I adored my Macbook, but at the same time I wanted something a little beefier on the CPU / GPU front than what the current line Macbooks had to offer. The Macbook Pros looked delicious, but the price points made my head hurt. So began the search…

I’ll skip past all the gritty details and laptop comparisons and hours spent reading reviews and articles and becoming familiar (again) with Nvidia’s / ATI’s mobile graphics cards and Intel’s Core i3, 5, and 7 chipsets and the pros and cons of this and that and on, and on, and on.

Instead, I’ll jump right to the end. I bought an Asus U30JC-A1 from XoticPC.com. Regarding hardware specs, this puppy falls somewhere between the 13″ and 15″ Macbook Pros, and it’s half the price.

Some quick highlights: Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 350M/330M : 2.26 GHz – 2.13 GHz, 4GB SDRAM DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM, 13.3″ HD (1366×768) Color-Shine (Glare-type), NVIDIA® GeForce® G 310M, with 512MB & Intel GMA HD (Support NVIDIA Optimus Technology) VRAM, 320 Gb Hard Drive @ 5400 rpm.

No Bluetooth, but Asus claims up to 9 hours of battery life while using the integrated Intel graphics card (I’ve read reports of 8+ hours from actual users). It’s 4.7 pounds, exactly what my Macbook was. Most ultraportables are around 3 to 4 pounds. I’m 6′ 2″ and 185 pounds — an extra pound is not going to break my back.

Nvidia’s Optimus technology looks really nice. Depending on your point of view, I’m happy / sad to say that I’ve been upgraded / downgraded from a hardcore gamer to a casual gamer over the last half decade, so gaming wasn’t my main concern when looking for a new notebook. With that said, I do like to fire up a little Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Battlefield Bad Company 2, yada yada yada, from time to time. I’m also a frequent Adobe Lightroom user and have been known to do some video editing here and there, both of which will get a nice boost with the addition of a discrete graphics card.

With decent graphics capabilities, outstanding battery life, acceptable portability, a powerful, yet energy efficient processor, an elegant and very solid design (brushed aluminum), and half the price of a Macbook Pro, I simply couldn’t resist this laptop. I’ve been purchasing Asus products for years, mainly motherboards (or mostly mainboards, ha!), and I’ve always been very pleased. This will be my first laptop experience with them. It should be delivered on Wednesday, so cross your fingers. Hopefully all my expectations and presumptions will hold true. If not, back to Mac I go?