ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

Discharge yourself by power cords and begin exploring with up to an astonishing 12 hours of all-day battery life with the ASUS UL30A-X5, cheers to its hyper- Low Voltage (ULV) Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 central processing unit and 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, which aggregates vivacious visuals with boosted energy efficiency. This fashionable, ultra-portable notebook boasts a brushed aluminum lid that not only looks glorious, but also assists in conserving its fashionable exterior day-to-day. The UL30A also features a multi-gesture touchpad, which enables you to intuitively zoom in or out of pictures via pinching, or navigate up and down pages by sliding your finger.

Pre-installed with the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OS (64-bit version), you will be able to easily make a home network and share all of your deary photographs, videos, and music. Windows 7 is the easiest, fastest, and most piquant version of Windows yet. Best way to find and manage files, like bound Lists and bettered taskbar previews, help you accelerate through daily tasks. Windows 7 is configured for firmer and more dependable performance, so your personal computer just works the way you want it to.

Feel FastBoot, the singular performance boost for Windows 7 made expected by ASUS's close partnership with Microsoft. With ASUS scoop FastBoot technology, this Windows 7-enabled ASUS notebook commences in a staggering 30 seconds.

Compact and under 1-inch thin, you'll be able to fit the UL30A almost anywhere--freeing space for books, files, or whatsoever else you need to enjoy a spacious workspace. The UL30A includes Altec Lansing speakers plus SRS surround for a virtual home theater experience on the go, also as an HDMI port for connecting to an HDTV at home. You'll be able to store all of your favorite applications, most important documents, and large video and audio libraries with the generous 500 GB hard drive. Other features include 4 GB of DDR3 RAM (maximum capacity), integrated webcam, Draft-N Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g/n), Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated video graphics, and multi-format memory card reader.  And in addition to a 1 year global warranty, the ASUS UL30A-X5 includes a 1 year Accidental Damage Warranty (ADW).

Just received my Asus UL30A-X5 yesterday. After much review, and a try-out with an Acer 1410, I decided that I wanted a full-sized chiclet/island keyboard and the larger screen. I'm already quite pleased with my decision. At the <$700 price point, this is an excellent notebook.

Pros
- Keyboard. A pleasure to type on.
- Touchpad. It drags at first, but once you get some finger oil on it, and change the pointer speed, it's one of the best that I've used. Very smooth two finger scroller. Support for customized two and three finger click.
- Screen. Bright and easy to read at 30 degree angles.
- Battery life. Yes, it will do over 10 hours.
- Weight/size. 1 inch thin and very light.
- Body. Love the brushed black metal look on the case.
- Asus facial recognition login. Didn't think that I would care, but it's nice to have the computer log in, without touch, when I'm sitting in front of it.
- Asus FastBoot (not the BIOS fast boot). This lets you configure which programs load during startup and which load after. Speeds up the boot quite a bit.
- Decent speakers. Not ear-destroying, but suitable for the size. Much better than most netbooks.

Cons
- Placement of touchpad. It still registers my palm as I'm typing even at the extreme setting. Downloaded the new touchpad driver, but that didn't fix. Still looking for a solution. This is by far the most frustrating problem. UPDATE: The TouchFreeze utility seems to almost fix the issue.
- Case still shows fingerprints.
- Web cam is low res and has difficulty in low light (haven't tried different drivers yet).