Asus G71V: Share and Share Alike.
I finally relented and decided to allow the rest of the family to have a go on the G71V to get their opinions and the results were both amusing and an indictment on what I would imagine is generic PC use around the country.
My daughter is 14 and straight away, added MSN and installed The Sims 3 as well as adding her own music to the iTunes library, enabling her to create Sims communities, listen to music and chat to her friends at the same time! The G71V coped well with her requirements, hardly breaking a sweat. After a few days of continual use, I asked her for her verdict: “Nice laptop Dad, can I swap this for my old one?” As they say, if you don’t ask …..
My son is 12 and has different needs to his sibling. He is more concerned with playing games than social networking and so the G71V is ideally suited to his needs. Some of the games he has bought in the past haven’t run as well as they should on the old desktop and they took on a whole new life as he installed them on the G71V and then cranked the settings up to the levels they should be. He was sold! Superb graphics and frame rates all around. He has also developed (along with his friend) an interest in videography and so being able to convert audio and video formats quickly is essential. At some stage I expect to find myself on You’ve Been Framed without knowing it and this laptop could end up being an accomplice!
My wife is a Facebook enthusiast, loves to view photos, and occasionally brings home work which requires an office suite of some sort. The 17” HD screen is perfect for viewing and editing photos in full size and the power available is more than enough to open several office applications at the same time without noticing any degradation in performance. Her requirements are simple – I need to switch it on and it must work. It must be quick and I mustn’t worry about disk space.
Thankfully, this laptop delivers on all these points.
Now, if I can just work out how to wrestle it back from the family!
