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Love is better the second time around!
I received my computer promptly. It, however, had problems which several calls to Asus, re-installing, restoring and voodoo would not solve. They requested that I contact Amazon since it was only 48 hours since I received the computer. I contacted Amazon via the internet on a Thursday night, and received a replacement on Saturday morning! This one works well. It is speedy, and comfortable, small enough to tote and large enough to see. The only complaint is that the keyboard feels a bit flimsy, although it is not. Also, for a laptop with everything- no blue-tooth. That being said,it is a wondrous combination; A good computer, and a great vendor.

Peppy Little System
Asus K42jr-a1 Review

Quick Synopsis: After putting a little time into it, its a quick, peppy system that can play movies and handle most games. As long as you aren't an extreme gamer, this system will work for you.

The Asus K42jr-a1 runs very smooth and can handle everything I have thrown at it. I used the recovery partition to reinstall on a single partition, but I have heard of just doing a fresh install. This also works. As with many laptops these days, lots of bloatware, but I was aware of this, and cleaned out what I didn't want. If you are a little weary fully deleting programs (even though you have the utility disk), just deactivate the services and stop certain programs from starting at the boot. This will also increase your performance.

****NOTE: When the computer was first booted, it seemed very sluggish. At times, the cpu light was on, but it appeared nothing was happening. Task Manager showed no CPU activity. After a couple minutes, the computer would resume what it was working on. But, this freezing, or sluggish activity would occur every 5 minutes or so. After some research, I found this obscure, but simple solution. From (...)

"Start, Run, type regedit, press ok.
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor and rename Parameters to Parameters.old.
Then restart the computer - this will stop the freezing, will speed up boot, and generally make it run better..
Note: This only works on computers which have a corrupt Intel AHCI install - modifying this key on computers which don't have a corrupt Intel AHCI install will have no affect.
Once I applied this, the machine responded and is blazing now. So, if you are having odd performance issues, try this fix."

The keyboard has perhaps a little more flex than most, but this does not bother me. Typing seems comfortable and isn't causing any issues as I type this review. Keyboard doesn't get hot after movie, gaming, or general use. The main heat exhaust is lcoated on the left side of the laptop. Is it a little warm, yes. But, that will happen. The fans create minimal sound. Maybe you will notice if you are working in a library by yourself. Any general background noise and the fans are not noticeable.

Dual monitor set up, either through VGA, or the HDMI, worked great. Watched Star Trek at 1080p through the laptop connected to the TV. (Not the Blu-Ray version) Can play computer games on my 19 inch while surfing the web on the laptop screen. A nice set-up.

Built-in Webcam tells me its a 1.3MP in the Device Manager, advertised as a 0.3MP. Microphone didn't seem to be too effective, I used something else, and had no problem.

For battery life, I had OpenOffice open and I was browsing the net via wireless. After 75 minutes, the battery was down to 50%. The screen was at 25% brightness. So, I would estimate about 2.5 hours battery life, but one may be able to stretch that to 3 hours.

Yes, it does have only one audio out, this may be a problem for some, but for me it hasn't. Itunes categorized and organized 1800 songs in about 3 minutes. And, the 14 inch is nice for me, as I travel a lot, and even going from the 15 inch to the 14 inch helps with the travel. It weighs under 5 pounds, and that can start to become noticeable if stuck in a airport for 3+ hours.

Finally, for you numbers people, some benchmarks:
Windows Experience:
Processor: 6.6
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 5.1
Gaming Graphics: 6.2
Hard Disk: 5.9

Other Benchmarks:
3DMark03: 10014
3DMark05: 6816
3DMark06: 4244
PCMark05: 6587
Boot Time: 25 Seconds

While the HD5470, i5 Core, and 4 GB DDR3 RAM have some limitations, I was very happy with these results. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what this little guy can do.

In conclusion, after a little work, and a quick fix, this laptop delivers. For the needs of moderate gaming, web, processing, and entertainment (Movies, or music), this laptop does the job. For the price of ~(...), the I think the performance of the machine is a great deal.

Great laptop
Pros:
-very light and portable
-very quiet (fans automatically adjust depending on system temp)
-good set of speakers in it (they get pretty loud and still maintain clear sound
-multi-touch track pad works well
-facial recognition works well
-HDMI out is amazing, I use it to connect to my tv
-the screen is very clear and there are shortcut keys on the keyboard to adjust the brightness
-laptop is fast with the Intel i5, 4gb of RAM, and the HD 5470
-battery life is around 3.5 hours which is pretty good considering the hardware you are running off a 6-cell battery
-keyboard has plenty of shortcut keys (volume, brightness, media controls, wifi toggle, HMDI toggle, camera, battery mode)
-comes with a 2 year warranty and a 1 year accidental warranty

Cons:
-microphone isn't very good
-keyboard has a little too much flex (it takes time to get used to, doesn't really seem to bother me that much anymore)
-disk drive is tray style, slot style would be much better
-only one audio port which means you need an external sound card in order to use 5.1 surround sound speakers

Overall its a very good laptop with a few minor flaws. For the price you cannot beat it, I tried building a similar laptop with Dell and Lenovo and both came out to around 00. This laptop is great if you need a portable laptop that is also large enough to be used as a desktop replacement. It has a lot of great features packed into it and I would definitely recommend this laptop.