Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

*Update 10/5/14: Well, about two and half months after I got it and the wireless adapter has crapped out. Wasted a couple of hours troubleshooting the problem and I am 99% sure that it is a hardware issue. I won't change my initial review at this point, but this could possibly be a sign of the long-term reliability. I'll update later.* *Update 11/1/14: Forgot ever making that update, sorry. The wireless adapter wasn't broken, I think it was an issue with the proxy software my school makes us install to use the university network. As a side note, I've since installed Linux (Ubuntu) on it as a second OS and it runs it beautifully without a hitch.* *Update 2/11/15: Still running strong. I've been using it with Linux almost exclusively for the past few months, so I've added a small write-up at the end of this review for people interested in that aspect.* This is a nice budget laptop for students and/or people just looking for something to do basic computer tasks. I'm a student, and although I already have a nice custom-built desktop computer that I do most of my work on, I felt like I would benefit from having something portable to have in-class or while hanging out on campus. This is, obviously, not a laptop for gaming. Out of curiosity I installed Skyrim on it and surprisingly it did run the game on low settings (albeit not with ideal fps) and it ran Minecraft fairly well (minor stuttering from time to time--but still definitely playable). If you're buying a laptop with the intention of gaming or any other intensive computer tasks I would highly recommend you look into the $500+ price range for a laptop with more capable specs. In my case, it runs all the programs I needed it for: Visual Studio 2013, Eclipse, and other IDE's run perfectly fine. Word and other Office 2013 programs run perfectly fine. Browsing the internet with Chrome is perfect. Streaming HD video or playing a 1080p movie file is perfect. Unity3D (a game engine) and Blender (3d animation software) run acceptably. For $250 I really can't ask for anything more. Pros: Price: $250 for a brand new full featured Windows 8.1 laptop is insane. I would recommend one of these over a similarly priced Chromebook any day. Extremely lightweight: I was surprised when I took it out of the box at how little it weighed for the size--very easy to carry. Quiet and stays really cool: Even while testing out the gaming I didn't notice any sound from fans and even after using it for a while it didn't feel warm at all. Nice design: Not a flashy laptop, just clean and non-descript aesthetics. Doesn't look like a high-end laptop but also doesn't look like a budget one. I like the textured matte plastic on the back. Screen hinge feels solid with not much play. No optical drive: I know for some this is a con--but I can't even remember the last time I used a CD/DVD and would much rather have the savings on weight, power consumption, and cost. If you need to format and reinstall the OS or something just make a bootable USB stick (very easy to do). Nice screen: The screen is bright with decent contrast and a 1366x768 resolution that's pretty much the standard for this size of laptop (at least until you get to the $600+ price range). I don't think it is LED backlit but it does its job well. *EDIT: The screen does have an LED backlight. Nice keyboard with a number pad: If you're doing office work or programming it's pretty much essential to have a keyboard with a num pad. The keyboard as a whole is decent, no complaints except there's just the tiniest bit of rattling noise when tapping away. The trackpad is offset so that your hands don't rest on it when typing in a normal position. Cons: Not upgrade friendly: There's no easy way to access the RAM, HDD, or even the battery. Although I really didn't have any intention of upgrading it so it's not a huge deal. This laptop is what it is and the slow-ish processor with low-end integrated graphics will always be this computer's bottleneck. If I need a faster laptop I'd rather just save the upgrade money to buy a new laptop. Power cord input is very snug: I guess this could be a pro, but where the power cord plugs into the laptop is so snug and secure that if you (or a pet) tripped over the cord it would certainly pull the laptop off the table before it came out. Makes me a little wary. No light for caps-lock or num-lock: It has a power/charging light and an HDD activity light on the front and that's it. Wish it had an indication light for caps lock and num lock. Also, it sometimes doesn't seem to remember if num-lock is on when waking up from sleep etc. I find myself having to reactivate num-lock even though I'm positive I didn't deactivate it. Trackpad buttons: The left-click and right-click on the trackpad are a little hard to press for my taste and they are kind of noisy. Using the Asus Smart-gesture or whatever it's called makes it where you can just tap/double tap (or tap with both fingers to right-click) the trackpad to avoid using the buttons at all which seems like a better alternative. All in all it's a decent and capable budget-friendly laptop with only a few minor gripes. I would definitely recommend it. ***Notes on LINUX: I've been using this laptop with Linux (currently Ubuntu MATE) dual-booted alongside the pre-installed Win8.1 for several months and have found myself using Linux almost exclusively. Figured I'd mention a few things regarding that: *I have never been able to get the screen brightness adjustment keys (fn of F5 and F6) to work in Linux at all. The key to turn the display off works (fn of F7), just not the ones to turn the brightness up or down. I've read through tons of forum posts etc. trying to get it work but finally just settled on putting a little widget in the top panel to adjust the brightness easily on the fly. (Just want to note that I never had *any issues with the brightness keys in Win8.1) *Also regarding screen brightness--with one of the Ubuntu flavors I tried, I wanna say Kubuntu, the screen brightness would not adjust at all (control panel, manually through terminal, etc). I ultimately didn't feel like trying tons of fixes so I just went on with trying other Ubuntu *flavors. *UEFI boot: While all flavors of the Ubuntu distro will install just fine (and very easily) on this laptop without adjusting any of your boot settings in the BIOS, some other popular distros will require some extra steps. I tried both ElementaryOS and Linux Mint, but neither of them will boot or install while in UEFI. You can, however, boot to them and install if you switch to legacy boot instead (I explained how to do this is one my replies to this review). Downside is that if you still want to dual boot with Win8.1 you will have to manually switch the boot settings between UEFI and legacy depending which one you are booting to. *Battery life: I haven't done any real benchmarks yet, but the battery life using Ubuntu MATE seems significantly better than with Win8.1. When I have the time I'll look into getting some actual data on that. ***