Alright, well lets see. My experience in knowing hardware is about zip, I'm bad with hardware and knowing what it does exactly. My first Asus machine was the G74Sx, and my current is the G751. My first one, I got from Best Buy with a 4 year accidental damage warranty, and had it repaired at the end of that warranty to find out the power ribbon was melted (although, I didn't know this because the machine was working just fine, I just dropped it one day and the keys weren't all that functional and such so I waited till near the end of the warranty to send it in as I couldn't go 2 months without my laptop).
My current, is the G751 which is nice, much better cooling, has a few useless keys on it because updates in software broke them (which is why Asus needs to stop making these special keys). My favorite thing about this machine, is it till has a functional keyboard layout. Something I can't find in any new Asus machines. They all combine the keys in stupid ways, removing important keys like pgup pgdn end. One notebook I saw was so stupidly designed on keyboard that it actually replaced the end key with the power button so I can't get that machine because I'd accidentally turn my machine off all the time. I use the number pad a great deal actually, and I don't wish to be pushing num lock constantly to switch from number pad to home, pgup/dn, end. Another keyboard I saw moved the number keys up and into the others, which is bad for gamers. Stop screwing with the layout Asus, its fine, you don't need to compress it. A 17.3" laptop has plenty of space for all the keys, so stop deleting them!
Thats my G751 keyboard after about 2 years of usage. I love the design, easily tell the difference between num pad, main keyboard, even the arrow keys are off center allowing me to find them easily in the dark without having to look down. I type from memory which is good because you can see a good portion of the keys are just erased now.
My current machine also has a 500GB SSD for the OS drive, and a 1TB SSD for the second which contains all my steam games on it and is where I record to as well when recording gameplay. I'm hoping to just move my drives over to the new machine so that I don't have to pay a fortune for a new storage device I'm not even going to use. I really like that i can move my 1TB SSD over and all my steam games stay installed on whatever machine I connect it to, so thats my intention with the next machine I get. The G703 for example says it comes with a 1TB SSHD which is useless to me as I already have something far better that I'll just replace it with. The G703 which I was looking at says it comes with some sort of RAID0 thing, which I've never seen or used before. What I need to know, is if the OS Drive will have 500GB, or if its gonna be some sort of strange cloning thing where I have 256GB being cloned constantly between a second drive. I need a good 500GB for the OS drive after all.
I'm happy to see that the G703 actually got rid of the optical drive, I mean. Who ever uses those things anymore anyway? Thats the one thing I like most about that machine is they got rid of it, to improve on the hardware inside instead of keeping an old abandoned technology in there. I mean my G751's optical drive doesn't even work anymore, some sort of power calibration error when trying to burn DVDs so I just told the neighbor to get a flash drive instead.
The biggest reason I use a laptop instead of a desktop which'd be clearly cheaper and easier to get in my situation, is that I live out in the middle of no where, where internet doesn't exist unless its a scam plan. My current internet is actually my phone, which works in most cases, even somewhat for gaming online with friends just barely with one or two games. So I need portability, so I can go to town to download large things like Ark Survival which takes a whole 120GB of drive space and 5GB a month in updates. So thats why I use a laptop, for the portability of moving the machine around to where I need it most.
I'm a little disappointed in the fact that batteries are now internal and can't be replaced, but I guess its not a huge deal. My G74 battery made it 3 years before some power cells died and the machine would shut down randomly on battery power, with nearly 50% reduced capacity. I almost never use battery anyway, as the machine is always plugged in, or on the move in sleep mode. I'm guessing the batteries were made internal to save more space from having to use adapters and whatnot.
When I look at Newegg, it shows the machine won't be available till June 1st, which is odd because some people here have already discussed issues with it showing they already had it about 5-6 months ago. I'm not sure if they have some alternate source of getting Asus machines or what, but I'd really like to get a new one within the next 2 months max so I can send this one in for some minor repairs and sell it to a friend who needs a new machine rather badly. Another factor in things however is that I'm disabled, I was hoping to find out what the price range for the machine might be, for G703. One important feature for me to have is the VR ready so that if I ever happen to get the money for that I can have a machine thats already VR supported. I'm also waiting for the machine to appear on Amazon because that seems to be the only place I can purchase 4 year accidental protection. I'm a rather cautious person and like to have the best protection plan possible. I'm not one of those Apple users who goes and buys a new over-priced device every year after all.
I may have other concerns come up, but my fingers hurt from all the typing and I need a break. Hopefully I can get some input on this soon so I can make some better decisions. I am disappointed in Asus though, the keyboard is my biggest importance factor and they keep deleting portions of it and making it worse.
😕 I decided against one Asus machine that was actually a really good option to upgrade to, soley because the end key was replaced with the power button and the arrow keys were mixed into the keyboard for a solid grid of buttons.