Pros: I turn on my computer and my eco-friendly monitor, and by the time I have a picture, Windows is ready for login.

Cons: I should have gone for a 90 gig, it's a bit small with all my programs, even after trimming windows. I keep all of my files on a HDD but I can only have 1-2 big steam games on the SSD at a time

Pros: Very easy setup, immediately recognized and used by Windows 7

Cons: once every hour or so of continual netflix streaming, it would lose connection. I would have to refresh the page and remove and reinsert the adapter to reset it. The adapter is only about 25 feet from the router, through one wall.

Overall Review: When my motherboard's integrated NIC died I bought this to temporarily have internet while I waited for the new internal NIC to arrive. This somehow took 12 days through A*mazon, so I'm glad I bought it. For that purpose, it was perfect, but I would not want to rely on it for everyday use.

Pros: Specs Weight Aesthetics I wanted a fast and light laptop, ostensibly for work but if it can play most of the things in my steam library with high quality, then who am I to argue? This laptop does those things perfectly, no surprises. I really like the power button, which indicates if you're running on integrated or dedicated graphics with color, and the Intel tool to control which software uses which is easy and useful. Bluetooth is useful for getting one image off my phone quickly.

Cons: After three years of ownership, the battery expanded so much that it bent the aluminum case. The case is about 1.5x as wide as it's supposed to be , maybe 2X. I'm just glad all the components still work. Not happy. Screen feels flimsy, I feel like I need to be very careful with it. This is the trade off for light weight, and the light weight is more important to me, but it is something to consider. Keyboard can't be set to white. 95% of the LEDs under the keys will be white under this setting, but 5% (mostly in the bottom row) can't quite make it--some have a strong blue tinge while others have a strong green tinge. I had to change from white to something like ice-blue to make this less noticeable, but there's still green lights on the bottom row. I'm not sure if this is an issue with all keyboards or just mine, but I'm quite irritated with it.

Overall Review: It's similarly spec'd to my 3-year old home-built desktop, which cost about the same amount of money back then. But you're paying for engineering, portability, and a battery. Windows 8 is not my favorite thing in the world but with a pretty small amount of work you can make it behave pretty much identically to windows 7, and there are a couple new features which are appreciated. Anyways, if you want to use Windows you should upgrade to Windows 10 for free this July regardless which version you have currently. I'm not really one for "flashy," and in that way this laptop is perfect. It looks like a thing of quality without being ostentatious. The fan kicks on and can be distracting (in my dead-silent office), but it's actually kind of an interesting tool--an indicator for CPU usage greater than 5-10%. It's alerted me to a locked up program once or twice.

Pros: My first build, everything worked right out of the gate and I haven't had to think about it since. Can't ask for more than that. Everything was easily accessible and simple in my small-ish case

Cons: none

Overall Review: During a big storm (power outages, lightning), the integrated NIC died. Picked up a cheap generic one and a surge protector. I recommend a surge protector.

Pros: It is RAM

Cons: Had to RMA one set after a couple months. Weird behavior turned out to be memory errors on one stick. That process was pretty painless, but it did cost $5.

Overall Review: I know sometimes bad sticks happen but I would be remiss if I didn't report it here.

Pros: Card has not broken a sweat yet, on any of the games I've played. Haven't had to think about it at all.

Cons: none

Overall Review: No driver issues, maybe I got lucky or maybe they're fixed.