Turbo,
My ASUS Laptop is two years old, and the top with the screen still opens stiff, I am kind of glad it does. It has been reliable as a rock, nothing spilled on the keyboard, etc... One thing you may want to do is go into config.sys from the run menu and turn off a bunch of preinstalled ASUS crap they send with it, I only have about five startup programs in the list, same for servies as well, that can get tricky because of one or more services can depend on others and no hierarchy tree exists to tell you what is what. I have that trimmed to the low 40 count as well, once that is done it should boot and run in 30 - 40 seconds. Good luck.
Rhody...