Pros: Cheap for the storage.
Cons: Mine was dead also - $13 shipping to RMA it.
Overall Review: Maybe I was unlucky, but the drive I got was DOA also. Seems like there are a lot of dead drives with this model.
Pros: - Good hardware for the money (especially when on sale) - Nice bright and clear screen - Good touchpad and buttons - Smaller / Lighter / More portable than most 17" laptops
Cons: - Keyboard quality seems a little lower than average - Battery life is short - No switchable graphics - Terrible webcam (really only works well in daylight) - Sound could be louder
Overall Review: Overall I'm real happy with this machine. The stock 5650 GPU clocks are 550 (GPU) / 800 (Mem) some laptops underclock this so these values are good). If your a die hard gamer, you can probably get another 20%+ boost i GPU if you use 'MSI Afterburner' (search for "msi afterburner unofficial overclocking"). I got a 3dMark06 of 6730 at normal speeds, and 7900 with values of 680 / 950.
Pros: High Quality Sound On the Cheap! Nice selection of tips. I think they are comfortable. Very good noise isolation. The double flanged one in particular pretty much removes all external sound.
Cons: Cord is a little stiff
Overall Review: I've use the version 1 of the M9 for over a year and have been very happy with it (bought these because I lost them). These are apparently version 2 and have a thicker, more rigid cord with a clip attached to it. I think there a little bigger also, but sound the same. As another reviewer noted the quality of these is miles above anything else near this price. I'll note that they sound a little tinny right out of the box. They don't reach there full potential until they break in after a few days of use. If sound isolation is important to you, I think these outperform all noise-canceling headphones (probably all IEMs do). There are lots of positive reviews in the internet if you search for them.
Pros: Comfortable (I have small hands though). No leakage of light from tracking LED. There are no other no other annoying lights. Tracks very well. I use the mouse right on the laptop in the area below the keyboard on a 'silver' Dell Inspiron 1520. It didn't track as well on a glass window though. :) Scroll wheel is near silent, with some feedback (clicking)
Cons: Left and right buttons are a bit loud.
Overall Review: I pretty much concur with the previous couple reviews - A couple of notes: 1. It is about 2/3 the size of a normal desktop mouse. 2. This is probably labeled a 'notebook' mouse because the USB receiver can stored in the mouse itself (for traveling). It make a good desktop mouse though also. 3. The USB receiver fits snug - Not alarmingly so though and I view this as a plus.
Pros: Good feature set for the money. Easy to use menus. Easy to update firmware if connected to internet. 'Search' function to navigation through file playback location when streaming is useful.
Cons: Wireless bandwidth is insufficient for high bit rate streaming. Remote / navigating menus could be more responsive.
Overall Review: Streams files from media servers nicely. However, when connected via wireless streaming works up to bit rates of about 20Mbps. After that playback stutter occurred. It played files fine when connected via LAN or a USB hard drive. Worked fine with a cheapo $3 HDMI cable.
Pros: Inexpensive Tracks well Thin USB cable
Cons: USB cable is kind of short
Overall Review: What's to say - this thing works fine, especially for the price (on sale). The mouse is bright red, and has an LED inside of it that goes through a rainbow of colors (so the parts that aren't opaque glow). If you're into computers with lots of flashing lights this will fit right in with it.
Pros: Price - If you get it during a deal for $35 or less. Quiet
Cons: 'Oddball' configuration of 1.5 GB DDR2 memory - low performance compared with other 9600 GSO products.
Overall Review: Well it's all about price. At the right price it's a perfectly good video card. Otherwise there are better choices and this card should be avoided. I get a 3Dmark06 score of about 6500. Very good when compared to most cards priced below $40. This compares badly though with other 9600 GSO products though (score of 8700). About the shell-shocker rebate - The second label required besides the UPC on box is located on the back of the hardware card. As some other reviewers noted the sticker is perforated and requires extreme care to peel off. I imagine a lot of people will get ripped off on the rebate. If you are still looking I'd recommend checking out the discounted 9800 gt cards which are 2x as fast as this and are currently going for about $50 (here at NewEgg)
Pros: Good upper middle range gaming performance. Overclocking is good (10%+ in my case). Decent support for 'grouping' monitors together, including ways to compensate for the bezels where monitors meet.
Cons: ATI / Sapphire still hasn't fixed their issue with 'Overdrive' that causes dual monitors to flicker. I didn't know about that when I bought this. I should have read more reviews so that wouldn't have spent so much time trouble shooting that. It's pretty lame that this still is an issue considering how long they have known about it.
Overall Review: You can work around the flicker issue by grouping them as one large monitor (ex 3840 x 1200) instead of separate 'extended' monitors. Or you can just shut off overdrive until loading up a game that needs the performance boost of overdrive. Without that issue I would have rated the card at 4 eggs - real good performance, but IMO could be priced a little better given what is being discounted to sell at the $100 price or so.
Pros: Seems like new - I can't tell that it's refurbished. Feature set is good for the price. Big screen. Easy to Use, and Good routing. You can Google many reviews of this product. All the reviews I've seen are positive.
Cons: Needed software and map updates. Screen sometimes seems a little unresponsive to 'dragging' with the finger. No case included with it.
Overall Review: Prices on GPS units are tumbling down these days and there are a lot of good products in the $150 range. The things that set this apart are it's bigger screen, 'free' traffic updates (which are supported by non-obtrusive advertising and (IMO) 'fun' factors like many different voices to choose from. Garmin will enable a free map update if you contact them and provide send them a copy of you invoice. My unit required two software updates and the mentioned map update. You get those by signing up at Garmin.com. The software updates took about a half hour, the map update about 3 hrs (2+ GB of data to download). I would recommend this product to anyone.
Pros: Price Sound Quality Ease of setup
Cons: Way too loud Blinking green light when playing sound
Overall Review: I bought this because of the poor sound quality of my Dell laptop. The laptop had a log of noise and hiss, none which are present with this device. Just plug this into a USB and it just works. I wish everything worked like this.
Pros: Lowest price dual core for small form notebooks. Vastly superior to Z520/GMA500 netbooks. Attractively designed. The sound was fine for the size of the computer. The control panel supports 'enhancements' like loudness, equalizer, environment, etc.).
Cons: Some flex in the keyboard. Fan spins on high whenever plugged in (see below though). Memory configuration and hard disk size disappoint. Lack other configurations (bigger hard disks, more memory, etc.).
Overall Review: This netbook is really more of a low cost/small form factor PC than a netbook and performs very well when compared to netbooks. I'm pretty sure it will get favorable reviews from the typical sources. As others have noted, the RAM configuration is 1/1 instead of 2/0, meaning if you plan to upgrade it's more expensive. OTOH 1/1 runs dual channel for a tiny (2%?) performance boost. Given the extra cost of upgrading memory, the choice of the x64 Windows 7 is bad because more of standard 2GB memory is needed by the OS. This is an opinion of course, but a 250GB hard disk for another $25 would have been worth it. Also Acer uses a non-standard connection cable to the hard disk which is fagile. There's a pretty active community supporting this series. Search for "Acer 1410 tweaks" for some interesting utilities and mods. This should play most games more than 5 years old. HP has a $400 ION based netbook which should do better with newer or 3D intensive games.
Pros: Nice looking, good ventilation.
Cons: Only half of the motherboard standoff connectors will actually screw into the case.
Overall Review: Like another reviewer I had a lot of problems with the motherboard standoffs stripping through the metal of the case. This is reason enough to avoid this case. Also when I removed the front cover to put in a DVD drive, one of those connectors broke off also. That location connector also makes one if the drive bays unusable since the screw protrudes into the bay. The case was cheap on sale, but I the quality should have been better given what it retails for.