Pros: Nicest laptop I've ever used. The IPS 2880x1800 display is amazing, the CPU is great, the 16GB ram is good, the discrete graphics are good enough to play any of my games. It's thin and light, first laptop I've ever had that I can use for gaming or work, and is light enough to carry around, with great battery life. I bootcamp windows 7 64 bit (for gaming and work) and use OS X just for fun, I like web browsing and email/calendar in OS X. I run parallels to run my bootcamp windows install in a VM when needed. 90% of the time I'm running this natively with win 7 though. Huge price drop here from when it first came out, a similar config then was close to $3500.

Cons: For windows users, you are missing the DEL key and the prtscrn key (Del is backspace, FN-DEL is del). This is just due to having an appl kbd. I got used to it.

Pros: Nothing, can't buy a new PC without it.

Cons: Gestures with a mouse - totally unusable. Start page / live tiles are not as useful as the start menu. Average users can not figure out how to use this. Ridiculous how you get to safe mode. Constant jumping in and out of metro to accomplish simple tasks wastes your time and breaks your focus. Metro would be fine on a tablet, it sucks on a desktop. It's like being back in the days of DOS where you could only run one app and had no windows - anyone remember how TILED windows were a big deal, and then you could cascade and that was something! We're back to tiles at best and full screen at worst.

Overall Review: The ribbon was bad enough, but this + windows 8 + the fact that you can't easily downgrade anymore (friend bought a new sony laptop thinking we could just exercise downgrade rights and put seven on it - wrong! no drivers for it for 7) is a big lose. I never thought this would happen but because of our recent iphone and ipad purchases and the decent job Apple has done w/icloud we've switched our main email/browsing/calender/tasks etc. to macs.

Pros: Decent motherboard, cheap when done w/rebate and CPU combo.

Cons: No drivers on the Biostar web site (US or Taiwan). http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=574 How are we supposed to get drivers? They have a very shade "scan my pc" link on the main page that takes you to a very very shady site that wants you to pay to get drivers... Please put the drivers on your web site like everyone does for their motherboards.

Pros: Great value, actually works with no issues w/3 monitors, even w/active dport adapter, comes out of sleep with no issues. No artifacts, no driver crash/recover etc. I went through 3 other 6870 cards from 2 other brands and all had issues either w/artifacts or w/the driver. Tried on 2 different PCs, one with a 1KW PS that had been running dual 4870x2 cards (so the PS was not an issue).

Cons: None

Overall Review: It's refreshing when a product just works and you don't have to struggle to figure out issues on the web, flash bioses, drivers, etc. Just plug and play. That's how it's supposed to be.

Pros: I bought this when I got 2 4870x2 cards in January 2010. It was a good value and provided the current needed on the +12V rails for the cards. It worked flawlessly for 11 months, and then it stopped being able to power both cards (but the PC was still usable w/only one card in it). I e-mailed tech support asking if there was a way to get an advance replacement, expecting (reasonably) to have an authorization put on my CC for it, but fearing the worst (that they would say no - I had already identified a local source for a replacment PS figuring I'd have to buy a new PS to use while this one was RMA'd). I couldn't afford to be down while a PS was shipped to and from a vendor. I was pleasantly SHOCKED to get a reply the next day saying they shipped me a replacement (included tracking #) and giving me an RMA to send the old one back when I get the replacement.

Cons: None. Degraded after 11 months, but their advance replacement warranty service totally negates this as a problem. Yes you'd rather not have problems at all but when a vendor addresses your problem this gracefully, it makes it a non-issue.

Overall Review: Well done XION, I have no hesitation buying their products again in the future.