On the upside, there are three easily reprogrammable function keys above the keyboard. The buttons surrounding the Synaptics touchpad are nice and large, but they're flush with the palm rest, making them difficult to find by touch alone. Between the buttons are two scroll buttons that work fine, but don't really offer much in the way of added utility over the cursor arrows. The bright and crisp 14.1-inch LCD screen is unfortunately backed up by a substandard video system. However, if you drop to a lower resolution, the screen takes on a very rough, jagged appearance.
Text becomes difficult to read, and graphics take on stairstep edges.
If you do presentations on the notebook screen, you'll need to create them for the LCD's native resolution or they'll look terrible. DVD playback fares much better. The notebook has very good sound, with admirable volume for a portable and no distortion even with DVD audio cranked to the limit. Despite the substandard 3D performance, business applications feel quite snappy. If the removable 20GB hard drive doesn't offer enough storage for your needs, the bay can also hold a second hard disk.