Joined on 04/16/01
Pros: Well designed, comfortable to type on, well laid out. For a chiclet keyboard, it's absolutely wonderful to use. All functions are easily available at a glance. The ports are convieniently positioned, and easily accessible. The dual core Atom performs very well, and the hyperthreading comes in quite handy for that little extra oomph when you heed it. The screen is sharp, clear, and bright as you need it. None of the fuzziness older generation netbooks sometimes had problems with. Bloatware is minimal, and easily uninstalled. Some of it, like the dropdown Asus center at the top of the screen, will be useful to people who do a bit of telecommuting. The touchpad works quite well, once you find a sensitivity that works for you, and the bottons don't have that "gonna pop off" feeling that seems so common to lower priced laptops/netbooks. All in all, light, comfortable to use, and well laid out. With 2 gigs of memory, it hums along without much in the way of complaints.
Cons: 1 gig of memory is not enough unless you have no intention of doing anything besides email and typing letters/reports. The port for the power input on the left side of the netbook feels fragile. I would suggest taking extra care to not move when it's plugged in. The key layout is very good, but people who hate chiclet keys will not like it without a great deal of use to acclimate their fingers. The feel is somewhat different from a normal sculpted keycap. Windows 7 Starter. Definitely upgrade to Home or install Linux. If you can find drivers, XP will also be an excellent alternative. Starter is just too limited for anything besides email and surfing. Small screen will be a handicap if you have poor eyesight. Then again, if your eyesight is bad, you shouldn't bee looking at a netbook.
Overall Review: Very nice little machine. More memory would be useful, but that's true for just about any netbook, and most laptops. HDD is comfortably large, processor is an excellent blend of speed and power usage, and keyboard doesn't make you want to punt the little computer out the window after 2 minutes.
Nice little upgrade
Pros: Excellent upgrade for older AM2, AM2+, and AM3 processors. Just spanked my old quad core and extended the life of my system another year or so. Speed improvement from 2.5GHz to 3.4GHz is very noticable, and welcome.
Cons: Jebus, the stock cooler is noisy! Got spoiled with the silent cooler I had on, but damaged it when removing from the older processor. Going to have to get a nice, quiet cooler.
Overall Review: Excellent chip for older systems, but don't use the stock cooler unless you like fan noise.
Still Chugging along
Pros: Got this to replace a flaky boot drive. Been stable, fast, and reliable so far. Just wish my MB was SATA3....
Cons: SSD Tweaker or some other SSD tuning program is a must unless you enjoy burning drives out early, or unless you enjoy shutting down/altering services by hand.
Overall Review: Moving from a HDD to an SSD is like going from dial-up to broadband: You'd rather sacrifice your leg than go back.
Impressed
Pros: Excellent card for the price. Stable, rear exhausting, clean layout. Also works just fine with nVidia's over/under clocking utility. Fairly quiet in normal operation. Make sure your drivers are updated, and that your power supply is beefy enough.
Cons: fan is very noisy when run all the way to 100% in testing.
Pros: Well laid out interior, fairly sturdy construction. The adjustable straps are simple to use, and seem quite capable of holding on without making you want to be paranoid about them coming loose running through the airport. The "can be used as an impromptu lap desk" bit is true, and does work, as the case is sturdy enough for typing on. There is sufficient room inside the case for a power brick, some papers, and some USB drives, if needed.
Cons: The odd shape of the case does not lend itself well to being placed with other items. It pretty much requires being placed on end, leaning against something. As noted above, there is sufficient room in the case for what you will most likely need. However, if you want to take along a USB powered external drive, you will probably not have room.
Overall Review: Nice case, some well thought out touches. A bit small, but that's the price you pay for compactness and sturdy design.
Pros: Kingston hasn't let me down for over a decade. Love the stuff. Stable as all hell.
Cons: Not for overclocking/tweaking. This memory is for people who want stability.
Well Done
Item arrived on time, without damage. No hiccups.