A few flat notes, but a neat investment.
598774
Very solid quality instrument. The keys take some time getting used to if you're used to playing piano. Another thing too, many of the notes are flat, not incredibly flat, but noticeable with a tuner.

I suggest getting it for a fun and whimsical time with your musician friends.
2694869
I'm really enjoying the new rush of thin and light notebooks. I enjoy the 11 inch form, and it works great with the 2-in-1, anddells attempt was not too bad.

The design is decently eye catching, it's ultrabook thin, with all the usb ports, hdmi, sd slots you could need. This is the part that is kinda meh to me though. Firstly the shape of it is kind of odd. While the main computer portion is thin, the screen is almost as thick, which when closed, makes the laptop thicker than your average thin and light. The keyboard is decently design, but when you type it had a hollow cheap feeling that is hard to explain. The touchpad also just doesn't feel that great, the texture is cheap feeling and it works so-so. The hinge could be a little stronger; if you yank up the laptop, the screen will fall backwards. These aside, I feel like most of them are things you can look around for $450, they aren't deal breakers, I just wish dell would have made a few things like the keybaord and touchpad feel a bit less cheap.

Performance on this laptop is not bad. Websites load fast, league of legends plays well on low settings,  videos play fine. The largest slowdown to things are the hard drive though, I almost would have preferred the cheap emmc memory used in the tablets. If you installed a cheap ssd in this (which you can do, as well as upgrade the ram, which is great) this would fly a lot faster. The new bay trail processors do great in every day use. The one complaint I have on performance is the multi-touch trackpad does not work too well. When you're scrolling, it's really jittery, and unstable feeling. Sometimes the multitouch just doesn't even work at all either, it's kind of touchy.

Screen - The screen isn't bad, viewing angles are decent, though not as good as other IPS screens. Color and brightness seem good enough for the casual user. Touch on the screen has worked flawlessly so far.

Battery - I think your average day of web surfing, and work processing would net you around 6+ hours on this, a lighter usage without internet would be 8. This is one thing Dell did well with, the other notebooks with these low power pentium and celeron bay trail processors should be getting at least this much battery life but for some reason they don't I applaud them on this.

Overall this isn't a bad buy. If Dell would have made it a little bit lighter, and a little less cheap feeling it would have been amazing. If you are looking for a cheap pc that is light and functional this will get things done for you .If you buy this and know what you're doing, I would recommend getting a 120gb ssd and replacing your hard drive with that (you could almost sell the drive for as much as one would cost) and this would be a much more mean machine.
4695035
A nice option for those that would rather not pay top dollar for one of the major name brands.
1197711
This wasn't a "need" purchase. This was an "I want something to kick around with and sketch out new song ideas" purchase.  I have my music studio in the basement with all the equipment I'll need for years, but it isn't really conducive to spontaneous creativity.  This is where the CTK-7000 comes in.

If you're a novice at these kind of arranger keyboards, finding your way around can be a bit daunting at first. Be patient and keep the manual close.  There's a bit more menu-digging than I'd like in order to access some features. I wish the jog wheel was a little more substantial, since it's used a lot and it doesn't strike me as terribly heavy duty. There's some minor flex in the keybed, but I'm not sure it's a big deal. I do notice that my forearms are sore after playing a while.  I think it's because the keys don't travel as far as I'm used to.  I can play my fully weighted Casio PX-3 for hours at a gig and not get tired, so there's something going on.

All those negatives are pretty minor. The sounds are better than I expected.  I don't plan on using any of them in any actual songs, but for sketching ideas they're fine.  The strings are rather harsh, but just about everything else is good enough. The preset styles are better than I expected. The cheese factor is dialed down from the Casio boards of yore.  I spent most of the first few hours I had the CTK-7000 jamming in various preset styles and had a blast. I even hooked up my Ipad 3 to it and goofed around with Garage Band and had even more fun.

I can't really say I'd recommend it for live use, but it would be good for a home studio on a tight budget or as a songwriting sketch pad.

This review is being written after using it for one day, so if anything changes, I'll update.

*Update*

This keyboard is still plugging away.  The plastic plate around the display tends to pop up along the bottom, making it hard to press the little round buttons inside the plate.  I can push it back down, but it will pop up again within a few hours.  I'll probably pry it off and glue it down at some point.

I have finally used it live!  Never thought I would use it live, but I lead a praise band that sometimes has trouble getting everyone together for some gigs we play.  I looked into getting a more expensive arranger to fill out our sound, like the Korg PA600 or the Yamaha S750, but I figured I'd give this a try and hang on to my $1000 for now.

Well, it works pretty well.  It is a bit limiting with only two variations per rhythm/style, but we mostly do fairly simple worship songs, so I can make it work. It sounds surprisingly good through a PA. Don't expect realistic acoustic or guitar sounds, but it works well for basic drums/bass/pad stuff. On the fly adjustments aren't as plentiful as on more expensive arrangers, but you get what you pay for.

If I was doing paid gigs regularly that called for an arranger keyboard, I would get the PA600 or the S750, but for occasional use that isn't too demanding, this does the job.

 Be warned: Creating and editing patterns on this is a major pain in the #@$. The manual may be in English, but it isn't written to be easy to understand. If you're anything like me, your eyes will glaze over trying to read the manual to figure things out.  Everything is buried in menus with vague names and has to be done in precise order. I do believe it's the most non-intuitive machine I've ever used. You WILL accidentally overwrite patterns and/or delete things because it is difficult to keep track of what is where. For example, when saving a pattern, it always defaults to user rhythm 1, even if you were editing rhythm 57. Ten times a day I accidentally save in rhythm 1 instead of where I want it. Frustrating.
4096002
This is a worthwhile investment for fans, but I can't say it's a fantastic deal at $230.
Pro's: Highly detailed; solid construction; everything worked as advertised; fairly sophisticated light and sound effects (plays 5 different, surprisingly long musical clips and 6 different sound effects--wave motion gun revs up, shuts down other lights as it "draws power," then changes colors for the discharge); well-made (all antennas and spires straight and properly aligned); arrived early
Con's: smallish; sound is necessarily not very loud or imposing
Cautions: As others have said, it's a bit small; some assembly required, and all instructions are in Japanese (but you can figure it out with the pictures); when using the remote to activate sound and lights, some experimentation is needed---to activate the wave motion gun, hold down the "A" button (not marked) continuously, then release when the cannon turns blue--I almost returned mine, thinking that feature wasn't working at first.
1622863
There are a few good suggestions in this book.
3533768
I don't have much to add to the other reviews here.  As a long time Richard Thompson fan I was wanting more background about the making of the album and about the artist.  There isn't much of that here.  The parts of the book where he is talking about the album and the songs themselves were interesting.  The fictional portions, not so much.

It's short and inexpensive, so you will not have to invest much money or time.  If you are a big fan of Richard Thompson there is enough of interest here to reward that small investment. You probably won't be sorry you bought it, but you won't be missing much if you don't either.
2134271
A cute little book with a good variety of tables if you're feeling uninspired. That said, nothing in the book seems particularly different from the many tables you can find freely created on various websites. It's handy to keep on hand, and more sources is never a bad thing, but I'm wishing it had just a little... something more. Overall, very good book thought.
4594438
I'm a big fan of hardbound notebooks for work, independent study, and various other diversions. They keep my thoughts jumbled in one accessible place that can be stored away when completely full, and then referenced if necessary. Here are the positives about this item. (1) It's made in Mexico. There are a variety of reasons geopolitical and economic that this is advantageous, say, to a product being manufactured west of Hawaii. (2) It has a nice feel to the cover - almost suede-like. And the cover is rigid and doesn't feel like it's filled with a substandard corrugated cardboard core. What it's filled with I don't know, but it's substantial. (3) The pages are acid free. This means a longer life. (4) Not that much bleed through between pages though they are somewhat thin.

The negatives? (1) The little design running down the front left of the book. But that's my fault for overlooking this. It's called Davinci after all. I should have caught on or looked closer at the images.
(2) The pages are thinner than I expected. Not a problem as they don't bleed through, but they don't tear easily, so that's a good thing.

In short a four-star, high-value item that's made along our same longitude.
459089
Not exctly a surprise. Nevertheless a welcomed dvelopment.
4856078
Whilst no one will use all the tips provided, just getting benefit from one or two makes reading this book worthwhile.
1825375
Not too crazy about this book, but, there are some good things in it.
3917783
There is nothing spectacular or novel in this short little book, but it nonetheless will be valuable to the person who puts it to use.  What I liked was the short and to-the-point chapters (what the author calls "laws"), many of which contained exercises at the end to get you thinking about how the topic can be applied to your own life.  There are 25 of these "laws" and for the most part they cover well-known territory.  In other words the material which is not breathtakingly original is brought to gather well and organized to allow the reader to put it to effective use.  It's a practical book.  The author illustrates his points with examples from his own life, which is at times inspiring.

If you are looking to do something different with your life and get some motivation and direction then I think this little volume will be useful to you.  If you just read a bunch of success type books and are looking for something new you probably won't find it here.
1010025
The music in this is of course, very good. However, I don't think the pagination and printing was done that well. For example the first prelude in C-major, which is a 2 page piece, is printed so that the first page is on the right side of the book, and you need to turn the page... Which is an unnecessary page turn. Had they simply skipped a page, that first piece wouldn't have a page turn. It seems like they valued compactness over page turns.

Also on mine the printing is a bit light so thin parts of notation, like the bar on rests, doesn't show up very clearly. I went through mine with a .7mm pencil and fixed any lines that were too faint.

All of that being said, I'm glad to find a complete Well-Tempered Clavier set in an edition like this, and I'm happy to have it. I haven't seen other editions on the market, but in spite of the flaws in this one, it's still a good book of good music.
1168531
This is a pretty useful item for a music major. I like to keep all of my theory notes in one place, so I don't have to go back and forth between notebook paper and staff paper when reviewing my notes, or take notes solely on staff paper. At the right angle and amount of pressure, all five lines print clearly though you must maintain both consistently. Hopefully in the future, Pickboy will update this product and improve it, making it easier to get five legible lines. As it is now, it is a wholly adequate product that still has room for improvement.
3839719
I am not a novice, but I did get a few nice nuggets from the book that will help in my investing.
625806
This setup gives interesting opportunities to take trades with more edge to you, not all of them will be winners but with risk and money management over time you will grow your account. I did like comparison of price to be bound by invisible rubber band it seems that price does return close to average.