Pros: Saves battery.

Cons: NVIDIA Optimus does not have Linux drivers.

Overall Review: Just an FWI. Beacause the Linux drivers lack support for this one chipset's hyrid technology ANY notebook or netbook using NVIDIA Optimus technology can not run Linux OpenGL for 3D graphics. Instead Linux will run only on the default graphics chips which in most cases are Intel's. This prevents the use of ANY 3D graphics in Linux. So if you are planning to use Linux on a net/notebook choose carefully which NVIDA chipset is onboard.

Pros: It's good innovative software. It's nice to have the computerized screen tones.

Cons: Install needs more than the serial number to activate. If the software does not have an Internet connection for registration then it defaults to a Trial install. The downloadable manual indicated the same thing if the activation server is overloaded. Just hope Windows doesn't have a bad hair day that makes you re-install it at any time when your internet is down.

Overall Review: I feel very insecure about the ability to do re-install this when Murphy's Law visits Windows. I believe the software rates a 4 or 5 but then I can't give that to any software that won't install to fully paid for usability without an internet connection.

Pros: Pretty exterior. That's it.

Cons: Linux users need to avoid this drive. Past experience with normal drive standards that just detect and work do not apply with this one. After it's detected a second drive unit then appears with software on it. The software that seems to be required for the deactivation of this extra drive is only for Windows or OSX. Linux users can not get rid of this secondary drive. I'm currently experiencing issues with the basic file transfer process that I suspect is due to what ever it's doing to create the second drive which seems to be mimicking a kind of CDRom. It's also not acting like a simple partition that you can deal with either. When you open that extra drive and check the properties for permissions looking for a way to deal with it I find it tells you, 'The permissions of "LS_SOFTWARE" could not be determined.' It's 292.8MB of size on that volume but it doesn't behave like a hidden partition. I need my drives to be STORAGE that's all. Waisted a day fighting this unreasonable ri

Overall Review: This drive constantly has name issues with files I routinely transfer without issue to my other name brand external USB drives. Those drives are "as is" from the factory with none of them have problems. With this Hitachi I keep getting alerted that the file in transfer is detected on the drive already as it's transferring it and asks if it's ok to over write it. I've removed all files from the drive and started again to test it and find it's doing this when I know with certainty the file is not already on the drive or in the destination directory. FTR I am currently using a standard install of Ubuntu Release 9.10. I''m used to all past hard drives keeping close enough to a common standard that they just work on any modern OS so this is a surprise.