Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

EDIT: I was initially super happy with this thing, but it took a dump within 3 months and ASUS has had it since the 30th with no updates or ETA or anything. It was great when it worked. But now they're apparently going to keep it until kingdom come and I'm out the money. How about let's not buy this thing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This baby just showed up yesterday and I swear to God that when it did the clouds parted, the angels sang, and my life got 3000x more efficient. I need to preface this with the fact that I'm a real penny pincher and tend to be 3 generations behind the technological curve at all times so I was sporting a dinosaur of a Toshiba Qosmio before this. I was okay with playing my games on "mediocre at best" settings. Then this dude showed up and everything changed. There are some really important things the more casual purchaser needs to know about. First off, the speakers are loud. Not "are you sure this isn't a jet engine" loud, but loud enough to fill a living room with decent enough decibels. Being an audiophile I thought the audio sounded a bit thin out of the box but there's an equalizer program built in so you can do whatever you want with the sound. The screen is matte. For the less in the know consumer you should know this means your screen will not have a shiny finish. This may not sound like a big deal, but a matte screen means a largely glare free experience without adjusting the screen position until doomsday to get rid of that awesome gray shade that traditional screen finishes like to cast if you're not looking at the screen just right. I'm a fan of shiny things too, and the keyboard backlighting situation is basically the coolest thing I've ever had the pleasure of tinkering with. You can change the color of the backlighting, y'all. It can color cycle. Like a trendy mood lamp. For many people this is dumb. For me it's a source of great glee. It's also a very satisfying keyboard all around. It's also superbly light. It's at least half the weight of the laptop I had before. Also the charger cord stays in firm and won't just fall out whenever it feels like it. The power supply box attached to the cord is also pretty small and inconspicuous. I can now play all my games on ultra. I can see colors in my games I didn't know existed. For this price I don't think you can get a lot better. I shopped around for weeks before settling on this and I couldn't be more pleased. I'm sure there are nitpicky things the more hardcore audiographicphiles could complain about but holy sweet fancy Moses this thing is a game changer for me. As a fairly hardcore gamer who has worked with subpar equipment for a long time, if you're in the same boat as me and thinking of taking the plunge, don't hesitate.