Pros: Bought this chip after months of research and waiting. This chip was the perfect balance between performance and price. Passmarks cpu list made it easy to compare this chip to others in the same category. This chip is very fast, and made photo editing in Lightroom3 much quicker than the X2 4000+ I was using before. Runs very cool with an Arctic Cooler 64 and a fresh coat of Arctic Silver... 16C at idle. 25C full throttle. (temps recorded after 24-hour burn-in.)

Cons: I attempted to use the Core Unlocker in the BIOS. The BIOS brought it right up and recognized it as a Phenom X4 B55. Unfortunately Windows7 64-bit and Ubuntu 11.10 Ocelot 64-bit wouldn't boot. W7 BSOD'd and Ubuntu 11.10 simply stopped loading. It seems that W7 was waiting for the 4th core to send back a signal to enumerate and it wasn't able to. Someone of Geek Status might know more, but this Nerd will simply use the 3 cores he paid for and not look a gift-horse in the mouth. This isn't a con for me, but it could be if this is what you expected from the core.

Overall Review: 3 cores is plenty fast enough for what I'm doing. Gamers may need 4 or 6, but photo editing with 8GB of ram is a perfect combo for this chip.

Pros: -Keyboard is easy to use, bigger than AcerOne -Battery life is 10-11 hours with wifi on constantly -Screen is clear and bright -Youtube videos are fluid on lower resolutions FS -wifi reception is excellent in windows XP and Ubuntu 9.10

Cons: -An exec at Intel should be fired for not releasing the GMA500 Development kit to vendors until a few weeks ago. Video under Ubuntu 9.10 has been a disaster. Vesa only. Some people have had success by using psb-kernel-source etc for their drivers but my attempts failed. 800x600 looks awful on a widescreen display -Don't think windows drivers for the GMA500 are any better. I still had to go find drivers for individual parts online since MSI said that they're using the built-in drivers from windows. The synaptic touchpad for example didn't scroll at all until I install the drivers myself. -HD video on youtube sucks. The video GPU isn't handling them as well as advertised. 360p is fine, but 480P and up is distracting if not unwatchable, and that's under XP. -Only keyboard comment is placement of Fn key. I wish that CTRL was in the corner and not the FN key. I use hotkeys a lot, and hitting the FN key instead is annoying. Not awful, just annoying. -Ethernet port does not function.

Overall Review: If you need your netbook to run 100% out of the box avoid this chipset. Stay with the GMA950 for now until Intel can get their drivers and support figured out. Had the netbook been perfect under windows and just fuzzy in Ubuntu I would've forgiven some of this, but even XP is running around 80%. Ubuntu is around 60%. For my business the ethernet port MUST work and it does not in XP or Ubuntu. Video under Ubuntu 9.10 is around 4fps. Video under XP is fluid at lower resolutions. This netbook would be perfect if it had the GMA950 instead. MSI did a great job with what they had. As of right now I recommend it to those who like to tinker and edit xorg.conf and recompile their kernel over and over again. I missed the part were there is only one dimm slot on this board. I ordered a 1gb chip to add just to discover I couldn't use it. Order a 2gb chunk and replace the 1gb that comes with it instead. I would give this netbook 5-stars if it were a GMA950 Intel GMA500 = avoid

Pros: I bought this board when my previous ASRock board went belly-up during a firmware upgrade. It's hybrid DDR2 DDR3 ability makes it an excellent choice for those on limited budgets who need to upgrade components one at a time, which is exactly what I did. Updating the firmware using the Instant Flash in the BIOS worked flawlessly. v1.40 -> v1.60

Cons: The 7.1 surround sound does NOT work in any version of Ubuntu. Stereo output only. Mic Jack works. Adaptec 29160N SCSI card does NOT work with this board. The board refuses to POST 99% of the time. The 1% works great, but this configuration is NOT reliable. I disabled serial ports, parallel ports, removed other cards and drives... nothing worked. I read that the AMI BIOS could be the culprit but even after updating the firmware to v1.60 the result was the same.

Overall Review: A SCSI card must work for my home business to run. Tape Drives are used for archiving data and HD's aren't as cheap to run as tape. Using an older Adaptec 2940UW has been acceptable, but the 29160 is a much faster card. The card not working correctly in this board is disappointing to say the least.

Pros: Works Perfectly in Ubuntu since 10.04. Works in Windows when you have the driver installed.

Cons: May NOT work previous to Ubuntu 10.04. 8.04 Definitely did not work. 9.04 and 9.10 were both hit-n-miss with hardware.

Overall Review: Windows doesn't have the drivers in a CAB somewhere. If this is your only WiFi card, be prepared to transfer drivers.

Pros: I've had this little card for 3 years and it has performed admirably until recently. The antennae was easy to place on my desk to get the best LOS to the router. All version of Ubuntu for the past 3 years recognized this card as RT61pci

Cons: Recently it has started dropping packets. Even DMESG has been complaining about it. Transfer times are erratic and some downloads are even missing chunks. It's 3 years old and I've used the bajeezus out of it, but it seems that this gem is finally in need of replacement.

Overall Review: Don't use the included software in windows, it's rather worthless. Let windows do what it wants to do and it works really well. Ubuntu 10.04 12.04 13.10 all work very well with this card. RT61pci

Pros: Picked this up to give my virtual machines some more breathing room. Works perfectly, runs cool. Obviously faster than my 4GB of DDR2-800.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: DDR2 is getting more rare and more expensive. This DDR3 set made the upgrade painless and affordable.