The M70-159 features a fully sized 86-key keyboard, which is very soft and comfortable to use. While the keyboard itself is very good, the displacement of some keys can be quite irritating, the windows key is placed at the right top of the keyboard, instead of between the Ctrl & Alt keys. The “ and @ keys are inversed, which can make you type something like -person”e-mail.com- when trying to e-mail someone. If you are using the notebook frequently, you will quickly get used to these small changes, but it can feel very awkward if you are using several different PC systems daily. The multimedia keys present at the right side of the keyboard, right beneath the power button, can be quite handy. With them you can launch your favorite media applications and control their basic options (start, pause, stop, etc).

The function keys are also very helpful. By pressing the Fn key, you can quickly access many features.

Some of them are:

Finally, there is the Alps touchpad. It is very sensitive to the touch and pressing any of the 4 corners will bring up an extra menu with options and/or applications to launch. It is rather easy to use, but for working or gaming with this notebook we cannot help but recommend a proper mouse.

Another strong feature of the M70-159 is the Harman/Kardon stereo speakers. Most notebooks have speakers which are barely good enough to play the MS Windows introductory tune. The Harman/Kardon speakers powering this unit are of a very high quality. Obviously a power user would attach a dedicated set of speakers for long term music or gaming.

The M70-159 has a total of 6 LED lights. The bulk of them are present towards the left of the notebook, next to the memory card reader. From left towards the right, they indicate:

• AC power present (blue if the DC adapter is attached)
• Power On/Off (blue if the notebook is powered on)
• Battery status (blue if fully charged, red if charging)
• Hard disk drive usage (blinking if there is HDD activity)
• Memory card reader usage (blinking if there is activity)

The last LED light is towards the middle of the notebook and indicates the wireless status of the notebook (on-off). Right next to it there is the on-off switch for the wireless connection options of the notebook. By turning them off, you can save some battery life but of course you won’t be able to connect to any WiFi network and/or use any Bluetooth device.