I also love the Express Gate feature which allows you to boot in 8 seconds to get online, look at pix, listen to music, play games, use skype, mostly basic stuff, but its great to have.

I’m a big fan of Asus style cpus so i was very picky about what to buy in terms of body, and I love this one. Chiclet keyboard with lots of function shortcuts, brushed aluminum lid, very thin and light as the name would suggest. I just wish they made this style with an optical drive, then it would be heaven!

Battery life seems decent; I get about 3 1/2 to 4 hours depending on what I’m doing (mostly web surfing), and there is a secondary power button (used to launch Express Gate) that can switch on battery saving profiles to dim the screen, etc.

I love this cpu but there is a UL30 model which gets much better battery life than mine (up to 8 hours, I think) but I don’t know of any other differences. Check them both out!

It was fast and problem free right out of the box. Connected to my Wifi instantly, and runs cool cool cool! I assume it has a fan, but I’ve never heard it, even in an otherwise silent workplace.

The keyboard is very comfortable, sturdy and has the Home, End, PgUp & PgDn keys that I missed on my ASUS 1002HA. I love my 1002HA netbook, but this machine, in my opinion, is in a completely different class…

The touchpad takes a little getting used to… no edges, so it’s easy to get off-track, but only til you get the “feel” of it… now my fingers recognize the little indentations and it’s no problem at all. Some have expressed the label on the palmrest as being distracting, but I think it makes a good protector for the surface, at least on the right side.

The UL20A arrived with one 2G memory stick,(KUDUS ASUS!) I ordered a second 2G strip the day I ordered the laptop, (I like to have mulitple windows open at the same time) and intalled it 24 hours after I received the UL20A, and now it’s simply amazing! It was very easy, just remove 3 tiny screws, insert the memory strip into the open slot, and close it back up. (Please look up and follow the detailed mfr directions, check warranty info, etc.)

The display is brilliant! The glossy screen… well, because I use it outdoors a lot, I’ve ordered a non-glare screen protector and am optimistic that it will be what makes this my perfect laptop.

My online video watching was definitely improved with the second strip of RAM, but certainly sufficient with 2G. The screen size is perfect.. where I had difficulty with my multiple open windows, and my vision problems on the 10.1, I have all the room I need with the 12.1 display… Not sure why it works so much better, but it really does. I considered purchasing the 13.1 UL30A, until I was told that it’s one inch wider and no taller.

My initial test of battery time gave me a little over 7 hours of various types of computing… watching videos online using wifi, online research, offline word processing, using the ASUS external DVD player to watch a movie, tinkering around with Windows7, personalizing settings, etc.

I really didn’t think I was going to like the light aluminum color… My ASUS 1002HA is the dark grey aluminum, it’s really classy and professional looking, so I was disappointed that the UL20A didn’t have a choice of colors… In fact, I almost didn’t purchase it because of that.

However… I’ve changed my mind, I really like it! Would I choose the darker color if it were available? Yes. Would I not buy this wonderful little laptop for that reason alone? Not after seeing and experiencing it!

I certainly have no complaints, and am completely satisfied with my purchase. And most of all, I thank my brother for pointing me in the right direction for what I needed/wanted! And well, I need a new desktop for the office, He thinks perhaps an Asus Essentio…

Hope this helps someone, because I’m having a blast writing this on my new ASUS UL20A!

I still attach a larger flat screen monitor when at my desk so that I can work with two or three different programs. The keyboard is easy to use, nearly as wide as my ergonomic accessory model – it does not feel small at all.

I like that it came with Windows 7 and not a lot of “crapware” according to reviews, and I didn’t see much when I looked around for things to delete.

Lots of hard drive space at 250 GB, more than the smallest netbooks. The hard drive is partitioned into C and D drives. I’m still figuring out what to put where. But my programs seem to find everything they need to run smoothly. I was reluctant to do without a CD drive/burner (the smallest laptops don’t have one), so bought an external drive, but I haven’t used it yet (2 months), and probably won’t need it much.

I don’t do graphics-laden games, so can’t speak to that. This has everything I need for “office work.”

Overall a great laptop & would most definitely purchase again & highly recommend.

The only cons I see are:

**CD/DVD ROM must be external (no internal drive is available, but the small size/weight of the laptop is more important to me than an internal drive)

**No PCMCIA slot (I know, outdated, but I still have a few cards!)

**No ASUS brand carry case is available, only non-OEM items. I’m not into brand names, but have found over the years that the OEM cases typically fit best and have the most useful features.

Overall, I am very pleased with the laptop, and would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a basic laptop that is fast enough to run most programs.

Anyway…I love this netbook/laptop, was exactly what I had wanted, it’s fast, easy and well worth the money.

Cons: absolutely zero

If this is the size laptop you’re after it is hard to beat the features. The aluminum-like finish on the cover is so much better than all those glossy black laptops out there. The keyboard is a standard laptop keyboard layout, not the super squished layout of a netbook, and it has a great feel. The screen is bright a crisp. It also comes with a super small power brick. The thing gets pretty warm, but the size is just one more thing that makes this laptop so portable.

Fast boot. Wow, this thing is by far the fastest booting machine I have ever used. I replaced the hard drive with a Solid State Drive and I can literally boot to a usable desktop in Windows 7 in 30 seconds from power off. No kidding. Even my Core i5 desktop with Intel SSD doesn’t come anywhere near this speed. They have super optimized the BIOS to get passed many of the slow issues with bootup on most machines.

So the downsides. The lack of bluetooth and gigabit lan on a laptop in 2010 is just plain bad thinking. These are low cost items that should be in every single laptop on the market, period. Sure I can get bluetooth with a tiny usb dongle, but why should I have to? And 10/100 LAN? Come on, that is so mid-2000’s.

The touchpad is not the best design I’ve seen. It has small divets on the surface, but otherwise there is no way to tell when your finger has moved off the touchpad. Finding the scroll regions is particularly hard, though the new dual touch scrolling feature of the Synaptics software goes a long way to mitigating this. The touchpad takes some getting used to, but give it a chance.

Lastly, price. Paying 5 or 6 bills of this thing seems like a lot when you get can a full featured and high powered laptop for the same or less. But I keep telling myself it is small and in electronics you always pay for small. But still. If this thing were say $450, I’d recommend it to everyone I know.

Thinking about buying one? Go for it, you’ll not be disappointed.