Pros: Beautiful screen and nice features. With the rebate it's a steal.

Cons: First of all it Comes with Vista. I realize this is supposed to be an upgrade but what a pain. Everything from getting it to talk to the 4 PCs on my home network to file sharing and printer sharing. Then as part of Vista is Directx 10. Most of the older games like Civilization IV are Directx 9 dependent. I think there are a total of 10 games that are Directx 10 ready. Yet this is a gaming laptop. Finally there is the ATI HD 2600. Which doesn't like one of the games on the Directx 10 list Bioshock. I have been trying to find a configuration that would let me run Bioshock, but so far no luck. ATI even has a patch for Bioshock that is "untested" that you can load. It improved the game a little, more of the graphics showed up, but I am still missing the floor.

Overall Review: I am a big believer in Asus products for years. After having multiple problems with various vendors I build all of my PC's with Asus motherboards. I just recently tried 3 ATI video cards. One died on me after 4 months and I am sending it back to Taiwan for repair. One works great, and this one I am totally disapointed with. I think I will stick with Nvidia after this. 2 out of 3 problems is not the best track record.

Pros: I like the unit and was very happy with it initially.

Cons: Blu-Ray drive dead on arrival. DVD/CDs played with no problem. I called ASUS support and reinstalled drives ect. Finally they wanted me to send in the whole laptop. I have over 30 years experience in electronics/computers so I was positive what the problem was. I requested initially instead of sending the whole laptop back just send me a new blu-ray drive. Blu-Ray drive arrived and I exchanded the drives and now every thing works fine. Then I found out that I have to pay to send the drive back. I don't understand why I have to pay shipping to replace a broken part on a brand new laptop. This is my second Asus laptop in less than 18 months and I can't remember the last time I didn't use one of their motherboards when building a system.

Overall Review: The Blu-Ray drive not working was a minor problem and since I have had only one bad motherboard over the years from them I thought nothing of it. The fact that I have to pay to fix their problem, this has turned a minor problem I would have forgotton about into a major strike against ASUS.