Pros: Open, customizable, fantastic hardware, and it's an alternative to the closed-natured Apple products. Apple makes attractive, well designed products, but I am very much opposed to their business practices. This Tablet is just as high quality in terms of the build, and in many cases more capable than the iPad 2.

Cons: There is certainly an argument to be made for the number of apps available to Apple users. Everyday, that is becoming more irrelevant though, and what I install is not subject to rejection from the mothership.

Overall Review: Either way, competition is good. I am very glad someone is making a product like this, because I admire Apple's products (I had an iPhone 3G and work on a Mac Pro) but wish I could support something that is healthier for everyone, and competition definitely is that. Everyone can get what works best and inspire improvements.

Pros: After it posts, it recognized both my CPU's and ~20/24 GB of my RAM.

Cons: Outrageously long time passes between power on and post. After a crash during an overnight render, the board will not post. Power+HDD LED are unresponsive, yet the fans running off the board are powered.

Overall Review: When I contacted T.S. about the long boot times, they told me to update the BIOS, which they make difficult. The BIOS they e-mailed me was the one "floating around the office" in case any of you are looking for an update. I haven't had the chance to figure out the BIOS update process, which is moot because it wont even start now. At this grade I expect more, and for a $400 board, this is ridiculous. My cooling is good enough to rule it out as the culprit. If by some small chance I discover the fault lies elsewhere, I will change my rating, but at this point, all evidence is pointing to the MBD-X8DAi-O.

Pros: An all around solid operating system that is very stable, attractive, and well maintained by Microsoft. The extra features, in particular the Media Center function, are hard to beat. I use almost every edition of this OS and it runs great!

Cons: Factors like Mac's wonderfully vague marketing and Nvidia's inability to make proper drivers have led people to believe this operating system is less than fantastic, which couldn't be more false.

Overall Review: I have an idea that "AJswimmer" and people like him/her don't know what he/she is talking about. I have never had issues loading any software on 64-bit Vista that worked on 32-bit Vista. It is also misleading to claim that Vista is slower than XP. Vista is 5 or so years newer and is built accordingly. For example, Vista takes advantage of RAM more than XP because it is much, MUCH faster. If you have very little RAM on an old computer, your machine will perform slower than XP.