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I bought the VM42 as a media center computer for the living room. For this, the unit is fine since the needs are for small and quiet, while a fast CPU is not needed. Only 3 stars because I had to remove 2 stars for Asus' inexcusable lack of any instructions for creating recovery media. (More on that below.) I'm writing this review in the hopes that anyone else in the future will have more Google hits when searching for recovery media creation.
The VM42 comes with 4GB RAM and a full size 3.5" 500GB drive. Trivially easy to open the top cover and replace the hard drive or add RAM. There are 2 SO-DIMM slots. Mine came with just 1 4GB DIMM so adding more memory won't require throwing away the existing DIMM. The VM42 also uses an external "wall wart" power supply. This means that it may block some outlets on your power strip, unlike a "power brick" that has just a cord plugging into the AC outlet. Not a bad thing, necessarily, just something to be aware of.
The VM42 is preinstalled with Windows 8.1 but does NOT comes with any recovery media. Unlike HP and Dell, where you are prompted to create the recovery media, Asus does not indicate any way to create recovery media. There is not even a way to boot to the recovery partition. The recovery partition is shown in Computer Management, but you can't add a drive letter or access it in any easy way. Booting to Windows 8.1's built-in restore utility and selecting the option to reset the PC to factory using a recovery partition does NOT work. Windows says there aren't any recovery partitions. This is unacceptable! We all know that hard drives eventually fail and this will take the (inaccessible) recovery partition with it along with your ability to reload Windows without buying another copy of Windows. Asus' knowledgebase says to just contact Asus if you need to replace the hard drive, but that is just an unnecessary step. Dell & HP supply a shortcut to create recovery media, as well as prompt you on first boot. But nothing on the VM42. Google shows that it is typical for most Asus models to not come with recovery media. Many Google hits say to press certain key combinations to get to the recovery partition. And for certain Asus laptops, you can get from Asus a utility to extract the recovery partition. (e.g. Backtracker.) But neither worked for the VM42.
Microsoft has changed the activation procedure for Window 10 so that it is easier to reinstall Windows 10 when you aren't supplied with recovery media from the manufacturer. But the VM42 has an OEM version of Windows 8.1 Home so even when I extracted the Windows 8.1 Product Key, I could not use it with a ISO downloaded from Microsoft since it wasn't a retail product key. If I was going to upgrade the VM42 to Windows 10, I might have let the issue go, but I was going to leave it with Windows 8.1 because I was going to use Windows Media Center since I already use Windows Media Center as a DVR on another machine. Thus the VM42 was going to be a Media Center Extender and Media Center is not available for Windows 10.
That said, after a lot of Googling, I found that you can use Windows' built-in function to create a USB recovery drive. Insert a 16GB USB flash drive and go to Search in the Charms bar. Type "drive recovery" and select "Create Recovery Drive". Follow the prompts...
* and be sure to select "copy the recovery partition" *
I was able to make a USB recovery drive and install Windows 8.1 to an new blank hard drive. So at least in my instance, the Windows 8 recovery partition was still functional.
This is NOT documented anywhere from Asus. It is only because I am a very experienced computer user that I could figure out how to do any of this and I would not expect any general user to know that they had to do this. Asus must make it easier to create recovery media. "Hidden" is not good customer service.
So overall, while the hardware is fine, and the design decision to use a 3.5" SATA drive and make it easy to upgrade memory and HD is a huge plus, the overall implementation of Windows by Asus is sloppy and unacceptable. It almost seems the way Asus was able to make the price so extremely low was to fire the software implementation team and not pay anyone to "finish" the instructions for the product. Yes, HP & Dell are more expensive, but the Asus VM42 implies greatly why the additional $200 cost is for a HP or Dell is worthwhile for most non-technical users.
| Processor | 1.4 GHz Celeron_2957U |
|---|---|
| RAM | 4 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 500 GB Serial ATA |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11a |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
