Pros: Very quiet. Quality construction. I can feel no vibration on my desk while the computer is running. The Earthwatts power supply runs quiet and cool.

Cons: No more than 4 internal HD bays. eSATA port on the front, in lieu of firewire or additional USB ports. This may seem like less of a weakness in 12-18 months, if eSATA catches on. If a long video card is installed as well as a front case fan, there is little clearance. The sides and top of the case do smudge easily, but smudges are easily wiped off as well.

Overall Review: When a case has two floppy bays, you have to wonder whether they could have been sacrificed for something that a modern computer might have, like a 5 disc RAID5 setup. I purchased this case with the intention of installing an eVGA 8800GT 512MB, and while the card fit fine, I had to remove the front case fan which I had already installed in order to insert the PCIE power connector onto the back edge of the card. There is just enough room for the part of the connector that sticks out and the power cable to bend. I do not anticipate any problems, but the HD rack and thus the fan mount could be closer to the front of the case allowing for more clearance here.

Pros: Lightweight. Sturdy fabric (won't catch or tear). Reasonably robust zippers. Thin compartment perfect for holding folders or documents flat. A few pockets exist for pens or calculators in the external pouch area.

Cons: You really have to shove an AC adapter (or paperback) into the external pouch to fit; not much room. This leads to compression of the laptop case if it bumps into something hard. A case slightly longer, with space for the AC adapter and the laptop in the main storage area, adjacent to either short edge of the notebook, would be preferred. The provided strap is a bit short for a person in excess of 6' or so (I am 6'3'').

Overall Review: If I have to fly on a business trip, I ship a laptop ahead as the potential cost in time/money waiting for the TSA is unacceptable; ergo I cannot speak to it's airport security-friendly features.

Pros: Purchased two screens, no stuck or dead pixels. Excellent brightness and contrast (almost painful, actually). Color reproduction is accurate (they do not bias blue). Backlight bleed is almost never detectable. It is most apparent while watching 4:3 video playback, on the left and right edges of the screen in the vertical black letterboxing. I had to try very hard to spot any LCD lag/motion blur on these units (I fired up UT 2k3 and upped the mouse sensitivity to maximum and spun around in a brightly lit area... even then it was barely perceivable). The bottom line: if you have a nice CRT(s), and you have been waiting to make the jump to LCD, jump on these!

Cons: These screens are more expensive than other models in their resolution and size class. The bases they ship with only adjust through about 25 degrees of tilt. Odd resolution, so playback of any HD video is going to include a lot of scaling with possible artifacts (not that this is an issue with nice players/codecs).

Overall Review: These are easily the best LCD screens I've ever had the chance to use for an extended period. They were the best match to my criteria. I switched to these screens from a quality pair of 22'' inch component-in CRTs manufactured in their heyday (early '90s) which were capable of a mximum resolution of 1280x960@85hz (who had the VRAM back then for higher resolution desktops?). These screens are still incredible, but only if you have a card with RGB and vertical/horizontal (W/Blk) out, or plain VGA (conversion cables). Since cards these days only ship with DVI ports, it became time to make the jump to LCD. My criteria: Medium resolution. It is difficult to drive modern games at a constant 60FPS if your screen has a high native resolution. Good contrast and color reproduction. It needed to rival my old quality CRTs. Color balance. I do some print work, and I need to adjust colors onscreen to exactly how they are going to come out on paper.

Pros: Reasonable bang for the buck. Well considered layout. The passive heatsink on the motherboard chipset keeps noise and vibration down. I'm very pleased with the amount of tweaking and status information Asus and NVidia expose in the BIOS and the NVidia Control Panel.

Cons: 1 gigabit LAN port; it would have been nice to have a second Ethernet port, even if it was limited to 10/100. If used in SLI mode, the PCIE video card slots are limited to 8x; this is probably not a problem, especially if the RAM densities are high on the cards being used (less bus traffic). Limited number of SATA ports (4).

Overall Review: In 6 years, I have yet to be let down by Asus. I migrated to their mainboards from another (mostly non-extant now) brand which also had a penchant for extras (onboard RAID and SCSI, multiple LAN ports before this was common, etc.), and have always been pleased with the quality of the hardware. I also like the extra touches Asus throws in the box (a mobo-specific sized SLI cable, several SATA and eSATA cables, etc.). Also, if the product specifications page does not make it clear, this mobo has a full ATA100 controller with both PATA ports, thus 4 devices max, not 2 as stated on the specifications page. You don't have to worry about how you're going to get one cable to reach both your legacy HD and DVD if this is a barebones upgrade.