Strengths: Price, video card, sound, battery, sturdy case, HD 250gig, webcam and processor speed.

Weaknesses: Laptop software conflict and overkill- better if just Vista buy itself.

Summary: I needed a gaming and college computer for daughter. Bought this for $835. Set it up with various games and set the graphics on high to test 8600 and found excellent results. The video card was fast enough with the dedicated memory to handle all the games she couldn't play before with her desktop. The movie playback was NG, I first thought the HD dvd drive was defective because of stalling but instead installed Nero Showtime and found that everything was all working great. The soundcard and speakers (including the subwoofer) sounded great. The software onboard was typical crap. Vista in the video games gave no problem at all, worked well. The ram for the price is good enough but every body knows you can never have enough. The case is sturdy which is great, stops the motherboard flex problems that allot of other laptops have. Battery lasted 3 hrs. installing and setting it up till I realized it wasn't plugged in, it let me know in plenty of time.