queenangelfish wrote:What software does it come with? Word? Excel? Power point?

And if it wasn't white paint, what do you think it was?

Mine came with Office 2010 that that you have to purchase an activation key for if you want to use it. I use OpenOffice so I haven't really investigated this further.

And.. I'm sure it was Coolwhip. Or.. whiteout fluid!

ThunderThighs wrote:Just want to clear this part up from a couple posts: We haven't sold THIS laptop previously. We've sold other Asus laptops with the same screen size but they've had different processors.

Derp, my bad! Indeed, the laptop I purchased had a 1.9GHz AMD A4, and a 6-cell battery, and slightly different onboard graphics, but otherwise the specs are just about identical. Pardon my confusion!

That being said, I thought the performance is good enough for the price with that CPU, so it probably can't be worse with something rated at 2.2GHz.

qwerty82 wrote:Hey all - I've really been wanting another laptop, preferably under $300 and this seems to be a nice fit for me. I'm not a gamer. I don't do much on my laptops but surf, watch DVDs, word processing, some you-tubing, stuff like that. Nothing too hefty but I'd like to be able to do multiple of these at one time which my old laptops aren't so great at that anymore. I've been watching for a USB 3.0 and this is the first one I've seen in my price range but the fact that there is only that and one 2.0 kind of makes me hesitant. I'm clueless about screens as well, I'd just like something that looks good for watching movies... Edit - the 15.6 " is the biggest that fits in my bag so I do like that.

What do you guys think? Does this sound like a good option for me or should I keep watching for something else?

Thanks!!

For what you want it should be a good deal...also, refurbed has worked quite well for me. Amazon had a similar model with high marks. Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-X54C-BBK7-Display-Graphics-Windows/dp/B007A5J2KW

Anyway...I'm thinking pretty hard on this one.

I've been thinking about getting a laptop to run some electronic drumming software I use. The min specs for the main tool I use (Superior Drummer) are "Pentium IV / Athlon 1,8 GHz with 1GB RAM", so it looks like we're good on RAM, but I'm not sure how P4 maps to this "B960" processor (ugh, I feel old-- it's been ages since I last had to deal with hardware).

I also sometimes use Maschine, which says "Intel Core Duo, 2 GB RAM". Again, unclear how that maps to the processor in this.

Little help?

I have this laptop and am pretty pleased in general with it. I use it for social networking, email, research, etc. I am not a gamer so I cannot address how it performs in that arena.

The shell is pretty much plastic and it looks like plastic.

Doesn't get halfway as hot as my (also new) Acer that I use in my office, so it's pretty comfortable on the lap.

I haven't had any issues, aside from the preloaded Internet Explorer didn't work well (kept crashing), but I'm a Chrome user anyway, so it didn't much matter.

The only negative I could see in this offer is the price. I got mine at Microcenter on a huge sale for $299. Got my warranty on SquareTrade, as I usually do. When you purchase refurbished, your warranty options are more limited.

Pretty nice laptop.

Best Buy has this laptop for $329.99 (not refurbished with a one year warranty). With a 5% cashback and free shipping it may be a better option.

Is this eligible for the 14.99 win 8 pro upgrade?

After dealing with 2 asus laptops and their customer service (asus not woot) I would have to pass unless the price was free.

queenangelfish wrote:Is this eligible for the 14.99 win 8 pro upgrade?

excellent question

revtuc01 wrote:Best Buy has this laptop for $329.99 (not refurbished with a one year warranty). With a 5% cashback and free shipping it may be a better option.

Got a link?

queenangelfish wrote:Is this eligible for the 14.99 win 8 pro upgrade?

It would not appear so (has to be "new"):

Eligibility Details:

The offer is for customers (e.g. Home users, students, and enthusiasts) who purchase a qualified PC. A qualified PC is a new PC purchased during the promotional period with a valid Windows 7 OEM Certificate of Authenticity and product key for, and preinstalled with:

Windows 7 Home Basic;
Windows 7 Home Premium;
Windows 7 Professional; or
Windows 7 Ultimate.
The promotional price is limited to one upgrade offer per qualified PC purchased, and a maximum limit of five upgrade offers per customer.

i will comment because my wife has an ASUS. we bought it about a year ago for school. it was 250 new from best buy. it came with a marooned old school single core processor. i have noticed with a few new programs running norton will give me the high cpu usage reminder, though i havent put any ssd or readyboost on there for her.

either way, for a less than 300 dollar laptop, it's a great computer, especially when you pretty much only use it for school. thats dirt cheap.

inkycatz wrote:Got a link?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-433333759101002939&id=pcat17071&type=page&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&Jolly Roger=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&st=bbk13

Bought this when it was up about 3 weeks ago. Laptop came but wouldnt charge at all. The Port or wire itself didnt work so I sent it back.

Not trying it again.

I have a video card from an Asus X83. Can I install that card to this computer and is that an improvement?

flyingdon wrote:I would not buy anything from woot they sell stuff with known problems and then if it appears after the 90 day they do nothing.

Then why are you on here? I have had nothing but good luck with woot. One bad apple...

Please mention that this is a dual-core Pentium processor.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/330983-28-intel-pentium-b960

JMurray51 wrote:I have a video card from an Asus X83. Can I install that card to this computer and is that an improvement?

Unlikely. The graphics on this laptop are integrated and cards in laptops are generally tailor-made for that exact model. To my knowledge laptops don't have "expansion slots".

I got your dual cores right here!

Does anybody know if this laptop can drive two monitors at the same time? I have some Dell Vostro machines which can - but I don't understand whether the "Intel HD" graphics card that is listed here i capable of this task.

This is a very specific question, but does anyone know if this model has an easily accessible fan/heat sink? My current laptop has a fan situation where you have to open up the whole thing, and that's irritating. I have to clean my fan and heat sink a lot because I live with a cat who might as well be an angora rabbit.

flyingdon wrote:I would not buy anything from woot they sell stuff with known problems and then if it appears after the 90 day they do nothing.

I should look at your profile before I respond to this, IMO your comment is flawed. I have been here from the beginning and have had only 1 issue item. And Woot took care if it IMMEDIATELY. If you are new here and thinking Who is WOOT and are they reliable, my experience has been a loud and strong YES. Purchase without a second thought.

"No I am not an employee of WOOT or any of their affiliates"

not a fan of ASUS, the few systems i have owned had heat/crashing issues

Bought this last time it was on Woot. I'm actually pretty pleased with it! I like the full keypad! It's not too powerful, but if you just need something for web browsing, word, excel, and playing flash games during class, it works well!

Also -- very hard to find a laptop at this price that has USB 3.0 AND HDMI out.

jmsmits wrote:Haven't Wooted in a while and my 10-year old needs a computer for school, so I'm in for one. I'm trying to switch our household to Apple but that's just not going to happen for $300 (with tax and shipping). I just hope the refurbishing was done by Asus and not by Acme Refurbishing Inc...

WHY are you trying to switch your "household to Apple"? Serious question; I'm trying to figure out what makes the idea of limiting to a single manufacturer/software pool appealing.

Hello! I'm new to Woot! This would be my first purchase. I need a laptop for at home freelance writing, mostly. I also like to play music, use iTunes, etc. Not too picky, but want something that I can take places with me so I can do my work from anywhere.

Anyhoo....my parents have an ACER and my mom has had difficulties with the mouse. It selects things when she is typing no matter how lightly her hand bumps it. Changed the settings but it is still a pain. Anyone else hear of this happening?

I am in need of something cheap, so this still looks to be a good deal. I would LOVE to be able to put $200 more into this, but I just lost my job, so that's not an option (as others have pointed out.) If I had the money, I wouldn't be looking at this.

Thanks for the input.

pizdets wrote:I bought this here when it ran last time. I use it for school, browsing and some light gaming. For these tasks and at this price point, the performance is more than adequate.

To those saying "throw in another $200 and you can have something nicer"--not to say you're being Captain Obvious, but yes, normally paying 70% more for a computer gets you a nicer one. If I had $500 to spend, I would have been looking for different specifications.

Of course throwing in an SSD is a great idea, but another cheaper upgrade with good bang for the buck would be an additional 4GB stick of RAM that you can probably get for around $20 these days, and would give this machine a bit more pep.

Something prospective buyers should know:

This will come with lots of bloatware so you'd be better off with wiping it right off the bat. ASUS will have wiped the recovery partition, so you will need to create a set of your own recovery DVDs to be able to reinstall the Win 7 that comes with it. Mine had a quick start guide in the box that claimed there would be a PDF file on the desktop detailing how to do this, but no such file existed. That being said, it wasn't hard to figure out using the ASUS utility provided.

Other than that, mine came with lots of little flecks of what I will continue to hope and believe was white paint, and that was easily removed with an alcohol pad.

Sweet Jesus, I really hope it was paint.

Can anyone suggest some good quality / cheap RAM to get this puppy up to 8GB? Where do you normally buy your RAM? Newegg?

Thanks in advance.

I bought one of these from NewEgg several months ago. Added 4 Gb memory, one slot open. Its a really good deal on a laptop, you won't fine one cheaper.

rflamion wrote:Can anyone suggest some good quality / cheap RAM to get this puppy up to 8GB? Where do you normally buy your RAM? Newegg?

Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure what Newegg currently has, but check this deal out right here.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002XN3OL4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01

$17.98 for a chip that should match what this laptop ships with.

revtuc01 wrote:http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-433333759101002939&id=pcat17071&type=page&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&Jolly Roger=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&st=bbk13

What say you about this? $100 more, but a lot better. Quad core for one.

http://deals.bestbuy.com//laptops2/product/5887295/lenovo++156quot+ideapad+laptop++4gb+memory++500gb+hard+drive++black#

geekwench wrote:WHY are you trying to switch your "household to Apple"? Serious question; I'm trying to figure out what makes the idea of limiting to a single manufacturer/software pool appealing.

Good question. I'll give you an honest/serious answer. I never had Apple gear aside from a used iPod until I got the first gen iPad a few months after it came out. Then my son got an iPod Touch, and then my wife and I got iPhones (4S). Then I splurged and bought a MacBook Air (early '11).

I'm not a "single manufacturer buyer" simply because of the company name. My audio gear is a mix of Oppo, Onkyo, Sony and Yamaha. I have had HP, Dell, Asus and Acer computers. I still have an Acer desktop for my Media Center, and HP and Asus netbooks for my wife and son, as well as a home-brew desktop.

But the Apple gear works. And it works well. No bloatware on their computers. No need to go in to system preferences to 'tweak' things. OSX is much more intuitive to operate, and my MacBook never black/blue-screens. I use Win 7 HP on my media PC and every two months I have to take care of updates/adjustments etc. Not so with my Air.

I have a full-time job and am writing my third book on the side, so I don't have a lot of time to do network maintenance, update AV software, adjust system settings etcetera for my family's computers.

If Asus (or Sony or HP or ChinaTechInc) came out with a PC that ran as well as an Apple, I would buy it. I don't care about the Apple name. I'm not a fanboy. I just want stuff that works without having to constantly "maintain" it.

But Apple's expensive. Except for maybe the iPad (based strictly on what it does), it's TOO expensive. That's why I have only one Apple PC in my house, and 4 Windows PCs (+ 1 for work). I would like to have more maintenance- and worry-free PCs, but simply can't afford it. So, my son needs a computer, I found this deal, I've never had any problems with Woot or Asus, and there you go.

Woot!

I recently bought this same laptop, refurbished. It came with a 90-day warranty. It is currently back with ASUS because I have been unable to use it without it freezing up and having to manually shut it down. Good deal but I am unsure if I would buy it again. Hopefully when I get it back, problems will be solved!

I bought the AMD-ized version (also refurb) on sale a few weeks ago for my girlfriend to use for paper writing and web browsing. It arrived with a dead display, which was a pretty big bummer. Woot had no more of the item, but offered a full refund and to pay for return shipping; Asus was able to issue an RMA and repair after jumping through tech support hoops ("hold F6 as you hit the power key, now take the battery out and stand on your head while reciting the alphabet backwards"), but I was on the hook for return shipping. I went with the latter, and everything worked out fine the second time around. The laptop itself works great for her purposes, but even if mine is the minority case caveat emptor on the Asus refurb.

pizdets wrote:I bought this here when it ran last time. I use it for school, browsing and some light gaming. For these tasks and at this price point, the performance is more than adequate.

To those saying "throw in another $200 and you can have something nicer"--not to say you're being Captain Obvious, but yes, normally paying 70% more for a computer gets you a nicer one. If I had $500 to spend, I would have been looking for different specifications.

Of course throwing in an SSD is a great idea, but another cheaper upgrade with good bang for the buck would be an additional 4GB stick of RAM that you can probably get for around $20 these days, and would give this machine a bit more pep.

Something prospective buyers should know:

This will come with lots of bloatware so you'd be better off with wiping it right off the bat. ASUS will have wiped the recovery partition, so you will need to create a set of your own recovery DVDs to be able to reinstall the Win 7 that comes with it. Mine had a quick start guide in the box that claimed there would be a PDF file on the desktop detailing how to do this, but no such file existed. That being said, it wasn't hard to figure out using the ASUS utility provided.

Other than that, mine came with lots of little flecks of what I will continue to hope and believe was white paint, and that was easily removed with an alcohol pad.

Sweet Jesus, I really hope it was paint.

Please have your wife/gf taste it and get back to us.

This model Asus, at this price point offers great "bang for your buck" for over 50% of laptop users. Most of us aren't gamers or CAD users.

ku1980rose wrote:Hello! I'm new to Woot! This would be my first purchase.

Welcome!

I bought this new last year for $300 at newegg. Good laptop while it lasted, The charging ports go out on these alot and it cost $200 to fix. Get an extended warranty if you do buy it.

I bought this during the last run as well (AMD Dual Core), for my fiance. She had a crummy netbook previously that she kept swearing at, and I took this, and a spare small SSD I had lying around...holy crap it is surprisingly quick. And for the size (15.6") pretty light! Definitely lighter than my Latitude e6510, and it gets great battery life. That, and a full 10key...honestly no complaints so far.

Surf the web, play flash games, using office, the basics of course, but definitely a solid PC (once I tore out all the bloatware, some of which was installed in Chinese). You can wipe the PC, but why not just remove the bloatware apps and run CCleaner? I agree, new PCs shouldn't come loaded with all of that stuff, but it's how they make money. Here is a little guide I found on what's safe to remove / what isn't bloatware:http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/380681-asus-utility-bloatware-guide.html

Does anyone who has this laptop play World of Warcraft on it?

I mean I know it won't be amazing but it might be passable.

Less than ideal touchpad placement, and the outer corners are extremely sensitive. Often leads to rouge clicking while trying to type. Disabling the touchpad and using a separate mouse highly recommended.

Got refurb Asus from Woot 3 or 4 weeks ago. Having trouble getting on to the internet using Mozila. Have to go through a "troubleshooting" process every time. Any advice?