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Is there really such a thing as a desktop replacement?

That is perhaps the greatest burning question facing PC users today.

Certainly, many users would elect for the desktop option; highly configurable and easily upgradeable, yet not particularly portable. And though there are those occasions where a laptop PC is far more desirable; the likes of college and university for students, on the road for business travel and work sites, the desktop still holds that performance edge.

And there-in lies the great divide. The overwhelming majority of laptops are severely lacking in the performance department with their meek mobile processors and budget integrated graphics options. Asus is hoping to change that though (and perhaps create a new PC market) with their C90S upgradeable laptop.



Yes, you heard me right, upgradeable. The Asus C90S laptop is a distinctive new breed of portable computing with its user upgradeable hardware. Of course there are those laptop components that are simple enough for the end user to swap out themselves; hard drive, optical drive and memory. Typically though, the processor and graphics card are static, soldered into place for the life of that system. The Asus C90S however allows the end user to easily upgrade both the desktop processor and graphics card within.

Though this does sound quite unique, it's been tried before. Several years ago, the prospect of a user upgradeable laptop was presented to the market, but that idea had died a quick and silent death. And it is common of course to have different laptop vendors offer different configurations for their notebook systems. But being able to plug a desktop Intel Core 2 Duo CPU into a laptop? That's what gives the C90S the advantage.

So can Asus steal some steam from the portable main-stays? Will users adopt this new breed of desktop replacement? Or will it fade into PC obscurity?

There's a lot of questions to be answered; what range of desktop CPUs can it use, what are the graphics options, is it a sound investment and can it compare with even the most basic of desktop systems?

All those questions and more await. But first, we should get a little better acquainted with the Asus C90S laptop and some of the features it has to offer.