First Impressions
I won’t bore you with the details of unboxing the unit, as the packaging was rather bland. After removing it from the box and peeling off the protective plastic layer I gave it a good look over. The unit was black and the only marking it had on the top was the Asus symbol, one which I have come to associate with quality. Once I lifted the lid and took a look at the inside I found myself very impressed with the keyboard, the keys looked similar to the ones you’d find on a Macbook and are very pleasant to type on. Being a programmer who spends many hours per day bashing away at a keyboard this was the most essential quality about the build of the laptop (not taking into consideration things like processor speed and memory). What impressed me the most was that they still managed to fit in a numpad on the right and it was not overly cramped, though some keys were placed in some rather odd positions. The track pad is centered between where your palms would naturally rest so unlike most computers I haven’t had an issue with accidentally moving the cursor with my palm as I type. The track pad also has multi-touch functionality for those who like to use gestures, which I will cover in more detail later. The plastic surrounding the keyboard is a textured black pattern that does a remarkable job of resisting fingerprints and smudges. Overall the keyboard is very sturdy, the keys do not stick and have a great tactile response, and the whole computer does not flex when you type as some do.

First Boot
After setting up the unit and booting it for the first time I was asked to make a backup. The employee at Staples had urged me strongly to do this as the unit did not come with an installation disc in case something happened. Knowing that I may very well be returning it I figured it would be best to have this backup to restore if I did decide to take it back. So I clicked yes and popped in a blank DVD-R. At that point I was told it would take 5 DVDs and it then went on to start making an image, that stage took about 45 minutes, then it proceeded to start burning. Each disc took an extremely long time because after burning it, it insisted on verifying each disc before allowing you to proceed. To make matters worse, it simply refused to verify the third disc. It sat at 1% verified for several hours before I gave up and ejected the disc, at that point it complained and said I had to redo the disc. So I let it try again only to find myself in the same boat. After several hours of frustration I finally gave up. Needless to say I was not impressed as I had wasted half of my day and several blank discs, when all I wanted to do was play with my new laptop.

After giving up on the backup process I proceeded to cruise through the menus and shortcuts on the desktop, I’ll admit I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of software that came preinstalled. I’ve owned many Asus motherboards and other various products over the years so many of the programs were familiar but there were far more that I did not recognize. Since I am not one who likes a cluttered computer I went to work and started removing everything I did not need on the system. I found a great forum post that covered all the Asus software that came preinstalled and made recommendations on what should be kept and what needed to be purged from the system. I suggest all owners of a new Asus laptop take a look at that site and clean out the junk you don’t need, as my computer had over 70 processes running on start.

The one piece of software you’ll want to leave installed is their facial recognition software. It’s a bit slow at times but once you train it you can have a lot of fun logging into your computer. Half the time I end up logging I manually because the room is too dark for it to recognize me, and there’s no equivalent software for Linux (I’ve mostly been running Arch Linux on it). Though it’s fun to show off you don’t want to rely on the facial recognition software for security as it can be fooled, according to many bloggers, but in all honesty if someone is sitting in front of your computer it’s already been compromised.

Specifications

Build Quality
One thing I really wanted to talk about was the quality of the keyboard, trackpad, plastic housing as well as things like the USB and audio jacks. Quite often when you get a laptop in this price range the actual build of the system feels cheap, the whole keyboard can flex and making crackling noises as you type — especially if it’s sitting in your lap. The connectors are all positioned in useful places, there’s USB plugs on each side so whether you’re a lefty or righty you wont be catching your mouse on memory sticks and cables.

The keyboard is absolutely brilliant. Not only is it pleasant to type on but none of the keys stick like on my Asus 4G netbook, I had to replace a couple of keys before it became usable. The plastic housing around the keyboard is solid and doesn’t flex when you type, but is cluttered with a few decals covering the specs and all the usual jazz. Since it’s a mid sized laptop it has a fair bit of weight to it, so you may get tired lugging it around an airport all day but it feels like it could survive numerous good bumps that are bound to happen when travelling, many of my gadgets over the years have fallen apart at the slightest tap.

The lid of the laptop is a very shinny and high polished black with just a simple ASUS logo on it. Beyond that, once you remove the decals there’s no branding on the laptop and when set up with a black desktop theme it has a very hacker-esque style to it. There are no flashing back lights on some of their higher end models, just a subtle power light and a few green lights on the front to indicate power, hard drive activity and all the other usual stuff. If you’re looking for a laptop that’s built strong and rugged like a MacBook the Asus K52J is the way to go!

Summary
The Asus K52J is a powerful laptop with a reasonable price tag. I picked mine up for $500 CDN, however they usually retail for $700 CDN. The processor is quick and snappy, programs open almost instantly and task switching doesn’t phase it. On top of that I took it for a run with a few games and was impressed with how it handled them. I could play Half-Life Episode 2 on the same settings I use with my Quad Core desktop computer with a dedicated video card. I won’t go too in depth with how it handled games as I don’t have all the benchmarking software, but for a laptop that was intended for business and casual use I was not expecting to be able to play games — so this is an added bonus.

First and foremost, insert a blank DVD into the computer’s drive as this will be the disc used for your repairs. Click on the Start icon and type the words “system repair disc” into the appropriate search box. This will immediately open up a new window. Once the window is opened, you will need to select the proper drive and also select the Create Disc function. Once you do this, the process will start automatically and the disc will be formatted so that it may be used as a boot disc.

Should you find yourself unable to boot Windows 7, you will now have the ability to boot off the System Repair Disc and either repair it or if you are unable to do so you will at least be able to backup your files before installing a fresh copy of Windows 7. Yes, it is as simple as that!

Go to the task bar and right click on it. This will reveal several of options and you will want to select the Tool Bar menu. Once you do this, you will have the option of clicking on New Tool Bar. Upon doing this, the next step will entail locating the particular folder you are most interested in. Obviously, in this case, you would be looking towards the My Computer icon. When you find it, select it and then click on the Select Folder option.

As soon as you do this, you will immediate see the My Computer folder directly in the task bar. As soon as it is in the taskbar, you can access with little more than a simple click. From this, you can then access all the many different subfolders in your computer with relative ease. Why fish around for your My Computer folder when you can just locate it on the task bar? Again, the process is easy and worth taking the time out to perform.

It’s very rare that I use Telnet these days, so it took a long time for me to notice that by default it was not packaged with Windows 7. I did some research and found out that this was also true for Windows Vista. More than likely this was an attempt to make Windows more secure by default, as Telnet is very insecure and whenever you have the choice you should always use SSH. However, with that being said, you can quickly re-enable Telnet by following these steps:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Programs And Features
4. Turn Windows features on or off
5. Check Telnet Client
6. Hit OK

After that you can start Telnet via Command Prompt.

Use your host key (ie: Right Ctrl) to escape out of the confines of the Ubuntu desktop, and click the Devices drop down, and then Install Guest Addons.  This will mount a virtual CD within your Ubuntu session. I actually got an error at this step but I just hit Ok and it didn’t effect me. Now you should see a CD icon on your desktop.

Open up your Terminal and type:

cd /media/cdrom0

In this folder there are some scripts for 64 bit linux and 32 bit.  For some reason the 64bit ones failed to work for me, so I had to use the 32 bit ones within 64 bit linux.  I would suggest doing the same.

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

This will configure your Ubuntu session so that it can allow you to use higher resolutions. First you must reboot your Ubuntu session or restart the display manager by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.  Next go to:

System
Preferences
Screen Resolution

Set your resolution and hit apply.