ASUS Laptop K50ID-X1 Intel Pentium dual-core T4400 (2.20 GHz) 4 GB Memory 320 GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Pros: Video card dedicated: Nvidia Geforce 320M GT 1GB VMEM Chocolate Keyboard: Works great anyone that complains needs to RMA their unit. this is one of the best keyboards I have ever used on a laptop. Touch pad: Works great as well. you want to scroll get an external mouse. I mean really it's a laptop. Memory: 4GB excellent pre installed amount. CPU: Some are claiming it is a slower cpu, I haven't noticed. I am a heavy gamer and this laptop takes everything I throw at it.

Cons: People claiming high understanding of tech. and yet they whine about keyboard design and touchpads. it's a laptop. unless it really really sucks, then yes. but buyers want legit reviews. like is it cheaply built. is there any defects or recalls. are drivers readily available. is it upgradable. please don't kill a product like this with irrelevant remarks that don't help others make informed decisions.

Overall Review: People should right realistic reviews and not complain over trivial things. This is an amazing deal and an amazing laptop. Unless your really super picky and don't know what your talking about 90% of the time

Pros: Great specs for the money. Graphics card was the big factor for me. I only run WOW and I got 60 fps on full settings. Averages around 30 fps but that could be my wireless/dsl. Startup was fast and so far im pretty pleased. Screen is decent but not outstanding. Keyboard is nice and has a little bit of flex but does not bother me, I like the full numberpad as well since I do accounting. I only use a mouse so the touchpad is not a factor either. It stays cool on my lap as well so no overheating problems. Plenty of USB(3 i think) and it has HDMI and video ports.

Cons: My only cons so far is the quality of the materials. There are a few rough edges on the outside of the screen casing(top). Not enough for me to send it back. The plastic used seems a little thin as well, but for $650 its not a huge factor either. My last laptop was a Dell 17" which was a beast so I have to get used to this one. The cords can get a little jumbled since the HDMI, LAN, Power, (1)USB, and VGA ports are on the right side.

Overall Review: If you dont want to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a decent gaming laptop I would go for this one. I may buy a new standalone monitor for gaming and graphics on this look pretty good so far.

Pros: This laptop is one of 2 brands in this price range with the specs as of 02/23/2010. It was either this one or an Ac*r that is comporable.Tthe only major difference spec wise is, the Ac*r had 2 megs of L2 cache and this one only has 1. However this one comes with a GT 320 GPU while the Ac*r only has a 130 GT GPU. Realistically, game performance would be the same. What sold me on this laptop is the free 1 year accidental damage warranty and a free 2 year limited parts and labor warranty. The Ac*r only has a 1 year limited parts and labor warranty. With that said, Asus seems to be a quality brand that is willing to stand behind their product and the warranty says it all.

Cons: This laptop casing is HIGH GLOSS! Beware of finger print smugges. It does look really slick when clean though.Whenever that happens:) The finger scroll pad is porous and has a high friction on your finger tips at first due to the high gloss finish. once the pad is "greesy" from finger prints it works fine. There isn't any up and down scroll bar on the side of the pad that allows you to scroll web pages. "at least none that I am aware of"

Overall Review: This computer comes with a SMART LOGON function, that takes your picture with the web cam. Upon logging in, instead of putting in your password, you can click the smart logon button and the web cam recognizes your face and allows you to pass. This is a cool function that isn't mentioned anywhere in the advertising. PS, when you set up this function take several pictures with the web cam from different angles and at different lighting to have it recognize you quickly.

Pros: The laptop looks good and construction appears to be decent quality (it is a fingerprint magnet but not worth complaining about). Display is crisp, clean, and bright - But it is not as good as my past HP's. *Comes with both Windows 7 32bit & 64bit recovery media. *SD Card Reader. *1GB dedicated Nvidia GeForce 320m video card. *System performance overall is good. Dedicated card really helps, a zippy fast computer! *Awesome warranty! My 3DMark05 results (not overclocked): Score: 7745 3DMarks CPU Score: 9406 CPUMarks Note: The GeForce Nvidia 320M is based on the GeForce 9600M GT, and performs about the same for cards in this family (Nvidia 220M etc). If you want to gauge the performance you can base it off this card. Comparative benchmarks for the 320M show it being faster than similarly priced systems running the ATI Radeon HD 3650, HD 4330, and HD 4570. So for the price its not a bad card at all.

Cons: My only real complaint is the Touch Pad. The buttons are VERY STIFF and hard to press! The texture is causes friction with the porous surface, but ok when it gets oily. Also worth noting. The scroll feature is used with two fingers on the pad. It does work, but you will find you have to be more exact with your gestures. It would me much more preferable to have a the slider on the right side to perform scrolling like on most other laptops.

Overall Review: All in all I am very satisfied with the ASUS K50ID Laptop. A plus about the recovery DVD's though is that it doesn't not reinstall all the bloatwear, but just the OS, drivers, and core apps. So I highly recommend you reinstall from the restore DVD's regardless. NOTE: Turning off the touchpad is done using the FN + F9 keys. This is helpful when typing and is not documented in the manual and is not marked on the keyboard. Note: Installing Ubuntu 9.10, Linux fails to detect that the 320M as an Nvidia card. This is the first Nvidia card I have never had detected correctly. To resolve the issue you will need to install the Nvidia drivers manually via your distro package manager, or download directly & configure X.

Pros: Quite a bit of machine for the money. Dedicated graphics, good for moderate gaming. I get 50-60 fps indoors/20-30 fps outside in WoW w/ vsync on (even in Dalaran), ~50 fps in Eve Online. Nice removable panel in back gives easy access to RAM and HDD as well as the CPU if you ever want to upgrade it. Stays fairly cool most of the time, even after a 3 hour WoW raid session. When it does start to heat up the fan remains very quiet. Quite a bit lighter then another similar sized laptop I owned.

Cons: No way to do a clean windows install, you must burn your own recovery discs which takes 5 DVDs and 2.5 hours. The set I made didn't work, fortunately the recovery partition did but now I'm stuck with either loosing the 16 gigs that the recovery partition takes up or burning another set of recovery discs with no confidence that they will work. After recovery all the bloatware gets reinstalled (54 programs pre-installed according to windows), no way to avoid it. Email to ASUS support asking for a place to download or have sent actual windows media has gone unanswered after 4 days. System comes pre formatted with an ~80 GB C partition that is pretty much full and a ~200 GB D partition. This is the one thing recovery did fix with the option to just use 1 partition. No drivers currently available from Nvidia for the GT 320M, though they say they will be available in June. No external volume control other then blue fn keys and a small battery with limited life.

Overall Review: If ASUS would include actual windows media or give a way to skip all the bloatware during recovery this would easily be a 5 egg machine. The strange partition scheme combined with the 16 gigs permanently lost to the recovery partition is very frustrating given that the set of recovery discs I spent 2.5 hours burning didn't seem to work (the first disc seemed to work fine but then it asked for the 2nd one and when I inserted it nothing seemed to happen). If I could rate half an egg I'd probably go down to 3.5 eggs but I think a 3 egg rating would be too low, overall I'm quite happy and I'm sure someone who is less computer savy then I am would be quite happy without proper media, though they might run into problems with the way ASUS partitions these by default.

Pros: Video card outstanding performance, Bios can be modded, Bios bad flash recovery, 4GB Memory, 1GB Video memory, 32Bit and 64Bit Windows 7 discs, Touchpad is best I have ever used. Keyboard is amazing, System is plenty fast even in heavy gaming extra to spare. Newest driver available from laptopvideo2go.com. Also d/l the modded powermizer setup. to enable overclocking of cpu, mobo, mem, gpu, nb, and sb within windows. Advanced bios setting can be enabled with AMI tools.

Cons: webcam is slow and glitchy. I only wish asus would have left it out and maybe sold this system for $50 less. Now it will drive me nuts till I mod it with a better quality one. Not really a con for a system like this. I'm just a little ocd with my systems.

Overall Review: Really the only difference between this system and the more expensive ones is as listed. Larger screen, slightly faster cpu and gpu. I prefer this size personally as laptop bags are such a rip off for 17' and up laptops.

Pros: Keyboard and Touch pad are amazing. finally a company that knows how to make a laptop work like a laptop should. Wireless is great as well. a\b\g\n card. you can get modded drivers on the net and really unleash the card. Same is true for the Graphics card "320M GT 1GB" preforms even better with updated drivers. you can d/l a modded *.inf from the net. extract the driver setup and overwrite the *.inf with the modded one. And poof driver support and new video card drivers. Also d/l the latest nforce drivers from nvidia. the nforce 9 series. you will have to manually install them fyi. System loads very fast. Runs stable. Great support. Currently running Windows 7 x64 at the moment. And no glitches so far. I am very pleased microsoft finally got down to business and listened to their customers.

Cons: Recovery dics instead of Retail or OEM Windows 7 dics. But oh well no biggie. it does make things easier. All I do is put the disc in. make some clicks w/ the mouse type my name. and in 20-30 minutes I am back up. unlike xp or vista @ and hour or more depending on various things you have to do. this does simplify installing immensely. thx again ASUS :)

Overall Review: Let me just say I bought a laptop a year ago for the same price. It claimed to capable of plying ames like crysis and etc. It also suffered from a defect the the manufacturer and the oem knew about. the oem could care less. so to that oem I say you just lost me as a customer. as well as all the people that ask my opinion of your products. And thank you ASUS for making a great system. :) ASUS For The Win!!!

Pros: This is a cheap gaming laptop that can hold its own with modern games. Plays Batman Arkham Asylum beautifully, but Aliens vs Predator is a little choppy on default. So there's your range. It should hold up for the next couple years, however. Great video card, good RAM, good processor (Pentium Dual Core 2.2 is not that far away from a Core 2 Duo at the same speed.) Exteriors are great. Looks good, feels good. Recommendation: REINSTALL WINDOWS TO ONE PARTITION AS SOON AS YOU BOOT UP. It gets rid of the bloatware and gives a bigger hard drive right off the bat. Bottom line: you would have to spend hundreds of dollars more to get better performance on a laptop. This deal is the most bang for your buck you will get.

Cons: None yet. The processor is the only thing that will bottleneck your gaming performance. But that's why it costs $650 and not $1000.

Overall Review: PERFECT for laid back gamers who don't care about having the highest texture settings available. They play on desktops anyways. :)