ASUS G73JW-XT1 17.3" w/ 8GB RAM, BluRay & 2 YR War Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)4.5 Star Rating
In my humble opinion, this is a fine piece of equipment (ASUS, Model: G73JW-XT1).
Out of the box, it has a Windows Experience Index rating of 5.9, and the breakdown goes as follows:
* Processor: 7.1
* Memory: 7.4
* Graphics: 7.1
* Gaming graphics: 7.1
* Primary hard disk: 5.9
I'll try to concisely review some of the key elements that may not be apparent (in no particular order):
Equipment:
It has a 7200rpm 500gb Seagate hard drive. Some of the other G73J laptops have 2 hard drives. This one comes with only one, so it has an empty hard drive bay to which I plan to add a solid state drive.
Performance:
I removed many of the apps ASUS threw on it, and reduced the time it takes it to go from off to fully booted and ready, from about 80 seconds down to 60-65 seconds. I installed Office 2007 and it takes about 1 second to launch any app in the suite...even while multiple apps are open. It quickly connects to my home network (802.11n) which has an Apple Airport Extreme router connected via Ethernet to the wireless router that comes with AT&T U-Verse. I have 3 Airport Express' being used as signal extenders. I experience blazing fast web browsing and download rates on this laptop. Performance-wise it is very fast and solid.
Feel:
It is predominately rubber coated, so the shell feels very comfortable and it doesn't leave prints. Feels very solid and sturdy so no concerns there.
Size:
Don't kid yourself on this one, it is VERY large and heavy. Finding a bag/backpack that will contain this beast can be tricky. Don't assume that it will fit into a bag just because it claims to fit 17.3" laptops. I found the laptop bag selector tool at ebags.com to be quite useful. I'm not necessarily for or against purchasing there, but at least use their tool to find bags that will work. Going to local retail stores (i.e. Best Buy, Staples, MicroCenter, Office Depot, etc.) turned out to be a waste of time for me. This is what I ended up with: Targus XL Backpack Designed for 17 Inch Notebooks TXL617 (Black with Blue Accents)
Battery life:
Expect to get about 2 hours on a full charge.
Usability:
The trackpad is very large and offers multi-touch functionality as well as vertical and horizontal scrolling on the right and bottom edge, respectively. Unfortunately they did not provide tactile partitions along the scrolling areas, so I often have to look down to find the right spots. I'll soon be avoiding this altogether via a bluetooth mouse with a scroll-wheel.

Capability:
I found the Blu-Ray movie playing capability to be awful (0.5 star demerit). It would not play the first movie I put in. The play of the second one was very concerning to say the least. It took about 6 mins after insertion to begin playing the first preview. It proceeded to go through lengthy load sequences after each preview. It then stalled for another 4-5mins on the title screen of the feature movie and then didn't respond for another 3mins after selecting play. Both movies played perfectly on my PS3.Bottom line:
This is a stellar, well-designed laptop that leaves little to be desired. It is lightning fast and displays an amazing picture. Not sure if the issues related to Blu-Ray movie play are software related (CyberLink PowerDVD comes pre-loaded), but it is terrible, and quite frankly an unacceptable feature function on a laptop of this caliber. That's my biggest issue, and since I didn't get it for that purpose, I'm not terribly disappointed and it doesn't affect my satisfaction level much at all. I would easily recommend it to a friend with interests similar to mine. If you have any questions...post a comment! I will certainly try to be of assistance.

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Every gamer knows that the latest games demands the best performance. But ASUS didn't believe in just meeting the minimum requirements, they believed in obliterating them. That's why they've made sure that the ASUS G73JW-XT1 Laptop Computer is jam-packed with one-of-a-kind innovation that propels mobile gaming performance to unseen levels. Featuring the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics engine that comes with a massive 1.5GB of DDR5 VRAM, the ASUS G73JW-XT1 Laptop Computer leads in DirectX 11 gaming for advanced tessellation and faster graphics rendering. This gaming powerhouse, powered by the Intel Core i7-740QM quad-core processor, soars while performing several tasks simultaneously.

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