How I Chose the Aircraft Carrier of Laptops: The Asus N71

It's been 9 months since I bought my first laptop - plenty of time to become acquainted. Here's a  review for shoppers: "Should I buy one of these?" along with a "What I thought I needed vs what I actually got" review for the product managers. TL;DR summaries at the end.

Before we begin:

• I’ve no axe to grind with any consumer electronics company. 
• I don't like to be wed to brands, but I will always love Canon point & shoot cameras, as long as this category exists (smartphones are eating their market share)

Background

My old Dell Dimension 8400 desktop had put in yeoman service over a life of many Windows XP re-installations. Nothing could make this machine fast again! With a new Canon Powershot S90, I needed more horsepower. The S90 shoots in RAW format and I wanted to see what could be done with Panoramas and High Dynamic Range photographs using files "straight from the camera". Turning RAW into JPG or TIFF takes CPU cycles. Having a fast multi-core processor really helps.

I wanted a laptop but had a desktop mindset (didn’t want to sacrifice anything):

Spec	What I Thought I Needed
Processor	Mid-level processor for photo heavy-lifting. See comments above.
Screen	HD resolution (1920x1080) or close to it
Sound	Superior quality built-in speakers
Optical Drive	For use as an audio/video component for home AV system.
Keyboard	With a number pad
Output	Three analog outputs to drive Logitech 5.1 system

I purchased an Asus N71. This is targeted as a desktop replacement / entertainment focussed machine. Here's a great review providing a thorough look at performance specs.

Spec	What I Got	What I Actually Needed
Processor	Intel Core i5 M430 @ 2.27 GHz	All 4 cores max out when processing RAW files. Watching this on the CPU Meter makes me happy!
Screen	1600 x 900 TFT (not an IPS panel)	I really don't need a screen this large. Occasionally, I watch high definition content (DVD) directly on the laptop. But the possibility of doing this appealed to me when I purchased Overall the screen is good - the reflection and limited viewing angles aren't a showstopper. What has bugged me is the small colour gamut. It is pretty obvious beside my second Samsung SyncMaster 226CW monitor - where are the reds?
Sound	"SonicMaster" Technology	This truly came as advertised. The 2.1 speakers are awesome, especially considering the size of a laptop. I especially like the cute little subwoofer on the bottom. It is really a "mid-woofer" - the speakers are well tuned to cover the mid-to-high frequency range.
Optical drive	DVD drive	Adding a Bluray drive was too expensive and not needed for my home A/V system. I am only set up for 5.1 not 7.1 Connecting to home A/V was a big FAIL. Beyond being a pain in the ass to arrange settings for displaying DVD onscreen, I could never  get to full HD dimension on the TV. It defaulted to 1600 x 900 instead of 1920x1080 no matter what I tried Netflix was option 2. However, it failed partially as Netflix outputs stereo sound and the receiver borked on handling this in the HDMI input from the laptop. By itself, Netflix on the laptop is good - too bad the selection is so limited in Canada.
Keyboard	With a number pad	I didn't really need the extra number pad. When doing heavy duty number crunching in  Excel or Quicken I am at a desk and use an external keyboard.
Output	Three analog outputs	I use a Logitech 5.1 system to play music with stereo right and left speakers set up in the office and kitchen. The centre speaker fills out the stereo on my desk. The system works just fine with a single analog output!

Wins

• Sound quality
• Solid construction and design
• Powerful i5 processor
• USB 3.0 for future peripherals
• Nvidia Optimus graphics processor - useful for Google Earth, but probably best suited for gamers

Fails

• Battery life is pretty miserable, about 2 hours.
• Size - can't lock in a safe and it's heavy to transport. there's a reason most people don;t buy laptops this size.

Consumer Summary

This is a great entertainment laptop, but I would go for the Asus N61 model unless you absolutely need three analog sound outputs for your systems. If you plan to do photo editing on the laptop (no external monitor) get an IPS screen. This is likely taking you toward the Apple line-up. Dells have high-end RGB-LED screens with large colour gamut, but who wants to go through their crazy ordering process.

Product Management Summary

• Having never bought the exact type of product before (laptop), I fixated on silly stuff like the need need for a keypad. 
• One marketing message really got through to me: the higher quality of sound was a call to action
• Overall, the Asus brand appealed to me. In two phrases I would describe it as: good value and advanced components
• PC laptops still market strongly on spec sheets - no wonder it is so hard to choose amongst the manufacturers.
• fanboys for any model!