ASUS K55A-WH51 Notebook Intel Core i5 3210M(2.50GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory 750GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW Intel HD Graphics 4000

Pros: Cheap price and come with warranty.

Cons: just a bit heavy, but what do you expect a 15.6" screen. one more thing the Window 8 is make you buy a touch screen notebook is easier to operate.

Other Thoughts: The machines is perfect.

Pros: Very competitive pricing

Cons: First there was an update issue.. As soon I turned the laptop ON there was a Windows 8 and ASUS software update (ALL THE TIME)
After 4 months of using this laptop the screen went black. I CANT DO ANYTHING. I TRIED THE FN KEYS, ECS, ALT-CTRL-DEL but still a BLACK SCREEN

Other Thoughts: I have own quite a few of ASUS products. From laptops, motherboards and graphics cards. This is the first time I encountered a problem with their products.
Time to test their costumer support.

Manufacturer Response:

Greetings JCP,

I am sorry to hear that you are having an issue with your screen not turning on after only 4 months of use. I would hope after I make a purchase, the device would last years to come and not have issues in such a short time. According to your review, it does look that you did decent job troubleshooting the issue; however, there are some other troubleshooting steps we can try to fix the issue.

I am not sure if you contacted customer support yet, but I would be happy to continue to troubleshoot the issue. Just send me an email at cl-mark@asus.com.

Best regards,
Mark
ASUS Cusotmer Loyalty

Pros: OK for the price

Cons: This is a big one for me, the SATA controller is only level I
should be SATA III, I wanted a great low cost machine which could be upgraded to a SATA III SSD. Nope.

Other Thoughts: To ASUS - Enable SATA III, even on lower level laptops and I might buy your products.

Pros: Nice laptop, I upgraded it's memory and installed an SSD drive. Runs like a champ.

Cons: Trashed Windows 8 and installed Windows 7.

Pros: Good specs, at a very reasonable price. Computer performance has been fine.

Cons: Mouse pad responsiveness absolutely UNRELIABLE and UNACCEPTABLE. Too often, especially when the computer has been sleeping, when controlling the cursor through the laptop mouse pad the cursor will be so jumpy and erratic that it becomes impossible to point and click on anything, making the computer unusable!

I sent this back to ASUS and they returned it claiming that they had identified the problem and fixed it (I think all they did was reset the computer and reinstall the software, which I had already done) but it was just as bad if not worse than before. I am sending this back a second time but my hope of them fixing the problem is dim. Rather than continue to go through the headache I will probably just use a USB mouse instead, it works perfectly then. Still, unacceptable, come on ASUS!!

Other Thoughts: Windows 8 is underwhelming; unless you have a touch-screen device I see no point to the windows tile pane start screen.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Here is a link that may resolve the erratic cursor issue.

http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=3&m=K55A

Just update the bios and drivers.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Got the computer for my other half for Xmas. The computer is great for the steal of the price I got it for.
Has an I5 processor but lacks a SSD or the new SSHD (hybrid) that the higher end laptops are coming out with. The casing is well built compared to the others at the same price. I am very happy with the product. The screen area is also large and the keyboard and touchpad flow well.

Cons: The standard ASUS OEM Software. I noticed it was sluggish with all the software. I had to blow away the operating system with a clean install. It works great now. But for the people who do not know or have the capabilities it will be a problem.

Other Thoughts: The laptop runs way better with a clean install without all the ASUS software taking up precious processor space.
Also if this was my computer and not my GF's I would double the RAM and install a SSHD. But what with she needs is just browsing and word processing the system works fine.

Pros: This laptop has much more than you would expect at this price tag such as a large hard drive, 6gb of ram, and even an awesome i5 processor. I am able to run most of the games that I would play on this and this is the only laptop that I have owned which I could consider to be a desktop replacement.

Cons: The biggest cons with this laptop are Windows 8 and the Asus preinstalled software. Windows 8 is a beast of its own and it has many problems that have not been fixed yet so this may someday be an alright operating system. As for the Asus software I had to uninstall even the Asus update manager because it was causing my laptop to restart almost as soon as it booted up every time.

Other Thoughts: I cannot blame Asus for putting windows 8 on this laptop for that is only the fault of microsoft pushing new operating systems onto companies and pretty much forcing all new computers to use the new OS. Remember how hard it was to find an XP computer right after Vista came out? There will be many updates to windows 8 to make it more user friendly, so for now im not blaming that con on Asus.

Pros: my wife just loves it, she already has it set up with her music and photos . this thing is fast and for a great price you couldn't go wrong.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: redid her old laptop and tried to give it back for her new one and no go , she love this laptop

Pros: Great laptop, loaded with all the good stuff accept for the OS.

Cons: Windows 8 sucks and I've spent the last 2 days trying to figure out the best and most cost efficient way to remove it and put Windows 7. This laptop was my daughters Christmas present and it's spent most of the time off because the OS is not user friendly. She's tried it 3 or 4 times and gives up and grabs her old netbook with window xp.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you do not like windows 8. Maybe I can help you get around things your daughter is trying to do.

If you really want to downgrade to windows 7 here is a link below. We do not advise this because of some incompatibility issues.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/13326-downgrade-windows-8-windows-7-a.html

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Fast intergraded GPU on the new Ivy Bridge processor (HD4000). Was a surprise when I could run Minecraft. Compare to all the previous generations of Intel Extreme graphics and I thought I still need to get a laptop with a dedicated video card to play games like minecraft ot TF2. Seems to be faster than my HTPC's Geforce GT520. I would think I need a dedicated video card to play some average games.

Nice looking design and runs cool

Cons: To shiny, easy to get scratches and visible.