Joined on 02/08/08
Incredible
Pros: This monitor simply blew me away. 10 million to 1 contrast ratio? LED? Under 200 dollars? Pure win. Seriously, the colors on my games and movies have never looked so vibrant and crisp on my computer till I got this. I live in a dorm room and desk space is limited, which made the circle stand a great fit! Highly recommended!
Cons: None so far. Keep in mind, this is a new arrival as of 03/10/10.
Overall Review: Some complain that the touch-screen controls are too sensitive on the Designo models, but I've found them decent.
Slow and Painful Death
Pros: Great graphical performance in games. Decent speakers.
Cons: The biggest con: This laptop has the tendency to die on you. When I bought it, it immediately became my favorite possession and I took utmost care of it, cleaning it regularly. However, about a month ago it would start turning itself off suddenly without warning in the middle of gaming. I looked up this issue and saw that it pointed to overheating, which was odd because I cleaned the fan and heatsinks regularly with compressed air. As per the instructions of others online with similar problems in the same MSI G series of laptops, I opened it up and removed the thermal paste off of the CPU and GPU and applied a new round of Arctic Silver 5. This brought about another week of satisfactory performance. However, this would not last. Soon after, the problem began again and not only when gaming. I ran Speedfan and other heat monitoring devices often and saw that it idled at 29C GPU and 30-40C CPU temperatures - which is the normal range according to many. Despite this, the laptop would turn off randomly with increasing frequency. Now it's gotten to the point where I can't even use the laptop with the AC power plugged in as doing so will immediately make it turn off. I realize this is because being on battery power throttles the CPU and GPU clock so, in other words, having them both on full clock makes my laptop die - all while temperatures are normal. Sadly, for me, I bought this laptop soon before graduating in New York last year (a graduation present for me from my parents) and I soon after returned to my home country of Pakistan. MSI has no dealers here (for laptops) so I can't RMA it. It's a pity because my year with the laptop was amazing but this problem is quite common according to my frantic searches on Google to find a solution.
Overall Review: If anyone knows of a solution to the problem above, feel free to contact me and let me know. I can't play games anymore (battery power reduces CPU and GPU clock) and I can't evne charge it while it's turned on because it will reset.