MSI A6000-029US 16" Widescreen Laptop: Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 7 Premium for $479.99

This Asus has a 32 bit OS, not a 64 bit. You have to buy the Microsoft upgrade to get 64 bit. Very misleading advertisement because the upgrade will cost you $120, so the laptop is not cheap after all.

Let me try to summarize the situation. Last month I was considering purchasing a new computer. I looked at Apple's and Dell's websites, but I also decided to go to the local Office Depot and look at the computers they had. I spent about an hour talking with the sale representative, expressed an interest in Windows 7 Professional because it had XP mode, and was allowed to believe that that the MSI laptop would meet my expectations and computing needs. I went home and looked up the reviews for MSI and found they were mainly positive (although there were not may reviews). The next week, I purchased the notebook (and the upgrade to Windows 7 Professional) from Office Depot. The notebook did not come with any software discs, and I was told that I need to run a burn disc recovery application. I tried to do this and it failed. After two calls to customer service, I was told that the application appeared to not be functioning (the tech support agent claimed not to recognize the error code the application was giving) and that I should either launch a Windows recovery, send the computer (at my own expense) back to MSI so they could fix it, or order some recovery disks. As this the burn application was the only application that had failed, I was not inclined to attempt the first suggestion, and the second suggestion seemed distasteful for what I hope are apparent reasons. Getting the recovery disks required another call to technical support. Finally, I received an email informing me that the recovery discs would cost $25. I was somewhat unhappy to find that I was being charged to fix a problem on a computer that (at the time) was about two weeks out of the box. I responded by explaining the situation about the recovery disks and suggesting that they send the discs free of charge. This suggestion was met with queries about the state of the computer, which I answered. At the same time, I realized that XP mode was not working on the computer. (In fact, it was not even installed. In my own defense, the print telling you that XP mode must be downloaded is in a footnote on the packaging and I don't even remember seeing it on the display at the store.) As I tried to work though the reason why XP mode would not work, I decided to include this as a question in my response to MSI about the state of the computer. The MSI representative responded to both parts of the email. About the recovery disks, he said that he could waive the normal $25 and only charge me the $7 shipping and handling fee. He also claimed that the application error was caused by user error (I found this bit somewhat offensive and said so in my response). About XP mode, I was told that the model of laptop I purchased did not support XP mode. I was fairly unhappy to find that a computer that claimed to support Windows 7 did not support Windows 7 (or at least not all of it). This was particularly upsetting given my previous discussion with the sales representative. At this point, I demanded MSI allow me to return the computer on the grounds that they had not properly advertised the capabilities of their product. The representative responded by informing me that they were representing their product in the same manner as the competition, and that they were unable to accept a return because they had not sold me the computer. Based on my experience, I would strongly suggest against purchasing an MSI product because of their poor and apparently incompetent technical support, and their lack of honesty in the representing their products. MSI may produce good electronic for all I know, but I have no faith in their integrity.

didn't work wanted $599

Got it at Office Depot