Pros: Light weight, decent screen, very good touchpad responsiveness and size, advanced close-the-lid standby or sleep mode, decent battery life (3+hours with screen at full brightness). Windows 8.1 upgradable. Fan is quiet, unit doesn't get too warm. 14" laptops fit way better in most backpacks, in my opinion. Allows VGA or HDMI connections.

Cons: The physical click portion of the touchpad requires a bit more pressure than I like, and makes a loud clunky click--but it works. I just got used to touch-clicking, rather than using the left physical button. The rubber bumpers around the screen bezel are the kind that are prone to damaging the display if your notebook gets very compressed inside a backpack with a lot of books--be careful or slide some sort of spacer to prevent bumper-to-body contact when the lid is closed (and it may be squished in a backpack). Screen brightness is great indoors, suffers outdoors. May have to get an external CD/DVD drive (for like thirty bucks) to keep on standby. No Bluetooth, which is kinda dumb.

Overall Review: The Celeron 1000M CPU s a far more capable than I would have guessed, and handles complex 2D graphics easily. Online research indicates that it should handle some 3D graphics and gaming at lower in-game settings and lower frame rates, but I have not tried. The slowest part of this laptop is probably the HDD, which could be replaced by a knowledgable person with a small SSD. Frankly, this is a great schoolwork and web surfing machine in a significantly more compact and lighweight package than your standard 15.x" laptop--and a pretty good deal, since it has the full year warranty (unlike most refurb units).

Pros: While it worked, it was fast.

Cons: Failed under warranty, and the failure mode was that the files could still be read without issue, but absolutely no write operations could be performed--including delete, erase, or format. Warranty replacement requires you to send flash drive back to manufacturer, which I cannot do, because of the confidential information contained on it--and therefore, the warranty is useless.

Overall Review: Many people will, in fact, send their flash PNY flash drives back as proof of failure in order to obtain a replacement. A common failure mode for this drive is the inability to erase the files already on the drive, and tech support will not let you semi-destroy the drive prior to returning it. PNY's assurance that they will not access the files was not the same as a fool-proof guarantee, and I am not a fool. No more PNY products for me.

Pros: Easy solution for grabbing data off a HDD

Cons: none found

Overall Review: More convenient than having to pop a drive into an external case kit

Pros: It works, it's quiet, and it's a really good value when the price is right.

Cons: Not such a wise idea when it is priced too close to a brand new, fully-warrantied, higher-capacity hard disk.

Overall Review: I use these to rebuild older PCs that have been auctioned off without hard drives. I would buy new HDDs if they weren't occasionally discounted by this fine retailer. They look like new, and are packaged really well.

Pros: Solidly built machine supplied with above-average amt. of RAM and larger HDD, centered around one of the better AMD CPU+GPU hybrid chips. Runs quiet and cool. Runs apps and games that require moderately good graphics power (CAD products, online games like Runescape or League of Legends). Bright display. Aluminum cladding over plastic looks good.

Cons: The arrow keys up, down, left, right arrow keys are small for gaming. Slightly heavy. Battery life is just okay.

Overall Review: Buy it for the AMD APU. This chip is just a way better value than an equivalent Intel chip, in my opinion, for light gaming. The fingerprint password feature is kind of nice. The large, glowing HP logo on the top (or backside of the screen) is almost too bright.

Pros: Moderately fast 3D (~700+ passmark) in a card that does not hog power (doesn't even have a seperate power connector), and at a price point that gives it a very good performance-to-price ratio. Runs standard nVidia driver & adjustment software. Installed without any problems.

Cons: The heavy aluminum fins on this are thick enough that it could run into another card, depending on slot spacing. It doesn't even come close to causing a problem in my HP midsized tower.

Overall Review: If you do not want to chance overtaxing your wimpy 425W power supply, and still want decent 3D gaming capability, this is the best option I've found. Get one when they are back in stock. My other Asus products have thus far been completely reliable.