I recently bought an Asus CG5275 to replace a nonoperative HP Pavilion p6130f which I bought in October. Yet another piece of evidence that HP no longer produces quality electronics. The Asus is a good machine, but uses the new Intel Core i5 with integrated video, and until this week Ubuntu 9.10 didn't support the video, so that was dicey at first. Now that the video works and I've removed the poorly-conceived door covering the front USB ports, I'm happy with it, though the fans hum fairly loudly.
That door: I'm not the only one to remove it. Among other things, there are four USB ports behind the door. The two lower ones are inaccessible with the door in place, and the upper two are very difficult to get long USB sticks in and out of. So my choice was to remove the door or plug in a USB hub. Removing the door doesn't add to my electric bill.
Actually I'm not a fan of the doors in front of the CD/DVD drive and empty bay either, since they hide activity lights. HP does it too, and I think that's the way of the consumer electronics market: style is much more important than functionality.
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