great. Very sleek, very fast. Great for gaming.

Honest reviews on Acer Aspire V5-552G-X414 15.6-inch Laptop (Cold Steel)

Pros: Good performance in CPU/GPU and good battery duration. Memory and hard drive must be sufficient for most users.

Better with a memory upgrade.

Cons: The shell seems to be fragile.

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I agree with the previous reviewer about the keyboard issue, it does take a bit of getting used to. The screen can feel a little climsy sometimes, but its fine and i have no hinge/frame problems so far. So far I've only used it to play Civilization V, which is more of a CPU rather than GPU game, and it ran the game fine on the automated settings (Medium-High). I'm going to intall CODMW3 on it and see how it performs :) the battery life is a downer though, can't do much unplugged (study at a coffee shop, having a long skype video call, etc...)

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Customer Ratings:

The ability to place the screen right behind the keyboard keys is what makes the touchscreen really user friendly. The keyboard placement itself is also easier on the hands for typing. I can see how reading pdf files in "tablet mode" will also be really helpful, especially for material with tables that are often too small to read. I didn't realize until just a few minutes ago that I can turn this machine on its side to get a "portrait mode" for reading documents. I will be using this in a classroom where the adjustability will come in handy to more easily access the screen while standing and while the computer is placed on a tv cart shelf that's at about counter height. I'm excited about this machine. I've got the features of my Note 8 tablet merged into a very cool laptop.

I purchased mine from Best Buy because I needed it right away to replace a 2-year old Lenova that's got a failing hard drive.

Update: You'll need a mouse for this thing because the touchpad is a little weird (for me anyway) and the touchscreen doesn't always work for certain links I've tried getting into or that are too awkwardly spaced to click on with accuracy. I still will keep the 5 star rating because this thing is still an awesome machine and the touchscreen has worked for most things that I do. I thought I'd have issue with the lack of a 10-key pad, but the touchscreen keypad has worked just fine for everything I've done so far. Still, it's something to consider for people who do tons of data entry.

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I love this laptop because the special Eazel hinge makes screen adjustment and positioning so, so comfortable. Just what I wanted in a convertible. I've had it about three months now. I went from a souped-up Lenovo laptop (ThinkPad series) to this. The R7's large 1080 touchscreen is simply gorgeous and just right for Windows 8.

The keyboard is backlit--a deal-breaker for me, which had knocked out some earlier convertibles (e.g. the Yoga). But it's true what people say about the keyboard's space button: it mis-strokes unless you learn to press it near the top of key, as opposed to lazily pressing near the bottom edge. So that's a slight adjustment I had to make as I began to use it.

Other than that, I love this laptop. Mainly b/c I work and play on it long hours and I move around as I do. The adjustable hinge allows the laptop to adjust to me---tilting the screen higher, lower, changing angles, coming forward towards me, back away from me---as I move around from sitting straight up, to more of a slouch, to laying down, whatever. *I SO HOPE ACER KEEPS THIS HINGE IN THEIR CONVERTIBLE DESIGNS*, but they probably won't b/c high powered reviewers squawked too much about the repositioned track pad. I never use the track pad and use the touchscreen + a wireless mouse instead (which can wire up on airplane if needed), so the track pad is a non-issue. I would trade the repositioned track pad for a more comfortable working and browsing experience any day. The components are standard-to-above for this price point. You get *a lot* for your money here.

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Hey there,

I really dig the Acer Aspire R7. I love my tablet but wanted the full CPU power of a regular laptop and this is it. I did buy at Best Buy as they were much cheaper for some reason.

While investigating the R7 it was everything I was hoping for. Nice processor/RAM, touch screen, tablet convertible... perfect! I almost went with an ASUS "something or other" which was very nice but in comparing I discovered the R7 had the better screen resolution and the speakers on the R7 are quite good. I've never had a laptop with excellent speakers so that was an unexpected bonus.

I spoke with 3 Best Buy associates and they all tried to talk me out of the R7. They were quite adamant I might add. Here's why they didn't like the R7... The screen doesn't fold flat (true), the keyboard is in the front... That's it! They were horrified by the configuration.

Here's why their "dings" on the R7 were actually a benefit for me... I thought the keyboard in the front was brilliant! I always disable the touch pad because I end up deleting huge paragraphs of info without even realizing it. Even with auto save it's hard to get back info I typed 30 minutes ago that got highlighted and backspaced out of existence when I wasn't looking. Gah! Not with this rig! I can leave the touch pad on and jump on it as needed and it is never in the way. I have long fingers and I like to rest my hands in front of the keyboard, off of the laptop when typing. I wasn't sure how that was going to go but I found it to be a better typing experience on a table and in my lap. I'm thinking that some folks may not like the keyboard up front but it was an improvement for me.

Part 2 is the fact that the screen does not fold flat in the tablet configuration. I have to admit I was in the store 3 hours messing with the R7, comparing it to other convertibles and it did bother me but I decided it was still in a configuration I could use as a tablet anyway so I bought it. In reality the partly open tablet configuration turned out be be a bonus! Seriously!

With the slightly raised top it gives me a place to hold the computer without having to put my fingers on the screen. You can get a good grip too. Who knew? When I found myself carrying the R7 around the house with my music blaring and the sports/politics news updates running wild, I kinda smiled and realized that the gap at the top was a very lucky move by Acer. At least for me anyway. I can't imagine that was on purpose but who knows? The flat convertibles do look very slick with the flat fold down. If you need that look then by all means get the flat rig. However, once the functionality of the slightly open top comes into play when toting this rig around you will love it. Promise! :-)

Note that as a tablet the R7 does feel a little heavy. I am 6'5" 220 so I swing it around the house no problem but for the Shire folk (Hobbit reference for fun) or the lovely, dainty ladies this probably isn't your best bet if you are looking to carry it around like your tablet.

I'm not much of a gamer (I dabble just a little) but I'm thinking this wouldn't be great for that. However, video, audio, multitasking, ergonomics etc. are fantastic. The coolest (temperature-wise) running rig I've ever had by far. I like the thin profile. Note that the arm that holds the screen is very firm and sturdy. I was concerned that it would be "floppy" but it is quite the opposite. It feels very high quality.

No DVD bay. With that, I have needed to load software from a CD but so far I've found all the software online. So no problems there. I'm sure there could be something that is not online so we'll see how that goes if that occurs.

In summary, it's a nice laptop as performance goes. Very well rounded with the resolution and speakers. Nice high quality "feel." I mostly use it as a laptop (in my lap, sometimes on a table) and as a tablet about 2-3 times a week. Probably not a MMORPG rig but video, audio and the rest is outstanding. Plus, I think the chicks dig the flipping screen thing. They know who they are. :-)

If you agree with the keyboard/touch pad comments and the configuration comments, and looking for a nice convertible laptop I think you are going to love the R7 like I do. Best rig I've had by far.

Thank you,

Rob

Honest reviews on Acer 15.6" Laptop 6GB 500GB + 24GB | R7-571-6858

I purchased mine from best buy which is a few hundred dollars cheaper but I LOVE MY NOTEBOOK!!! My goal was to find something with the keyboard across the front edge and the tough pad in the back. This FLAW in every other laptop prevented me from purchasing another after the disaster of my first laptop. It's just more ergonomically correct to have the keyboard up front! Anyways, I'm using it now to write this review and as long as this machine runs, I can't see myself ever getting a different one!

The second best feature (after the wonderfully placed keyboard) is the tilt screen. It can really be used in "tablet" mode. Over all this is a wonderful product and I would gladly purchase it over and over again. And if I had a problem with any replacement, I'd buy it from a different seller!

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ive never wrote a review before but I was really on the fence about this laptop for over 3 weeks.i read all the bad stuff ppl had to say bout losing connection. my worked fine right out the box.i love it I just wished I would have gotten it sooner.so don't believe all the hype ppl talk trash.thanks

Reviews of Dell Inspiron 17R i17R-1842sLV 17.3-Inch Laptop Core i7-3632QM

Customer Ratings:

AWESOME! Of all the laptops I've had, this is by far the best. It's well constructed and sturdy. Our almost 80 pound dog walked across the screen and there was NO damage. This Dell runs Quiet....no whirring wizzing or loud fan sound. The keyboard is very quiet when I am using it: no click-clack, plus the number pad is a great addtion. The on/off key is well placed and the mouse works well.

Now, Windows 8: It is great once it is set-up to your liking. It has an Apple-esque feel to it, but not quite there yet. If you do not like the new Windows, you can always convert back to the regular old-school Icons by hitting the desk top key.

This Dell has been a very good purchase for me. Dude, I got a Dell!!!

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I should have paid more attention to the reviews, but this computer had everything I was looking for at a decent price. It was great for six months until it wouldn't boot on startup. I talked with tech support, and was instructed to send the computer to Dell for repair. The last update on the Dell site said that the part needed to repair the computer wasn't in stock and that there is no timeframe on when it will be repaired. Dell never even tried to contact me about this issue. It's bad enough that the computer quit working, but I'm extremely displeased with Dell's customer service.

Update: I finally got my computer back. I contacted Dell through their Facebook page. The gentlemen I corresponded with looked into it and kept me in the loop with what was going on. I haven't had any trouble with it since. It's a great computer as long as it works.

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I love the computer. Not sure how I feel about windows 8 yet. That will hopefully get better in time. Thank you very much.

Honest reviews on Dell Inspiron 17R i17R-1842sLV 17.3-Inch Laptop Core i7-3632QM

Got this laptop and like it. The video is awesome with 17 inch screen and it is super fast. Overall a great laptop!

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it's a very great laptop, and it has no problems and run s fast and good, it's the best computer ever!!!!!

Reviews of hp 2000-427cl laptop--AMD Dual-Core E-450 Accelerated Processor

Customer Ratings:

Is this the most advanced laptop available, No, but it is a Great laptop for how little it costs! Great Value!

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The vendor did not send me the correct PC. It was a less powerful PC. Doubt they did it on purpose. Ended up with a deal on a Dell 5110 purchased 10-2-2012 from another vendor, not on/from Amazon. Having the hard drive in that replaced this week free under warranty. Purchased thru LogicBuy. THAT machine is a very nice unit. In spite of the defective hard drive. 1 TG/500GB

Reviews of ASUS Taichi 21-DH51 11.6-Inch Convertible Touch Ultrabook

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $1,099.00
Sale Price: $879.65
Today's Bonus: 20% Off

UPDATED ON 6/9/2013

This is a quick update of how things have evolved with the Taichi and I guess a final feeling after five months of use.

-So far I haven't had any technical issues, the laptop is holding up very well. I even dropped it on its side once and it dented the housing but the screens didn't break and all works fine. Lucky break I think, this is not a laptop you should be dropping for sure!

-I'm still getting 3 to 4 hours of battery life, so I haven't seen any degradation, which is great because I'm plugged in must of the time and I was afraid of battery degradation and no way to replace it. It's only five months though, we'll have to see.

-I haven't seen many software upgrades from Asus, so what was buggy is still buggy. Like the palm rejection when using the pen, that's still there, I thought I had fixed it but nah, let's not kid ourselves, I have even stopped using my pen as much because it's just not as great of a experience as I'm used to. With that said, it's good to have the pen for signing things and what not, but I wouldn't recommend it for prolonged note taking.

-My gripes with the Asus management software kind of went away, no more brightness issues, etc.

All my other comments remain. I still love this laptop and don't think, even to this day, that there's anything better on the market for my needs. I hope they make a new version and keep improving on this design over the years, I would certainly love to buy a new one in another couple of years with longer battery life, better digitizer and a bigger SSD.

Written in January 2013

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

I ordered my Taichi just two days ago from us.ncix and they supposedly only had one in stock which I luckily got overnighted to me. They were top notch with service and went the extra mile for me by shipping the item right away and even making a special trip to UPS to make sure I got it the next day as the pick up for that day had already been done.

Now onto the Taichi.

Pros

-It's a great laptop all around, as long as you can live with some cons.

-The keyboard is outstanding. I type a lot, all day long really, and the keyboard couldn't be better. And this coming from a Thinkpad owner of 10 years.

-The touchpad is flawless, it works like a charm. I've never used a touchpad this good. I think it's pretty on par with mac touchpads, both on desktop and modern areas of Windows 8.

-The build quality seems top notch and it's a gorgeous piece of hardware. Sure, you have to handle it with care because of the screen on the lid but overall it's a great build.

-The 1080p Screens are top notch, the viewing angles are great, the colors look great, the text is sharp, a lot to like there.

-UPDATED: The size is good for a laptop. Enough space for a great keyboard. I got good vision, but the screen on desktop is very useable at 1080p resolution. I don't have to zoom or anything, that said, I am young and have great vision. My IE browser seems to be auto zoomed in to 125% and thus I didn't have any issues reading web pages, however, after installing chrome I see that at 100% zoom you really can't browse the net, it's too small. The 125% zoom works well though, and everything in the desktop looks good.

-The lid collects finger prints but you can't really see them from a far, so that's great because I was concerned about the laptop looking bad all the time due to finger prints.

-It has a tablet on the lid! Sure, this is not your light and small ipad, but it works well, the colors are great and I do plan to replace my tablet and laptop with this one device.

-Backlit keyboard. This is a huge pro for me and one of my requirements.

-Comes with a good quality laptop sleeve, VGA and Ethernet adapter. That's $100 in accessories right there.

-Comes with a one year accidental projection damage warranty, that's another added value/bonus there.

Cons

-UPDATED: Battery life. After some use, I seem to get from 3 to 4 hours of battery life while working full steam, typing, listening to music on headphones, backlit keyboard on, wifi and Bluetooth on and screen in medium brightness or so. If I dial things back a bit I can get past four hours just a bit, but I'm not sure how they got their five hour estimate though. For me this is fine as I'm plugged in most of the time and I may buy an external battery for long trips or meetings. Using it on and off as a tablet (and putting it to sleep when not in use with 2 second smart resume) I can get through most of the day.

-UPDATED: I had some big issues with the digitizer pen at first, but I recalibrated the pen and touch input under windows settings and ever since it's working great (as intended). I no longer have lag when writing and the palm rejection is much better than before, although not quite all the way there in my opinion. Is it as good as Wacom? No, at least not in my opinion, but it does the job. One thing I'm not happy about is that it has no eraser head and the eraser button doesn't work on Microsoft's metro pdf app, there's no way to erase in this app with the pen, I can erease just fine with my Wacom pen on my thinkpad on that app. That said, the eraser button works fine on pdf annotator and onenote.

-UPDATED: The Asus "management" software is a bit buggy, it seems to be fighting with Windows for authority. The main issue I see is with brightness, sometimes you set it to something and then it comes back to something else, this is due to power profiles not acting correctly I think. Also, auto brightness never ever gives you the top brightness even if you choose to get full brightness. The only way I got full brightness was by disabling auto brightness and then the brightness still changed some times on its own, mainly on tablet mode. Maybe there are two light sensors and the tablet one can't be disabled? Don't know. The screen switcher was a bit off at first but after some updates it seems to be doing fine.

-UPDATED: The brightness is said to be a bit low, and it is mainly if you leave the auto brightness on, however, I find it adequate on both tablet and laptop mode, even on bright sunlight it seems adequate in my opinion.

-The size for a tablet is a bit big, but if you want mainly a laptop and second a tablet then this is the best option in my opinion. I was expecting it to be lighter for some reason, as I have a HP TouchPad with a cover on and that package seems like two pounds to me, so you would think another .75 pounds wouldn't be so much, but it feels a bit heavy, that said I can live with it.

-I had read on some tech sites that using a tablet with 16:9 aspect ration on portrait was a bit ridiculous, and you know what, it kind of feels weird. I guess it's something to get used to, but don't expect it to feel natural right off the bat.

Subjective Items

-UPDATED: No touch screen in laptop mode. To me this is a pro as the laptop screen doesn't have finger prints and it's matt which I love, I don't think I could stand a glossy screen for work all day. Also, the touchpad works so great that you may not miss touch so much in laptop mode. I can easily pinch to zoom, scroll, pull up charms, etc., all from the touchpad. You will want to touch the screen sometimes, specially after spending some time using the touch screen on the lid, but I'm happy with the way it is, another touch screen would've added more weight and a glossy screen in the front and that would've been a big issue for me.

-The audio is a bit low for my taste. I had read that the audio was pretty loud, but I wouldn't consider it loud, I would consider it adequate but that's about it. I was expecting a bit more bang. That said, I listen to a lot of loud music and may be a bit deft already, so your mileage may vary.

-This vs the surface pro? I went with this one because for just another $150 (vs surface with cover), I get a backlit keyboard, two screens and an adjustable screen that I can easily use in my lap, bed, couch, anywhere at the craziest angles, which I tend to do. The surface wouldn't work for me in the same way and I would've had to adjust. That said, I wanted mainly a great laptop with a nice enough tablet. I think the surface pro is a good tablet (not great due to low battery life too)and an OK laptop.

-UPDATED: The keyboard lacks media buttons for pause/play/next track, etc. Those are useful while playing music. It also lacks the new windows keys that come with some keyboards for charms, search, etc. That said, it's a small keyboard and they couldn't have put everything in there. The other thing is that the function keys, F1 to F12, are primary vs the other items like brightness and volume. I prefer it the other way, but again this is subjective. I did fine a tool called KeyTweak which allows you to remap your keyboard keys however you want, and I have changed F10 through F12 for media buttons, so that problem is solved!

**Lastly, this is a warning. The 128gb version, which is the one I have, only comes with 63gb of available space out of the box. This is crazy! I was expecting more like 90gb after windows, etc., but Asus has a 20gb recovery partition and a 4gb OEM partition in there, so that's pretty substantial and I plan to kill at least the recovery partition and get my space back**

So the final verdict.

I love it so far. Sure it has some drawbacks, but there's no perfect hybrid out there right now. I was planning to wait for second generation models but come on, life's too short to be waiting and waiting, I've been waiting long enough and this is 90% what I wanted so I'll take it and enjoy it. The battery life is the biggest limitation/con in my opinion, but I plan to buy an external battery of some sort to have around for emergencies or long meetings/seminars.

To me this laptop is just AWESOME and I wouldn't buy anything else on the market over this for my own needs.

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I would like to say that there are some misconseptions about this laptop and some very skewed reviews that I have read.

Here is my take on the laptop.

First, I have had the previous laptops before this and they pale in comparison to the Taichi.

The Samsung ATIV PC Pro 700t. (Horrible keyboard)

The Samsung Series 9 late 2012 edition. (second favorite ultrabook)

Lenovo Twist, Lenovo Carbon x1, HP Spectre 14 with Ivy bridge(late 2012)(Heavy), The yoga (I call it the horrible bouncing screen), the ASUS Zenbook UX31A (Excellent), and my media laptop the HP ENVY 17 3d (Ivy bridge) spec'ed out.

Why am I telling you this?

I have come to find out that the laptops with the touchscreen right in front of the keyboard has become an unused option for myself, especially when you have a good windows 8 compatible touchpad. The new touchpads have all the screen moves with no arm movement to reach out to the screen, and once you learn to use the efficiency of the shortcuts there is no real reason to take the time to reach up to the screen. (I did less and less over time.) I did however want the touchscreen tablet version for the new OS and the desire for the touchscreen but not in the way that it is presented behind a keyboard. The touchpad is great for taking notes, touchscreen games, Drawing, and just plain fun to use with the windows 8 fluent OS. I really do love it. For those of you not liking the windows 8 yet, give it time. I have come to love it for its efficiency and ability to go PC, Tablet, Phone. With the learning curve mostly past me, there is nothing else that compares in my opinion. I would think that everyone would feel the same way once they put the time in and get past the learning curve of the new Awesome OS. I certain would think so at least.

This leading me to why I love the Taichi so much. I have a great ASUS Zenbook with a great touch pad and I blow through everything windows 8 style and never even think about wanting to have to reach up to the screen. There is no reason I have to do so. I am writing Documents, Surfing the web, Productivity, anything keyboard related I really have no need for the screen to be a touch screen in front of me. Now, when I am done and I have a craving for a touchscreen or I just want consumption with a touchscreen I close the lid and Voila, a tablet for bedtime, table, anywhere. I play with the stylus (try that upright with a keyboard in front of you.) I swipe through the games, web, and I love to draw (have you tried the Fresh Paint app by the way). The awesome stylus the Taichi comes with is the perfect tool for the tablet.

When I need to go back to writing emails etc... I open the lid and instantly have my awesome Zenbook back in front of me to do so.

My next desire in a laptop cross over would be to prop the tablet up at just the right angle to watch a movie without the keyboard in front of me. Taichi does just this.

Turn the laptop around hit the outside screen switch and I have a tablet at the angle I want and can watch movies or still just use the tablet as it was meant to be used.

I hope this is making sense to some of you.

To summarize, I don't want a touchscreen when typing and doing emails and regular laptop functions. I do want a tablet when I can touch it easily, write, swipe, and draw properly. I also want the ability to look at the tablet at my preferred angle for plain viewing. That is turn it around and there is the tablet. (note; with the bottom still on the bottom, unlike the lenovo yoga with the keys down on the table, yikes!)

This is another reason why I love the Taichi.

It is the perfect tablet for me and I have not covered the dual screen (My kid loves this part). The ability to have a movie playing on the back side while I am working at the table or sofa is a very cool thing for my 3 year old. I also can do some teaching with him like this as well. He also sits and watches a show sometimes while I work. OK, OK, that is not the top of everyone's list, but who cares, that part is still cool.

Everything else about the tablet is a 10. The quality, the touchpad, the three level backlit keyboard, the FULL HD SCREENS! The screens are VERY solid and I have no concern after using them that there will ever be an issue of two screens being on the lid. It is solid. I spent the 180 bucks for ADP coverage of course but I don't think it will be the screens that I would have to use it on.

This is the number one tablet in my eyes.

I hope this helps some people in making the right choice for their new Laptop crossover.

Best Deals for ASUS Taichi 21-DH51 11.6-Inch Convertible Touch Ultrabook

It kills me to write this review as I literally counted the days until this was released and I was so looking forward to how the Taichi could improve my productivity but after having to return 2 faulty Taichi laptops I am convinced that Asus rushed this product to market before they got their technology right.

This is supposed to be a productivity tool but instead it has been a black hole of wasted time. I spent hours setting up the first Taichi I received just the way I liked it with all the settings and Office applications I needed. Only to find out all the bugs and defects that Asus failed to address before shipping this product.

Imagine trying to concentrate on a meeting when your Taichi on Tablet mode is registering touch input that you did NOT initiate. So as you are having your meeting the Taichi is busy launching your applications, closing them, selecting various random parts of the screen and generally making the tablet most unusable. Good luck using a stylus with all this going on with a defective digitizer! And when I tried to actually use the mirror feature it bombed and again wasted time and was actually an embarrassment as I was fiddling with my laptop when trying to show something to a client when I could have just turned the laptop around.

The first Taichi was returned due to the faulty digitizer but the second one in addition to having the problems with the touch screen/digitizer also has a defective battery. It sometimes refuses to charge the battery above 79% or some other arbitrary % figure. Other times no matter how much the laptop is used, the charge is always some arbitrary % and never changhes only to have the power cut off completely while the Taichi is being used. So the second Taichi I bought is even worse than the first.

What makes the situation even worse is the ineffective Asus Taichi support. They call it VIP support but that is a joke and there is nothing VIP about it. Some times hold times are 30+ minutes. All their "solutions" come down to you reinstalling windows, resetting windows, and when they fail help solve the problem they want you to ship your brand new Taichi to them with your data and applications and pray that they will fix and send your Taichi back without trying to access any of your personal data on the laptop. When I found a problem with one of their chipset drivers not updating the chipset version installed, they refused to help me solve the problem other than suggesting wiping the laptop clean or sending the laptop to them.

I would never send a defective new laptop only days old to the manufacturer for repair. They can sit on the laptop and you could end up with a laptop with the same problems but you no longer have the benefit of the 30 day return window. If you buy a Taichi and it is defective, just return it to Amazon for a refund and don't bother wasting hours of your time with Asus support.

After two defective Taichis, no more for me.

I am waiting for the ThinkPad Helix. Hopefully it is a solidly built business laptop that works with a solid digitizer and touch screen. I have no more time to waste on a laptop that is more of a gimmick than a serious productivity tool.

UPDATE 6/6/2013: With Intel's 4th generation chip Haswell just released it does not make sense for me to purchase the Think pad Helix anymore. I am likely going to instead purchase the Sony Vaio Duo 13 that is coming out this weekend. Hopefully it is a solid laptop with a functional digitizer.

Honest reviews on ASUS Taichi 21-DH51 11.6-Inch Convertible Touch Ultrabook

After all the reviews I had read about the Taichi I was very hesitant; but I was compelled by the form factor. So when I found out that it was available at my local FRYS I went to their to take a look and I was pleased with the aesthetic and great build quality, so I purchased the I7 with 256 GB. These are hard to come by and I didn't want it to get away from. Asus does a great job in packaging the right materials most of which you need, the ballistic nylon case, the stylus, the USB dongles and pouch, cleaning cloth and Velcro strapping for the cables...great stuff.

When I took it home to set up it was easy and had no issues then had MS store techs do their PC tune up for $99 and the computer was cleaned out of all the bloatware and its just like getting a PC at the MS store with their Microsoft signature...it blazes now. OFFICE 2013 is great and works well with this form factor of a PC laptop, the screens are amazing both the matte finish and the tablet, you have to adjust the settings in the charm bar to stop having the system dim the display as I have read the reviews that pointed a dim display even with it being charged.

As for battery life its not that bad, 4-5 hours is good for me plus for what I use it for I can get up 6-7 hours, I didn't buy this to stream on line or gaming without the battery, this reason is a whole new PC itself, like a desktop but I use it more for email, and some web surfing, and fact finding, Sky Drive and Dropbox MS OFFICE, and travel.

Just give it some time, I think this the best form factor or "hybrid" PC laptop out their now, yes there is the Yoga and the Twist made from Lenovo and I have the twist but it doesn't compare to this, as for the Yoga I don't like the fact that the keyboard face down when in the tablet mode, this one the keyboard is not laying on your lap. And for now this is the only form factor that is out their that works the best, until the Lenovo Helix and the HP Revolve comes out, outside of that I am not sure whats out in the horizon, but I am sure ASUS will have an improved Taichi or a different named PC that has dual touch screens. I can live with one touch screen for now, the matte screen again is awesome..

The design is awesome and I am liking this more and more...again buy and give it some time and you wont regret it...

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for ASUS Taichi 21-DH51 11.6-Inch Convertible Touch Ultrabook

I have had the TaiChi for a couple days now and have to say it is everything I was looking for in an ultra-hybrid and am very satisfied with my purchase. I am the demographic that this form factor appeals to the most as I work for a large corporation, travel quite a bit, give presentations often, and like to play games at times. My goal with the TaiChi is to replace my HP EliteBook and my Asus EP121 tablet plus accessories when I travel. I won't go into specifics on the features as it has been covered very well by other reviewers but what is really nice for me is the power this device has, and the ability to put it into tablet mode and angle the screen for the perfect profile to use a touch device.

I am also planning on getting a USB with "Windows to Go" so I can have the best of both my work and play worlds. The idea is that I can leave my work PC behind and still have access to corporate resources when I need to without having to have my personal machine managed by corporate IT. This way they can be assured that I am not a danger to the network and I don't have to have VPN and the bloat of other IT processes slowing down my user experience. If you are thinking about going this route, make sure the USB you purchase is certified for Windows to Go, I will update when I have it all running.

The duel screens work very well and PowerPoint presentation mode works as you would expect with the two screens. The TaiChi comes with a micro HDMI to VGA adapter so I am good there, but I would also recommend getting a micro HDMI cable or adapter as well if you are giving a lot of presentations and need to be able to connect to various setups.

The only nitpicks I see to this experience has been:

1. Battery life – While it is not the same as my Kindle HD Fire I also understand that I have an Intel i7 processor and can run any PC software I own. I travel with my Kindle so it is not a big deal for me on airplanes and I am fine for power at work and hotels. I of course always want it to last longer!

2. Windows logo – I wish there was an option to turn down the brightness of the Windows logo that also acts as the home button for Windows 8. When I watch a movie in a darker room, or potentially in a darkened aircraft it is annoying as it can be right in my face with the unit lid screen facing me. It should dim it like the screen based on the ambient light.

3. Screen cleaning – I am always wiping down my screen but understand that it is a touch device for oily handed creatures.

4. Windows shortcut keys for moving apps between monitors does not seem to work, but maybe it is me.

Overall I would recommend this device for anyone that does a lot of travel and has to bring a lot of junk to support both your work and play worlds!