Crave had an awkward run-in with the postman this morning. He turned up, handed us a package containing an Asus N50V laptop, and we sexually assaulted him. Sorry, that's too strong a term, but we did hump his leg -- perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
Why the excitement? Well, the box said Asus on it -- and that's usually reason enough to drop trou'. Inside, we were greeted by a hot-looking laptop that's very reminiscent of an HP. It even has an 'Imprint Finish'-like pattern on the lid and wrist rest, touch-sensitive buttons above the keyboard, front-facing audio jacks and Altec Lansing speakers.
Asus hadn't bothered to install an operating system on it, so we can't confirm whether there's any HP software installed on the hard drive. Presumably, though, the
final version of the N50V will have Vista. In the meantime, we've kept ourselves busy messing about with the limited, but still highly useful Express Gate Linux
partition (see page 3 for more on this).
According to a sticker next to the mouse trackpad, the N50V has an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 clocked at 2.5GHz, 4GB of RAM, a two-speed Blu-ray drive, a 320GB hard drive, 802.11a,b,g,n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a 15.4-inch WXGA, LED-backlit screen.
Other things worth noting include three USB ports, a front-facing e-SATA port, HDMI and D-Sub video outputs, a memory card reader, and the lack of a confirmed price or release date -- although that last point's not a particularly good thing. We're off to stick Vista on it so we can have a proper muck about. Watch for a full review soon and click through for more pics and deets. -Rory Reid
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