Pros: Seems to be very well built (with basically no defect or problem complaints in forums I frequent). Nvidia's official notebook drivers work flawlessly (I won't touch ATi hardware in a notebook until they provide at least the same level of support). CPU is plenty fast. Game performance seems solid at worst. Asus provides reinstall discs so it's possible to get basically a clean install of Vista without much effort. Cooling system seems to be AMAZING. As reported by CPUID's hardware monitor, I can't get the CPU over 50c even running the SMP Folding at home client for hours on end (and I've been Folding since I got it). I can even Fold on the GPU without issue (running both parts at 100% gets the CPU to slightly over 50c...maybe hovers between that and 54c max). This actually runs everything at 100% cooler than many laptops run at IDLE. It's not silent, but it's quieter than my relatively quiet desktop PC it's replacing. WIFI seems to work flawlessly too-though mostly I use Ethe

Cons: -Keyboard isn't great, though I've gotten better at using it. (At work I plug in an external monitor with an HDMI to DVI cable, and external mouse and keyboard.) It's no worse than average by notebook standards though I don't think. -I'd love if it had a Blu Ray drive (I may experiment with installing an after market drive, as the optical drive (and hard drive) are easy to swap. -I'd love a Geforce 9700GTS or better in here, but obviously I knew what it had going in (and what it does have is solid at worst). -I've run into a decent number of program incompatibilities because it ships with 64 instead of 32-bit Vista (as do most systems now). The DVD authoring program they included actually doesn't seem to work, and there were a handful more programs I had to find replacements for. No issues with the OS once I figured out what does and doesn't work (most programs do, but...) And contrary to what people seem to claim about Vista it's fast for me.

Overall Review: There's at least some confusion over whether the screen is LED or florescent backlit. The box has a mercury warning, as does a sticker on the bottom of the unit. Those may be just generic warnings though (this general model is sold in some configurations with a florescent backlight). The sticker with the actual specs does explicitly claim it's LED backlit, and it appears to be instant on, has more brightness levels than florescent probably would, and its max brightness is fairly crazy as you'd expect. The screen itself is solid, though not spectacular. The panels used in recent Macbook Pros seem higher quality to me, at least in terms of viewable angles, but this isn't bad by any means (and the resolution isn't too high for the small screen size). Basically I can see areas where Asus cuts costs to get the low price, but at the same time I think this notebook is really well engineered, and didn't skimp in the ways that matter, from the quality components to the great cooling system.

Pros: When it worked it worked fine

Cons: -Something's wrong with the USB controller. While a computer can always 'see' this, intermittently it can't actually read from a disk in it. Trying to will hang the program-whether explorer or a DVD/Blu Ray program indefinitely until you either switch off the drive, or kill the program. It happened infrequently enough at first that I wasn't sure anything was really wrong, but now it fails maybe 95+% of the time. It's nearly useless. I've noticed someone posted the EXACT same issues with USB on the Vantec USB/eSATA drive. Since no one seems capable of making a decent USB converter, I guess try an eSATA enclosure next. (Note that USB 2.0 is plenty fast for an optical drive...if it actually works.)

Overall Review: Not sure any other company is any better, but from the people I've heard of with this same issue, something's wrong with Vantec's USB conversion chip.

Pros: Replaced a Seagate 320GB/7200RPM/16MB drive with this back in November. I've found that it really does help boot times and program launches go faster. Also, my system is actually pretty much ready to go when it hits the Windows desktop, while on every other system I've used, there's really like a 30-60 second period when the desktop is up, but it's not REALLY ready.

Cons: None really. I did update the firmware, but Seagate's program was painless-showed the current firmware version, the new one, and had a "reboot/install firmware" button. Took a few seconds and rebooted into Windows.

Overall Review: These Momentus XT drives are a really good deal IMO. They really do speed things up where it matters-booting Windows and common program loads. Apparently the firmware is optimized so it only caches small files, which helps the relatively small flash go a long way, I guess. At any rate, it really does work. Worst case scenario where the SLC cache doesn't come in to play, this is still one of the fastest mechanical drives on the market, and has double the RAM cache (32 versus 16MB) of other 7200RPM drives (or 4x the RAM cache versus 5400RPM drives). It's really great for notebooks with a single drive bay, since SSDs are too expensive and/or small IMO to be the only drive in a system. I haven't used it in a Mac personally, but after recommending one to someone, they stuck it in a Mac Mini and have told me they love it, that it seems a lot faster to them.

Pros: I bought this over some other brands since I've had good luck with Tripp Lite products in the past. This works flawlessly with my notebook's Geforce 9650GT and my Dell 1905 monitor-it's just like the notebook has a DVI port. I also connect and disconnect this daily, and so far it shows no sign of any wear, or the connection getting looser or anything like that.

Cons: None