Asus K50AB

Hi guys.
I am new here. I have recently bought an Asus K50AB from newegg.ca but could not see any threads related to it. I hope this is the correct place to start a new thread

The model I got is K50AB-X2A which is a very cheap model at $650 on newegg US and CAD 699 on newegg.ca. Specs are 15.6'' (1366x768), AMD Turion X2 RM-75 2.2ghz, Mobility Radeon 4570 (512MB DDR2 500Mhz), 4gb RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium x64. It weighs about 2.7kg. It has 4 USB ports, 1 VGA port and 1 ethernet jack and 802.11n wifi using an Atheros chipset.

Pros:
1. Day to day performance is adequate. CPU is based on an old core and will lag behind standard Core 2 Duos but for daily tasks it is fast enough. Multitasking, HD flash etc all work well.

2. Gaming performance on the simpler games is adequate. I do not play too many games so I cannot give you too many numbers. However, on Street Fighter IV benchmark, it ran at 40-45fps at 1366*768 with model settings turned to low detail and AA turned off. SFIV is not very graphically rich though so on more complex games you will have some trouble.

Average:
Keyboard, touchpad, webcam and speakers are all average. Keyboard is completely flat and has some flex but the keys are large. If you are coming from a raised-key keyboard, then it will take some getting used to but after a few hours it feels ok and I can now type accurately. Touchpad is so-so but I mostly use an external mouse anyway. Speakers are good when sitting close to the laptop. I also tried the sound-out with some decent Sennheiser headphones and the output was actually very clear and hiss-free.

Cons:
1. Battery life is between 90 minutes to 120 minutes. On web-browsing over wifi, you will get close to 110 or 120 minutes. This laptop only has a 48Wh battery which is too small for a laptop of this size. By comparision, some Eee PC models ship with larger batteries!

2. No HDMI, e-sata or expresscard. You get 4 USB ports, 1 VGA and 1 ethernet. No HDMI is particularly annoying. I guess you get what you pay for.

Other notes:
1. I recommend also installing pumastatectrl for this laptop. Puma State Control (pumastatectrl) is an open source utility to undervolt Puma platform processors. I have successfully undervolted the processor and now during CPU intensive tasks the laptop remains practically silent. It did not make much difference to the battery life though.

2. Some reviewers online mentioned that you can switch off the discrete GPU to save battery. But in my model, there is no such option in the BIOS and I did not find the "PowerXpress" option in the Catalyst driver either. I have tried the original catalyst that shipped with it as well as a modded Catalyst 9.10 using mobility modder but neither show powerxpress as an option. Overdrive is also not showing as an option on either Catalyst.

3. Windows experience index is stuck at 4.1 because the aero score is somehow only 4.1. The processor, memory, HDD, gaming etc scores are all higher.