I purchased this laptop in February of 2006 and have been very hard on the poor thing.  I know I stress out my computers; after all, I have had to do several complete restores setting it back to complete factory settings.  While that has been a bit of a hassle I know the reasons for it being necessary are completely my fault, however the hassle is only minimal since I have the restore disc which helps speed the process right along.  Other than the several restores, I have been required to do; I have experienced very few problems with this computer.

Let me first explain to you a bit about what I do, so you can grasp exact why my poor computer is abused, then I’ll explain the problems that I have experienced, and you will most likely see that my problems will be experienced by very few others.  I am a student full time in college, however all of my classes are online, which means I am spending hours each day using the computer just for school purposes.  I have several hundred e-mails hit my e-mail box each day that the computer must process.  I run two different web based business also from my computer, as well as put together a few presentations for my normal day job.  I also do a lot of work with video converting and audio tracks.  This alone is hard on a computer.  Aside from that I am connected to an IRC network for a good 23 hours a day plus with mIRC running in the background at the minimum so I can work and chat all at the same time. 

Now this brief list does not even include my all in one messenger program Trillian that I run as well as my anti-virus and firewall software.  Therefore, as you can see my computer is worked much more than the average computer user would ever dare dream of doing.  However, this computer has worked like a charm.  Few problems have really been experienced that were not directly my fault through either a virus or a program that was a beta that I was testing that caused me some malfunctions. 

The only cosmetic issues my computer has at this point is that the left click button underneath the touch pad has started to lose it’s silver color, but it’s only about a third of the way across the button, which is very minor.  Moreover, since the laptop itself is silver, it is not even that big of a cosmetic issue.  The screen has resisted scratches wonderfully, which considering my two small kids seem to think its touch screen is a miracle to say the least. 

Only other major problem I experience at times is related to the position of the DVD drive, it’s not placed and designed very well because if you place a slight bit of pressure on the left side the laptop on either the top or the bottom, the drive pops out.  Not the greatest placement there, but that has been the only malfunction that I have experienced overall with this machine. 

It does seem to require to function in tip top shape a very good clean up including restart, and defrag at least every 4 weeks at a minimum.  I am usually able to go a good 2 weeks average before a restart is even required to make the computer regain some speed loss that is usually evident after running for long periods of time.  The only major thing I personally wish this computer had is more RAM, while it does come with 1 GIG standard, I think that it’s almost impossible to have too much, and wish it would be 2 GIG standard, it does however have the capability to upgrade and add another stick, which is on my to do list for in the future. 

The hard drive that is included is 80 GIG, divided into 2 partitions.  Partition C is the main drive, which you are free to use, and is approximately 75 gig empty.  Partition D is locked and includes the files that you will need to speed along the restore process in the event that a reformat is ever needed.  As someone who has had to use those files several times, I cannot stress enough the importance of leaving them alone. 

One of the main things that drew me to this computer is the fact that it included the built in wireless card that loads fairly quickly, however it seems to take a couple of minutes to actually load up upon computer startup.  Which since I am an internet addict does drive me crazy at times.  The computer overall is not very heavy at all, makes it great to move around. 

The battery itself has one feature that to me is useless, however the average person would find wonderful.  When you remove the battery, it has a button you can press, and it will tell you how fully charged it is, while this does me no good since my computer is almost always on, I thought that was a great idea for the normal user.  I paid a bit over 900 for this laptop on sale, including the taxes and have been very happy with it.  It has been a wonderful investment for me, with virtually no problems.  Handles everything thrown at it with ease.