Pros: LED backlit screen and keyboard. GTX 260M GPU P8700 Great palm wrest. Twin hard drive bays. 1080P screen is beautiful. Sound card has Creative controls giving it a big step up over typical Realtek solutions. This one has built in bluetooth, most of the other Asus laptops of this style do not. Built in overclocking.

Cons: Onboard speakers are weak but see comments for improvement. Optical drive feels cheap and flimsy. Easy replaced with a quality slot loader though.

Overall Review: This lappy has a BIOS bug related to sound. If the POST sound is disabled it SEVERELY limits the max volume of the onboard speakers. To fix this leave the POST sound enabled but set the volume to 0 in BIOS if it annoys you. Overall it's hard to touch these specs for the money. The (insert company name that rhymes with pest guy) version isn't much cheaper but has a far worse CPU, screen, sound and no bluetooth. This one also has the awesome Asus warranty instead of the pest guy lousy 1 year.

Pros: Has newest firmware. Very fast disk. Boot times were noticeably shorter and file transfers very quick.....

Cons: .... for about 3 hours until it started clicking and making a whine/beep noise. Drive eventually died all together. Won't even spin up now. Popped my old disk back in and it works fine.

Overall Review: This drive has the supposedly "fixed" firmware. It's a shame that Seagate has gone from the premier maker of hard disks to the laughing stock of the industry. Thankfully newegg makes RMAs as painless as they can be. I think I'll stick with WD.

Pros: Simply the most noticable upgrade you can make to any machine. Programs launch instantly. Everything is faster. No noise or heat.

Cons: Expensive for it's capacity but dirt cheap for it's performance.

Overall Review: These seem to be shipping with the latest TRIM firmware now. 3rd Intel SSD I've bought. I simply refuse to use a machine without one now.

Pros: Cools very well for the price. Uses push pins which is a plus for some.

Cons: Uses push pins which I really dislike. Annoying to mount arms on cooler for i5. Fan clips are the usual excercise in frustration. Doesn't cool nearly as well as the typical monster coolers.

Overall Review: For the price it's hard to beat this. Just be prepared for a possibly frustrating installation. Thankfully you only have to do it once.

Pros: Onboard diagnostic LED lights were a big help when it didn't boot the first time. After completing the R.T.F.M process all was well. Nice layout.

Cons: Actually had to read the manual for this one. Very picky on memory placement. Would not boot the first time.

Overall Review: Was a bit hesitant about the brand having never used them. Board worked exactly as the manual says it would and has proven reliable. I'd buy it again.

Pros: Works. Voltages look stable on Fluke DMM.

Cons: It doesn't make me coffee.

Overall Review: It's a PSU. It works. It's dirt cheap. Would I trust a $1k rig to it? Probably not. Works great for an HTPC though.