ASUS 15-Inch D550MA Laptop [OLD VERSION]

Don't listen to all the negative comments unless the computer was a lemon. Someone even had the audacity to say the are going to return their's and buy a mac. If you have money to buy a mac, why would you consider this computer anyway. By the way, I have 3 Mac computers and needed extra computers for my kids to surf, play simple flash online games, do homework, etc. and this is an excellent buy!I also build computers and you can barely build a desktop computer (including case w/ power supply, HD, MoBo, Ram, DVD and with monitor) in this price range. Yes, the keyboard doesn't have the feel or power of my MacBook Pro, but I spent $1,800 for my mac. So is a fair comparison? No, because they are two different machines with different purposes. However, it is durable and if you have concerns, do what I did. I bought an inexpensive usb keyboard and mouse and let my kids use that without touching the actual laptop keyboard to preserve it.I bought two and the are serving me and my family well and remember, ASUS is one of the top motherboard manufacturers in the world and I trust them. Also, it has 4 gigs of ram, a 500 GB HD, DVD burner, camera, Intel Dual core processor (and I know it isn't a i3, i5 or i7) and it is 15.4. screen...It's a steal and I don't know how they are making money.Now, if you are a serious online gamer, do video rendering, audio recording/mixing, etc., then you will bring it to it's knees. But that's why I have my Mac Book Pro which has the i7 processor with hyper-threading which doubles my cores to 8, with 8 gigs of ram and no matter what I throw at it, it handles it with no problem.Nevertheless, if you are considering a good computer for yourself, kids, significant other, etc.; and they just need to surf, do homework or use Microsoft office, then this is an EXCELLENT buy. I highly recommend this computer!!!!!

I was so worried about the stories of windows 8, but this is not a touch screen computer, & I am happy about it. This version of windows 8 is much like windows 7, but as far as getting to control panel, it is much like playing hide & seek. But first when you get it, You Need to know that the start button is on the bottom left corner. Occasionally on the right side while moving the mouse there a settings screen will pop out, that will get you to the machine functions. I plugged in the ethernet cable to get internet, downloaded some favorite programs, Rough Draft, Fox Fire, word web, Apache open office. I did 62 upgrades, a couple hours later it upgraded 92 more. Later the wifi worked too. There are a few programs you need to find, the pop up screen for setting that will pop out the right side, it will take you to control setting & system security, you will also need to find back up, to do a windows repair disk on a cd or dvd , ( the repair disk is what you need if it crashes) I did an image disk on the spare drive D: 42 gigs of info. I saved a backup icon, on desktop, of windows defender( microsoft security essentials ) Later I found on settings/programs, uninstall program I pinned it to tray, it ended up on the start tiles, you then scroll all the way to the right end, so at least I can find it.You can plan to spend most of your first day, down loading, up grading, And learning to save icons or pin to tray, so that you do not play hide and seek for the computers lifetime. I think that this is what caused a bad reputation for windows 8. So now that I paid $319 to be frustrated all day, my wife has a new computer, in case the win 7 computer quits. And I learned a new toy.It has the same speed processor as win 7 has, but it runs faster, there was no bloatware. I had to download my favorite Rough Draft word processor just to see if the caps lock was on, you have two lights, a power light & a charge light. So now that this is finished, this computer is just as good as my Windows 7 computers.

Okay, let me just start by saying that I didn't have huge expectations for this laptop in terms of performance and I bought it with the intention of upgrading the memory to 8gb and replacing the hard drive with an SSD.Pros: Price, size and appearanceCons: Poor quality, cheap parts. See below.The disappointing thing about this laptop is that it is not easily upgradeable when it comes to replacing the HDD or the RAM. There are no easy access removable panels on the bottom for the RAM or HDD which means in order to upgrade either of them you have to disassemble the chassis and remove the motherboard which, of course, voids the warranty. It does not state this anywhere in the product information.When I first removed the laptop from the box I heard a rattling inside. Now I didn't care about the warranty and was planning on upgrading anyway so I opened it up to find the source of the rattling. I discovered that it was a screw rolling around inside. In fact, about half the screws for the motherboard, both screws for the battery, and two screws from the hdd bracket were missing.If you plan to do anything more than Web browsing, email, or word processing spend the extra money for something with better hardware so you're not disappointed. Otherwise, I would only use this machine if you're planning to replace the extremely awful Windows 8 with something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint.