Asus M70S: media machine handles HD at a high price.(REVIEWS: LAPTOPS)(Product/service evaluation)(Brief article)

ASUS' MEDIA-CENTRIC M70S delivers top-notch performance, great HD capabilities, and a full terabyte of hard drive space--at an appropriately large price.

With its 17-inch display running at a native resolution of 1,920x1,200 (capable of showing 1080p HD video at its full resolution), the $2,399 M70S looks the part of a media machine. We were impressed with the screen's clarity and brightness, and HD Blu-ray disc playback was quick and effortless.

The rest of the M70S is just as eye-catching, except for the full-size keyboard, complete with a 10-key pad, that's on the plain side. Tapping the system's touch pad twice on its upper-fight comer will activate a blue backlight with a range of media-control buttons under it. The touch pad is a unique addition, though we found ourselves accidentally activating it many times during Web-surfing sessions.

The M70S gets a lot of mileage from its 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 processor. It scored well on our productivity and multimedia benchmark tests; more impressive is the ...