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(More customer reviews)Been an Asus fan for a long long time. Jumped on this deal for what I expected to be a "performance" laptop, man am I disappointed. First off, the hard drive is a slow as hell 5400RPM which has no place in a machine with this price tag, shame on me I never checked the spec. In addition to that, its not a 320Gig drive, the system is only reading 282Gig and Asus for some bizarre reason decided to partition the drive into a 74G C: Boot Drive a 208G D: Data drive. Makes no sense, its confusing and cumbersome.
My biggest beef with this machine is the 18 (EIGHTEEN) shortcuts I found on my desktop when I booted up. All flavors of crapware that I don't want and don't need that include a 90 day subscription to Trend Micro Anti-Virus which MaximumPC magazine rated as the WORST AV package on the market in their May 2010 edition. Now I know that doesn't mean much, but its disquieting when the defacto Hardware Champion of the entire computer industry (IMO) loads up a new machine with a truckload of unrecognizable garbageware like Splendid Utility and AP Bank, among others I've never heard of and don't have any use for. Oh well, while cleaning all this junk out of my HD I also noticed the boot time is right at 4 minutes, that's with the included utility Asus Fast Boot engaged. Sheesh!!!
On the upside, the display is bright and crisp and the graphics are amazing. And, the real good news here....there are two open DIMM slots so you can easily upgrade to 8Gig of system memory and hopefully improve the performance of this machine. Not a fan of the chicklet keyboard either, and you will find it almost impossible to navigate in the dark.
Very disappointed in Asus, and ya know it would have been nice to get a media player that's compatible with the Blu-Ray drive but alas....and good luck finding one that's even compatible with Windows 7 that doesn't cost $100, well there is VLC for your DVD's but that's about it. The battery gave me 70 minutes on a full charge before the initial boot. I don't expect my mood to soften anytime soon as I am still cleaning this thing up, BUT it does look good, and for a 15.6" it very lightweight, so I got that going for me.
3 Week Update: OK OK, now that I have massaged this thing and gotten rid of all the pre-installed junk provided by Asus I am VERY impressed. This machine is a multimedia/multitasking monster, and the Power 4 Gear power settings will give you about 2 1/2 hours on the battery, and it runs very cool, no heat discharge at all. The display is the most impressive thing about this laptop, I was forced to buy glasses to read my old HP but don't need them with this LED backlit panel. And the graphics are nothing short of incredible. Still not a fan of the chicklet keyboard, its just not as intuitive as it should be. And I think I can still benefit from a memory upgrade but right now that's only around $100 for another 4Gig and I'm hoping that improves the mouse function...not as responsive as one might hope, maybe its a resource thing, we'll see.
Anyway, I'm still upset about all the preloaded junk that came from the factory, Asus knows better but if you're going to take over the world there are things you just have to do as an OEM I suppose. They still make the best hardware out there IMO. So after the courtship phase with this thing I'd have to say I'm very pleased and semi-happy with my new laptop. BTW, PowerDVD10 is the most reliable media player I've found for Windows 7. VLC falls down on some formats and and I've never really liked Windows Media Player. Too bad Asus doesn't provide an OEM version with this unit, haven't tried a Blu Ray disc yet but they cant look any better than a regular DVD on this display.
FYI. if you're into these things, these are the Windows Experience numbers on a scale of 1 to 7.9:
CPU 6.7
RAM 5.9
Graphics 5.1 (Desktop and Windows Aero)
Gaming Graphics 6.2
Hard Disk 5.7
After cleaning everything up and re-running the scores, the CPU performance went from 6.5 to 6.7. Everything else stayed the same. Pretty strong! Also boot times have been cut in half, I can live with that. However, my biggest complaint now that I've upgraded to 8Gig of RAM is that the touchpad (Elan Smart-Pad) still doesnt work. And thats after turning off ALL of its services except the basic functions. HELLO ASUS, FIX THIS PROBLEM!!!! If you buy an Asus laptop you have to expect to have touchpad problems out of the gate, complaints are posted all over the web dating back 3-4 years, and you cannot install the latest drivers....they just wont install. My fix was a Microsoft 3500 mouse which I should have bought with the machine. Problem solved. A 5 star product if not for this pathetic Elan Tech "Smart-Pad"
Click Here to see more reviews about: ASUS K52 Series K52JR-X4 15.6-Inch Laptop (Dark Brown)
The K52JR is the perfect fit for work and play. Powered by Intel’s new Core i5-430M processor, an ATI 5470 graphics engine, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a Blu-Ray combo drive, the K52JR is ideal for your versatile computing needs. The K52JR was not only designed to be powerful, but it was also designed to be comfortable. The K52JK has a sunken hinge design which allows for more comfortable viewing angles. It also has smudge proof palm rests and a concaved chiclet keyboard which allow for a more comfortable typing experience. Lastly, the K52JR comes with ASUS’ new Palm Proof Technology which intelligently differentiates between the touch of a finger and the touch of a palm on the mouse pad, preventing accidental movement of the mouse cursor. The notebook comes with the ASUS 360 service program that includes a 2 year global warranty, one month zero bright dot guaranty, free two-way standard shipping, twenty-four hour tech support seven days a week, and a one year accidental damage warranty, protecting the notebook from drops, fire, spills and surge.
Click here for more information about ASUS K52 Series K52JR-X4 15.6-Inch Laptop (Dark Brown)
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