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Asus F3Jc Review

2007-09-09T17:14:00.000-07:00

by Silver Hannolainen

Overview and Introduction

The Asus F3Jc is a lower-budget brother of the F3Ja. It is also branded as a "portability" notebook, but lacks the higher-end graphics cards of its more powerful and higher priced brethren. It is still equipped very respectably with a Geforce Go 7300 graphics card and an Intel Core Duo T2250 processor.

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Specifications:

Intel Core Duo T2250 1,73GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB
Intel 945PM chipset
1GB DDR2 RAM (1x512MB stock Nanya DDR2-667 and 1x512MB added Hynix DDR2-533)
15.4" WXGA "glossy" screen at 1280x800 resolution.
nVidia Geforce Go 7300 128MB (up to 512MB with TurboCache) at 350/600MHz core/memory speeds
80GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 HDD (5400rpm, 8MB cache, SATA)
8x Super Multi DVD±RW optical drive (Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-850S)
3-in-1 SD/MMC/Memory Stick reader
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 802.11a/b/g Mini-PCIe wireless card
6Cell 4800mAh battery
Ports: 1 x Headphone jack, 1 x Microphone-in jack, 1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line, 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack, 4 x USB 2.0 ports, 1x IEEE1394 port, 1 x TV Out (S-Video), 1 x ExpressCard54 slot, 1 x DVI Port, 1 x VGA Port
Dimensions: 365 x 269.5 x 28-40.5 mm
Weight: 2.95kg / 6.5lbs (with 6Cell battery)

This particular model lacks Bluetooth and an integrated webcam.

Reasons for Buying

The main reason for buying this notebook was to aid me in my studies at Tallinn Technical University. I also wanted to play games such as Counter-Strike Source and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory while on campus. The main principle was that the notebook had dedicated graphics, so my choices were quite limited price-wise. Before I came across a local Asus-certified reseller, I was bent on buying a used but well-kept Dell D600. Luckily, an unexpected budget boost enabled me to look for other non-used choices. With the boost, I was strictly limited to a $1,250/€990 budget and that enabled me to go ahead and buy the F3Jc reviewed here. (All $ prices in USD)

Where and How Purchased

I bought the machine through another firm, which enabled me to skip the 18% VAT (that's actually not a tax fraud here where I live, in case you were wondering), resulting in a final price of €980. The notebook came with 512MB of RAM, so I later bought an extra 512MB stick for $49/€38.

I think it was a pretty good bargain because other brand notebooks (Dell Inspiron 6400 etc.) with similar specs start around the $1,500/€1200 price point and the Compal HGL30/HEL80-based gaming machines at $1,350/€1050.

Build & Design

The lid after a months use. AC adapter and mouse shown for size comparison. ( view large image)

I have to agree with the F3Ja review here - the build quality is very nice. When twisting or applying pressure to the back of the LCD, no ripples appear on the screen. The screen hinges are quite solid so its neccessary to hold the notebook down when opening the screen. The button and latch mechanism which holds the screen shut seems a little fragile, so I wouldn't abuse that part too much. There is very little or no flex when picking the notebook up from both front corners, although I wouldn't attempt it with only one corner. The right palmrest flexes a little when pushed down but the left one is solid because of the HDD situated underneath. The weight, close to 4kg including the AC adapter, mouse and carry bag is reasonably luggable between home and university, but I wouldn't take in for longer walks. One thing I do not understand is why on earth put 2 extra feet on the battery?

Screen

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The screen is a glossy widescreen 15,4" WXGA 1280x800 resolution unit. I can't say that there is anything awfully wrong with the screen - both the brightness and contrast are plentiful, black is black, white is white and it's somewhat viewable in indirect sunlight, at least in my opinion. One slight annoyance is that the screen collects dust pretty fast but Asus includes a special microfiber cloth to wipe it off. Also, the viewing angles could be better in my opinion and the following pictures should illustrate my point. Luckily there aren't any dead nor bright pixels to be found on my screen.

Asus includes a piece of pre-installed software called "ASUS Splendid Technology Utility", which can be used to adjust the settings for the screen. It has several preset modes and you can customize one on your own. Personally I tried this feature but found no real practical use for it, so uninstalled it. Also, there is a hotkey to swap between different screen presets. Below is a picture to illustrate the light leakage found when viewing a black screen. In everyday usage, one would definetly not notice it that much.

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Speakers

The speakers are located above the keyboard, just below the screen. I've found the speakers to be sufficient for makeshift listening at university when I have no headphones at hand. The volume is loud enough but definetly lacking bass, which is usual on notebook speakers. At home I usally plug in a 4.1 speaker system, which offers a much more satisfactory listening experience, although recently a problem concerning internal/external speakers has sprung up, but more on that later.

Processor and Performance

Although the Intel Core Duo T2250 1,73GHz is one of the lower-end models of Intel's Core Duo lineup, its performance is still pretty impressive in comparison to my desktop AMD Athlon64 3000+ overclocked to 2.25GHz. The T2250 managed to complete SuperPi 1M a whole 2 seconds faster than the aforementioned AMD-equipped Desktop PC despite its lower 533Mhz Front Side Bus (FSB), although it is left slightly behind by its 667MHz FSB Core 2 Duo bretheren.

The overall feel is snappy thanks to the 1 GB of RAM, only the 5400RPM Seagate SATA HDD was feeling a little left in the dust compared to my desktop's 250GB 7200rpm Seagate 7200.8 HDD. For some strange reason, Firefox 2.0 temporarily hangs once in while, but maybe thats the fault of the OS. After pressing the power button, startup takes 38 seconds to get to the login screen and another 30 seconds for the notebook to become fully usable.

Graphics are handled by the Geforce Go 7300, a low-end card suitable for light gaming. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will run relatively well at 20-40 frames per second (fps) depending on draw distance. Counter-Strike 1.6 will run 100fps+ unless in a smoke cloud. With some tweaking, CS: Source and Flatout 2 will run at over 40fps. All games were run at 1280x800 native resolution, so if you choose to run your games at lower-res, you will get better performance at the cost of image sharpness, as always with TFT LCD-s.

Benchmarks

SuperPi

SuperPimeasures CPU performance by calculating Pi to a specific number of digits.

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Asus F3Jc (1.73GHz Intel T2250)	1m 28s
Asus A6Jc (1.66GHz Intel T2300)	1m 21s
Asus W7J (1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo)	1m 19s
Asus A8Js (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 04s
HP dv6000z (1.8GHz Turion64 X2 TL-56)	1m 54s
Compaq V3000T(1.6GHz Core Duo)	1m 26s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.00 GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s
Toshiba A100 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Acer Aspire 5102WLMi(1.6GHz Turion64 X2 TL-50	2m 22s
Gateway E-100M (1.2GHz Core Solo ULV)	2m 02s
Dell Inspiron 600m (1.6 GHz Dothan Pentium M)	2m 10s
HP dv5000z (2.0GHz Sempron 3300+)	2m 02s

3DMark05

3DMark05 tests the graphics processing capabilities of a system:

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3DMark05 Results and Comparison:

Notebook	3DMark 05 Results
Asus F3Jc (1,66 GHz Core Duo, Nvidia GeForce Go7300 128MB)	1,710
Asus F3Ja (1.83 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	3,696
Asus W7J (Core 2 Duo, 1.66Ghz, NVIDIA 7400)	1,980
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	2866
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800 GTX)	7,078
ThinkPad T43 (1.86GHz, ATI X300 64MB graphics)	727
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI Radeon Mobility x700 128 MB)	2,530
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273
HP dv4000 (1.86GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB)	2,536
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4,157

3DMark06

3DMark06 is a very similiar graphics processing test to 3DMark05, but with more visual detail.

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3DMark06 Results and Comparison:

Notebook	3D Mark 06 Results
Asus F3Jc (1,73 GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go7300 128MB)	693
Asus A8Js (2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7700 256MB)	2,665
Apple MacBook Pro (2.00GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB)	1,528
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB)	2,183
ASUS A8Ja (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB)	1,973
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744
HP Pavilion dv6000z (1.8GHz Turion X2 TL-56, nVidia GeForce Go 7200 256MB)	674
Sony SZ-110B in Speed Mode (1.83GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7400 256MB)	794
Toshiba Satellite P100-222 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB)	3,534

HD Tune

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Heat and Noise

The F3Jc has cooling vents galore, sadly the smaller vents on the right are for the cooling fan. Shown without the battery.(view large image)

First off, I have to say that the notebook isn't as silent as cracked up to be. After turning the thing on, it is silent until the CPU temperature hits 38°C, after that point, the fan stays on quite audibly in a quiet room. When put under heavier load, the fan incrementally speeds up (in relation to the CPU temp.) to a rather high level of noise, although still being quieter than my Desktop PC. The highest CPU temperature I have seen is 61°C under heavy load.

The trade-off is that the notebook is relatively cool throughout. The area under the keyboard and palmrest stays pleasantly warm, but not excessively hot. The only area that significantly warms up is the upper-right corner on the underside. It is not a problem to play games with the notebook on your lap for shorter periods of time (let's say 15 minutes), whether plugged in or not. Just be sure not to cover up the little cooling fan vents under the right side.

Keyboard and Touchpad

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The keyboard is something on this notebook I'm fully satisfied with. There is no perceptable flex, keys are full-sized and feel good. Also, the Fn and Ctrl keys are where they should be on a notebook - Ctrl in the lower-left corner and Fn right next to it. This makes the keyboard much more usable in First Person Shooter (FPS) games and of course when you're a frequent keyboard shortcut user. However I've found myself pressing D instead of S and F instead of R, because I usually check my finger placement with the groove in the desktop keyboard's Caps Lock key, which is absent in this notebook, and in every notebook for that matter. This should be a non-issue once one gets used to it. As you may have noticed, those green letters are Cyrillic (Russian letters). Since my particular notebook was originally meant for the Russian market, it carries these letters. I don't make use of them but they don't get in the way either.
The touchpad is also quite satisfactory, although when scrolling with the appropriate area, when you let go of the touchpad, it still keeps scrolling and the only way to stop it is to touch the scroll area again. Again, a non-issue. It is nice that one is able to disable the touchpad either with the appropriate hotkey or Fn+F9 key combination. Otherwise works fine with the pre-installed Synaptics drivers.

Correct Ctrl / Fn placement as seen on the F3 series (view large image)

Hotkeys, from left to right: ASUSDVD hotkey, Power4Gear preset key, touchpad toggler, Splendid preset key, default web browser key, power button ( view large image)

Input and Output Ports

Right side, from front to back: ExpressCard/54 slot, 2x USB 2.0 ports, Mini IEEE1394 port, S-Video out port, DVI-I and VGA ports, RJ11 telephone modem and RJ45 LAN ports( view large image)

Front: Wireless LAN card on/off switch, lid open button, microphone-in jack, headphones-out jack. ( view large image)

Left side: Kensington lock port, DVD burner. ( view large image)

Back: AC adapter plug with adapter cord attached, exhaust vent, 2x USB 2.0 ports and the battery itself. ( view large image)

Wireless

The included wireless card is an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, which supports all known 802.11 WiFi standards (a/b/g), although not the latest Draft-N. Signal strength is "Excellent" when a ZyXEL P320W WiFi router is behind a reinforced concrete wall about ~8cm thick. I really can't comment on how several of such walls affect signal strength but the net is still barely surfable on "Very Low" or "No Signal", surprisingly. Since this is a budget notebook, there is no Bluetooth or Infrared, but I can live without these. By default, the wireless management software is Intel's PROSet Wireless, which I have found to be a resource hog (runs 4 processes) and with no real tangible benefit over Windows XP's own similar utility.

Operating System and Software

The icons adorning the taskbar after the first startup.

The notebook comes pre-installed with Windows XP Home Service Pack 2. There isn't much bloatware (such as Skype), though the taskbar is filled with icons of doubtful usefulness, such as a telephone modem "helper" and touchpad indicator . For power management, Asus includes its own "Power4Gear" utility, through which preset modes can be cycled using Fn+Space key combination or a dedicated hotkey (see above). The change of screen brightness and sound volume using appropriate Fn+F1-12 combinations is illustrated by an OSD (On-Screen-Display) in the upper-left corner of the screen. After using Power4Gear for some time, I found that it didn't give me enough control over my notebook, so I unistalled it and installed Notebook Hardware Control (henceforth NHC), a universal and powerful program for hardware monitoring and power management.

Recently, I installed Windows Vista RC2, which ran fine but the Geforce Go's driver support was seriously lacking so I promptly recovered back to Windows XP using the bundled recovery disks. Complete recovery time was close to an hour, if not more.

List of included CDs:

Asus DVD
PowerDirector Pro
Medi@ Show
Norton Internet Security 2005
Asus F3 Driver & Utility CD
Nero OEM Suite
Windows XP Home Edition Recovery Disk

List of pre-installed software:

ASUSDVD
ASUS Live Update
ASUS Splendid Video Enhancement Technology
Power4Gear
nVidia ForceWare display drivers version 84.85
Nero OEM Suite
Intel PROSet Wireless Software
Synaptics Touchpad Software
ATK media (for hotkey functionality)
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0

Note one thing, install Laptopvideo2Go's modified 92.91 drivers at your own risk, you might get a Blue Screen of Death at the end of the installation. I did, but after the restart suprisingly LV2Go's drivers were installed, games ran fine and benchmark scores were the ones achieved above.

Battery

An Asus-branded 6-cell 4800mAh battery is used, which is by now a month old and achieves the following results (in practical situations):

50 minutes of light usage (movies, typing this review) and according to NHC 66% / 2:15hrs remaining at 6/16 screen brightness (without WiFi).
30 minutes of playing Age of Empires 3 with nVidia PowerMizer set to "Max Performance" drains close to 40% from the battery (without WiFi).
Watching a 1:20 movie with maximum screen brightness and in NHC processor speed set to "Max Battery" drains 45% from the battery (with WiFi).

With full charge, the notebook ran for two 1:30hr lectures with NHC set to "Max Battery" and in the end 15% battery remained. I never had the chance to fully drain the battery, but a guesstimate would be up to 3:30 with low load.

Customer Support

Where Asus doesn't have its service centers, such as here in Estonia, local resellers handle warranty issues, or at least they try to. Since I bought my notebook at a reseller, I can expect them to send it to a service center if it decides to malfunction in such a way that I can't fix it myself. Unfortunately, the nearest official one is in Moscow, Russia and the process of shipping and other related things could take as much as a month. As far as I know, all Asus Ensemble (non-barebone) notebooks sold in the EMEA region come with a standard 2-year international warranty and so does the notebook reviewed here.

In the speakers section of this review, I mentioned that I ran into a rather small but usage-limiting problem. Whenever one plugs in headphones, the notebook's own built-in speakers mute automatically. When I first got the machine, everything worked fine in this respect, but all of a sudden after turning on the machine, the built-in speakers no longer mute. It seems that a lot of F3J series users have had the same problem. The particular reseller's technician was unable to fix it in 15 minutes, can't really blame them for not trying.

Conclusion

If you're on a low budget and don't want to compromise on build quality or weaker components, then you may just find a sweet spot for an Asus F3 series notebook. The F3Jc has everything I want and has awesome value for the money paid, you'll even get a free carry bag and optical Asus-branded Logitech notebook mouse. It does have some weaker points, such as noise and infrequent minor technical glitches, but otherwise well worth the buy.

Pros

Value for money
Good build quality and input devices
Overall nice screen
Conveniently placed ports (at least for me)
Very stylish

Cons

Noisy
Some may dislike that most the ports are on the right side
Less-than-ideal techsupport in my area
Infrequent driver glitches (probably my fault, may not happend to you)

Extra pictures

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Source: notebookreview

Asus G1 Review

2007-09-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

by Mark Mierzwa

This is a review of the G1 Gaming Laptop by ASUS. This laptop defies traditional categorization since it provides gaming performance while maintaining a mobile capability. Normally gaming notebooks are isolated to larger entertainment style laptops that have low battery life. However, the Asus G1 being reviewed here can provide excellent multimedia and gaming performance while remaining portable with good battery life.

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First impressions:

Packaging:

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The box was secure and did not seem like the contents were loose or shaking inside. After opening the first outer box, the backpack and G1 box were revealed. A piece of cardboard the height and length of the remaining space wedged the G1 box in snuggly. The backpack was folded and sealed in plastic. Inside the G1 box, the contents were divided into two sections, the laptop in an anti-static bag secured by fitted plastic foam and a brown box. Inside the brown box was contained all the various discs, parts, and promised corded gaming mouse. The top of the laptop was covered with a plastic protective film along with other various protective measures, such as a sheet between the monitor and keyboard, and a plastic sheet over the monitor. Several decorative and informative plastic inserts highlighting the features of the notebook were also present.

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The laptop:

Asus G1 gaming laptop, fresh out of the box (view large image)

I observed the overall design and proportions of the unit and found them satisfactory. The laptop was not small but certainly not huge. The finish and textured look was impressive and gave a sophisticated look to it. It was scratch free and did not have any obvious blemishes. Finger prints were not immediately noticeable, though at close inspection you could observe them. All the expected ports and devices were present. The optical drive had several labels but nothing in regards to LightScribe (More on this later). The laptop being billed as a Gaming Laptop was certainly true from the exterior. The strobes, colored squares around the "W", "A", "S" and "D" keys, a sleek dark design, OLED, and all seeing evil eye gave it that serious gaming experience on the exterior. A true Gaming Laptop is impressive inside and out.

Top view of Asus G1 (view large image)

Under side view of the Asus G1 (view large image)

On the outside it had 'the look,' but would it cook?

During the time I first started charging the laptop I decided to call ASUS support for more information. I spoke with an Albert there and he seemed friendly enough,after a moment of relating my information to him he asked how he could be of assistance. I inquired about his knowledge of the unit, which he was aware of and semi-knowledgeable about. I asked as to whether or not the indicator would show when the battery was full, and if he knew if there was LightScribe or not (more on this later). He advised me that the battery indicator would turn off, and that he had seen LightScribe as an option on the model they had trained on, but had not tested it and would need to inquire further. I asked about hours of operation and so forth and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Satisfied, I returned to waiting and after about one hour the light turned off as promised.

In action:

I plugged the laptop in, per the instructions, and waited for an indication of a full charge. After about one hour the charging indicator extinguished. I turned the laptop on and was able to boot up without incident. The POST (Power-On Self Test) had a cool little ASUS Gaming Laptop logo that made a neat sound effect and, after making a mental note to disable it, I proceeded to wait for the rest of the startup. Windows proceeded through the setup normally and I was on the desktop in no time. I was then advised to reboot. After the reboot I proceeded my testing with single-minded precision.

Specs for ASUS G1 AK008M:

Processor: ASUS G1 Intel® Core™2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz)
Screen: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) ColorShine
RAM: 2048M DDR2 667
Hard Disk: 160GB HD 5400 RPM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForceGo 7700 GPU 512 MB
Optical Drive: M-a-t-s-h-i-t-a DVD-RAM UJ-850S DVD RW DL (No LightScribe)
Wireless: A/B/G + Bluetooth
Card Reader: MMC, SD, MS, MS-Pro
Operating System: Windows Media Center Edition
Kensington Lock hole
1.3 Mega Pixel camera with microphone
Included Accessories: ASUS Optical Mouse (Logitech MX518), backpack

Reasons for Buying:

I've been considering my laptop purchase since last year, and have pondered many models by all manufacturers, but in particular models by Acer, MSI, and ASUS. I had previously considered the ATI x700 and x1600 graphic chipsets, so it is odd that I decided on an Nvidia 7700 GPU based model, but in my opinion it was the best current GPU for the 15.4" laptop.

My main requirements were gaming performance, battery life, manageable body size, a good warranty and a cost below $2,000. My wish list included LightScribe, Windows XP Professional, ExpressCard slot, DVI-D, and Bluetooth. The G1 satisfied a number of my wants and all of my needs. I did consider waiting for a DX10 certified mobile GPU chipset, but then I decided that limited immediate adoption and the DX legacy compatibility of DX9 made it worth picking this one up now.

Where and How Purchased:

I purchased the laptop from MilestonePC.com. I placed my order as a pre-order and was very fortunate to receive the laptop from the initial shipment. Danny was very helpful and the service was good. As an early adopter, I did pay the original MSRP of $1,799. I purchased it as an individual outside of any group plan and there were no other incentives.

Build & Design:

The laptop is solid with little flex. The build is of good quality. The hinge is sturdy and the screen easily adjusts position. It does wobble slightly when shaken and may prove disturbing on trains, planes, and automobiles. I pushed on the lid and received no observable ripple. I twisted the LCD but it did not have any give. When closed, you can pull up on the top and observe the latch does not hold the unit together firmly. Some may consider it slightly annoying that the laptop does not snap shut tightly. The textured look is very subtle but noticeable and does not show finger prints too obviously. At roughly 7 lbs (6.8lbs by some accounts, though I have yet to weigh it myself) it is light enough to be considered portable and the backpack is ideal for transferring the weight into an easily carried form.

All the lights and buttons have worked thus far. The strobes, illuminated eye above the DJ, and OLED display add to the overall presentation rather than giving a gimmicky feel as they could have. I am not sure what the cause of the strobes to illuminate is, it's seemingly random and they activate at unusual points, but when they do light they are bright but not blinding. I examined the features for Direct Flash and only observed an On/Off option.

Screen:

The screen is beautiful with a slight hint of imperfection. There is a touch of light leakage on the bottom portion of the screen. I am not overly sensitive to this and it's only really noticeable on a black screen and if you're looking for it. It is not as bad as some Asus A8Js models I have seen images of in the NBR Forums, but still there is some. If it becomes an issue I will more clearly document it.

The laptop has a native resolution of WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) displayed on a 15.4-inch TFT screen.

I have not observed any ghosting on the screen and the desktop and applications display well. There were no dead pixels and the screen is free of scratches or any type of damage.

A web camera is located at the top of the screen (view large image)

Speakers:

The speakers are on the front right and left corners of the laptop and point seemingly outward left and right. I have listened to a few Windows sounds and watched a DVD and can say everything is clear. The audio seems louder when you are on either side of the laptop, but the blend in the middle will provide the best of both channels. Like many laptop speakers, they are good enough but do not match the quality and fidelity of external speakers. They are above average for laptop speakers but for ‘gaming’ you would like the precision and depth that advanced speakers and headphones may provide.

Processor and Performance:

The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz). Boot up sequences are quick and the POST is probably on a quick check by default.

The hard drive is a SATA 160GB 5400 RPM drive. A fairly large sized amount of space though at only 5400 RPM this may lead to longer delays in read times.

The laptop contains 2GB of DDR2 667MHz memory. The two slots are filled with 1GB sticks, maxing out the upgrade potential. 2GB seems like a lot for Windows XP Media Center though in Vista with additional addressing space and memory intensive applications, 2GB this may seem less hefty.

The Nvidia Go 7700 is not as capable as the 7600 GT or 7800 and higher chipsets, but still very capable. With more power behind it than most multimedia laptops it competes almost directly with the Acer Ferrari 5000 series

Heat and Noise:

The heat thus far from the unit has been manageable. It starts to become uncomfortable in my lap after about an hour and a half. After three hours my legs were tired, but the laptop was not any hotter than it was at the 1.5 hour mark and the touchpad was barely more than normal warmth. Given the time of year, my hands are actually somewhat cold while typing this and might enjoy a toasty touchpad!

A heat vent is present on the back of the unit, there are no side vents. There are several vents on the bottom and the center, the largest vent produces the most heat.

The fan uses a variable speed and I rarely hear it enter cooling overdrive. There have been moments on startup when loading the entire OS that it starts up at full speed but then slows down.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

The keyboard and touchpad are well designed with a few noteworthy features.

Keyboard and touchpad view, the (view large image)

The keyboard is an 88-key keyboard that is situated in a normal manner (centered). It does not have an ergonomic curve and is rather straight across. The keys press softly with little noise. You would probably not be scolded for typing away in a quiet room. There is a small amount of flex in the center of the keyboard but it is not obvious without applying above average force and looking carefully. The W, A, S, D keys are highlighted in green to make them more apparent, their significance is well known to the gamer demographic they are targeting. Of note, the Ctrl and FN keys are positioned so that the Ctrl is the outer key and FN is wedged between it and the Windows key.

"DJ" media buttons located at the front of the G1, above them is the glowing gaming eye (view large image)

The touchpad features the same textured look as the rest of the body with the glowing gaming eye below the touchpad, acting as a type of divider between the left and right click buttons. The eye is lit constantly and serves as no type of indicator and is not a button. There is a scroll bar on the right of the touchpad and it is easily activated.

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The DJ is not technically part of the touchpad, but it is located directly below the touchpad. Pressing the PWR button loads Windows Media Player though pressing it again does not turn it off. While in Media Player you can use Next/Fast Forward, Previous/Rewind, Stop, and Play/Pause buttons to control the playing media. The Fast Forward and Rewind functions do not work while playing a song as they merely skip to the next or previous song. While Media Player is not on, pressing the Play/Pause button turns on the ASUSTek ASUS DVD application. There is no worry about pressing these buttons accidentally with your arm or finger as they are flush with the lip of the case. This does make them difficult to press as you need to apply pressure on the button surface with a finger nail and depress a small amount.

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Typically I can navigate the controls without issue and for a laptop touchpad and keyboard they are very functional with a little extra touch of special features that adds to the gaming design. In its shortcomings thoug, it can be noted that the laptop does not take advantage of Windows Media Center’s additional input functions such as a dedicated volume slider, turn knob, or touch activated slide sensor. Without using the software the only way to mute, unmute, raise, and lower the volume are with FN combinations. These functions depend on Windows to operate and therefore cannot be used before it loads.

Input and Output Ports:

The Asus G1 has the following ports:

1 x TypeII PCMCIA slot
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF)
1 x Line-in jack
1 x VGA port
1 x DVI-D port
4 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x IEEE 1394 port (4 pin)
1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
1 x TV-out(S-Video)

Asus G1 Left side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Right side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Front side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Back view (view large image)

I would have preferred an ExpressCard slot, but instead the unit included a Type II PCMCIA slot. I at least have a developed line of existing PC Cards to choose from.

Included with the accessories was an S-Video to RCA output adapter cable.

The necessary ports are seemingly all present though. I used the card reader and was able to open my 1GB SD card but it required a reboot. The power input is on the back of the laptop, which is a plus.

Wireless:

The built-in wireless A/B/G + Bluetooth is an excellent feature. Thus far, I have tested the G wireless and was easily able to connect to my Belkin router and remain connected. I could turn the WiFi on and off and each time it would reconnect quickly. The Bluetooth and WiFi controls are paired so you can pick one of four options with the FN+F2 combination to select between WiFi and Bluetooth, WiFi Only, Bluetooth Only, and both off. I have always been a fan of Bluetooth and probably liked it more than it deserved. I have a Treo 700W with Bluetooth and I am already trying to think of the possibilities and hopefully there are more than just synching. There is supposedly a modem in there, which I might have never noticed if not for the notification area icon for it. The laptop does lack infrared, but I had no plans of utilizing it.

Accessories:

The laptop comes with two specific accessories that are designed to complement the overall gaming package. These include the backpack and the ASUS optical mouse (Logitech MX518 rebranded).

Included Asus mouse (view large image)

The backpack is roomy with two main pouches, a front pouch that contains a large section and holders for pens with two smaller pockets and a main inside pouch that holds the laptop. The main inside pouch is the one located nearest to the the back when worn. The main inside pouch holds the laptop in an upright position between two stiff, soft cloth supporters with a velcro, elastic strip that secures over the top once inserted. In this pouch space exists on either side of the supporters though items probably should not be placed here. Above the supporters is a decently sized net pouch with a zipper. The best place to carry the power brick would most likely be the front pouch along with any other loose accessories. Externally there are four pockets, two that are netted and two that are placed along the zipper on the front pouch. The material is of good quality and it seems durable. The ASUS logos are not obvious though there is one indented on the front pouch so the casual observer would not be inclined to know there is a laptop contained inside. The straps are thick, re-sizeable and generally comfortable. I have worn the backpack only short distances but I have never been uncomfortable when wearing it. There is also an attaching clasp to secure both straps together for extra support.

Asus G1 with included backpack (view large image)

The mouse is a rebranded Logitech MX518 mouse, as it clearly states on a label on the bottom of the unit. The mouse works well and thus far I have been using it on fairly poor surfaces with good results. It is optical and not laser. The corded mouse is somewhat irregular in the concept of the laptop, especially one with Bluetooth included but it does ensure the best response time and performance in games. Regardless, I will replace it with a good RF mouse in the near future as the cord is too cumbersome.

Battery:

After a quick charge of about one hour the laptop charged from an unspecified level of power to full. I attempted a few tests and having never used BatteryEater my results have not been definitive. I will give more details on the battery later after more tests and anecdotal experience. Right now the laptop has been on with Wi-Fi on but with no connection, screen brightness 86%, Bluetooth disabled, in Quiet Office mode for 2 hours, 37 minutes with a remaining estimate of 10%. I have been doing little activity, checking features and verifying items for the review.

I am happy with the battery life and with the power saving Power4 Gear+ running it should allow me to watch a DVD before the battery runs down while on the road. To be on the safe side I do have a power inverter for the car as I do suspect I will need it on long trips.

Operating System and Software:

The included operating system is Windows XP Media Center. It runs well with the specs and in the future it will run Windows Vista (drivers and ASUS willing). I wish it included Windows XP Professional and I am not sure if Media Center was required to make the DJ buttons or any other feature operate, or if it was just a move to diminish cost.

The storage drives include the hard drive, detected as ST9160821AS, and the optical drive, detected as a Matsushita DVD-RAM UJ-850S.

The hard drive was partitioned into three primary partitions. The first was a recovery partition of 3.9GB, a system, active partition of 87.1GB, and a partition labeled data of 58.0GB. The partitions are FAT32 with no preinstalled programs or information on the data drive. The recovery partition does not have an associated drive letter. (Drive sizes quoted per Windows)

The optical drive, located on the left side of the laptop, is responsive and spins up quickly. The eject/open button has worked with each depression. On a small label there are three stickers: DVD, MULTI-RECORDER, and RW DVD + R DL with their respective industry images. The laptop comes preinstalled with LightScribe software but after a check with ASUS through an email correspondence and a quick call it was revealed that the laptop is not LightScribe capable. Why the software was installed or presented clearly on the desktop is unknown to me. A week ago Albert, a rep I spoke with to test the responsiveness of the customer service, was uncertain about LightScribe being on the device and a week later another rep was certain it was not included per an email he had just received. My disappointment aside about LightScribe, the optical drive does work well. The noise it generates is audible, especially during burning, but overall not so much that it may disrupt a movie.

There is a comprehensive set of ASUS branded software included and thus far the largest complaint is the limited features of customization in the Direct Console for manipulating the Direct Flash and Direct Messenger. Direct Messenger allowed me to add a personal line of text, display the current time (uses system time), and choose from a series of icons of which I could add several. I am able to add a series of icons and text in one display, but that is of limited value. Some of the applications may prove useful later but I do not expect myself to use the RAM drive or Skype software.

Customer Support:

I spoke with an Albert and he seemed friendly enough and after a moment of relating my information to him he asked how he could be of assistance. I inquired about his knowledge of the unit, which he was aware of and semi-knowledgeable about. I asked as to whether or not the indicator would show when the battery was full, and if he knew if there was LightScribe or not (This laptop does not include LightScribe). He advised me that the battery indicator would turn off, and that he had seen LightScribe as an option on the model they had trained on, but had not tested it and would need to inquire further. I asked about hours of operation and so forth and he seemed to know what he was talking about.

Several days later after developing concerns about LightScribe I placed an afterhours email support request and was answered sometime the next day, though I never received an email notifying me my question was answered. Rather I noticed an update to my ticket/issue on the URL they provided when I placed the request. The question was answered in less than a day with a one line response stating 'The G1 model laptop ODD is only for Supermulti, not capable for LightScribe'. I called back and conferred with a rep that then took my phone number and about an hour later familiar Albert called. He stated there was no LightScribe and that it may have been due to a 'master image issue' which personally I do not believe. I went over a few more items with him such as how to acces the BIOS (F2 on POST), any other features/discrepencies missing or misreported (which he had none), what kind of screen the laptop has (I speculated IPS but he had no idea), and if Direct Messenger was to be improved (He stated there is a known issue with Outlook that was being resolved but no additional functions were being added to his knowledge).

The warranty is a global warranty for two years and Albert stated that I may have an option to get an extra year but it is generally through them (if purchased directly through ASUS) or with the reseller.

Source: Notebookreview

Asus R2H UMPC Review

2007-09-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

by Andrew Baxter

The Asus R2H is a UMPC device powered by an Intel Celeron M processor. It’s fairly loaded with features, even including integrated GPS. Asus definitely aimed high by making this device more feature loaded than other UMPC devices. But cramming everything you can into a device with a small screen, underpowered processor and putting a bunch of startup software and processes on it can result in a not so stellar user experience.

Asus R2H UMPC (view large image)

Asus R2H Specs:

Processor: Intel Celeron-M 900MHz
Graphics: Intel GMA 900
Operating System: Windows XP Tablet PC edition + Touch Pack
Screen: 7-inches diagonally, 800 x 480 resolution
Memory: 768 MB (1 slot accessible for user upgrade, can hold up to 1GB but sold with 512MB stick)
Hard Drive: 60GB (4200 RPM, 1.8")
Weight: 2.2lbs
Dimensions: 9.21 in x 5.2 in x 1.3 in (width x height x depth)
Battery: 4-cell battery
Input / Output Ports:
- 2 regular USB 2.0 ports and one mini type USB 2.0 with a standard USB adapter included for it
- VGA/Expansion out port. This can be used as a monitor out, adapter included. This can also be used as a port bar expansion dock. The dock is sold separately.
- Ethernet network card port 10/100
- Microphone Port
- Integrated microphone
- Headphone port
- DC in port
- AV out
GPS: SirfStarIII GPS chipset
Camera: Built-in 1.3MP video camera
Wireless: 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth integrated

Packaging and In the Box

The R2H comes very nicely packaged, with a custom designed box sporting a carry handle.

Asus R2H UMPC box (view large image)

Inside the main box you get two more boxes, one that contains the actual R2 device and the other a whole bunch of accessories to go with your R2H.

After opening the main box, you get two more boxes and an instruction book (view large image)

Inside the box you'll get the following items:

Asus R2, A/C adapter, standard battey, R2 protective sleeve with Velcro close, Mouse, stand, English Manual, Micro fiber cloth wipe, stylus, VGA-out adapter, several discs with software and the OS

Lots of goodies come in the box with the R2H (view large image)

Build and Design

The R2H is eye catching. It’s typical in its Asus look with a brushed aluminum type of finish. The build is rock solid, the case is a very rigid and firm metallic material. It's much sturdier than the somewhat cheap feeling Samsung Q1 UMPC device released in early 2006. The overall device is quite thick, I measure it to be about 1.4" thick when lying flat on a table -- it does have four rubber feet on the back so in actuality it's probably more like 1.25" in overall case thickness. Still, it's no skinny minnie and many an ultraportable laptop can be found that's slimmer. At 2.2lbs it's only slightly lighter than an ultraportable laptop too.

The R2 is designed to be held by two hands at the same time. It has a joystick on the right top side for easy cursor navigation (like a mouse). Below the joystick button on the right side are a Page Up and Page Down button that allow you to quickly scroll through long documents such as web pages. Finally on the right lower side is a shortcut button that brings up a screen allowing you to adjust system settings such as brightness, volume, screen resolution and color mode.

On the left top side is a biometric fingerprint reader that can be used as a login method to Windows. Below that are the equivalent of right and left mouse buttons. In the middle area of the left side is a D-Pad that allows you to easily scroll up, down, left or right in a document. You can't say Asus didn't give you enough ways to get around the screen with the R2.

Finally, on the lower left side is a button that brings up an application called Program Launcher that allows you to quickly navigate to various important program categories such as GPS and communications -- this Program Launcher application is customizable by the user as to what program links it contains.

Using the R2H

While I stated that the R2H is a device to be used holding it with two hands, it's really quite flexible in the way it can be used. I, for instance, found myself using it at the breakfast table to surf news web sites while drinking coffee and munching toast. Simply using the included stand so the device stood facing me and then poking links with a stylus (the Asus R2 is a Tablet PC with touch sensitive screen) to navigate about was quite doable. Just watch you don't spill coffee on the R2.

The built-in kick stand makes it easy to stand the R2 up and face the user for easy tapping of the screen with the stylus (view large image)

The R2 can also sit flat and be used. It has four rubber feet on its back so when you place it lying screen face up the device is slightly elevated to allow the vents on the back to still do their work.

You could also attach a USB keyboard to the device and type a document while using the kickstand to keep the R2 facing you. The major challenge being the limited 7" screen size and its resolution of 800 x 480.

The GPS functionality of this device might make you want to take in the car as a navigation tool. The problem I see here is that there's no way to mount this device, it's way too big, and I wouldn't recommend resting it on the car dashboard. The only real way to use it in the car as a GPS nav tool is to sit it on the passenger seat next to you. Or recruit your passenger as a co-pilot that can use the R2H.

Processor and Performance

The name of the game with the R2H is obviously not performance, the talk should focus more on usability and portability for this device. Unfortunately, it is important to talk about the fairly dire performance you'll tend to get from the R2H. The Celeron M 900MHz processor is just a drag, a Pentium M low voltage processor would have been so much better. Frequently there is lots of lag when using even basic applications or navigating menus. You can watch the screen redraw itself at times. Sometimes when inputting text with the stylus and poking the on screen keyboard you'll tap a letter and it'll register a couple of seconds later. You really have to make sure to stop as many background processes as possible, free up memory and don't run multiple applications at once to make a single program usable. Having said that, Asus included a bunch of software utilities that run in the background, aggravating and stealing resources from an already power starved processor. The very poor processor and overall performance really sinks the usability of this device.

HDTune

The hard drive included with the R2H is a 60GB Hitachi drive, it spins at 4200 RPM. It's slow, but with a device like the R2H it's a sacrifice you have to make to keep size down.

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Everest Hardware Report

Everest is used to give a rundown on the hardware inside a PC, following is a link to this report for the R2H: Everest Hardware report

Screen

The R2H screen is 7" diagonally and has a 800 x 480 native resolution. The screen is nice and can be cranked up to be easily readable and bright, but Windows XP on a display of this size is pretty painful to use. Granted it's usable, but can be an exercise in frustration. Sometimes some simple dialogue windows are a bit too large to fit on the screen and you can't click on the "OK" button because you can't fit the entire window on the screen. For instance, when using the Windows wireless network utility to find networks you can select a network okay from a list in the dialogue box, but the "Connect" button isn't on the screen so you sort of have to drag the box around to get the "Connect" button to display on the screen so you can push it.

You can adjust the resolution of the screen so it is higher, you do this by using the built-in Asus Power4 Gear utility (by hitting the bottom right hand button) to select higher resolutions of 800 x 600 or 1024 x 600. However, the graphics and icons will appear a bit distorted and text is fairly hard to read at the highest resolution of 1024 x 600. All the same, I ended up using the 1024 x 600 resolution most of the time so I could see more stuff on the screen.

Below are screenshots of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 used in each screen resolution offered by the R2:

Screen at 800 x 480 (view large image)

Screen at 800 x 600 (view large image)

Screen at 1024 x 600 (view large image)

Ports and Buttons

Let's take a tour around the R2H to see what input and output ports it offers, along with buttons.

On the left side of the R2H you simply see a mini USB 2.0 port, there is a provided expansion cable that converts this to a regular USB 2.0 port.

Left side view of Asus R2 (view large image)

Close-up of the USB mini port with the full sized USB adapter inserted (view large image)

On the right side we have a regular USB 2.0 port, microphone in port, headphone out, and power jack. You'll notice that there's also a door covering some more ports, behind this door is an ethernet port and a port that allows you to connect either a VGA out adapter (included) or to an expansion port for the R2 (not included, an extra option).

Right side view of the R2H (view large image)

Revealing ethernet and expansion ports behind the door cover (view large image)

On the top of the R2H we have an AV out video port, USB 2.0 port, hold button (when this is on, it blocks other button pushes from registering), heat vent and fan, SD card slot, Wireless on/off toggle button, login button and finally the power switch.

Top of the R2 (view large image)

On the bottom of the R2 we just find the battery lock buttons and some vents for allowing heat out.

Bottom of the R2 (view large image)

On the underneath side of the R2H you can see the GPS antenna and kickstand that allows you to prop up the R2 so it can stand facing you. In the bottom left hand side is also a silo for storing the stylus.

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On the front side of the R2H you can see the 1.3MP camera located at the top, and next to it an integrated microphone so you can easily use Skype or speech to text functionality of the Tablet PC OS. Down the right side is the joystick navigation button that acts like a mouse, pushing it in acts as a left click. The Page up and Page Down nav buttons are below the joystick on the right, and then a shortcut button to the Asus Power4 Gear utility that allows you to adjust system power and display settings. On the left side is a fingerprint reader for biometric login -- this can be used to replace the regular Windows login. Below that are buttons that serve as left and right mouse click buttons. Below that is a D-pad for screen scrolling -- the joystick controls the cursor while the D-pad serves as a method for scrolling within windows. Finally, on the lower left side is a shortcut button to open the Program Launcher.

Front view of the Asus R2 (view large image)

The Asus Power4 Gear utility comes up when you hit the lower right button (view large image)

When you hit the lower left hand button it launches this built in application called "Program Launcher" where you can quickly navigate to useful programs to open (view large image)

Overall the R2H has an excellent array of ports for its size. It's amazing how much stuff Asus crammed into this device.

GPS

The GPS inside the R2 is the SirfStarIII GPS chipset. This is the most up to date chipset you can get and supposedly offers fast fix times, high sensitivity for locking satellites in urban areas and a low power drain on battery life. However, I struggled for days to get the GPS working within the included Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006. I was never able to acquire satellites from indoors by a window, but going up on the roof of a 21-story building did eventually yield success in acquiring 5 satellites and a very precise location. After that the GPS worked okay, and I could even acquire a couple of satellites from indoors by a window, but performance was never outstanding. I think it might have something to do with all the interference from the internal workings of the R2H. The R2H does have an antenna you can retract to get better satellite reception, but this didn't seem to help things a whole lot. I don't have a car, so I couldn't test for the quality of reception while driving, but when on a bus in a city I had no luck getting satellites.

OS and Software Features

The R2H is a Tablet PC OS run device and the screen is a touch screen type. It is not Wacom Penabled like many other full fledged Tablet PCs on the market. The stylus you get with the R2 is no fancier that what might come with a PDA. I found using Tablet PC applications and writing on the screen tough because of the size, and the feel unnatural. The touch screen capability is cool for screen navigation of course, but if you're looking for a tablet device for school or work this is the wrong type of device to choose. Write one word within Microsoft Journal and you'll have used almost an entire line up given the screen size and resolution.

Included with the R2H is a full version of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006, a handy piece of software for planning trips and getting maps of the U.S. and Canada. The integrated GPS works in conjunction with this program to locate where you are and also provide directions to a destination.

A cool little accessory that comes with the R2 is a Netlink cable that allows you to connect to a PC and access files or optical drives on that PC. It also allows you to browse the hard drive of the R2 from your PC. Below is a picture of the R2 connected to my ThinkPad using this cable.

ThinkPad and Asus R2 connected via included Netlink cable (view large image)

There's a bunch of Asus utilities built into the system as well as the ubiquitous Norton. Honestly, while some of the security stuff and automatic update utilities are well intended, I think the end user would have appreciated a somehow more stripped down OS with minimal pre-installed software. When in native resolution mode (600 x 480) if you open one program and display all the icons in the system tray your entire bottom toolbar is occupied.

The caveat to saying any one piece of software is really great to use on the R2 is the fact the processor and sluggish performance could turn the application into a slog.

Audio

The R2 has a mono speaker built-in on the left lower side. System sounds are fine, but listening to MP3s is quite painful as the sound is tinny and low in volume. Luckily there's a port for headphones, which are recommended.

Heat and Noise

I figured that with the Celeron M processor inside power consumption and heat would be low. But the R2 got hot at times, the fan on the top had to puff out air as fast as it could after a couple of hours of continuous usage. The fan was certainly audible when it revved into high gear. When running HDTune it even warned me my hard drive was at a critical temperature of 59C, so things can certainly get warm inside. The front surface of the R2 never seemed to get really hot, but the back area and vents did get very warm.

Battery

The R2H came with a 4-cell battery, I was prepared for pitiful performance but was able to get 3 hours of usage out of one charge. This was accomplished having the screen brightness set to level 3 brightness (low), but the screen was still quite viewable indoors at this setting. Wireless was toggled between on and off over this period and the device was used for about 2 hours of the time. Battery life certainly beat my expectations.

Wireless

Asus included an 802.11b/g wireless card and Bluetooth. Wireless was decent but reception was not as good as what I get from my regular laptop that has an Intel wireless card. I don't know why, but I always find it kind of neat to surf the web on a smaller device like this and see how favorite websites render on a smaller screen. Not having an integrated keyboard makes typing in web addresses tough though, you have to quickly build out your favorites links so you're doing more touch screen clicking around than trying to type in URLs.

I was able to use Bluetooth to pair with my Treo, but didn't use it outside of that so all I can report is that it does work.

Asus A8JP Notebook Review

2007-09-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

by Michael Davison

The ASUS A8JP is a small 14” laptop with enough power and performance to put most larger laptops to shame. Especially considering the price, nothing can touch this. I know, because I have looked. While not an “ultra-portable” (13” and smaller), it is definitely not a burden to carry around and has pretty good battery life, taking in to account what this bad boy can do.

Asus A8JP (view large image)

First impressions:

Packaging:

The ASUS box came from Newegg.com in a larger box full of peanuts. It was very secure and well cushioned from impact. Inside the Asus outer box were the carry bag and A8JP box. Inside the A8JP box was the laptop and the box off accessories. The laptop was in a plastic bag with a screen shield taped to protect the screen. It also had a thin piece of foam sandwiched between the lid and the keyboard. All neatly done and with purpose.

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ASUS A8JP Specs:

14” Wide XGA+ (1440 x 900) Color Shine (glossy)
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz, FSB: 667MHz, 4MB L2 Cache
ATI Mobility Radeon x1700 256MB Dedicated (512MB Hyper Memory)
1GB RAM, DDR2 667MHz (2x512MB) / Max 2GB
120GB 5400RPM 8MB cache 2.5-inch SATA Hard drive
DVD Dual Layer Super-Multi Drive (left side back)
- Read 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD)
- Write 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD±R) / 4x (DVD±R DL)
- 16x (CD) / 6x (DVD-RW) / 8x (DVD+RW) / 5x (DVD-RAM)
Intel PRO 3945 Wireless 802.11a/b/g
Bluetooth2.0 + EDR
Infrared (IRDA) (right side)
5 USB 2.0 (2 on right, 2 in rear, 1 on left)
IEEE 1394 (left side)
4-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro) (left side rear above DVD drive)
10/100/1000Mbps, 56k modem
DVI, VGA, S-Video (TV Out)
19mm Full Size Keyboard
13.2" x 9.7" x 1.4-1.5" / 5.25 lbs
Built in .3 mega pixel Webcam
Built in Microphone (next to the function key)
1 x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF) (left side forward)
1 x Microphone-in jack (left side forward)
1 x Express Card slot (left side forward)
Carry Bag (2 pocket)
Asus Optical Scroll Mouse (USB)
Kensington Lock Hole (backside left corner)
Virus and Tool Software
- Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2005 (Trial)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0
- NERO Express V6.0
Multimedia Software
- ASUS DVD XP 6.0
- Power Director V3.0 DE
- Medi Show V2.0 SE

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Everything included with the Asus A8JP (view large image)

Reasons for Buying:

I've been considering my laptop purchase for the last 4 months and have researched all kinds of laptops from many different manufacturers. I wanted to be able to game when I travel. While I didn’t need cutting edge, I for sure didn’t want integrated graphics and nothing below a Core 2 Duo T7200 2.00GHz processor. It seems ASUS somehow got a list of exactly what I wanted and built the A8JP to my specifications. I looked at so many laptops that I thought I would never get anything close to what I wanted. The reasonably priced ASUS S96J was my primary candidate due to the x1600 256MB video card, but it was a little bigger than I wanted. I was hours from settling on the ASUS S96J when this beast popped up on Newegg.com. I searched by video card looked what was available. No joy. For fun I typed in “x1700” and boom the A8JP popped right up for $1298 + shipping. I thought I was hallucinating and double checked, and then triple checked the specs and price. It couldn’t be. It was, and I’m very happy with my purchase.

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Where and How Purchased:

I purchased the laptop from Newegg.com. Used a credit card and got it in 3 days via UPS Ground. I couldn’t believe the price of $1298. Still can’t.

Build & Design:

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This is my first laptop, but I am pretty impressed with the build quality. Though I won’t be using it to pound nails, use it as a Frisbee or wedge it under the tires on my car, it is pretty solid. The hinges provide plenty of resistance and the screen easily adjusts position and stays put. I pushed down on the top with the screen closed and it bowed in. The top is plastic, so of course it was going to give some. When closed, you can pull up on the top and observe a minimal amount of play, but nothing to worry about. The keys won’t fall out and the mouse won’t get away. The latches are actually 2 rectangular tabs that are attached to the top of the screen frame and lock into place at the bottom of the palm rests. There is only one exhaust vent and it’s on the right side toward the back. I prefer it to be there and have all the video jacks in the back. That’s just me. The placement of all of the USB ports and accessory jacks are very functional and spread out. Overall it’s a pretty well put together laptop.

Left view of Asus A8JP (view large image)

Right view of Asus A8JP (view large image)

Front view of Asus A8JP (view large image)

Back view of Asus A8JP (view large image)

Asus A8JP under side view (view large image)

Screen:

ASUS provides a “zero bright dot” warranty on all laptops bought after October 2006. My screen had zero bright dots and is beautiful and colorful without any noticeable leakage, when viewed dead on. I put the blank screensaver on and looked at the screen and it was evenly lit up. I could only see what seemed to be leakage when looking through my digital camera, but it was not noticeable to the naked eye. The screen is too bright at 100% for indoors. I usually keep it around 40% indoors. The screen was very clear and was easily viewed from approximately 45 degrees on either side of center. The screen has “flex” when I twisted it, but this goes back to it having a plastic screen lid, and I don’t plan on twisting it again. The laptop has a native resolution of WXGA+ (1440 x 900) displayed on a 14-inch glossy TFT screen. In the screen setting the screen refresh is locked at 60 Hz, with all other modes not selectable. I did not observe any ghosting on the screen. The screen was also free of scratches or any type of damage.

Movie on A8JP screen (view large image)

Speakers:

The speakers are under the lip on the front side right and left corners of the laptop. I watched a DVD and was impressed at how loud and clear the sounds were. For even more volume I turned up the audio booster in the DVD program. Wow. Gaming on them was fine and I actually had to turn the volume down. No need to max out the speakers to hear them. They lack bass obviously, but are more than sufficient for gaming/media on the go. I’d still recommend a good set of headphones for gaming, ‘natch.

Processor and Performance:

The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz). I downloaded and installed all of the Windows Updates, including Internet Explorer 7 (seems like a Firefox copy) and Windows Media Player 11, uninstalled Symantec Internet Security, flashed the newest bios from ASUS (went from version 205 to version 208), updated some ASUS hardware drivers and performed minor tweaks here and there. Boot up sequences are just under 90 seconds from push of the power button to no hour glass on the mouse and all icons loaded. It takes the Windows Splash screen progress bar exactly 8 swipes to load. The hard drive is a SATA 120GB 5400 RPM drive with 8 MB cache. A fairly large sized amount of space at only 5400 RPM may lead to longer delays when compared to 7200 rpm ones. This allows for better battery life though also. The drive is actually three partitions: Recovery (hidden), C: 64.7 GB, D: 43.1 GB. The drive came formatted as FAT32, but this is easily converted with a batch file on the desktop “NTFS converter”. It only took a couple of minutes and it was done. I highly recommend defragmenting the drive after the conversion, because it really scattered the data. The laptop contains 1GB of DDR2 667MHz memory. The two slots are filled with 512MB sticks, making upgrading to anything higher more expensive because you have to remove at least 512MB to add another stick. The ATI Mobility Radeon x1700 is basically an x1600 tweaked a little and made with newer “stretched silicon” technology to become more energy efficient.

Benchmarks:

The driver used during benchmarking is the ASUS x1700 driver 8.311.0.0 (dated 10/06). At this time ATI’s own Catalyst drivers do not recognize this card and even though I updated from the ASUS website, it is still kind of old. I did try to over clock to get more performance, but the current tools (ATITool and RivaTuner) don’t recognize the chipset yet. ATITool actually had my clock speed at like 1500MHZ – yeah right. I think that once I can upgrade to the newest official driver, I will see a little boost in performance. Here’s hoping. I also had it plugged in and the rear elevated on a book to get max air flow and performance.

NOTE: For some reason 3DMark06 lists the video card as “generic VGA with 260 MB of memory”, and also says it is not Vista compatible. This is wrong and must be because it is new and not readily recognized yet.

As you can see, you can get pretty good performance out of this little guy. Even most of the newer games should be playable albeit with lower settings and/or resolutions. Most impressive, even with the low clock speeds that the video card is at. Wonder how big of a boost I’ll get when I can OC…

Stock Clocks: (as per ATI Catalyst Control Center)

Core – 473 MHz
Memory – 396 MHz

F.E.A.R. SP Demo all settings to MEDIUM and anisotropic filter to 4x (1024x768)

Fraps says – 52.255 fpsavg (11 min)

Far Cry SP Demo all settings to HIGH (texture filter is medium) and anti-aliasing high (1024x768)

Fraps says – 45.275 fpsavg (10 min)

Half-Life 2(1280X768 / 16x10 / v-sync enabled / HIGH everything / Trilinear filtering / no AA / water reflect all)

Solid locked in 58-60 fps(limited by v-sync for better visuals)

3DMark01SE	19892 (1024x768 set by default)
3DMark03	7279 (1024x768 set by default)
3DMark05	4205 (1024x768 set by default)
3DMark06	2153 (1280x768 set by default)
	2376 (1024x768 set by me)
PCMark05	4378
Super Pi(2M)	1m 02s
AquaMark3	47,189(GFX – 6,027/CPU – 10,867) (1024x768 set by default) Doesn’t test dual core. Also for some odd reason, the video was blank throughout the test. I had to minimize and maximize to get the result screen to appear.

Super Pi to 2 million places

Notebook	Time
Asus A8JP (Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, ATI x1700 256MB)	1m 02s
Asus G1 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s

HDTune 2.52

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Heat and Noise:

The heat is not really a factor unless I am benchmarking or gaming. The fan does blow more, but is not loud at all and you really won’t notice it if you are gaming or watching a movie. I didn’t try it on my lap, but should be fine if you don’t block the intake/exhaust with clothes. After benching and gaming I don’t notice any heat building up on top at all. The exhaust got much warmer, but not to the point of “hot”. The exhaust cools down pretty quick once you stop doing graphics intensive programs. A single heat exhaust vent is present on right side toward the back of the unit.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Asus A8JP keyboard (view large image)

The keyboard and touchpad are well designed. The keyboard has 88-keys and is straight and centered. The keys press softly with little noise. There is a small amount of flex in the top left of the keyboard but it is not obvious without applying above average force and looking carefully. The Ctrl and FN keys are positioned so that the FN is the outer key and Ctrl is wedged between it and the Windows key.

The touch pad looks to be a solid plate, but it functions like a normal “divided” touch pad. It is a wide touch pad to compensate for the wide screen and has the “virtual mouse wheel” section on the right side for easy scrolling on documents and the web. I found that I had to press a little harder to get the scroll to work, but it did work. I use the included optical scroll mouse (Logitech M-UAG120) when I can and it is pretty good. It probably won’t satisfy hardcore gamers looking to 1337 #e4d$#0t$ n00bs, but it performs just fine for everyone else. You can have the mouse settings disable the touchpad when an external mouse is plugged in.

There are 5 “Instant” buttons located above the keyboard.

Left to right:

Power4 Gear+ - toggles power saving modes.
Bluetooth - enable/disable Bluetooth.
Wireless - enable / disable wireless
Splendid - toggles different color enhancement modes
Instant On – boot straight to multimedia player without loading Windows. (This doesn’t work on mine and it’s a known “manual misprint “ error)

The buttons worked as advertised, except the InstantOn.

DVD:

Works just fine. Very smooth sounding and fast. When bening a DVD at 8x, I just hear the hum of the drive. Awesome.

Wireless/Bluetooth/IRDA/Modem:

The built-in wireless A/B/G + Bluetooth are icing on the cake. The wireless found 6 connections (all locked) within range around my house (I don’t have wireless). I didn’t have anything to test the Bluetooth with, but I know its there and turns on and off. I also don’t have anything to test the IRDA, but it's there. Yes, there is a modem. People still use these?

Accessories:

The laptop came with a carry bag divided into 2 pockets and a Logitech M-UAG120 USB optical scroll laptop (not full size) mouse. Good stuff.

Battery:

After charging to full in about an hour, I unplugged it and tried to see if I could watch a DVD on a single battery. The computer went in to a power saving mode that you can customize. The screen was at 40% brightness, which is plenty bright if you ask me. Depends on the movie I guess. I got through 2 hrs of the Matrix Reloaded when it went into standby with 4% battery left. Pretty good I suppose seeing that it was running the DVD drive the whole time. If I tweaked it a little more, I bet I could watch the whole movie. The video card down clocks also to save power. I went from 19913 plugged in to 6395 with battery (this turned video card to power saving mode) in 3DMark01SE. Intense gaming is out of the question with battery unless you want less than an hour of play, by cranking up the video card performance out of power save mode.

Operating System and Software:

Windows XP Media Center is the included operating system. I’m glad, because I get a free update to Vista Home Premium when it comes out ($6.93 s/h + taxes). I’m not in to the whole Media Center part, but its there if you want it.

There wasn’t any bloatware to speak of. Some things I didn’t need, but not really junk. ASUS’ power saving program and display settings program work well and I don’t want to get rid of them.

Lightscribe software is included, but the drive doesn’t support it. No big deal for me.

Microsoft Works 8.5, Nero OEM and Skype were also there. Skype is pretty cool and I tested it with the onboard microphone and speakers and worked excellently. Pretty cool to be able to make free phone calls when I travel to other countries.

This is an example picture taken with the built-in camera, the camera can be used for video chat (view large image)

Customer Support:

I had to use customer support to ask about the reason InstantOn was not working. When I called the first guy said he’d call back when he could get the right information, because they were experiencing high volumes of calls. He called back, but I was gone.

I called the next day and talked to an Albert about the InstantOn, Hypermemory, and the IRDA. He seemed knowledgeable and explained about the InstantOn “typo” in the manual. Hypermemory is locked in newer bios and the IRDA is in the Control Panel under wireless connections. Not what I wanted to hear about InstantOn and Hypermemory, but c`est la vie.

Conclusion

This laptop is perfect for anyone that wants mid-high performance, portability, good battery life, and just an overall high quality product for a price that can’t be beat. It has all the connections and accessories you could want and will last you for a good long while. Being Vista compliant is a big plus and not being DirectX 10 compatible doesn’t really bother me. An absolutely top notch laptop.

Pros:

Performance (great overall performance)
Graphics (not limited to Doom I or II era games… lol)
Size (so many features, yet so small)
Price (can’t beat it – period)
All the built ins (Wireless a/b/g, IRDA, Bluetooth, webcam, mic, DVD burner))
Speakers (loud and clear)
Hard drive is quiet
Free bag and optical mouse

Cons:

2x512 DDR2 (if you want to upgrade, you have to remove these)
X1700 not recognized in Current ATI Catalyst drivers (may effect performance)
Lid flexes when pushed on
InstantOn doesn’t work as advertised

Asus R1F Notebook to Tablet PC Convertible Review

2007-09-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

Asus R1F Tablet PC / Notebook convertible (view large image)

Following are the specs for the Asus R1F as reviewed:

CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.66GHz)
Chipset	Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
OS	Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
RAM	DDR2 667MHz, 1024MB
Display	13.3" WXGA (1280x800) Color Shine LCD, Asus Splendid Video Intelligence Technology
Graphics	Integrated (Intel GMA 950)
Audio	Integrated Sound Card, built-in speaker and microphone
Hard Drive	80GB 5400RPM SATA+TPM
Optical Drive	8x DVD/RW Super Multi
I/O ports	1 x Express Card 1 x VGA port 1 x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF) 1 x Microphone-in jack 1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert 3 x USB 2.0 ports 1 x TV-Out 1 x Fingerprint
Communications	Integrated V.92 MDC Fax/Modem 10/10/1000 Ethernet Integrated 802.11a/b/g Built-in Bluetooth 2.0
Dimensions/weight	31.7 x 23.2 x 3.5 cm (12.5 in x 9.13 in x 1.4 in) 4.3 lbs.
Battery/power	6 cell, 5200 mAh, 3 - 4 hours Input: 100 - 240V AC

Design and Build

The R1F isn't as small as some other Tablets on the market such as Fujitsu's T4215, but it still is certainly still portable. Weighing in at 4.3 lbs, the R1F can go where ever you need to go. The 13.3" screen makes reading documents and viewing photographs pleasurable, you can fit a decent amount on the screen and the XGA resolution makes for easy reading.

The Asus R1 has a solid build and keyboard. It feels sturdy in your hands, with minimal flex. The screen swivels with ease for a 180 degree view, which comes in handy when you don't want the keyboard or want to show someone across a table what's on your screen. Being able to write directly on the screen and convert your writing to text brings back that personal aspect -- maybe even gives you a bit of practice with handwriting (in case you'd forgotten how to do that now that we type so much these days).

From first glance it is hard to tell that the R1F functions as a Tablet as well as a notebook until you notice its center hinge. It has a professional appearance, great for the office or school. The graphite colored lid extends to the inside surrounding the black keyboard keeping the R1F classy, but not to flashy. On the downside, the the R1F's casing is made of plastic instead of metal, which kind of gives it a cheap feel.

A look around the R1F

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These are the accessories the R1F came with including a wireless mouse. The R1F was packed so plush you would have thought is was fine china. The portfolio fits the Tablet like a glove for quick traveling and the bag is durable and roomy enough to hold your cell phone, wallet and files.(view large image)

The center hinge converts the R1F into Tablet mode. (view large image)

Underside view of R1F (view large image)

Display

The screen itself is nice and scratch resistant, as much as it can be. It is slightly grainy, but that is due to the extra layer on the screen and you'll get that with any other tablet. Don't expect the R1F to produce crisp flawless images, but like I said earlier, it is not made to be an entertainment center. However, the Asus Splendid technology that allows you to adjust screen colorization is great and really brings out the color, especially when watching movies. I set the brightness and color saturation as high and balanced as possible to offset the graininess and it works well. The graininess is more noticeable against white backgrounds compared to colored ones. Though a white screen does not appear as pure white (there's a slight greyishness), other colors do shine and the screen is backlit very well. Black colors on the screen appear sharp and if you stand away from the screen a little bit you won't even notice the graininess. My eyes are used to the screens display and I don't notice the graininess anymore, just the bright colors.

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The R1F is easy to carry in Tablet mode, though a bit heavier than others at about 4.5 lbs, it is still portable. The screen still looks great and you can change the orientation for better viewing. The center hinge also helps for better viewing because it of course allows for twisting to align for the best viewing angle to onlookers, perfect for presentations. The 13.3" screen is a good size for traveling because it is small enough to take on the go, but big enough to read those important documents or watch a movie on without straining your eyes. Asus includes a nice cloth in with the accessories for safe and easy cleaning of the screen and keyboard.

Speakers

The speakers are average, but I'm comparing them to my Compaq laptop fitted with JBL speakers, which are loud and clear. The R1F is loud when you have all the right software settings in place, but not something I would listen to my music on. It's not made to be an entertainment system though, so it meets normal expectations. One good thing about the notebook design is that in slate mode the speakers are not completely covered, so a decent amount of sound still comes out.

Keyboard/Touchpad/Pen

The keyboard's keys are solid and it has no flex. It is easy to type on because it is of standard size. There are only a few keys that are shortened including the right side Shift key and the Backspace key, but this doesn't create any problems. I did notice if you are a fast typer then you have to make sure to completely press down on each key because just tapping them will not work. The built-in microphone worked well for the most part. It was clear and fun to use, once you teach the software to recognize your voice. It can be used to record things too like memos or a teacher's lecture.

I like the touch pad on the R1F because it's not anything fancy. Just your standard touchpad, which works great. It's simple to use, fast and smooth, no sticking. The touchpad works as well as the mouse in my opinion, but I am used to working on it. For all you mouse fans though, the Bluetooth mouse works fine after you do the easy, step-by-step install.

Working with a pen is the whole point of a Tablet and I don't think I will ever buy anything besides a Tablet again. This feature alone makes it stand out from your typical notebook. The pen is lightweight, easy to write with and works flawlessly on the screen. It comes in handy when taking notes or adjusting your calendar. It even has an eraser in case you make a mistake. The only bad thing is the pen is made of plastic and it feels cheap and flimsy. It also gets scratched pretty bad in the silo. I would much rather have a metal pen, I mean you are taking the pen in and out all the time, so something a little more durable would be better.

Tablet PC Buttons

A series of hot keys are available for instant launch of entertainment, connection, power management and color adjustment applications. These buttons are located at the top of the keyboard. There is even a button to change the screen’s orientation for use when in Tablet mode. The keys are easy to access while keeping the keyboard area distraction free.

Processor and System Performance Benchmarks

The R1F model I reviewed had the Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.66GHz) processor. The R1F provides enhanced responsiveness to enjoy audio and video playback and recording, instant messaging and web-browsing simultaneously on your Tablet. In other words, the dual-core performance helps in general types of multi-tasking you'll do on a PC.

Below are some benchmarks we ran on the Asus R1 to give a general idea of performance, and how it stacks up.

SuperPi:

In the below results of Super Pi, where Pi is calculated to 2 million digits of accuracy, you can see the R1F processor performs well:

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Asus R1F (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 20s
Lenovo ThinkPad X60t (1.66GHz LV Core Duo)	1m 24s
IBM ThinkPad X41t (1.50 GHz LV Pentium M)	2m 02s
Dell Latitude D410 (2.00 GHz Pentium M)	1m 36s
HP TC4400 Tablet PC (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 13s
Dell Latitude X1 (1.1 GHz ULV Pentium M)	2m 40s
Dell Latitude D420 (1.06GHz Core Solo ULV )	2m 11s
Toshiba Portege M400 (1.83GHz Core Duo )	1m 19s

PCMark05 Comparison

Another synthetic benchmark we use is Futuremark's PCMark 05. This is a good general measure of system performance. The R1F got a respectable though not great score of 2,724:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Asus R1F (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel GMA 950 graphics)	2,724 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X60t (1.66GHz LV Core Duo)	2,860 PCMarks
LG R1 (1.86GHz Core 2 Duo T5600, Intel graphics)	2,855 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Panasonic ToughBook T4 (Intel 1.20GHz LV)	1,390 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400)	3,646 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FE590 (1.83GHz Core Duo)	3,427 PCMarks

Using "HD Tune" we tested the R1F's 80GB 5400RPM hard disk read and write access benchmarks.

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The graph shows that the hard disk starts at its maximum speed and slows down towards the end of the test. The couple downward spikes in the graph are not a problem, they show that another application or Windows was accessing the hard disk during the test.

Battery

The battery lasted about 3 hours for me when in normal power setting mode. Asus offers different battery settings like quiet office and high performance via the Geared. However high and super performance is mostly used when the R1 is plugged in. If you need to save battery power on the go you can adjust the brightness or use the quiet office setting. It only takes around an hour to fully charge, so the R1F lasts long enough to do work on for a few hours and then recharge while at lunch.

Heat and Noise

I had no problems with the R1F getting hot under normal conditions, in fact it barely produced enough heat to warm your hands on a cold day. The R1F runs quietly except for the DVD/CD drive, which makes noise when it is spinning a disc, but this is normal for all notebooks. When the system is running benchmarks or under intensive use the left side vent will generate quite a bit of heat and the fan will kick in making some noise.

Ports

The R1F has an array of ports that you would expect to find on a Tablet of its caliber. It has one Express Card slot, one VGA port, one headphone-out jack (SPDIF), one microphone-in jack, one RJ11 Modem jack for phone line, one RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert, three USB 2.0 ports, one TV-Out and one fingerprint reader. The TV-Out is neat because this allows for the R1 to connect to a TV. It also has an 8x DVD/RW Super Multi optical drive, which is swappable. The headphone and microphone jack being at the back is a pain when in notebook mode, but aside from that the port layout is pretty good.

Power switch (at the back) Express Card and heat vent located on the left side (view large image)

The DVD drive and SD, MMC card slot located on the right side (view large image)

The Ethernet port and modem port, microphone and headphone jack located on the back (view large image)

There are three USB ports located on the back side (view large image)

Security

I enjoyed using the fingerprint reader once I learned the proper way to swipe my finger. It works perfectly every time. Talk about added security, it's like being in the FBI. You can use your fingerprint to log in from BIOS. The reader scans all your fingers from both hands, so should you accidentally lose a finger one day, you can rely on your other fingers to log you in. Hopefully that won't ever happen though. The R1F also has the normal password protection settings just like any other notebook.

Software

The R1F runs Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC edition, but it is Windows Vista capable for those who want to upgrade. My unit did not come with Microsoft Office suite, which would include Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, Access and OneNote. These are options you can have included though. The other software programs came pre-installed and were just the basics.

There's a bunch of Asus utilities built into the system as well as the ubiquitous Norton. The Asus Power4 Gear utility allows you to adjust performance and power settings while the Splendid application allows you to adjust color settings for the best picture based on what you're doing and what your preferences are.

Wireless

The R1F has an integrated V.92 MDC Fax/Modem and built in 802.11 a/b/g, which functions as expected. It also has built-in Bluetooth, which can be used with the Bluetooth mouse. Signal strength and range were good in all the areas I tested the Tablet.

The R1F in Tablet mode.(view large image)

Asus G1 Gaming Notebook Review

2007-09-09T17:09:00.000-07:00

by Andre von Muhlen

Asus G1 (view large image)

The Asus G1 is marketed as the 15” mobile answer for the hardcore gamer enthusiast. The G1 is a sharp looking package that meets the requirements of most of today’s best games and entertainment applications. The configuration for the machine reviewed follows below.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0GHz)
Screen: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) ColorShine
Memory: 2GB DDR2 667
Hard Disk: 160GB HD 5400 RPM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForceGo 7700 GPU 512 MB
Optical Drive: Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-850S DVD RW DL
Wireless: Intel PROSet/Wireless A/B/G + Bluetooth
Operating System: Windows XP Media Center Edition
1.3 Mega Pixel camera with microphone
Included Accessories: ASUS Optical Mouse (Logitech MX518) and backpack

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Reasons for Buying

My main reason for buying a new laptop is an upcoming master’s program in Italy. I will be away for 16 months, and am concerned about taking my 30 lb home-built desktop with me. My favorite computer activities include 3D CAD and photo editing. I also enjoy a game sometimes. My favorites are MS Flight Simulator 2004 and Sim City.

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Based on my needs above, I decided to pursue a game machine – something fast, with lots of memory, a cool video card with its own memory, a large yet fast hard drive, and a nice glossy screen.

My first stop in my research led me to reliability ratings on all the major manufacturers. According to Consumer Reports, the most reliable name brands are Sony, Compaq/HP and Lenovo (IBM). I’ve owned computers from the first two and was very disappointed. Lenovo doesn’t sell laptops with NVIDIA video cards – which are my favorite – so it was out of contention as well.

Duly disappointed, I decided to look at other lesser-known brands. At first, the Sager 5760 seemed liked a cool bet. It had the very latest video card, the NVIDIA 7950 with 512 MB of video memory, and the keyboard was large enough that it packed its own numeric key pad. I started having second thoughts, however, when I priced the laptop at $2,400, well equipped with 2 GB RAM and a 100 GB 7200 HDD. The idea of carrying a 10 lb behemoth around also didn’t seem worthwhile.

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After asking for help online, someone at NotebookReview.com suggested I look at Asus’ A8 models. The A8Js has nice features, but I was turned off by reports of light leakage from the monitor.

Then I found out about the G1: it has all the cool specs, a glossy screen just like my previous Sony laptop, and a 2-year global warranty – perfect for my time abroad. The reviews didn’t mention light leakage and I heard lots of good things about the brand, so I decided to buy it.

Where & How Purchased

I bought my laptop from ProPortable.com. I paid list price, $1799. I decided to purchase from them because they had a 99% positive feedback rating at ResellerRatings.com, and they answered my shipping questions within 10 minutes, on a Sunday, at 9pm. Kudos to them.

Build & Design

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This is my first Asus product, and I am very impressed. As I opened the package, everything was stored neatly and in order. I even found some items I didn’t expect, like a cloth to clean the LCD screen, and an awesome backpack made by Targus. I had seen it in pictures online, and expected a throw-away sample bag. I was pleasantly surprised to find it’s made of strong materials, with lots of pockets, showing off a tasteful green and gray design. It also has thick support straps, perfect for carrying books around Milan. Hopefully, the 7 lb G1 will barely be noticed.

Along with those items, Asus also included a fine gaming mouse from Logitech (too bad it’s not wireless) and recovery disks. Most brands charge extra for those.

The G1 itself is a pleasant sight. The case is shiny and beautiful, showing off a carbon fiber construction look. In reality it’s all plastic, but it feels solid. The lower portion of the palm rest area is made of anodized brushed aluminum, and feels very smooth. I found no crooked corners or blemishes. I expect this laptop to last a long time.

Screen

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When opened, the 15.4” WSXGA+ (1680x1050) screen reflects all light around it, as expected from a glossy screen. The gorgeous images are worth it! The text is just large enough for reading, but some people might want to adjust the text size or resolution.

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The screen did ripple slightly when twisted by the sides, but I don’t see this happening on day to day activities. I’m always careful on opening the laptop to avoid lifting it from the table. The lid opens with a positive feeling of resistance, but wobbles slightly once I let it go.

The monitor has 16 levels of brightness adjustment. I picked level 12 for writing this review – as I’m seating by an open window and the sun is out. However, one could use any of the levels and still be able to see the screen.

Asus has a zero bright pixel warranty on the first 30 days of ownership. I didn’t find a single dead pixel.

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Regarding light leakage, this screen has none! The screen is sharp and the lighting is of uniform coverage. I took a picture in the dark with a dark photo in the background (San Diego Bay) for you to see.

Speakers

As I installed 3DMark05, I ventured downstairs to eat lunch. Minutes later, I heard a loud commotion upstairs... I returned to find the Asus G1/G2 screen saver playing music. Unlike other computers, the G1 has speakers on the bottom of the case. They play loud music, but sport a strange echo-like sound. I tried playing with the environments and equalizer in the Realtek HD Audio Manager, but it’s hopeless. If you are an audiophile, you will want better speakers.

Processor & Performance

The Asus G1 laptop is as fast as my 2-year old desktop computer*. This is a great feeling, because I hate going from a fast computer to a slow computer. I ran SolidWorks with some CAD assemblies I created in the past, and the computer ran them without a hitch. I’m very satisfied.

Besides the speakers, another G1 shortcoming is the slow hard drive. There are four speeds commonly available in the market: 4200, 5400, 7200, and 10000 rpm. Of those four, laptops usually carry a hard drive with either of the first two speeds. I burned a DVD with 4.5 GB of mp3 files in less than six minutes (16X drive) on my desktop. When I put the same DVD on the G1, it took 25 minutes to copy those files to the 5400 rpm hard drive. I did four DVDs in a row with similar results. While 160GB is nice for storage, one might consider installing a faster model. A 100GB 7200 rpm drive usually costs $110.

Another factor in performance is all the extra software Asus included with the G1. I immediately deleted the sample Norton anti-virus software (90 days of functionality) and some other resource-consuming applications. The difference in the benchmark application Super Pi was incredible: 25 seconds for 1 million iterations vs. 59 seconds with all the Asus software running.

The only apps I have running now are AVG free edition, NVIDIA Control Panel, and the Asus Direct Console which manages the speed of the fan and processor (power consumption).

I ran MS Flight Simulator 2004 at full graphics, and there was no noticeable lag. The image was very smooth.

* My desktop computer is my reference system:

Windows XP Home SP2, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Nforce3 Ultra 939 Motherboard
Athlon 64 3500+ 2.21 GHz
Corsair 2x512MB DDR PC3200
XFX NVIDIA 6600GT 128MB DDR3
Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA 75GB HDD (x3)
NEC DVD+/-RW 16X ND-2510A

Benchmarks

Besides Super Pi, I ran Futuremark 3DMark05 and 06. Below are the results and a comparison with similar laptops. The G1 is part of the cream of the crop. However, when it comes to sheer speeds, there are better alternatives in the 17” monitor range (priced over $2,000).

It takes approximately 1 minute and 15 seconds to boot up to Windows XP, until the mouse icon is ready to go. To turn off, it takes 18 seconds.

Heat and Noise

I have not experienced any issues with heat on the G1. The palm area turns slightly warm over time, but it’s not enough to annoy me. The heat sink and fan exhaust on this model are located on the rear left side, away from the mouse. I placed the computer on my lap, and it didn’t bother me, however I find it too big to use it there.

In regards to noise, I can hear a faint hard drive swoosh sound when the laptop is idle or doing light tasks. When playing games, the fan picks up speed and becomes more noticeable. The exhaust was hot during benchmarking tests.

Note also that the optical 8X DVD-RW drive is fairly loud when reading data.

Keyboard & Touchpad

My biggest concern before buying the G1 was the bright green ASDW keys on the laptop. Would they be an annoyance? Turns out they are fine. My left hand covers the keys when I’m typing...

The keys make a slight click when pressed, traveling about 2 mm. I have since become accustomed to their sound. They feel solid and sturdy. There’s no visible flex by the keyboard.

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One item I’m particularly happy with the G1 is the function key placement, on the right side of the control key. I have no idea why some manufacturers (even Asus in other models) switch their location.

(view large image)

The keypad can be turned off by a simple click of a button, located next to the power button. It has a smooth surface and the sliding bar feature functions well. A green LED located inside the “eye” of the game series logo shines brightly when the keypad is on.

The G1 has five multimedia keys in front of the case: power, reverse, forward, stop, and play. They are intended to control the optical drive when the laptop is turned off, allowing you to listen music much like a portable player. In reality, the player functions by turning motherboard, keyboard and optical drive on, while the hard drive and monitor remain off. The keyboard still works to allow volume adjustment.

The keys above, minus power, also work along with Windows Media Player when the laptop is fully turned on. The buttons are tiny enough that I cannot press them by mistake.

Aside from the player, there are four additional hot keys besides the power button. They are for adjusting the speed of the fan/processor, calling out your e-mail software, Internet browser, and turning the keypad on/off. The fan setting has five options: quiet office, presentation (which sends video to video out and turns the monitor off), super performance, high performance, and game.

Input & Output Ports

Front view of Asus G1 (view large image)

Left side of Asus G1 (view large image)

Right view of Asus G1 (view large image)

Back view of Asus G1 (view large image)

The Asus G1 meets your basic needs in this category. In the rear, you will find four USB 2.0 ports, and a DVI and VGA set of ports. The AC power input is located here, too.

On the right, you will find an RJ11 modem, an RJ45 LAN jack, an S-video out (an adaptor cable to RCA form is included with the laptop), a microphone-in jack, a line-in jack, a dual purpose headphone-out and S/PDIF jack, and a Fire Wire port. A Type II PCMCIA slot and a MMC/SD/MS/MS-Pro card reader are also included.

On the left you’ll find the optical drive.

Wireless

I have no Bluetooth devices, so I can’t test this feature.

I connected the G1 to my wireless home network through the g mode, and it worked flawlessly.

Battery

My laptop will be plugged in most of the time, so battery consumption was not a factor in my purchase decision. Asus doesn’t sell longer-lasting batteries. If you want to spend a long time on batteries, you might want to purchase an extra battery.

While typing this review and listening to music, the battery lasted 2:45 until the 4% mark. I also played around with SolidWorks at one point (3D CAD).

Operating System & Software

The Asus G1 comes with Windows XP Media Center. Microsoft Works 8.0 is included in the package, but it’s not installed.

In addition, Nero 6 is installed; as well as a series of Asus software that is meant to assist the user. I deleted most of these applications in an attempt to reduce the workload in the background.

As I mentioned earlier, a recovery DVD is included for Windows and Asus applications.

Customer Support

Fortunately, I have not had to call customer support. I read good things about them, but I hope the occasion never comes up. The package included a plastic card containing phone numbers to call for technical support throughout the world.

Asus G2 Notebook Review

2007-09-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Source: Notebookreview

by Akhil Parujanwala

Introduction and Overview

The Asus G2P is a new gaming series 17” notebook. The G2P offers an array of interesting and cool design features. The Asus G2P reviewed here comes with a Core 2 Duo T7200, a 17” screen with a native resolution of 1440x900 (WXGA+) and an ATI Radeon X1700 512mb graphics card. The Asus G1 notebook is closely related to the G2, but is of a smaller 15.4" screen size. Following is a full review of the G2.

Reasons for Purchasing

The G2P is a 17” notebook and the target market in my opinion is for those people who are looking for a moderate gaming desktop replacement. This notebook also appeals to those looking forward for a lower native resolution laptop, since it will be relatively easier on one’s eyes. The price of the G2P is $1,899 USD and $2,179 CAD.

Specs of the Asus G2P

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0Ghz; 667mhz w/ 4mb Cache)
Display: 17" WXGA+ (1440 x 900) Color Shine, AUO4087 (B170PW04 V0)
Asus G2P w/ Intel 945PM Chipset
Memory: 2048MB DDR2 667 (2x 1024mb)
Hard Drive: 160GB @5400RPM SATA (Seagate)
Graphic: ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 512MB
Wireless: Built-In Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G
Optical: 8x Super Multi DVD Burner (LG Electronics)
Battery: 8-Cell Li-Ion, 4800mAh, 71Whr
Operating System: Windows Media Center
Dimensions: 16" (length) x 12.5" (width) x 2.63" (height)
Weight: 9.7lbs
Warranty: ASUS 2 Years Global Warranty + Zero Bright Dot LCD Policy (30 Days)
Ports: 1x Express Card, 1x VGA port, 1x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF), 1x Microphone-in jack, 1x RJ11 Modem, 1x RJ45 LAN, 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1x IEEE 1394 port, 1x TV-Out, 1x Infrared Port, 1x μ-DVI, 1x Docking Port,
8-in-1 Card Reader
(MMC/SD/Mini-SD/XD/Memory Stick/MS Pro/MS-Duo/MS-Pro-Duo)

What’s in the box?

G2P 17" Notebook
Standard Capacity; 8 Cell; 4800mAh Li-Ion; 14.8V
Asus Design Gaming Series Notebook Backpack made by Targus
Asus Gaming Series branded Logitech Mx518 Carbon Fiber look
S-video to RCA Cable
Microfiber LCD Cloth
AC Adapter (19v DC, 1.5A, 90W)
Software:
AsusDVD (CD)
PowerDirector Pro (CD)
Medi@Show (CD)
Nero Burning Rom OEM Suite (CD)
Microsoft Works (CD)
G2 Driver and Utility (CD)
Asus Recovery Disc for Windows MCE (DVD)

Packaging

The packaging of the G2P is very nice; the box presentation is very colorful and inviting. There is no rattling inside the box, but the box is quite heavy, and taking out the laptop from the box requires a bit of muscle.

Design

The laptop has a very rugged look, but also very nice accents of faux aluminum on the lid and anodized aluminum on the palm rest. The laptop basically has 3 color tones, red, black and silver. The red color is used to signify some new features in the G2P, like the side lights, the top vents, and the trademark G2 symbol between the touchpad buttons.

My initial impression of the laptop was that it is reasonably sized for a 17”, has a great color scheme, but the glossiness of the screen exhibits a lot of reflections. I was also impressed by the lid design looks -- it is very unique and is glossy and emanates a brushed aluminum look.

Screen

The screen on the Asus G2P is a medium resolution glossy screen. The native resolution is 1440x900 (WXGA+) which may be a benefit to some but a detriment to many, since WSXGA+ or WUXGA is more desired on a 17” notebook. The screen is perfect, no dead or bright dot pixels. In my opinion this resolution is not satisfactory, I prefer higher resolutions, but the images, icons, and text on the G2P are very clear.

Max Brightness

The screen is very bright, and I do feel comfortable using it at the maximum brightness. There are 16 levels of brightness however, if I decrease the brightness from max, you will notice the screen does not decrease in brightness much. It feels like there are about 5 real brightness levels.

The viewing angles of the screen are excellent, just like I anticipated. The horizontal viewing angle is roughly 145 degrees both ways, and the vertical viewing angle is roughly 120 degrees. The contrast level is very high, the whites are white and the blacks are black.

There is a slight amount of light leakage at the bottom of the screen, it is quite hard to notice and I don’t find it to be a problem at all.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a black color with white letters on the keys. The keyboard has 88 keys and the sizes of the keys are nice, except for the spacebar, because there are 5 key to the left of the spacebar, causing it to be smaller than usual. The CTRL key is to the left of the FN key, which I am happy about since that is my preference. I wish there were a full sized keyboard with number pad.

The Asus G2 keyboard keys produce a soft click. If you type fast and lightly the sound is very minimal, if you type hard, then there will be some noise. The keys have short travel, but still feels nice to use, I can type on it without a problem.

The keyboard has a reasonable amount of flex, which is noticeable but so far not a big problem for me, but you will notice it. The top left corner of the keyboard flexes, the bottom left corner flexes, the middle exhibits a lot of flex, the top right corner flexes but the bottom right corner has a minimal amount of flex.

Touchpad

The touchpad material looks like it has a textured feel, but instead it is very nice, silky smooth touchpad. My fingers are able to glide over it nicely without a problem. There is a silver accent around the touchpad which enhances the look of it. There is a vertical and horizontal scroll embedded in the touchpad, and it works very well.

The touchpad buttons are silver and are very easy to press, the sound of pressing them is rather loud and somewhat annoying, but they are easy to use. The G2P emblem is in between the touchpad button and glows a nice red color. I did not find it to be a problem, being in the middle of the buttons.

Features

The Asus G2P has a variety of features that make this notebook unique.

Flashing Lights and Direct Console

The G2P has two lights encased on both sides of the lid, they are red and flash when you are gaming or even running benchmarks and will light up a small area. The G2P also has an emblem that is located in between the touchpad that glows red, and looks quite nice.

You are able to turn off the flashing lights by using a program called Asus Direct Console. Also, in the console you can adjust and tune the Direct Messenger. There is a little LCD in which it will show the ASUS name, and/or time in digital, but then you can change it to an image, with your own text. This is a cool feature!

Red Light Off -->Red Light On

Mini LCD Direct Messenger

Bluetooth

Bluetooth allows for wireless connectivity to other devices, like cell phones, mice, keyboards, headphones and others. There is a Bluetooth manager in which it will take roughly 5 minutes to set up a connection.

Multimedia Keys

There is a power button, then there is a previous button, forward, stop, and play/pause button. If you press the play button, it will open up the Media Center ability, where you can see pictures and movies organized in a nice interface.

Webcam

The Asus G2P is equipped with a 1.3 mega pixel camera, located above the screen. It does not swivel. The quality of the camera is decent, certainly better than other laptops I have seen. I would feel comfortable using it for online conferences and chatting.

Webcam Images

Sound System

There are 4 speakers on this laptop, and it sounds amazing! The speakers are located under the left palm rest, the right palm rest, under the left side hinge and right side hinge. It gives a surround sound feel and is clear and crisp.

When using headphones, you won’t believe how well games sound. I am using Sennheiser MX400 earphones and love how games sound, everything is very crisp and clear.

When playing music on earphones the sound is excellent, treble is excellent and the bass is quite good. When playing music on the speakers, once again the sound is very loud, the bass is somewhat little but still better than most laptop out there.

When playing movies the sound quality is great on both earphones and speakers, the treble and bass are reasonable for watching movies.

The sound card is a Realtek HD Audio and I am very pleased with its performance and quality. There are 16 levels of sound and I feel very comfortable using 3/16, any higher and you can support a small house party with just a laptop!

Input and Output Ports

The G2P has a great number of ports and a variety of them as well. They are mainly located on the left side and rear of the notebook.

The front side of the laptop contains:

the latch
multimedia keys
front status indicators
CIR, which is a consumer infrared port, which allows the consumer to use infrared devices like a remote

The right side contains:

speaker located under the right palm rest
optical drive with eject button
power input plug
direct flash red light on the lid.

The left side has a great amount of ports:

direct flash red light on the lid
LAN port
Modem port
USB 2.0
Audio Input Jack
Mic Jack
SPDIF output jack
IEEE1394 port
Wireless Switch
ExpressCard Slot
Card Reader
IrDA port
Speaker located under the left palm rest

The rear of the laptop also has many ports:

Vent
Kensignton Lock Port
S-Video Out
VGA out
DVI-D out
4x USB 2.0

The bottom of the laptop has several slots to open certain compartments:

There are button and indicators above the keyboard:

Direct Messenger (LCD)
Bluetooth Indicator
Hard Drive Access Indicator
Num Lock
Caps Lock
Power4Gear Button
Power For Phone (Skype)
Splendid Software
Touchpad Enable and Disable
Power Button

Wireless

The Asus G2P comes with an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G, I found that using the Intel Proset drivers works great, I was able to connect to internet wirelessly very easily.

Build Quality

The build quality of the laptop in my opinion is good; the materials used seem to be different forms of plastic. Some of it is glossy plastic, some of it is matte, and the other material is anodized aluminum on the palm rest.

The quality of the lid is very good, the plastic lid and bezel hold the screen in place. There is no flex or rippling in the screen, even if you press hard. There is very little twisting of the lid as well.

There are three hinges that hold the top portion of the laptop, but this looks rather unusual at first but the hinges are very solid, strong, and do not feel like it would break. The screen barely wobbles on these hinges and the screen will not move if put in awkward positions. No creaking when moving the lid up and down.

The palm is very interestingly designed, there is one portion of the palm which is anodized aluminum and the other which is a high gloss plastic. Overall the palm rest exhibits no flex at all, and gives an interesting feel to it.

As previously mentioned, the quality of the keyboard is ok, the spacebar is small, the arrow keys are a little small, but at least the CTRL and FN keys are in the correct position. Also, there is a considerable amount of flex, and that is a negative aspect of this notebook.

Size and Weight

The size of the notebook is quite big and bulky. The dimensions are, 16" (length) x 12.5" (width) x 2.63" (height). The weight of the laptop is 9.7lbs and yes this is heavy, this is something I would not want to carry around on my back, but for sure for LAN parties and occasionally to work.

The power brick weighs 500-grams which is equivalent to 1 pound. The dimensions of the power brick are, 5” x 1” x 1”, I find this size to be just normal like some of the other laptops out there.

Heat and Noise

When I first plugged the laptop into the AC adapter, I heard an interesting gust of wind sound, the heat out of the rear vent is warm, not hot but warm when gaming.

The palm rest are cool, the aluminum part of the palm rest is cold for the first 4-5 hours of use, and then it starts to get slightly warmer. The plastic portion of the palm rest is cool but will start to get Luke warm after hours of gaming.

The keyboard and sides of the keyboards are also lukewarm after hours of gaming, but above the keyboard is warm. The air coming out of the rear vent is just warm, not hot; this means the cooling inside of the G2P is extremely good!

The noise is barely noticeable when gaming, the sounds of the game will easily overcome the sound of the vent. The sound coming out of the vent when gaming is a “whirr” sound with a touch of a high pitch sound. Otherwise when doing light tasks there is no sound, the laptop is very quiet.

Idle Temps:

Core 1 – 45 degrees Celsius
Core 2 – 46 degrees Celsius
Hard Drive – 47 degrees Celsius

Gaming Temp: Call of Duty 2

Core 1 – 58 degrees Celsius
Core 2 – 58 degrees Celsius
Hard Drive – 47 degrees Celsius

Gaming Temp: Medieval 2: Total War

Core 1 – 60 degrees Celsius
Core 2 – 58 degrees Celsius
Hard Drive – 48 degrees Celsius

Battery life

The battery pack of the G2P is 71whr, and it is located in the front section of the laptop.

My battery life tests yielded the following, on Max Battery for P4G and WIFI On.

16/16 Brightness – 2 hours 15 minutes
8/16 Brightness – 2 hours 24 minutes
1/16 Brightness – 2 hours 47 minutes

If you were to game on the G2P with a battery you can yield close to 2 hours, with max brightness and WIFI On.

If you are planning on using this notebook to be a portable laptop with the need of more battery life, I would suggest purchasing another main batter to extend your battery life.

Benchmarks

Boot time

I used BootLog XP to measure how fast the system boots. The laptop booted in 74 seconds with stock applications and startup programs.

SuperPi

This is a screenshot of SuperPI, the Asus G2P was able to calculate 2 million calculations in 1 minute and 3 seconds which matches most other laptops equipped with a T7200.

3DMark05

This tests the graphics and performance of the laptop. The clock and memory settings on the X1700 512mb are, the laptop scored 4493 points on stock drivers.

3DMark06

This benchmark test the performance using Shader Model 3, the G2 laptop scored 2292 using stock drivers

PCMark05

This tests the overall performance of the laptop when running PCMark05. The laptop scored a respectful 4626.

HDTune

The hard drive is quiet, no noise at all, when gaming, light tasks or movies, which is great. The hard drive is made by Seagate, and the temperature is slightly warm when compared to other laptops.

CineBench

This program shows how well the computer is at designing and 4 dimensional rendering.

Comparisons

Here is a table comparing some benchmarks of the G2P, G1P, and V1JP.

When comparing the G2P and Asus G1P to each other, you can see that the performance is roughly the same. The G2P is a 17” notebook while the G1P is a 15.4” notebook. The overall feel of using the laptop doing basic tasks is very nice since it has 2GB of ram and a 2.0 GHz processor. The looks are very similar, using glossy plastic, but not compromising on build quality. Red or green lights, which one do you prefer? While testing I found that the green light to be more exciting on the G1P, while the G2P has the red lights and is very bold.

When looking at the V1JP to the G2P and G1P, there is definitely a difference in styling since, the V1 series is aimed at the business users, who still want sleek styling and performance. There is an obvious size difference between all 3 models, and the G1P would cater towards more of the home gamers looking for a great all around system. While the G2P would also cater to home gamers looking for on par performance to its 15.4” counter parts.

Games

NFS Carbon

The game ran very well on the G2P, these were the settings used below.

Resolution: 800x600
AA: 4x
Texture: Antistropic
Max Graphics, No V-Sync
FPS: 17-23 FPS

Battlefield 2

This is great fun to play, the graphics are excellent the FPS are great, all round good fun.

Resolution: 1024x768
AA: 6x
Texture: High, No V-Sync
FPS: 36-55 FPS

Oblivion

This is not one of my favorite games to play, but it sure is demanding and quite interesting.

Resolution: 1280x768(*)
Medium settings, HDR Enabled, No V-Sync or AA
Indoor FPS: Ranges from 22 – 50 FPS
Outdoor FPS: Ranges from 21– 26 FPS

BF 2142

This is another one of my favorite games to play, and this laptop played it pretty well.

Resolution: 1024x768
AA: 6x, No V-sync
Textures: High
Outdoor FPS: Ranges from 15– 30 FPS

Call of Duty 2

This is a great LAN party game, in which many can enjoy fast paced action.

Resolution: 1024x768
Texture: Bilinear
Detail: Medium
Outdoor FPS: Ranges from 15– 20 FPS

Medieval II Total War

Playing this game requires a lot of strategy, this forest like map was very intriguing, have a look at the pictures.

Resolution: 1024x768
AA: 4x, 4x AF
Details: Medium
Bloom and Reflection Enabled
Outdoor FPS: Ranges from 12– 20 FPS

Software

The Asus G2P comes with Window MCE pre-installed, but I prefer Windows XP Pro. The initial Windows setup takes roughly 7 minutes, after that everything seems to work very fast.

There is a vast amount of programs pre-installed on the G2P, some of them are vital and some of them are not. There is some bloat ware on the laptop like Norton and Symantec and that Asus Live Update which is pretty useless. I would recommend users to remove these programs or simply do a fresh install of Windows, if you feel that you would need it.

Accessories

There are a few accessories that you will greatly appreciate.

There is an Asus laptop backpack, and it has a few pockets, and one large pocket for the laptop. The back is well padded, the hand strap is also nicely done, same with the shoulder straps.

There is also an Asus branded mouse, which is a Logitech Mx518 mouse, this is an excellent mouse, 5 buttons and you are able to change the speed of the mouse on the fly.

Asus also provides a micro fiber cloth used for cleaning the screen.

Customer Support

This notebook comes with 2 Years Asus Global Warranty, and 30 days Zero Bright Dot Warranty, if anything should happen, just contact Asus. Their customer Service in North America is very good.

Pros:

Screen: Great viewing angles, brightness, and contrast
Graphics: Decent performance for the X1700 512mb
Performance: The overall performance matches most 15.4” notebooks
Battery Life: Decent battery life, achieving 2 hours 47mins maximum
Touchpad: Textured feel, worked well right away, with vertical and horizontal scroll
Keyboard: The keyboard color scheme is good, and soft
Build Quality: Good build quality all around, thick plastic used
Hard Drive: Seagate Momentus, quiet, reasonably cool and efficient
Speakers: The speakers are loud, very loud, clear and crisp
Heat: very little heat all round
Cool: this notebook is very cool in whatever you throw at it
Battery Life: 2 hours gaming, 2 hours 47 minutes doing light tasks
Ports: great layout of ports and variety of ports
Freebies: backpack and gaming mouse Mx518

Cons:

Price: At this price point I would expect a much higher end GPU or a 7200rpm HDD
Screen: low resolution for such a big screen, also very reflective
Glossy Plastic: this is a fingerprint magnet
Weight: (9.7lbs, it is heavy and you’ll feel it when traveling, especially with the power brick and cords)
GPU: I would have preferred a higher end GPU and preferably an NVIDIA solution
Bulky: The laptop is very big, has a big bezel
Design: The design is interesting but not something I would like, looks a bit childish
Light Leakage: there is a small amount of light leakage at the bottom of the screen
Keyboard: considerable amount of flex

Conclusion

Overall this laptop was fun to use; the red accents make this notebook stand out. The performance and specs of the laptop matches most 15.4” notebooks, but in terms of graphics and other 17” notebook there is much to be desired.

The notebook is geared towards people looking for an excellent screen, and good CPU performance and average graphical power. It is a desktop replacement for midrange performance and those who wouldn’t mind using a relatively low native resolution.

In the end the notebook did meet all my needs in a 17” notebook, except for graphics. Like many we would want something much more powerful like a 7900GS or GTX or an ATI comparable solution. The price is also a bit steep for what you are getting when considering the GPU can be improved. Look forward to other 17” gaming laptops, and possibly the rumored Asus G3.

Asus A6 Notebook Review

2007-09-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Source: Notebookreview

by Cosmin Zavoianu, Romania

(view large image)

The A6KT is touted by Asus as a mainstream portable entertainment laptop. What first struck me looking at this laptop was its sweet price to performance ratio. Hovering at just under $1,100 this laptop is a great starting point if you’re looking for something to enjoy not only office work and movies, but even gaming, be it casual or more frequent.

Tehnically, the A6000 is part of the Asus’ business series. However, everything about this particular notebook, starting from its design and configuration and ending with the way it’s presented, seems to indicate it would better be situated in either the Multimedia or the Personal Entertainment Center series.

Top view of Asus A6K (view large image)

ASUS A6KT Q086 specs as reviewed:

Processor: AMD Turion MT-34 (1,8 Ghz/1MB L2 Cache)
Hard Drive: 80 GB PATA 4200RPM
Screen: 15.4" WXGA Color shine glossy Widescreen with native 1280 x 800
Graphics: Ati Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128 MB Dedicated + 384 MB Shared
RAM: 1GB DDR400 (2x512 MB)
Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW SuperMulti Double Layer
Battery: 8-cell lithium-ion
Wireless: 10/100/1000 LAN 802.11 b/g
Weight: 2.85 kg (5,8 lbs.)
Ports and Slots:
- 1 x PCMCIA (Type II) – right side
- 1 x Microphone – right side
- 1 x RJ-11 Modem – right side
- 1 x S-Video TV-out – right side
- 1 x Headphones – right side
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN – right side
- 4 x USB 2.0 – back
- 1,3 Megapixels built-in webcam
- 5-in-1 Universal card reader – right side
Dimensions: 35,4 cm (14,12”) (W) – 28.4 cm (11.4”) (D) x 2,52 cm-3,52 (1”-1,4”) (H)
Security : Kensington lock

Above are the basic specs for this notebook, though it must be said that Asus does equip their A6KT laptops according to the region they ship it in. That’s why some can find this notebook sporting a faster and bigger 5400 rpm HDD or get a version without the handy 1,3MP webcam. The suffix differentiates the configs of this notebook (Q086 could be Q056 or Q001 etc.)

Asus A6 packaging (view large image)

Contents of the Asus A6K box (view large image)

First Impressions

I have to say right off the bat that I didn’t expect any miracles for this kind of money. And I didn’t get any. What I did get was a well built, stylish notebook with a good configuration and decent battery time. More on that later.

Top view of Asus A6 closed (view large image)

The belly of the laptop (view large image)

Build and Design

You can usually get a pretty good impresion of a laptop’s build quality when you first touch it. If it doesn’t crackle under its own weight (like when held from one side) or if doesn’t just feels flimsy, chances are the build quality is decent. The first thing I checked was the quality of the plastics, which turned out to be pretty good. They’re rigid and there’s no noticeable wobble in areas where the plastic covers gaps inside the notebook, which are prone to more stress when handling the notebook. Also, the palm rests, at each side of the touchpad are firm enough to sustain even a heavy hand such as mine without bending a milimeter.

The right side of the laptop where most connectivity ports are located (view large image)

The left side just has the DVD drive (view large image)

Back view of laptop that has a D-sub connector and old LPT port! (view large image)

The LCD hinges are firm and hold the pannel in place no matter how much it’s shaken. A nice touch is the frame surrounding the touchpad inlcuding the buttons, which are all made out of aluminium with a slight striation along their surface. This is a smart choice as sweat from the fingers will reduce the aging of these buttons. On the other hand, the notebook’s LCD cover is made of plastic and this is probably the first thing that will get scratched and show signs of wear. Besides these aspects, the laptop is solidly built and should bare every day use and exploitation just fine.

A shot from "Valley of Wolves" with screen brightness at 25% and camera ISO high (view large image)

Things get ugly when viewing from a side angle (view large image)

The design is pretty sleek in my opinion and I think it’s a pretty notebook without being too sober. It all comes down to each one’s taste on this matter, but I think the A6KT is a stylish laptop.

Screen

The notebok has a glare type LCD, dubbed by Asus as “Color shine”. Let’s sart with the brightness which I found to be impressive. It has 15 different settings of illumination and office work is perfectly enjoyable even at 6% brightness. Personally, when gaming, I found a setting of around 25% is just enough for a nice experience and hasn’t seemed to bother other people either. The LCD continues to remain bright, even when sitting side by side with a 19 inch Samsung 940B TFT which has impressive contrast and shine.

Here the screen is set at 25% brightness and camera at high ISO (view large image)

You can see that outdoors the screen acts like a mirror due to it being a glossy screen (view large image)

Unfortunately, there is a downside to this nice LCD panel, and here I’m refering to the maximum viewing angles. There are no numbers specified by Asus on the website nor in the manual. As far as I can work out, the horizontal viewing angles are around 140 degrees which is uncommon for a modern LCD. Movies are viewable as long as the group huddles togheter to fit inside that 140-degree range, otherwise depending on how far outside this zone they are it can become difficult to view or even impossible.

Closeup of the right side: Infrared, IEEE 1394, Audio jacks and TV-Out} (view large image)

Battery Life

There isn’t much to say here. The battery is an 8-cell Li-Ion acumulator. The first few charges, the battery didn’t last much more than 2 hours and 5-10 minutes. A battery calibration did make a significant change, now having a total lifetime of 2h 30-45 minutes depending on how the notebook is used. The maximum I’ve achieved was 2h 45’ when typing and having no other programs or unnecessary processes running. Screen brightness was set to 6% which allowed me to work confortably even in a day-lit room.

Options buttons: Change Power4Gear presets, start mail app, start Internet browser, disable touchpad, Power on/off the notebook (view large image)

Multimedia buttons - You can use the notebook as a CD-player while it’s off, by pressing the button from the left (view large image)

Heat and Noise

The laptop is very quiet when running on the battery and when used for light tasks. It can go as long as 15-20 minutes without starting the fan and when that does happen it is very quiet and doesn’t disturb. However, when set to High Performance, Super Performance or Game and when running a resource heavy application, such as a game, it will rev up pretty high and become annoying after a while. The DVD drive is fairly noisy as well, but it revs down as soon as it is not needed. If operation of an application does require continuous seek of the DVD that can get annoying after some time. The HDD on the other hand is quiet.

1.3MP webcam (view large image)

DVD drive popped out (view large image)

Heat is not an issue so far. The hard drive does become hot, around 51 degrees when operating for some time, which makes the upper right side of the keyboard hotter than the one just above the CPU. The laptop can become quite hot (around 45 degrees) in specific points on it’s underside, but I can’t see it becoming a real issue unless it is used on a hot summer’s day and held on the lap the entire session.

Graphics

The Radeon Mobility X1600 is currently consdered as being part of ATi’s performance segment, and should be enough for anyone who plans on using this laptop for everything less than a full time gaming system. The card can run anything you can currently throw at it including games that require Shader Model 3.0 as a minimum, because the RV530 mobility is a fully compliant DX 9.0c graphics card.

PCMark05 -- a reasonable score for a single core processor with a 4200 RPM drive (view large image)

The speakers

The speakers are pretty common, and lack power. They are quite “screamy”, showing a tendency to exaggerate higher frequencies (8kHz +) but they are laptop speakers though.

Built-in Webcam

This version of the A6KT came with a built-in webcam and microphone, for easy communication on the go. The camera’s quality is decent, and the voice recorder is also clear and efficient. It does make talking over the internet so much faster and more enjoyable as it removes the need for an extra USB slot for the webcam and the need to connect an annyoing microphone. Besides, it stands out pretty nice and gives the notebook a “multimedia-look”.

The Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is really nicely built. The plastic used for the buttons feels comfortable, though I reckon it will show signs of wear and tear eventualy, with several keys becoming shiny. The color is a very dark grey and it makes the keyboard look somehow less sober than a black one would. The keys are firm enough not to press accidentally, but don’t become tiresome for the fingers. The symbols on them are clear and white, and positioned in the upper and lower left corner of the keys for primary and seconday functions and upper right for tertiary functions. The Function keys allow a multitude of things, like jumping to either STR or STD (suspend to RAM or suspen to disk), turning on the WLAN, controlling the brightness of the LCD, the system volume and so on.

The touchpad 16:9 format is really nice (view large image)

Keyboard view (view large image)

The touchpad is pressure sensitive, it respnds quickly and accurately and most important of all it’s the same aspect ratio as the screen so you don’t have to move your fingers 2 times to reach the end of the screen. It also has horizontal and vertical scrolling.

Ports

The notebook features a Wireless Lan card that works great and picks up even fairly weak signals, a normal RJ-45 network conncetion, a modem, several audio plugs, a card reader, a PCMCIA slot, firewire and infrared conncetions, so you can plug in anything, be it a camcorder or digital camera, or a simple SD MMC card.

Conclusion

The ASUS A6KT is a great budget multimedia notebook. It doesn’t matter if you want to just browse the net or watch a DVD or play a favorite video game, you can do it all on this versatile notebook. As long as you know what you want from your laptop and set your configuration priorities straight, this notebook could easily become what you’ve been looking for. The 15,4’’ screen is bright and clear enough to enjoy multimedia content on the laptop in every lighting situation, and even more so thanks to the Mobility Radeon X1600 the laptop comes with. The A6KT is a good, quality buy, a strong, stylish laptop, with decent portability and battery time.

Pros:

Good build quality and materials
Stylish, semi-sober look
Bright and clear widescreen LCD
Nice keyboard and touchpad
Cool and quiet when used normally
Good gaming performance

Cons:

Small horizontal viewing angles make movies difficult to view when in large numbers
Slow HDD takes its toll on performance
Battery life could have beena little higher though i might just be nitpicking
A little noisy when using it at full power
It could get a little too warm in the summer, so it may be uncomfortable for lap use
Not a dual-core and only DDR400

Asus V1JP with Windows Vista Ultimate Review

2007-09-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

by Lenard Gunda, Finland

Reasons for Buying

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I had my second notebook, an ASUS V6V for almost two years. I have been looking at Core 2 Duo notebooks since they were announced last summer. I was not in a real hurry to get a new notebook, I really wanted to wait for a system that was the perfect fit. A multi core CPU is important for me because I do software development and often have to run many applications at one time. Also, I required more RAM for some time now, but decided against upgrading it in the current notebook because I knew I wanted a new one eventually.

I did not really want to wait for Santa Rosa. It might turn out to be something very cool, but at the moment I'd rather take something proven. I also did not want to wait until the next thing after Santa Rosa (which might be another year), so that pretty much left the current Core 2 Duo platform as my choice. I also wanted a notebook that could be used for gaming. Not the ultimate gaming machine, but something respectable.

My previous two notebooks have been made by ASUS, and although I had some problems with them, I still like them very much. I checked out other brands, how they look, what they provide and I just couldn't find anything like ASUS that would fit my needs. I also considered the ASUS G1 notebook, but the sleek look of the V1Jp, plus the fact that a power station was included made be go for it in the end.

Where and How Purchased

I bought the notebook at a Finnish web site called Verkkokauppa (their website is only avaialable in Finnish), and I went to get it personally from their main store location as it saved on postage and was faster.

The price was on the high side at €2,319 ($3,036), but considering that a Power Station is included (which is also sold separately for 199€) the price was justified for me.

Specs for the V1JP-AJ008P

The specs for the V1Jp that is sold here in Finland is a little bit different than other parts of Europe or the USA. The one I got is identified by the model code AJ008P. The models vary in the CPU, RAM, HD and this particular one had the ASUS Power Station included in the package by default.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0Ghz
OS: Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Hard drive: Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST9160821AS (160 GB) SATA + TPM (Trusted Platform Module)
Optical Drive: 8x DVD Super Multi (TSSTCorp Ts-l632d, Toshiba, Samsung)
RAM: 2GB @ 667MHz
Screen size: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1600x1050, 16:10)
Graphics: ATI x1700, 256Mb dedicated / 512Mb HyperMemory
Network: Realtek RTL8168/8111 Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless: Intel 3945ABG
Bluetooth: 2.0 + EDR
Fingerprint sensor
Integrated web camera: 1.3 Mp
Slots:
- MMC, SD, MS/Pro
- ExpressCard
Ports:
- 3 x USB 2.0
- Microphone input
- Headphone output / SPDIF
- IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
- Infrared
- Modem
- µDVI
- S-Video
- VGA
- Ethernet

What is in the box?

1 x ASUS V1JP 15.4" notebook
1 x AC adapter (19V DC)
1 x Battery (Li-ion 8 cells 5200mAh, 77Whr)
2 x Manuals (Finnish, Swedish)
1 x ASUS Optical mouse (rebranded Logitech, USB, cord)
1 x S-Video - RCA cable
1 x µDVI - DVI cable
1 x ASUS Cable Tie (for holding cables together)
Software:
- 1 x V1 notebook series Driver & Utility v2.0 CD
- 1 x Windows XP Professional recovery DVD
- 1 x Nero OEM Suite
- 1 x Medi@Show SE 2.0
- 1 x PowerDirector DE
- 1 x ASUS DVD v6.0
1 x ASUS Power Station for V1/V2
1 x AC adapter for Power Station (19V DC)

The packaging is generally the same as what I have come to expect from ASUS, this is my 3rd ASUS notebook. The big cardboard box contains the bag and the notebook box. The notebook box contains the notebook itself, and another smaller cardboard box has all the accessories like the mouse, cables and manuals inside. The notebook is packaged and padded really well, and the whole package is well organized.

The box includes Finnish and Swedish manuals. However, these were not specific manuals for a particular ASUS notebook, rather, generalized versions, that could be bundled with all notebooks. I was a little bit dissapointed in this. For example, there is no mention of TPM or the fingerprint sensor in them. The English version manual is avaialable as a PDF download from the ASUS website, which is even better for me, because although I do read and speak Finnish, it is not my mother tongue.

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Build & Design

I am very satisfied with the build quality of this notebook. My previous notebook was an ASUS V6V. I think they are very similar in build quality though the materials are a bit different. The lid is made of magnesium alloy while the base is carbon fibre. From the outside the notebook has a dark gray and black design with silvery edges. When opening the lid, the palm rests are revealed in gray, in the middle sits the touchpad. The touchpad is also a wide model, 16:10, just like the screen.

I was more comfortable with the locking mechanism on the V6V which has magnets and no latch. The latch system on the V1JP does not feel that solid. The latch that holds the lid in place does not hold the lid tightly closed. The palm rests have a little flex on them, the left side maybe a little bit more than the right. Overal however, the notebook feels very solid.

One problem that I would point out is the closing of the DVD drive. This seems to be rather difficult. Gently clicking it close will not actually close it. I have to "slam it shut.", or otherwise it just pops open again. It also stuck in once, I had to gently move the cover around a little so it would open.

Screen

There is very little light leakage at the bottom, it is almost invisible unless the screen is black. The picture is crystal clear, the colors are beautiful. The ASUS Splendid utility allows you to instantly apply color profiles to the screen that suit different situations. The brightness of the screen can be adjusted in 16 steps, even the 3/16 setting gives enough light to type some text or browse comfortably and saves on battery life. When turned up to the maximum or 1-2 steps below, the picture looks really nice.

Viewing angles are excellent, at least compared to what I have seen on notebooks.

Processor and Performance

Equipped with a 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor there is not much in processing power that this notebook cannot provide. While using it I always got a fast response time, no matter what I was doing.

Benchmarks

As you will read further down, I also installed Windows Vista on the notebook. For this reason I tried ran the benchmarks under Windows XP and Windows Vista as a comparison.

Super PI measures performance by calculating digits of PI. It was the first benchmark I ran, and it calculated 2 million digits in 1 minute and 02 seconds.

PCMark05

PCMark05 gives an overall benchmark of system performance, I ran this benchmark application under both Windows XP and Vista:

Windows XP Professional - 4536

Windows Vista Ultimate - 4701

*Notebook*	*PCMark05*
Asus V1Jp with Windows Vista (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1700)	4,701 PCMarks
Asus V1Jp with Windows XP (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1700)	4,536 PCMarks
Asus A6KT Q086 (1,8GHz Turion64 MT-34)	2,539 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB)	4,994 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook A6010 (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel GMA 950)	2,994 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Toshiba Tecra M6 (1.66GHz Intel T2300E, Intel GMA 950)	2,732 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FE590 (1.83GHz Core Duo)	3,427 PCMarks

I was a little surprised to see an increase in the score under Vista. I am just guessing that the scores can be compared even if the test was run on a different operating system.

3DMark06

Windows XP Professional - 1879

Windows Vista Ultimate - 1877

It is nice to know performance is actually the same in both XP and Vista, at least concerning games.

3DMark06

Notebook	3DMark 06 Results
Asus V1Jp with Windows Vista (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1700)	1,877 3D Marks
Asus V1Jp with Windows XP (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1700)	1,879 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Intel T2500, ATI X1400)	926 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744 3D Marks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB	1,528 3D Marks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	4,085 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3D Marks

Windows Vista Experience Index

Windows Experience Index - 4.3

This is the score Windows Vista assigns to the computer. The score is between 1 and 5, 5 being the best. It actually measures different parts of the system, and then assigns the lowest score to the entire computer. Below is a comparison chart of how the V1Jp with Vista stacked up against other notebooks.

Notebook	Processor	Memory	Graphics	Gaming graphics	Hard Disk	Base Score
Asus V1Jp with Windows Vista (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1700)	4.9	4.5	4.3	4.8	4.7	4.3
HP dv2000t

(1.6GHz Core Duo, Intel GMA 950, 1GB RAM)	4.5	4.5	3.0	3.1	4.3	3.1
Asus V6J

(1.83GHz Core Duo, Nvidia 7400, 2GB RAM)	4.7	4.8	3.6	3.3	4.7	3.3
HP nc8430

(2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1600, 2GB RAM)	5.0	4.7	4.2	4.7	4.9	4.2
Compaq Presario v3000z

(1.6GHz Turion X2, Nvidia 6150, 1GB RAM)	4.6	4.5	3.1	3.0	4.2	3.0
Dell XPS M1210

(1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 7400, 2GB RAM)	4.8	4.5	3.7	3.3	4.5	3.3
Sony VAIO SZ370P/C

(2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 7400, 2GB RAM)	4.9	4.5	3.6	3.3	4.6	3.3
Lenovo ThinkPad Z61m

(2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400, 2GB RAM)

4.7

4.9

4.4

3.8

4.2

3.8

HDTune

HDTune tests the performance of the hard drive, below is the graph generated by this benchmark tool:

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Windows Vista Ultimate

After having done all benchmarks and the bulk of this review under Windows XP, I started installing Windows Vista Ultimate on the notebook. ASUS had just published all the Vista drivers on their webpage. Before starting to install Vista I decided to update the BIOS. The notebook came with V1J BIOS 301. There was some problem updating to V1JP BIOS, because WinFlash kept telling me that the new BIOS image is not compatible with the system. A quick search on the NotebookReview.com forums provided me with a /force switch, that allowed forcing the update (USE WITH CAUTION!).

After the update I had to soft-poweroff (4 seconds of power button pushing) because the notebook did not restart. My initial fears that I blew something quickly went away when after pushing the power button and restoring BIOS defaults the notebook booted normally.

Installing Vista was quite easy. It recognized many devices from the notebook without requiring me to install drivers separately. After setup was complete there were some devices that needed to be installed, most notably the graphics card. Vista can also find drivers after setup is complete by using Windows Update. The drivers provided here might be a little old, and ASUS has more recent ones. ASUS utilities (like MultiFrame, ATK keys support, ATK media keys,etc) are naturally not found on Windows Update, so they need to be installed manually. (it did find the ATK100 ACPI drivers, however) I left out some of the utilities I did not need, like the ip switcher or instantfun applications.

Not all applications provided with the notebook are Vista compatible. Like Nero Express, from which version 6 is included. Nero website offered me to update to Nero 7 Premium, but a price of 47€ for the update is just too much, considering that I would not use half of what is provided in that suite. I wish there was a way to get Nero 7 Express, which should be bundled with V1Jp in the future (at least according to ASUS website). Also some of the ASUS utilities are still buggy. For instance MultiFrame looks and works great, until you check out the number of handles the process has allocated in Task Manager. MultiFrame eats handles like crazy, I got the count up to over 100k in just about 2 hours. Hopefully fixes will come for these problems.

Wireless access configuration was difficult at first, but this was only because the windows and controls have been changed in Vista. Also Vista likes to hide the more advanced things (likes to use wizards and selection lists), and it took some time to figure things out. But I was really happy to notice that after I got it working I do not need the Intel software any longer for the WLAN key to work - on my V6V if I do not install the Intel software (only the driver) I cannot enable or disable wireless using the WLAN key on the notebook. Vista also found the Bluetooth controller and it too can be turned on or off with the key without any other software. For the time being I decided not to install the Toshiba bluetooth stack.

I did not install Power4Gear, rather used the built in tools for Vista. There is an icon in the system tray that allows choosing power plans. It was intersting to see that in battery saving mode as soon as I disconnect the power the nice Aero interface is gone in a second, so it would not eat the battery. It is nice to know I don't need to configure this separately. (Actually in this case what I mean by Aero is the glass like transparency effects of the interface. The window borders and controls still look the same when turned off.). I did one battery test so far in Vista. With wireless on, battery saving selected I was able to get 2 hours and 50 minutes before the 10% mark. I did web browsing, some instant messaging in Live Messenger (MSN), writing some text and browsing Vista settings. I am quite satisfied with this result.

I tried two games under Vista, Oblivion and World of Warcraft. Both games ran without problems, and I was really satisfied with the performance and quality of graphics.

Asus W7J with Core 2 Duo Review

2007-09-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

by David Nguyen

Overview and Introduction

While Asus notebooks remain relatively unknown to most consumers in North America, there is a large fan base that continues to grow due to the quality of Asus' notebooks. Outside of the continent, Asus is relatively well known in both Asia and Europe where they maintain a strong presence. Asus has two types of notebooks, AsMobile (aka Built-On Asus) and Ensembles. The former are configurable whitebooks that often come with a reseller's warranty while the latter are non-configurable, generally built better and better looking, and come with Asus' warranty.

The model I'm reviewing is an Asus Ensemble notebook, the W7J-3P076P, aka the W7 "refresh". This particular model is black, and as of the time of writing, the only color available in the United States. There does exist however, a pearl white version. The specifications are as follows

Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz
1 GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM (2x512 MB) with one being soldered
AUO B133EW01 13.3" WXGA (1280x800) Color Shine Screen (glossy)
Fujitsu MHV2100BH S-ATA 100 GB 5400 RPM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 PCI-E Graphics w/ 128 MB VRAM (256 MB w/ Turbo Cache)
Intel PRO Wireless 3945 a/b/g miniPCI
Matsushita UJ-850 DVD-RAM 8x Super Multi DVD Burner
6-Cell Li-Ion 4800mAh
Azailia compliant audio chip
1.3mp web camera (fixed)
Dimensions: 315mm x 226.5 x 29 -- 36.9mm (W x D x H) [12.4" x 8.92" x 1.142 -- 1.453"]
Windows XP Professional SP2

Reasons for Buying:

I am a graduate student who needed a computer to carry to school everyday but needed something with a little more power as I am using it to replace the desktop in my room due to space restrictions. While I do not do much hardcore gaming, often either playing my Nintendo DS or online games that do not require high end video cards, I still desired some gaming abilities.

My candidates were the Asus W7j, the Dell XPS M1210, and the Sony VAIO SZ. The Dell was quite nice. My coworker owns one and the build quality is easily superior to Dell's lower Inspiron line. It was also quite affordable as the price could easily be lowered by haggling with Dell's phone operators. Unfortunately I ruled out the XPS due to the screen being a little too small for use as a main computer, and the rather dim screen. The Sony SZ is a very attractive notebook, lighter and slimmer than both the W7j and the XPS with a nice brushed aluminum palm rest. The screen was also sharp and bright. In addition, the lower models such as the SZ340 were attractively priced. However the SZ did have an Achilles heel, being its keyboard. Being mushy and very flexy, I found it near impossible to adjust to, especially after using an IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad for so long. As a result, I opted for the W7j which recently re-released with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

Where and How Purchased:

I purchased my W7j through BTOtech.com formerly known as Geared2play.com. Its owner, Eddie, is a well known member in the NotebookReview forum often assisting Asus owners with their tech problems. For me personally, the fact that I will be able to remain in contact with the reseller who will be able to provide support long after I have made my purchase, is another reason why I opted purchasing from BTOtech over large online resellers such as NewEgg. In addition, BTOtech also offers the cheapest pricing on the W7j as of current.

What's Included:

Targus carrying bag, sleeve, and the box containing the actual W7j (view large image)

Opening the box, I found another large white box, which contains the notebook itself, and the sleeve and Targus carrying bag separately sealed. Prior to this purchase, I often wondered if there would be a good sleeve to carry my W7j in as I generally prefer backpacks over carrying bags. To my surprise Asus included a nice sleeve that fits snugly over the W7. There's a nice Asus logo the front of the sleeve and a magnetic button that seals it together. The Targus bag features two compartments inside, and one outside. However I found it to be too small to carry anything other than the notebook. It was already a bit of a stretch putting in the associated power supply and mouse.

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Inside the Targus carrying bag and W7j sleeve

Opening the white box produced a smaller box with software and accessories and the actual notebook being placed on top of it being held in air by two cardboard holders (don't worry its safe and something most manufacturers are switching to nowadays).

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The software includes CDs of various software including Nero, recovery discs, etc. While the picture does show a Windows XP Professional packet, inside was actually a recovery CD that includes Windows (and all the other pre-installed programs). Also included was a nice micro-fiber cleaning cloth that has been very useful in screen cleaning, and a business card featuring the numbers of international Asus centers should you need to contact them when traveling abroad.

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Hardware includes a nice Asus branded Logitech Bluetooth mouse with two sealed Fujitsu AA batteries, a three pronged power cord and the associated power brick as well as some Ethernet cables and an S-video cable. The "brick" measures 5in x 2.3in x 1in.

Build & Design:

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A 13.3" W7j placed on top of a 14.1" Dell D620. The Dell is raised higher due to it being mounted on a docking station to which I was not allowed to remove.

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13.3" Asus W7j placed on top of a 15.4" Apple G4 Powerbook. Interestingly the G4 has a similar profile to the D620 as well as the same height as the W7j when the lid is opened to the same angles. This is due to the way the G4's screen hinges behind the notebook, while the W7 hinges on top of the chassis. In addition, the W7 is also slightly thicker than the G4.

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W7j on top of an Apple Macbook, both being 13.3" notebooks. The Macbook is slightly wider, but is significantly thinner and has a lower profile when the lids are opened at the same angle. Again this is due to the screen hinging behind the chassis. The W7 however, has a significantly brighter screen.

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The W7j next to a Dell XPS M1210. Despite being a 12" laptop, both the W7j and XPS have similar dimensions, particularly in their height and thickness. The screen of the W7 however, is significantly brighter, while the XPS is dimmer than both the Asus and the Macbook.

The W7j is very solid. Upon pulling it out of the box, the feel instantly reminded me of the Dell Latitude D620 which is Dell's higher-end line, featuring a magnesium lid. Indeed, the W7j features a mixture of Carbon Fiber and plastic, ensuring a very sturdy lid and chassis. There is very little flex anywhere. If you press hard enough, there are some ripples near the middle of the lid, as well as a small amount of flex on the right palm rest, however the pressure required to create this flex is not natural.

The texture of the lid and palm rest is the same as the D620 we have at work, the only difference being that the W7j is black not dark grey. The camera on top is plastic and the hinges are quite sturdy. There is no creaking anywhere on this notebook. In the long run, it would probably be best to remove the two large stickers on the palm rest as they easily attract the dirt from your palms although I do admit, the left sticker has been useful as I have received numerous inquiries on the specs of my notebook, which is easily solved by pointing to the sticker which displays all the vital specs.

It should be noted that this design (as well as many Ensemble designs) do not feature a lid latch. Regardless the lid is very secure when closed and requires two hands to open. Grabbing the lid will result in some smudges left behind from your fingers which I find to be a minor problem, especially compared to the smudges left behind on a black Nintendo DS which are much more obvious.

While the W7's black lid attracts fingerprints, it is nowhere near as bad as those found on a black Nintendo DS (view large image)

Screen:

The W7j's screen is a glossy (or as Asus call's it, Colorshine) screen with a native resolution of 1280x800. While glossy screens tend to generate reflection under certain lighting conditions, I found the W7's screen to be less reflective than some of its contemporaries. As shown in the previous pictures, the W7 is significantly brighter than the Macbook and the Dell XPS M1210. There are 16 brightness settings, with the highest being a bit too bright! I often use it on the 13th or 14th notch.

The screen is very sharp and crisp easily rivaling the Sony SZ's screen. Horizontal angles are good while vertical angles are just okay. Unlike many 14.1" widescreens, finding the "sweet spot" on the W7's 13.3" screen is relatively easy. Unfortunately my model has two stuck pixels which can be replaced as Asus offers a zero bright dot policy in which consumers can have their panels replaced free of charge, provided it is within 30 days.

The screen in my particular unit is an AUO B133EW01, with a response time of 25ms, 16:10 aspect ratio, 400:1 contrast ratio, and brightness of 250cd/m^2. Detailed specifications of this notebook lcd can be found via this link.

The W7j includes software such as the "Asus Splendid Technology Utility" which adjusts the tone and brightness in order to optimize the presentation of different types of media.

The bottom is noticeably brighter than the top as with most notebooks (view large image)

Sound:

The speakers are located the lid right under the screen. As expected they are your typical notebook speakers where bass is lacking and sound isn't too great. However compared to my last two laptops, an IBM T series and a Fujitsu E series, the speakers on the W7j are superior. For those demanding a better sound experience, investing in a good headphone or external speakers should be considered.

What I like best about the sound of this laptop isn't the speaker itself, but the fact that there is an external sound dial on the right side, allowing me to change the volume with out resorting reaching out to the keyboard and pressing FN + F11/F12. While it may seem like a relatively minor feature, it is something that I use on a daily basis.

Processor and Performance:

The W7j has been refreshed to use Intel's latest Core 2 Duo processor, being 64-bit rather than 32-bit as on the Core Duo. However, unlike its bigger brother the A8jm, the W7j has been "reduced" to using a 1.66Ghz processor instead of a 1.83Ghz or a 2.0Ghz. This decision by Asus was made in order to keep W7j refresh prices the same as previous models. The Core 2 Duo will certainly appease those Windows Vista fanatics who demand a 64-bit processor in order to properly experience the new operating system. Indeed, there is a "Windows Vista Capable" sticker located on right palm rest.

Benchmarks and Gaming:

These benchmarks are based off stock drivers, no overclocking was done.

SuperPi: a program that calculates Pi to millions of digits, in this case we are using 2 million as the benchmark

Notebook	Time
Asus W7J (1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo)	1m 19s
Asus W7J (1.83GHz Core Duo)	1m 15s
Asus W3H760DD (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 33s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s

Asus ASMobile Z84Jp Review

2007-09-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

by Charles P. Jefferies

Overview & Introduction

Asus Z84Jp notebook (view large image)

The Asus Z84Jp is a 17” desktop replacement notebook designed for multimedia enthusiasts and home users wanting a large screen, powerful system performance, and moderate gaming capabilities. The Z84Jp features the latest in mobile computing, including Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology.

Our test unit is configured as follows:

17” WSXGA+ “Color Shine” display
Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 (2.16GHz/667MHz FSB/4MB L2)
Intel 945PM chipset
Intel 3945ABG wireless LAN
Nvidia GeForce Go7600 with 512MB dedicated RAM
Windows XP Professional – Windows Vista Ready
2GB DDR2-667 RAM
160GB 5400RPM SATA Hitachi hard drive
Built-in Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR module
Integrated 2MP web camera
4 speakers + integrated subwoofer
9-cell battery (Production units will have 6-cell battery (see Battery Life section for further information)
Dimensions:
- 8.8 lbs w/ 6-cell battery
- 15.5 x 11.3 x 1.4~1.7 inches

Asus priced our notebook at $1,900USD, which is a justifiable and competitive price in my opinion for these specifications compared to other notebooks in its price range. The Z84Jp is designed to be sold as a barebone notebook, which means the chassis only – the end user adds components. However, it is being sold as a partially complete or complete system by many online dealers.

Build & Design

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The Asus Z84Jp is comprised of entirely one color – black. It is black on the bottom, sides, top, inside, around the keyboard – you get the idea. There are no variations. The surface texture does change, however. The top 5/6 of the lid is glossy, as are the palmrests. The bottom 1/6 of the lid and the area surrounding the keyboard are horizontally-lined plastic, which is an interesting design choice; I haven't seen anything like it on other notebooks. It adds a touch of uniqueness.

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Let's talk for a moment about the glossy finish. The Z84Jp is Asus' first barebone to feature the new IMD (In-mold Decoration) panel finish. The finish looks like it is textured slightly underneath the glossy coat when viewed up close, and it glistens slightly. The IMD finish makes the Z84Jp look aerodynamic and adds flare. While I will admit the new finish does give the Z84Jp a sleek look, durability is compromised and it picks up dust and fingerprints too easily. Owners of this notebook will want to have a microfiber cloth on-hand, as well as a soft sleeve and/or carry bag to protect the finish. As long as the glossy finish is not subjected to any rough articles, there should be no worries.

As far as build quality goes, the Z84Jp is quite solid, and is better built than a typical mainstream notebook by a noticeable amount. What I mean when I say “better built” is that the Z84Jp feels more solid than a typical consumer-grade notebook from a mainstream manufacturer – it is constructed in such a way that it feels like one solid piece and reacts as such. When picked up, the Z84Jp doesn't make any creaking sounds, nor does it feel like there are any parts/panels that are weaker than others. The palmrests and the area around the keyboard feel solid; hard pressure will yield some flexing but largely there is none and under normal usage flex is nonexistent. The chassis itself proved to be inflexible and solid as a board when I tried to flex it. I am impressed by the build quality, although the plastic itself does not have the highest-quality feel to it. Don't get me wrong – it is strong and rather thick, but the feel isn't quite top notch in my opinion. Also note that the Z84Jp is constructed entirely of plastic – no aluminum or other alloys. This is not a negative in my opinion and was probably done as a cost reduction measure.

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The display is constructed ruggedly and is another component that sets this Asus apart from a mainstream notebook. It does flex when twisted, but considering this notebook has a 17” screen, it is both normal and unpreventable. The flex is minimal. When pressing in on the display from behind, no ripples appear on the screen. The display hinges are securely anchored to the chassis – there are three of them, instead of the usual two. This shows extra attention to detail and is another testament to the Asus' build quality.

Now let's discuss the physical design of the Z84Jp. As can probably be derived from the pictures, the Asus Z84Jp looks rather ordinary, and it is. It is not outstanding in any particular way and it does not appear to me as if the designers of the notebook made an attempt to make it so. Because the entire notebook is black, it is hard to pick out any design details unless it is viewed up close. The design is plain and squared off. If there's a plus side to the generic design, it would be that it probably helps to keep costs down, and that it doesn't try to look cool and fail. Asus played it safe.

Overall, the Z84Jp is well-constructed and holds its own from a build quality viewpoint, but has a generic design. It will look appealing to the end-user because of small details only noticeable up close, but to other people sparing passing glances, it will not require any more than that.

Screen

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The Z84Jp features a large 17” display with a WSXGA+ (1680x1050 pixels) resolution and a “Color Shine” glossy coating. How does it look? Simply put, it's gorgeous. It has more than enough brightness for all tasks; it even looks amply lit in a sunlight room. It is not too bright – I was not squinting or shielding my eyes. The display has 15 brightness settings; the lowest one turns the screen off. I found 7/15 and up to be usable during the daytime, and even lower ones are fine in darker rooms.

Contrast is equally as good as the brightness – blacks are deep and white is white and is not tinted. This display does not suffer from a sparkling effect like some notebooks do. Colors literally flow out of this screen, and high definition images and video look stunning.

Viewing angles are excellent; images are not distorted from above or to the side; when viewed from below, the display does appear darker like most displays, but the colors are kept basically intact.

Viewing angles from above (view large image)

Viewing angles from the side (view large image)

Everyone I showed this laptop to commented on how nice the display was. The display is a definite selling point in my opinion and is certainly a key selling point of this notebook.

Above the display lies a 2.0 megapixel integrated webcam. It provides excellent image quality and fluid frame rates. There is an integrated microphone right next to it, making the Z84Jp a suitable video conferencing platform.

Speakers

The Z84Jp's primary role is to provide entertainment, and what would entertainment be without good audio? Asus didn't skimp on the sound in this notebook – they put in four speakers and a subwoofer – that's 4.1 virtual surround sound. From games, to music, to movies, the sound quality and loudness is phenomenal. I have never heard louder speakers on a notebook. Standing in front of this notebook with the speakers at full makes you want to take a step back for your ear's sake. I would be willing to bet that I could take this notebook to a party and use it as the sound system. Even at 85% volume, the sound is not distorted, and the subwoofer, being as small as it is, provides enough bass to vibrate the surrounding surface that the notebook is sitting on. The entire setup is quite impressive in my opinion. Believe it or not, I have to say I consider the sound system to be a notable factor in buying this notebook. It's that good. Now, keep in mind that this is a notebook after all, and external speakers will easily outperform these. But for entertainment on the go? It doesn't get any better than this.

Processor and Performance

With a top-shelf Intel Core 2 Duo processor, I had high expectations for the Z84Jp's overall system performance. I tested this notebook using both Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 and Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. All benchmarks were done under Windows XP unless otherwise noted.

Testing notes: Hard drive was fully defragmented prior to benchmark tests; frames per second (FPS) were determined based on the built-in benchmarking utility in FRAPS; benchmarks were run a minimum of two times to ensure repeatable results; minimal background processes were running while benchmarking; video drivers used: XP – 86.47 (I was unable to install alternate video drivers – the system would not recognize them); Vista – 97.52; all benchmarks performed with default video clocks of 350MHz:350MHz core:memory.

General System Performance

Super Pi Comparison Results

Super Pi forces the processor to calculate Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy and gives an idea of the processor speed and performance:

Notebook	Time
Asus Z84Jp (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo)	0m 58s
Fujitsu LifeBook A6010 (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 22s
LG S1 (2.16 GHz Core Duo)	1m 11s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s

HDTune Hard Drive Benchmark

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Windows Vista Experience Results

Vista has a built-in scoring system to indicate how well the PC will run the OS, the Z84Jp scored well:

PCMark05 System Results Comparison

PCMark05 tests the system performance as a whole, below we have recorded the PCMark05 when running both XP and Vista:

Source: Notebookreview

Asus V2Je Review

2007-09-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

by Akhil Parujanwala, Canada

Asus V2Je Introduction and Overview

The Asus V2JE is a new high-end business 14” notebook. The V2JE offers a sleek design with silver accenting. The Asus V2JE reviewed here comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor (T7200), 14” WXGA+ (1440x900) screen, ATI Mobility X1450 256MB (512 hypermemory) graphics card, 8x DVD-RW Super Multi drive, 120GB hard drive spinning @ 5400rpm and 1GB DDR2 RAM @ 667mhz. The laptop is pre-installed with Vista Business, it also comes with a 2-year Asus Global Warranty and Zero Bright Dot Guarantee for 30 days. The notebook offers many features which will be described in the review.

Reasons for Purchasing

The Asus V2JE is a 14” notebook that is targeted at business users looking for great features and flexibility. The notebook has a great screen with a higher than normal resolution (1440 x 900) compared to other 14” notebooks. This allows you to fit more on the screen, albeit graphics and text will be slightly smaller than with an XGA display. The price of the V2JE is $1,800 USD and $2,150 CAD. It is expected that a 3.5G version of the V2 will be released in the future at a ~$500 premium.

Here is a list of other similar competing notebooks one may look at when shopping for business notebooks:

ThinkPad (Lenovo) T60 14”
HP Compaq nc6400
Toshiba Tecra M5.

The Asus V2Je can be purchased from any Certified Asus retailer. The V2JE is one of the top business notebook contenders for the performance, price and quality.

Specs for the V2Je as reviewed:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0 GHz; 667 MHz w/ 4mb Cache)
Display: 14" WXGA+ (1440 x 900) Color Shine, part # AUO1247
Mobile Intel 945 PM Express Chipset + ICH7M
Memory: 1GB DDR2 667 (1x 1024mb)
Hard Drive: 120GB @5400RPM SATA
Graphic: ATI Mobility Radeon X1450 256MB (512MB Hypermemory)
Wireless: Built-In Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G
Optical: 8x Super Multi DVD Burner
Battery: The 6 cells, 4800mah, 11.1V and 53whr. 9 cell 7800mah, 11.1V and 85whr.
Operating System: Windows Vista Business
Dimensions: 13.5” length x 10.7” width x 1.3”/1.5” height (front back).
Weight: 5.1lbs with 6 cell and 5.4lbs with 9 cells
Warranty: ASUS 2 Years Global Warranty + Zero Bright Dot LCD Policy (30 Days)
Ports: 1x Express Card, 1x VGA port, 1x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF), 1x Microphone-in jack, 1x RJ11 Modem, 1x RJ45 LAN, 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1x IEEE 1394 port, 1x TV-Out, 1x Docking Port, 1x -DVI, 1x Kensington
6-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/SD/Mini-SD/XD/Memory Stick/MS Pro)

What's in the Box?

Asus V2JE 14" Notebook
Standard Capacity; 6 Cell and extended battery 9 cell.
Asus Design Gaming Series Notebook Backpack made by Targus
Asus Wireless Mouse made by Logitech (USB Dongle)
U-DVI to DVI Cable/Adapter
Asus Cable Holder Strap (Used to wrap around your cables for travel)
AC Adapter (19v DC, 1.5A, 90W)
Software:
- AsusDVD (CD)
- PowerDirector Pro (CD)
- Medi@Show (CD)
- Nero Burning Rom OEM Suite (CD)
- V2 Driver and Utility (CD)
- Asus Recovery Disc for Windows Vista Business (DVD)

Packaging

The packaging of the V2JE is nice, just like most other Asus laptops. Asus decided to use a basic V2 box, instead of a box with a colorful design like other Asus laptops have. There is no rattling inside the box, everything is tightly packed. The overall weight of the shipping box is good, not too heavy, but also not light.

Design

The Asus V2JE has a very clean design, it will appeal to business users. The color of the laptop is primarily a dark grey and a carbon fiber black which gives the notebook a contemporary look. The laptop has silver accents which mimic the similar Asus V1JP model. There is a silver trim around the lid, the edge of the chassis and around the touchpad.

My initial impression of the laptop was that it would be fit for a business user looking for styling, good performance, and a swivel webcam and fingerprint reader. The design is very inviting, and once you open the laptop, you see a very clean design. The webcam draws you in, and also the silver accent around the touchpad with the fingerprint reader in the middle of the buttons.

Screen

The screen on the Asus V2JE is quite nice and is glossy. It is 14” and widescreen with a resolution of 1440x900 (WXGA+) which is great, because this allows users to have more real-estate compared to other laptops that only come with a 1280x768 resolution. I ran Everest Ultimate to find out the screen manufacturer is AUO, model number AUO1247. I feel that this screen is pleasant to use.

The lid does not have a latch; it does take 2 hands to open the laptop due to the stiff hinges. This is just like the W3 series, it closes shut and stays that way, and it will not open on its own.

The horizontal viewing angles are very wide. I am able to see text, icons and images from roughly 145 degrees from the center. The vertical viewing angles are not so good, they only allow for a little leeway before they wash out. Probably offering around 100 degrees of decent viewing up and down.

The brightness of the screen is good, there are 16 levels of brightness total. The lowest level does not turn the screen black, and I feel comfortable using the lowest screen brightness for work and optimizing battery life. At the highest brightness, I also felt comfortable; it is great to use it when watching movies and doing some gaming.

Maximum Brightness <---------------------------------------> Minimum Brightness

When considering the backlight there is some light leakage at the bottom of the screen. The contrast levels look good. Overall I found the screen to perform quite well under all situations, gaming, movies and regular use.

Keyboard

Asus provides a spill proof keyboard that can withstand a small spill of your drink. One of the things I really like is that Asus placed the FN key to the right of the CTRL key. So now the CTRL key is on the far left corner. This is how keyboards are supposed to be in my opinion, thumbs up for that!

The keyboard is black with white lettering that is slightly grey. The sizing of the keys is great. I felt comfortable typing on the notebook. The keys have a good amount of travel and the sound of the clicking is soft, I would feel comfortable typing in a class or library setting without disturbing others.

There is a considerable amount of flex on the right side of the keyboard. I don’t feel that it hinders my ability to type. The middle of the keyboard has some flex and the right side of the laptop has little to no flex.

Touchpad

The touchpad area is aesthetically pleasing, and using it is even more enjoyable. I am able to glide my finger across the touchpad as if it was silk. You can really feel the quality of the touchpad.

The touchpad buttons are also good, they have an ergonomic shape and the pressure required to press them is decent. The buttons are not as soft as with the Asus G2, but not as stiff as the Asus V1JP.

Features

Webcam

The Asus V2JE is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel swivel camera located above the screen. The quality of the camera is decent; I would feel comfortable using it for video conferencing. There is a flash included so that if you're taking a picture of something close up, then it will brighten the picture, here’s an example below.

Without Flash-------------------------------------------------With Flash

Spill proof keyboard

Asus integrated a spill proof keyboard for those users who may accidentally spill a small amount of liquid on the laptop. This is a great feature -- no I have not tested this, nor do plan to!

3.5G Wireless

This is an optional feature on the V2JE which costs an estimated $500 to integrate. This will allow you to connect to the internet wirelessly using a special service, and it is much faster than the previous 3G technology. This is a great feature for those people who need to be on the internet at high speeds on the road.

Docking Station

The docking station is something new to Asus laptops, and fortunately the V2JE has a docking station port located at the bottom of the laptop. The docking station has a variety of ports that allow users to connect more devices.

Bluetooth 2.0

The V2JE has a nice toggle switch at the front of the laptop which turns on and off the Bluetooth and WIFI. Bluetooth technology allows users to connect up to 8 wireless devices such as a mouse, keyboard, headset, cell phone and more.

Fingerprint Reader

Many business users are looking for additional security, and Asus offers the fingerprint reader so that it can further protect the data on the notebook. It is located in between the touchpad buttons and is easy to use after a few tries.

Wireless

The V2JE has a toggle switch in which you can turn the WiFi and Bluetooth on and off at the same time. If you want one or the other, turn on the switch and then use the software, FN + F2 to change which wireless connectivity you want. The WiFi worked great, it was very fast around the store I was testing this in.

Sound System

The speakers are located at the front of the laptop and face slightly downward, the sound emanates to the user in front. The treble sounds good, the loudness of the speakers is good, however there is an evident lack of bass. The sound card is a Realtek High Definition Audio.

The sound quality using headphones and ear buds is excellent, just as expected. The treble and bass are clear and crisp .Overall I found the speakers to be good, since this is a 14” laptop you really can’t expect much more than this.

Input and Output Ports

Front Side Ports

Left Speaker
Right Speaker
WIFI Toggle Switch

Right Side Ports

Mic In
Headphone Jack (SPDIF)
ExpressCard Slot
6-1 SD Card Reader
8x DVDRW Supermulti
LAN Port
Modem Port
USB Port
1394 Port

Left Side Ports

Vent
VGA out
S-Video
U-DVI
2x USB

Back side Ports

Battery Bay
Power Input
Kensington Lock Port

LED Indicators

Power
Battery
Email
WIFI
Bluetooth

Lid LED Indicators

Power
Battery

Build Quality

Asus is known for making quality products, let’s look into how the V2JE performs under certain stress tests of quality. Firstly, the lid and screen section is one of the most used parts of a laptop aside form the keyboard. The bottom of the lid is strong, where the hinges are located, I am able to apply a considerable amount of pressure to the lid. When I am applying pressure to the middle of the lid there is some flex and evident rippling. At the top of the lid where the webcam is located, there is a considerable amount of flex, and the entire top portion does move.

The hinges are very sturdy; they hold the screen up very well. There is only a little amount of wobbling, and there is no creaking sound. I feel very comfortable using the laptop in any position and remain confident the screen will hold its position.

As previously mentioned, the keyboard has a considerable amount of flex in the right and middle, but little to no flex on the left hand side. Overall the quality of the keyboard is good, and having the extra feature of a spill proof keyboard keeps me from worrying.

The wrist pads, also known as palm rests, are indeed very strong, giving very little flex when excessive amounts of pressure is applied. I am very pleased about this.

I feel comfortable carrying and holding the laptop in my hands and in different positions. Overall I find the build quality to be good, it does share similar flex issues with the V1JP, however I feel confident that this will not be a problem.

Size and Weight

The length of the V2JE is 13.5”, the width is 10.7” and the thickness is 1.3”/1.5” (front back). The weight of the laptop is 5.1 pounds with the 6 cell battery. When placing the 9 cell extended battery into the laptop, it weighs roughly 5.4 pounds. The 9-cell battery protrudes about half an inch outwards from the back of the laptop.

Overall the laptop feels very nice to carry, it is light and the size is just right. I would feel comfortable taking it to school in a backpack with other books inside, or to work in a briefcase with a sleeve.

Heat and Noise

I have used the notebook for very long stretches of time -- installing applications, running benchmarks, browsing the internet and typing. Only the right side gets mildly warm, the right palm rest and keyboard area. The touchpad also gets warm. The left side of the laptop is cool and only gets as warm as your skin is touching it. Overall I am happy that the vent is on the left side since I use mouse on the right hand side. During gaming the heat remains at reasonable levels, but there is warm air coming out of the vent, and the right side of the laptop.

Overall the noise is only evident when you place your ear near the left side of the laptop, then you will hear the vent blowing out air and some clicking sounds. These sounds are not easy to hear and I would feel very comfortable using this in school and in work.

Processor and Performance

The Asus V2JE is equipped with a fast 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, and using it in Vista, I don’t feel any slow downs. Overall the notebook performed well in Vista while doing light to medium tasks. I also had Aero Glass running the entire time. To further see how well the notebook performs, please check out the benchmarks and gaming portion of the review.

Battery Life

I normally test battery life under the following settings to maximize battery life for real life usage. Using the 9-cell battery, the screen brightness will be 1/16, in Vista the power mode is battery saving. The battery life under these conditions is 3 hours and 35 minutes . When I changed the brightness to 100% (16/16) the battery life fell to 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Using the 6 cell battery, the screen brightness will be 1/16, in Vista the power mode is battery saving. The battery life is2 hours and 05 minutes under these condistions. When I changed the brightness to 100% (16/16) the battery life becomes 1 hour and 45 minutes.

The 9 cell battery has 7800mah, 11.1V, which results in an 85whr battery which is really nice and big. The 6 cell battery has 4800mah and 11.1V, which results in a 53whr, which is a normal sized battery.

I found the battery life to be poorer than I expected. I was expecting closer to 2 hours and 45 minutes on the 6 cell battery, while I was expecting 4 hours and 15 minutes using the 9 cell battery. I do find that this to be one of the negatives to the Asus V2JE, and we can not only blame the laptop, but Windows Vista may have contributed negatively to the battery life.

Comparison

Here are some comparison picture of the Asus V2JE beside an Asus V1JP. As you can see, the V2 is smaller than the V1. Also, the V2 is about them same thickness as the V1, there is only 1-2 millimeters in difference.

When I compare the V2JE to the Asus W3 series and A8 series notebooks you can see that they are similar in size and dimensions. The V2 weighs less than the W3 and you can feel it. The V2 and W3 are roughly the same in thickness only 1-2 millimeters in difference.

Benchmarks

Super Pi Comparison Results

Super Pi forces the processor to calculate Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy and gives an idea of the processor speed and performance:

Notebook	Time
Asus V2Je (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz)	1m 05s
Apple MacBook Pro (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo)	0m 58s
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T2400)	59s
Asus W3H760DD (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 33s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s

Asus F5R Review

2007-09-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

Source: Notebookreview

Introduction and Overview

The Asus F5R is a new 15.4" screen notebook targeted at the budget market. The Asus F5R has a simple silver and black design that is common amongst consumer style notebooks. This laptop is expected to come with Windows Vista Home Global, 2-year Asus Global Warranty and a 30-day Zero Bright Dot Guarantee. The notebook offers the basics of what consumers are looking for in an affordable price range.

Reasons for Purchasing

The Asus F5R is a 15.4” notebook that is targeted at users looking for basic home uses. It offers the essential features needed in a PC for productivity work. Also included as a nice extra is a rotating webcam for video conferencing. The price of the Asus F5R is estimated at $900 USD and $1,100 CAD.

Some of the other notebooks users shopping for the F5R may want to look at in this target market are:

HP dv6000 series
Dell 1504/E6400
Compaq v6000 series
Toshiba Satellite A135
Acer Aspire 500 series
Sony VAIO FE Series

Specs of the Asus F5R as reviewed:

Processor: Intel Core Duo T2250 1.6GHz
Display: 15.4” WXGA (1280x800) with Color Shine (glossy screen)
Memory: 1GB DDR2
Hard Drive: 120GB @ 5400rpm
Optical Drive: 8x Super-multi drive burner
Wireless: Integrated 802.11b/g
Battery: 6 Cells, 4400mah, 11.1V and 49whr
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Dimensions: 14.4” length x 10.3” width, 1.1”/1.4” height (front/back)
Weight: ~5.8-6lbs with 6 cell battery
Warranty: 2 years Asus Global Warranty and 30 ZBD Guarantee

Design

The laptop has a very simple look to it, certainly basic and unsophisticated. The webcam draws attention due to its look and the fact it can swivel. The lid is silver with a small indentation for some extra styling. The bezel around the screen is black, while the webcam that sits above the screen is silver. The palm rests are silver and the chassis is black. The notebook is made of plastic, but that’s what you can expect for a laptop targeted at the budget buyer market.

When I first saw the laptop it did look appealing. I lifted it and moved it around and it definitely felt lighter than most other 15.4” notebooks I have tested.

Screen

The Asus F5R has a 15.4” screen, the resolution is 1280x800 (WXGA). The screen is pleasant to use and easy for viewing, personally I am used to higher resolutions such as 1680x1050, but the lower resolution screen was certainly fine and actually more standard.

The horizontal viewing angles are good; they are roughly 145 degrees on both sides. The vertical viewing angles are not as great, roughly 100 degrees, meaning you will need to keep yourself squared for vertical viewing.

The screen brightness it adequate for most users, but I would have liked a brighter screen. Overall I feel that the screen is satisfactory for normal users.

Keyboard

The keyboard is black with white lettering which has a touch of grey. The keyboard keys feel a little small but they are ergonomically placed. The keys do make an audible click sound when pushed, but I would still feel comfortable using the laptop in a library or school setting. Just be aware nearby people may notice it and look at you. The Fn key is on the far left and it is a nuisance to reach for, many of the Asus laptop keyboards are like this, it will just take some time getting used to.

There is a reasonable amount of flex on the entire notebook, it did not hinder my ability to type and use the keyboard. There is a considerable amount of travel for the keys which is nice to see, and overall I am satisfied with the keyboard.

Touchpad

The touchpad looks a little outdated in terms of style, but my finger does glide across it nicely. I felt that the touchpad was responsive, but I would have liked a slightly larger one.

The touchpad button is a single bar that has two sensors under it; one for left click and one for right click. It was just slightly hard to press compared to other laptops.

Features

Webcam

The webcam is 1.3 mega pixels and it swivels. Asus provides a program called LifeFrame2 which is used with the webcam. The program offers many great new features compared to the previous program.

Wireless

The F5R has a toggle switch to turn on and off the WIFI; it is located on the left side of the notebook. The wireless connectivity was strong, I was able to move the laptop around the entire building and keep a strong signal.

Sound System

The speakers are located at the front of the laptop and face slightly downwards. The sound emanates towards the user. The quality of the treble is good and I found that the speakers were loud enough for personal use. As expected, there is a lack of bass. I tested movies and music and found that the sound was okay, with the caveat that there's no bass.

The soundcard is High Definition Audio Device, however it is lacking many features found in Realtek or SoundMax sounds cards. When using headphones and ear buds the sound quality is excellent just as expected. The treble and bass sound good.

Input and Output Ports

Front Side Ports:

Left Speaker
MultiMedia Card Reader
Latch
Right Speaker

Right Side Ports:

8x DVDRW SuperMulti

Left Side Ports:

LAN Port
Modem Port
3x USB
WIFI Toggle Switch
ExpressCard Slot
Mic In
Headphone Jack (SPDIF)

Back side Ports:

Kensington lock port
Power Input
Vent
USB
VGA output

LED Indicator and Buttons:

Hard Drive Usage
Numlock
Capslock
Scroll Lock

Build Quality

In terms of build quality, the Asus F5R seems to be good. The lid shows some flex but does not ripple, even under excessive pressure. The hinges hold the screen well, there is little wobbling and there are three hinges to hold it in place. It takes two hands to open the laptop with the latch design it has.

As previously mentioned, the keyboard flexes all over, but it does not hinder my ability to type. The keyboard feels a little cheap and a little noisy but it is still satisfactory. The palm rests also have a little bit of flex under normal usage.

Overall the quality of the laptop is good. It does feel plasticky in some areas, but that’s what you can expect from a laptop of this caliber and target market.

Size and Weight

The dimensions of the laptop are 14.4” length x 10.3” width, 1.1”/1.4” height (front/back) and the weight is around 5.8-6lbs with the 6 cell battery. When I first picked up the laptop, it felt very light in my hands. It felt much lighter than the 15.4" screen sized Asus V1JP and Asus G1. Also, it was thinner than other notebooks I have tested. I was pleased by the dimensions and weight of the notebook, I wouldn’t find it too much of a problem to carry this notebook to school or work with other supplies or books.

Heat and Noise

The laptop is quite cool, even after several hours of use. Only the touchpad gets warm, the rest of the laptop just gets slightly warm. During intensive CPU tasks, like benchmarks and installing, the laptop is still only relatively warm.

Noise from the laptop is extremely minimal. Even if you put your ear to the vent you will hear only a slight amount of fan noise.

Processor and Performance

I found the Core Duo processor be a little outdated in terms of the current technology and speed. For the target market it can be acceptable. While using Vista the notebook felt snappy, so I was happy with that. Unfortunately there is no real gaming potential. I had AeroGlass on the entire time. I would liked to have seen the Core 2 Duo T5500 over the Core Duo, but it was used to reduce the cost.

Battery Life

Here's a couple of battery life scenarios:

Using the 6 cell battery
Screen brightness set to 1/16 (dimmest)
Vista set to battery saving power mode

The battery life is 1 hour and 30 minutes

Using the 6 cell battery
Screen brightness at full (16/16)
Vista set to battery saving power mode

The battery life was 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The 6 cell battery has 4400mah, 11.1V, which is a 49whr battery which is a decent size, but small when compared to other notebooks. The overall battery life is quite poor.

Overall the battery life was not up to my expectations; I would have liked closer to 3 hours of battery life. Vista could have had an effect on the battery life, another method in which you can increase battery life is to turn off AeroGlass and disable the webcam in the device manager. Making these changes could yield another 30 minutes or so of battery life.

Comparison

Here are some pictures comparing the Asus F5R and the Asus V1JP side by side. As you can see, the dimensions are very similar. The weight difference is noticeable, the F5R weighing in at 6lbs and the V1JP weighing in at 6.5lbs.

Benchmarks

SuperPi Benchmark Results

Notebook	Time
Asus F5R (Intel Core Duo 1.6GHz)	2m 55s
MSI M677 (1.8 GHz Turion X2)	1m 53s
Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s
LG S1 (2.16 GHz Core Duo)	1m 11s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s

PCMark05 Results

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Asus F5R (Intel Core Duo 1.6GHz, Intel GMA 950)	1,870 PCMarks
Fujtisu Siemens Amilo Xi1554 Review (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1900, Windows XP)	5,066 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1600)	4,621 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus Z84Jp (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7600)	4,739 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400)	3,646 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks

Windows Experience Index

HDTune Hard Drive results

Accessories and Miscellaneous

The accessories and software CDs are going to be just like many other Asus notebooks. They will provide the driver, recovery, media discs, and other accessories that are typical for Asus notebooks.

Pros

Build Quality - Asus build quality lives up to its name
Heat and Noise - The notebook is very quiet and cool
Weight and Dimensions - Regular size, but low weight
Webcam - Swivel Webcam
Screen - It is quite nice

Cons

Performance - compared to today and current competitors it lacks in performance
Battery Life - Low amount of battery life
Keyboard Flex - The keyboard has a considerable amount of flex

Conclusion

In conclusion the Asus F5R is a basic notebook that will fit the needs of a mainstream user. However, the weak points are battery life, older Core Duo processor instead of the current Core 2 Duo technology, and keyboard with flex. For the price of $900 USD, this notebook does offer a great swivel webcam and a nice chassis design though, and is worth a look if it fits your needs and budget.

Asus G1S-A1 Review

2007-09-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

by Won-Suk Choi

The Asus G1 15.4" laptop was released at the end if 2006 and recently Asus has updated that model with the Santa Rosa based G1S. This G1S defies traditional categorization since it provides gaming performance while maintaining a mobile capability. Normally gaming notebooks are isolated to larger entertainment style laptops that have low battery life. However, the powerful Asus G1S can provide excellent multimedia and gaming performance while remaining portable with good battery life.

Asus G1S (view large image)

Specifications as reviewed:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 2.2 GHz 4MB L2 Cache 800MHz FSB,
Santa Rosa Intel Mobile 965 PM Express Chipset + ICH8M
2 GB RAM 667MHz (up to 4GB supported)
Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT, 256 MB onboard, 512 MB Turbo Cache DX 10 Capable HDCP support for DVI port
160 GB HDD Seagate Momentus 7200.2, 7200 rpm SATA 300 (upgrade from 160 GB 5400rpm)
15.4” WSXGA+ (1680x1050) ColorShine TFT-LCD Asus Splendid Video Intelligent Technology
8X DVD Super Multi drive with LightScribe
Intel Integrated HD audio (Azalia), Bluetooth v2.0
Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11 a/b/g/n
Ports:
- 1 x Express Card
- 1 x Microphone-in jack
- 1 x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF)
- 1 x Line-in jack
- 1 x VGA port
- 1 x DVI-D port
- 4 x USB 2.0 ports
- 1 x IEEE 1394 port
- 1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
- 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
- 1 x TV-out(S-Video)
- 1 x eSATA
- 1 x HDMI
- 1 x Memory card reader (MMC, SD, MS, MS-Pro)
Accessories Provided:
- 1 Optical Gaming Mouse (Logitech)
- 1 AC Adaptor
- 1 Targus Backpack
- 3 recovery CDs (1 for vista, 1 for drivers and 1 for Nero burning software)
O/S and other software:
- Windows Vista Home Premium (32 bit)
- Assorted Asus Utilities

Included software (view large image)

Reasons for Buying

Asus G1S out of the box (view large image)

My 4-year old Dell Inspiron 8600 was getting old and unstable, so I decided to start shopping around and got very frustrated with the usual big manufacturer names. They touted customizability for their notebooks, but sometimes only allow one choice. I was not getting the flexibility I needed to build a system I needed. I wanted a powerful gaming laptop in a package no larger than 15.4” screen size since I take my laptop to school on a daily basis. Once I looked outside of the mainstream manufacturers I found Asus and their G1s offering and it fit the bill perfectly for what I needed -- a powerful system, nicely designed and with the latest components in a 15.4" screen form factor.

(view large image)

Where Purchased

I narrowed down my retail choices for buying the Asus G1S to GentechPC.com and MilestonePC.com. Both retailers had decent ratings on review websites I found, but I decided to go with Gentech PC due to their slightly lower price ($1,929 as opposed to $1,999). I was very happy with the service I received at Gentech PC, and a tip of the hat goes to Ken Lee there who accommodated my every request and was very patient with the thousands of questions I had for him.

Design and Build Quality

The Asus G1s has a solid construction and nice finish. I was particularly worried about having a wobbly screen as my Dell Inspiron 8600 is a nightmare in that department. Thankfully the hinges of my new Asus were solid and the screen only wobbled very slightly. The glossy carbon fibre finish is a very nice touch.

Asus G1S underside (view large image)

The only issue I really have with the design of the G1S is with the placement of the USB ports. They are all clumped in the back. Since laptop users often make use of peripheral devices, clumping the USB ports in one location is not the best thing to do. For example, if one had to use a USB key, the key would hamper access to the USB port below it. I consider this a minor issue though.

Input and Output Ports

The Asus G1S has the following ports:

1 x TypeII PCMCIA slot
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF)
1 x Line-in jack
1 x VGA port
1 x DVI-D port
4 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x IEEE 1394 port (4 pin)
1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
1 x TV-out(S-Video)

Asus G1 Left side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Right side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Front side view (view large image)

Asus G1 Back view (view large image)

As you can see, all of the USB ports are clumped on the back side, which is a bit unfortunate in my opinion.

Screen

The laptop has a native resolution of WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) displayed on a 15.4-inch TFT screen.

There are no dead pixels on this screen, if there were Asus has a 30 day zero-bright-dot guarantee so you can be confident you could resolve such an issue anyway. There is no ghosting on the screen. I am very happy with the screen so far and it is a huge step up from my old inspiron 8600.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard has great tactile response and is quiet. The keyboard is well built and key placement is quite intuitive. I don't like how the “Home”, “PgUp”, “PgDn” and “End” keys are in a vertical row at the very end of the keyboard, but this will not be a problem in the long run as I get used to it. The palm rest for the keyboard is made of brushed aluminum which looks and feels great.

I really like the “feel” of the touchpad. Instead of a smooth texture, it feels almost rough, which gives great feedback when using the touchpad. The buttons are made of brushed aluminium and likewise feel solid and give great feedback when pressed. The buttons don't feel like a cheap plastic button that gets loose after a while, such as what happened on my Dell Inspiron 8600.

Touchpad closeup (view large image)

I was particularly impressed with the keyboard and touchpad since factors such as tactile feedback and the like really reflect the manufacturer’s attention to detail and demonstrates that they are looking to manufacture the complete package and not just slap a decent graphics card and processor in a plastic box.

Included free mouse (view large image)

Speakers

The main issue I have with the G1S is regarding the built in speakers. While there is a certain expectation of poor quality for laptop speakers, the G1S has speakers that do not even attain the average for laptops. They are tinny and the sounds echo as though the speakers were alone in a large chamber. Even when you're right next to the laptop, the speakers sound as though they were in another room with the door closed. It seems most likely to be poor placement and low quality speakers with bad fidelity. My Inspiron 8600 has much better speakers, which thankfully is the only department my old laptop surpasses my new one. It definitely is not a sound card issue as the sound card is very passable with headphones or external speakers. But this might just be the audiophile in me talking and in the big picture, I don’t expect to make heavy use of the laptop speakers and will use my Creative Gigaworks speakers instead (which are highly recommended for gaming).

Processing Speed and Games

The laptop has excellent start up time and is very responsive. I have run movies while chatting, browsing and typing all at the same time with no problems whatsoever. Vista is new to me, but the interface is much improved and I find it intuitive

So far I have played Supreme Commander at 1024x768 and high levels of detail with no problems at all (the settings were on no antialiasing and low shadow, but texture details and other details on high). Command and Conquer 3 posed absolutely no problems and was played on the highest level of detail.

As a side note, I would highly recommend the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 (upgrade available from Gentech) as it is very quiet and the SATA 300 makes it very quick. I am no expert when it comes to the architecture of the computer, but I suspect that the quick hard drive load times might explain my slightly higher 3DMark 06 scores that others seem to be getting with the G1S.

Unfortunately, I do not use CAD programs or similarly demanding professional software so I am unable to comment on the computer’s performance in that regard. Lastly, the bloatware supplied by Asus is time consuming and tedious to remove, but other than that, I am very pleased with the performance of the computer.

Benchmarks

All graphics benchmarks were run with settings at 1024x768 no anti-aliasing, optimal filtering, HLSL VS and PS target: 3_0

3DMark05 Results and comparison:

3DMark05 tests the graphics processing capabilities of a system:

Notebook	3D Mark 05 Results
Asus G1S (Core 2 Duo T7500 2.20GHz, NVidia 8600M)	7,704 3D Marks
Asus G1J (Core 2 Duo, 2.0GHz, NVIDIA 7700)	4,247 3D Marks
Asus W7J (Core Duo 1.83GHz, NVIDIA 7400)	1,974 3D Marks
Asus W3J (1.83Ghz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	3,925 3D Marks
Sony VAIO SZ2 (2.16GHz Core Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 7400)	1,851 3D Marks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	4,236 3D Marks
Alienware Aurora M-7700 (AMD Dual Core FX-60, Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	7,078 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, NVIDIA Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3D Marks

3DMark06 Comparison Results:

3DMark06 tests the graphics capabilities of a system, it is more demanding than 3DMark05.

Notebook	3DMark 06 Results
Asus G1S (Core 2 Duo T7500 2.20GHz, NVidia 8600M)	3,816 3D Marks
Asus G1J (Core 2 Duo, 2.0GHz, NVIDIA 7700)	2,389 3D Marks
HP nc8430 (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	1,745 3D Marks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,528 3D Marks
Dell Precison M90 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia Quadro FX 1500M)	3,926 3D Marks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	4,085 3D Marks
Compal HEL80 (2.0GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7600 256MB)	1,654 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744 3D Marks

Windows Vista Experience Index

The built-in Windows Vista Experience Index benchmark indicates that the G1S will have absolutely no problems running Vista:

(view large image)

Wireless and Bluetooth

The new Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless card seems greatly improved over my old wireless card in the Inspiron 8600 and consistently gets 1mb/s download rates and above on a cable connection with an 802.11g wireless router. A 579 MB program downloaded in 9 min and 36 seconds. My old Inspiron with an older a/b/g card maxes out on the same connection at 300kb/s for the same download (same download location, same file).

The Bluetooth works well and I managed to sync my Treo 680 with my laptop with no problems.

Heat and noise

I was quite impressed with the heat management on this computer, after playing Supreme Commander for a few hours, the heat levels were still low.

I was likewise impressed with the noise. The cooling fan is quiet and the Seagate hard drive was extremely quiet. The DVD player was somewhat louder but will only be a problem in a room with zero ambient noise.

Battery Life

The battery life is decent for the G1S. I watched a movie on the power saving mode and the battery went for 2hrs 30 minutes with about 6% left. Not astounding battery life, but definitely decent for this sized laptop.

Conclusion

The G1S-A1 is a great buy with solid build quality and good performance for the price. I definitely recommend this laptop. I also highly recommend getting this laptop from Gentech PC as they did a great job of accommodating my somewhat demanding requests for changes in configuration and shipping as well as my constant stream of questions.

Pros

Solid build quality from the high quality screen to the minutiae such as the tactile feedback from the keyboard, touchpad and buttons
Very good processing performance.
Decent pricing
Very nice aesthetic that is well suited to its gaming purpose.

Cons

Poor speakers
Minor problems such as clumping of the USB ports and personal preferences for the positioning of the Home, PgUp, PgDn and End keys.
Bloatware

Source: Notebookreview

Asus F3sv-A1 Review

2007-09-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Source: Notebookreview

by Gautam Jagannath

The Asus name has been synonymous with quality notebooks, and the F3sv-A1 certainly exemplifies it. The F3sv-A1 is a replacement for the previous F3j line of notebooks, sporting a new build, motherboard while still preserving the high-end yet budget gaming experience.

I purchased the Asus F3sv-A1 for $1,425, and received a 3% cash rebate via Fatwallet, bringing the total to $1,383.

The notebook arrived packed very neatly in a sleek corrugated cardboard box with a plastic handle. Asus provided a funky, spacious messenger bag and an Asus branded Logitech optical mouse along with the notebook. These additions gave the purchase a very polished touch.

Specs

Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB
Intel PM965 Series Crestline Chipset 800MHz FSB + ICH8M (Santa Rosa)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
15.4" WXGA+(1440x900) LCD
1024MB x 1 DDR2 667MHz; two sockets for expansion up to 4GB
160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS with built-in 256MB VRAM (TurboCache up to 512MB w/ 1GB RAM and 1GB w/ 2GB RAM) & DX10 support
8x Super-Multi DVD-RW Dual Layer with LightScribe
Intel Wireless 4965AGN Draft-N Wi-Fi network adapter
Built-in 1.3M webcam with 240 degree swivel and LED lighting
Bluetooth, Fingerprint Scanner, 8-in-1 card reader
6 Cell Li-Ion Battery
Fax/Modem/LAN/WLAN
A/C Adapter Output: 19 V DC, 90W, Worldwide (100V-240V)
6.5 lbs & 14.2" * 10.5" * 1.1"-1.6"
BIOS Booting / HDD User Password Protection and security lock
Kensington Lock Slot
Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
Built-in Fingerprint Reader

In The Box

F3sv-A1 Notebook
Asus Messenger Case
Asus Branded, Logitech Optical Mouse
LCD Cleaning Cloth
OEM Recovery Disc
Instruction Manuals (2) & Driver Disc
A/C Adapter 90W w/ Cord Strap
S-Video & RJ45 Phone Cables

(view large image)

Design & Build

The notebook feels very sturdy and professional. The chassis is entirely made from strong plastic. The F3sv does not seem painted, so I suspect there won't be any lifting of paint on the palmrest.

The notebook has a business like professional design. While Asus touts this notebook as a gaming notebook with a lot of horsepower, there isn't any sign of geekiness that its bigger brother the G1S has.

The entire notebook feels strong and well constructed. With the help of the battery pack, the notebook is raised in the rear portion to further heat dissipation.

I/O Ports & Buttons

Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Radio Switch, Screen Latch, Line In, Line Out (SDIF), USB2.0x1, Flash Card Reader (8-in-1) (view large image)

Kensington lock slot, 8x Supermulti Drive w/Lightscribe (view large image)

ExpressCard 54, USB2.0x1, 4-Pin Firewire (IEEE 1394), TV Antenna In, S-Video Out, DVI out, VGA out, RJ45 (Phone) and RJ11 (Ethernet) ports. (view large image)

AC In and two USB2.0 ports. (view large image)

Battery compartment, access to two memory bays (DIMM0, DIMM1), and mini-PCI slot(s). (view large image)

Integrated Camera & Microphone

Included at the top of the screen is a rotating, 1.3 megapixel camera along with a small microphone. Asus has provided the LifeTouch software to use the video and still abilities of this camera. The camera is a handy feature for video conferencing, but would be used for little else.

Here is an example of the photo quality of the integrated camera, the content of which shows the included technical literature that came with the F3sv:

(view large image)

Screen

The F3sv sports a 15.4” glossy, WXGA+ widescreen that is backed by a no-dead pixel policy. The screen is crisp, rendering at a maximum resolution of 1440x900. It is indeed a very satisfying screen with excellent indoor viewing angles. Images appear rich and vibrant. Games and films are lifelike. The screen is thin and colors do not distort from minor pressure against the LCD.

(view large image)

Asus provides their proprietary Splendid software which can alter the color saturation of the LCD. The screen has very little light leakage.

Sound & Speakers

The F3sv has a basic built-in soundcard which is similar to all other brands. The audio in and out ports are featured on the front of the notebook, which is a mixed blessing for some. The placement of these ports are an annoyance for those who want to attach external speakers, but for those who travel or use headphones frequently, the positioning is perfect. The built-in speakers are located near the screen, and produce an unusually powerful, well amplified sound that is fairly well rounded for notebooks in general.

[Video example of a movie playing here ~ from Brightcove]

Optical Drive & Lightscribe

The included super-multi drive is Lightscribe enabled, but no software is given to use this functionality. This is unusual, since the Lightscribe feature is noted on the invoice and the optical drive label. Free third party Lightscribe software is readily available online from lightscribe.com. I was therefore able to test the Lightscribe feature, which seemed to function considerably fast compared to the HP dv2000t's drive.

DVB-T Tuner & Intel Turbo Memory (Robson)

A DVB-T tuner is offered in non-US models of the F3sv. For US models, an open mini-PCI slot is available to accommodate one. Furthermore, on the right side of the notebook, a TV antenna port exists for attaching an external antenna.

The F3sv series notebook can also house the new Intel Turbo Memory, also known as Robson, via a mini-PCI slot that is open for use.

Touchpad & Fingerprint Reader

The touchpad is very sleek looking. It is very responsive when the mouse speed is moved to the fullest setting in Vista. Otherwise, it functions slowly. Unfortunately, the touchpad doesn't have a rocker wheel where the fingerprint reader is located. Instead, scrolling is accomplished via a dedicated portion of the right hand side of the touchpad. However, the Asus branded Logitech mouse has a multi-directional wheel which serves this same purpose of a rocker wheel.

(view large image)

The fingerprint reader is located between the two touchpad buttons, and can double as a scroll wheel. It is an elegant and unobtrusive addition to the notebook, in contrast to some manufacturers who place the fingerprint reader as a separate unit on the palmrest.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a normal, full size set of keys, including function keys that control display output, touchpad use, volume, screen brightness, and other Asus specific functions. It is comfortable to use and feels solid when typing. The keyboard is fairly noisy, but does not have any noticeable flex when typing.

Performance Benchmarks

Windows Experience Score:

(view large image)

The disappointment lies in the 1GB standard memory. One memory bay is free for a quick upgrade up to 4GB max. Vista is fairly sluggish without 2GB of ram, which is a de facto minimum.

The exposed internals (including memory bays) of the F3sv-A1. (view large image)

PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	4,544 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,571 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

(view large image)

SuperPI results:

Notebook	Time
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz)	1m 04s
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	0m 58s
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	0m 59s
HP dv2500t (1.80GHz Intel 7100)	1m 09s
Lenovo ThinkPad T61 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo Intel T7300)	0m 59s
Toshiba Satellite P205-S6287 (1.73 GHz Core 2 Duo Intel T5300)	1m 24s
Toshiba Satellite A205 (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 34s
HP Compaq 6515b (1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52)	2m 05s
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s

(view large image)

Although SuperPI is not multi-threaded, it has been traditionally used in benchmarking and used here for a bit of nostalgia.

HDtune results:

(view large image)

The 160GB hard drive is partitioned by default into three partitions: a 5GB recovery, a 96GB VistaOS primary, and a 58GB extended (60%, 40%). The recovery partition (and disc) allows you to make one single partition if you so choose.

Gaming Experiences

Gaming is wonderful on the F3sv, and that is expected considering the power the notebooks brings to the table. Because the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS card can work with DX10, I had the opportunity to play a DX10 demo of an upcoming game entitled Lost Planet, developed by Capcom. The DX9 tests were done with Elder Scolls IV: Oblivion.

Keep in mind that the GeForce 8600M GS card can use TurboCache to dynamically allocate video memory contingent on your system ram. Results are expected to only improve when ram is upgraded beyond 1GB and/or NVIDIA drivers are upgraded. All benchmarks below were performed using modded ForceWare 158.45 drivers (The stock drivers would not even run the DX10 demo).

3DMark06 Results and Comparison:

Notebook	3D Mark 06 Results
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344
Sager NP9260 (2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700, 2x Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX video cards with 512MB DDR3)	9,097
Alienware m5790 (1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1800 256MB)	2,625
WidowPC Sting D517D (Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB)	4,833
Apple MacBook Pro (2.00GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB)	1,528
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB)	2,183
ASUS A8Ja (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB)	1,973
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744
Toshiba Satellite P100-222 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB)	3,534

(view large image)

DX9

Oblivion ~ 20-25 FPS average on medium-high settings, 1440x900

As you can see, there were points in the game that were choppy but for the most part the game ran exceptionally smoothly and is enjoyable to play. The F3sv-A1 handles Oblivion without much issue.

DX10

Lost Planet Demo ~ 12-18 FPS average on medium-high settings, 1280x768 (max!)

This game suffers quite a bit to play, although benchmarks show decent framerates for this DX10 demo. I suspect that having only 1GB of ram is a major issue here, being that the TurboCache can only max out to 512MB of total video ram. There is an in-game message declaring that medium-high settings are too high for decent gameplay. Another explanation could be that the newest drivers still cannot take advantage of the card's ability, or that the demo still has serious issues.

Wi-Fi & Bluetooth

The Intel 4964ABGN card provides great range under the provided Windows driver. I was however NOT able to attain 108Mbps speeds with my Belkin Pre-N router on the newest firmware. This might be because the pre-N/draft-N specs are not standardized or interoperable. In any case, the new card has range equal to or better than the 3945ABG predecessor.

Battery Life

The Asus F3sv notebook is not strong in the battery life category.

Windows Vista	Remaining Time
w/ Aero, Full Brightness, Wireless Radios On	~ 55 Mins
w/ Aero, Half-Brightness, Wireless Radios Off	~ 1.1 hours
w/o Aero, Full Brightness, Wireless Radios On	~ 1.2 hour
w/o Aero, Half-Brightness, Wireless Radios Off	~ 1.5 hours

As noted, the provided six-cell battery provides a measly one hour of battery life under Vista with all features turned on.

Heat and Noise

The F3sv provided surprising results in this area. Under extreme stress of gaming and benchmarking, the notebook feels relatively cool. More surprising is that the fan's noise is barely audible – and then notebook is completely silent under moderate stress. The F3sv is remarkably cool and silent under significant processing stress.

CPU Temp (Average x2 Cores)	Degrees Celsius
Idle	49
Normal Stress	55
Gaming Stress	62

The ambient temperature for tests was 24 degrees Celsius.

Software and Bloatware

Like all notebooks, the F3sv comes preloaded with unwanted or unnecessary software. Luckily, in comparison to the big companies, Asus has limited this bloat to just an anti-virus program and a few utilities. The included software is Nero 7 Essentials and Norton Internet Security 2007, Although Asus provides the Nero 7 optical disc, the software is not preloaded. However, a full reformat will reinstall all the original software. In effect, there is no way to do a clean Vista install since the OEM disk is a factory restore image.

Ubuntu Linux Experiences

The current LiveCD releases of Ubuntu do not work. I was able to install Ubuntu 7.10 (in Development, 64-bit) via the alternate CD's, non-graphical, install process. It was a fairly simple 25 minute procedure that involved reallocating space from the F3sv's second partition on the 160GB hard drive. The X server does not work on the default NVIDIA card option: instead, I was able to successfully get into the GUI by using the vesa driver. At the command line, after logging in, I typed

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This allowed me to completely create a xorg.conf file from scratch visually – allowing me to select the “vesa” display as noted previously, as well as other video options, such as a 1440x900 screen resolution. The Intel 4965ABGN card is not recognized at the moment, and some ndiswrapper work was needed to to get it running. I suspect that the next release of Ubuntu in October will support the the F3sv's hardware without any work beyond the installation.

Warranty & Tech Support

Asus provides a thirty day Zero Bright Dot policy, a one year battery pack warranty, and a two-year warranty on the entire notebook. The ZBD policy ensures that there will be no pixel issues on the screens. The two year standard, global hardware warranty is a refreshing move from the industry standard of one year.

Asus provides worldwide tech support numbers along with the technical literature. I called the Asus tech support (twice) to see how long I would be put on hold. During the morning hours, I was on the phone for just over a minute before I my call was answered by an operator. In the evening of another day, the time was longer, being around four minutes. The time to an operator has been compared with previous experiences with other notebook companies.

Asus also provides means to submit technical issues online, as well as attain software updates for Asus notebooks.

Manufacturer	Time to Operator
Acer	~40-50 Mins
Dell	~10-20 Mins
Asus	~1-5 Mins

Conclusion

The Asus F3sv is a phenomenal 15.4” notebook in all respects. While it is relatively heavy and has poor battery life, it's compromised portability is vastly outweighed by its feature set, performance, build quality and total polish.

Pros

Features and specs for the price
Runs silently and with minimal heat
Performance and elegance
Warranties and technical support

Cons

Battery life
Touchpad doesn't have rocker wheel

Asus G2S-A1 Review

2007-09-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

by Donovan Christoffer

The Asus G2S-A1 is classified as a "desktop replacement" laptop due to the size of the screen, which measures 17.1 inches, and its weight which comes in at 9.6 pounds. I opted to add one gigabyte of RAM, for a total of three, as my only configuration change from stock. The following specs are taken from the GenTech Computers website, which is where I purchased this machine:

2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7500 (Santa Rosa platform)
Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel 965 PM Express chipset
2GB SDRAM DDR2 667MHz (2 X 1GB) with up to 4GB supported (3GB as reviewed)
17.1 WUXGA (1920x1200) glossy display
nVidia GeForce 8600M GT w/256MB VRAM support
160GB (5400rpm) S-ATA HDD
8x Super-Multi DVDRW dual layer LightScribe optical drive
Card Reader (MMC, SD, MS, MS-Pro)
One 8-cell Li-Ion battery
Weight: 9.6 lbs
Dimensions: 16" x 12" x 0.18"
10/100/1000 Base T, integrated 802.11a/b/g/n, and built-in Bluetooth V2.0+EDR (optional)
1.3 megapixel web camera
Optical Gaming Mouse
Gaming Backpack

Reasons for Buying

This is my first laptop. I decided to purchase the G2S-A1 because I don't think I will be moving it around all that much. Once I narrowed my choices down to one brand, I had to choose between the 15.4 inch G1S-A1 or the 17.1 inch G2S-A1. I do tend to travel about once a month, but plan to leave the laptop in place once I reach my destination. While at home I move about from place to place in the house thanks to the wireless networking, but tend to set up camp in one area for a few hours to most of the day. I also like to play games both at home and away, so I opted for the larger screen and higher resolution of the G2S-A1.

Since receiving the laptop, I have made one trip with it. The trip lasted about a week, and I took the laptop with me to several different locations. While the whole package of laptop, charger along with a bunch of stuff I brought along such as blank CD's, a few DVD's, cell phone charger, headphones, etc, was a bit on the heavy side, the included backpack was able to handle it all along with room for plenty more. The backpack was surprisingly well made. I expected a cheap, flimsy piece of junk, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very heavy-duty and functional carrier for the G2S-A1.

During my research of different brands and models of laptops I also considered the Dell XPS 1710 and the HP DV9000. The Dell ended up being more than $1,000 more expensive than the Asus after I confugured it to my liking, and the HP was several hundred dollars more after configuration. The Asus G2S-A1 represented the best bang for the buck in my opinion, and it came highly recommended by several people in the "What Laptop Should I Buy?" forum on this website.

While the size of the G2S-A1 is similar to the HP DV9000, the HP tends to weigh a little less than the Asus. While you might think of this as an advantage for the HP, the DV9000 did not feel as solidly built as the Asus. I would pick the G2S any day over the DV9000 based on this alone. I wouldn't say that the HP felt flimsy, but its definitely not as solid as the G2S.

I also opted for the newer model G2S as opposed to the G2P in order to get the newly released Santa Rosa chipset.

Where and How Purchased

I purchased the Asus G2S-A1 from GenTech Computers. The price after configuration came to $2,260.50, UPS Ground shipping included. I configured the G2S with an extra GB of RAM for 3GB total and I also added a third year of warranty for $129, which seems to be the standard price across most Asus resellers. The base price of the laptop is $1,995, which is also within $50 plus/minus several other websites. I chose GenTech because I read many favorable reviews about them, and I was not to be disappointed.

I placed my order and was called back within a couple of hours to confirm the order and shipping information. I had requested that Ken Lee process my order as I heard good things about the service he provides and his knowledge of GenTech's products. Once again, I was not disappointed. Ken answered all of my questions and explained the different features of the laptop in great detail. I think he would have stayed on the phone for an hour answering my questions if that is what it took to satisfy my curiosity. Ken was calm and did not seem one bit rushed to end the phone call.

The G2S-A1 box (including evil eye) and gaming backpack. (view large image)

Another view of the included backpack. (view large image)

The included gaming mouse and accessories. (view large image)

Build and Design

The laptop seems to be put together very well. Being a larger screen model it is a little on the heavy side, but it feels solid, not just like dead weight. Pressing on the outside of the lid does not have an effect on the screen. Giving the screen a slight twist will distort the screen a little, but again, the screen feels solid and well constructed. It will bounce back and forth a small amount while sitting on your lap in a vehicle, but the hinges hold it tight in position. When you apply enough pressure to the hinges, the screen will fold down in a smooth motion. There isn't any sticking to be found, just glass-smooth motion.

(view large image)

The LCD picture quality is amazing, absolutely gorgeous, and I did not notice any dead or stuck pixels at first power-up or while using it. You should see the HP DV9000 owners drool over the picture on this machine. I have had three of them compliment me on the picture quality alone.

(view large image)

The screen measures 17.1 inches on the diagonal. The resolution is WUXGA (1920x1200). The Asus G2S-A1 comes with a glossy screen, there is no option for a matte screen. I have an LCD monitor for my desktop at home with an acrylic screen protector, so I am used to the glossy look. It takes a bit of practice to look through the occasional reflections, but once you master the skill, you don't even notice them any longer. The screen is very bright with excellent color reproduction. The brightness alone all but eliminates the glare and reflection issue.

I am a serious digital photography enthusiast and I am looking forward to viewing and processing photos on this screen. There was a very small amount of light leakage at the bottom of the screen and this has been reported by other people. The only place I could see the leak was on a totally black screen during start up. This isn't like a crack with bright, shiny light coming through, its just a lighter area of the black screen along the bottom edge. It is not visible during normal use and is no cause to not choose this laptop in my opinion.

(view large image)

I will put on my wish list that a brushed aluminum cover be included. The outside cover is made up to look like brushed aluminum, and the palm-rest is actual aluminum (very nice, by the way). Asus, are you listening (hint, hint)? Just a nice to have, not a necessity.

Speakers

The speakers on this machine left something to be desired. The sound quality was average, but the volume just wasn't up to par with the beauty and performance of the rest of the G2S-A1. The speakers are adequate, I just expected something a bit more brilliant when looking at the whole package. It is not an issue that would have stopped me from buying the laptop. The sound volume is pretty acceptable during normal usage. The area I felt that the speakers were too quiet in was watching movies via Media Center. This may be an issue with the way I have Media Center set up, I haven't had time to go through the settings. The problem was that it just seemed like you couldn't turn the volume up high enough.

Processor and Performance

This machine is a big leap forward for me. I have been babying an old desktop along for several years now. Add a little RAM here or there and it performs pretty well. This laptop compared to my old desktop is like comparing a Mustang to a Geo Metro. The laptop runs circles around my desktop when opening a program such as Microsoft Word. I am very satisfied with the performance and speed of the laptop. The G2S-A1 comes with the 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500. The performance is fast with no hang-ups or other problems so far. Performance is smooth and stable. One area that I noticed a definite improvement from my desktop was in opening, switching between, and closing applications. All these operations were lightning fast and did not make the screen jump and flinch like they did on my old desktop as it searched for RAM and swapped page-file space, etc. Rock-solid performance on the laptop!

3DMark06 Results and Comparison:

Notebook	3D Mark 06 Results
Asus G2S-A1 (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 256MB)	3,814
Sager NP9260 (2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700, 2x Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX video cards with 512MB DDR3)	9,097
Alienware m5790 (1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1800 256MB)	2,625
WidowPC Sting D517D (Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB)	4,833
Apple MacBook Pro (2.00GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB)	1,528
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB)	2,183
ASUS A8Ja (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB)	1,973
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744
Toshiba Satellite P100-222 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS 512MB)	3,534

Heat and Noise

I have not owned any other laptops, but I have used others in the past. Most of these were several years ago, so my experience with them really doesn't present a fair comparison to this newer laptop. The older machines were large and heavy and very noisey and HOT! The G2S is a very nice machine compared to these relics. The G2S is nearly silent. The only time you know it is on is when you are running a CD/DVD. The heat generated by the laptop does not seem to be excessive, in fact it generates less heat than I expected. It does generate some heat, but it doesn't make me uncomfortable or want to put the laptop down.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard seems to be nicely laid out and the pressure required to press the keys seems about right. I did not notice any flex in my keyboard. The press of the keys really resembles that of a full size keyboard. Not quite as much travel, but the pressure required is very similar. The mouse keys are also quite sturdy. I like the feel of the touchpad. It is neither glass-smooth, nor is it really rough. It's a nice compromise between the two, and your finger glides across it very nicely.

Input and Output Ports
There are plenty on input/output ports on the G2S-A1. I will echo other reviews in that all of the USB ports except one are located on the rear of the laptop. While this is a minor inconvenience, it is not something that would stop me from buying the laptop. However, one must remember to be careful if you attach a USB thumbdrive or some other device to one of these ports on the back of the laptop. It would be easy to forget such a device was plugged into the back, out of sight, and snap it off. The complete list of ports includes:

1X HDMI
1X eSATA Port
1 x Express card
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF)
1 x VGA port
5 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x IEEE 1394 port
1 x RJ11 Modem jack for phone line
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
1 x Wireless ON/OFF switch (Wireless Console to control Wireless/BT)
1 x SIR
1 x CIR
1 x TV-out(S-Video)

The back view of the G2S-A1 with lock slot, S-video out, VGA out, HDMI, and four USB 2.0 ports. (view large image)

The left side view of the notebook with modem and Ethernet ports, USB port, microphone and headphone ports, SPDIF output jack,firewire, ExpressCard, multi-card reader, and wireless on/off. (view large image)

The front side view with media control buttons and eSATA port. (view large image)

The right side with Lightscribe DVD drive and power jack. (view large image)

The bottom view with vents, memory expansion access, and battery. (view large image)

Battery

Battery life on the G2S-A1 has been reported to be anywhere from around 90 minutes to 2 hours. In my own experience, after letting the laptop fully charge, I was able to achieve 90 to 100 minutes depending on my configuration (wireless, bluetooth, etc). When the wireless and bluetooth are turned off and the screen brightness is turned down, I can squeaze about 150 minutes out of the battery. I do feel that the screen could be turned down even more than the software will allow you to. There are certain situations, such as total darkness where even the minimum brightness is more than adequate, so turning it down even further would only conserve more battery power. A higher capacity battery would be nice given this machine wasn't designed to be ultra-portable.

Operating System and Software

This is my first experience with Windows Vista. I am a bit apprehensive about this operating system because I have heard some bad experiences with it. To be fair, I have also heard some good reviews, time will tell. I am very familiar with Windows XP. I was also leary of upgrading to XP when it first came out, but I have grown quite fond of it over the years. I hope Vista can live up to my experiences with XP.

My main annoyance in this area is a general one with any pre-built machine. The G2S, just like any other pre-loaded machine comes with only a restore disk as opposed to an OEM, OS-only disk. The software load on the G2S is decent, and there aren't a ton of bloatware applications like some well-known mass production machines. It is just a personal preference of mine to start from a clean OS install and load device drivers and applications myself. Call me a control freak if you must, I just feel safer knowing exactly what is loaded on my system.

The Asus G2S-A1 comes with a few pieces of quite useful software. Included are an antivirus program, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Nero Express. The anti-virus was a trial version and was quickly uninstalled and replaced with a fully licensed version. Acrobat and Nero are must-haves and will remain installed.

Conclusion

I am extremely happy with my purchase of the Asus G2S-A1. I feel that this laptop will provide me with many years of service and enjoyment. GenTech Computers was more than helpful in the purchase process and I would highly recommend them to anyone. Be sure to ask for Ken Lee when you call them or place your order online. All in all this is an awesome laptop with great performance and a solid build. There isn't much I would change about the machine, other than moving a couple more USB ports to the side of the laptop. otherwise, I feel that I have definitely gotten my money's worth with this purchase.

Pros

Absolutely beautiful screen, no dead or stuck pixels
Solid build quality
Works right out of the box with no problems
Fast, smooth performance

Cons

Lots of glassy-smooth areas to collect fingerprints
The glowing "eyeball" under the touchpad will take some getting used to
Speakers were a little quiet while watching movies
All but one of the USB ports are located on the back of the machine

Source: Notebookreview

Asus W7S User Review

2007-09-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

by James Wong

ASUS has slowly and steadily gained a reputation for churning out quality yet still affordable laptops. Whilst still establishing its brand in the US market, this Taiwanese company has a bigger presence in the Asian and European regions. For this review I will be looking at the W7S model which is the Santa Rosa update for the 13.3" W7 series. The W7S is advertised in two distinct versions; the white version features an Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor whilst the black version has the T7500 along with a bigger hard drive and more RAM.

Asus W7S notebook (view large image)

The black version I am reviewing is not the standard version because in the place I bought mine there are many variants of the W7S series, to be specific the model number of this notebook is W7S-3P057. The only difference is that 'Wireless N' is not supported, it comes with a 6-cell battery and it comes preloaded with Vista Home Premium instead of Vista Business.

Specifications as reviewed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 800FSB, 4MB Cache)
Memory: 1.5GB (512MB + 1GB)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G 128MB VRAM
Display: 13.3" 1280x800 WXGA Color Shine LCD
Hard Drive: 160GB 5400RPM SATA (Seagate Momentus 5400.3)
Optical Drive: Super Multi DVD Burner with Lightscribe
Wireless: Intel PRO Wireless 3945ABG
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
Ports: 3x USB 2.0, 1x FireWire, Headphone/SPDIF out, Microphone in, VGA out, Modem, Ethernet
Slots: 1x ExpressCard, 8 in 1 card reader
Dimensions: 315 x 226.5 x 36.9mm
Weight: 1.95Kg

Reasons for Buying

The notebook arrived at the time when I would be studying at university and the fact that I travel overseas quite frequently meant that a relatively portable 13.3" laptop would succumb my needs. I like to do the occasional gaming so there was a pressing need for a dedicated graphics card; preferably one which supports DirectX 10 as this would help prepare me for future games. Performance was also important as I do quite a lot of encoding so the benefits of the Santa Rosa platform would help. This narrowed my choices to the Sony SZ, Dell XPS M1330 and the Toshiba Satellite U305. The Sony was too expensive, the Dell was not released yet (at the time of purchase) and the Toshiba didn't have global warranty, which lead me to this notebook.

Where and How Purchased

I didn't purchase via the Internet because I needed to make sure that the software and warranty would cover me as I study overseas and the fact that prices were more negotiable. I purchased this notebook from Golden Computer Centre in Hong Kong at the price of $12300 HKD which is the equivalent to $1,571.16 USD ($7.829HKD/USD) I was able to haggle the price down a few hundred dollars and was allowed to switch to the English version of Vista free of charge. The laptop was purchased and was taken home on the same day.

My notebook package includes:

Targus carry case
Bluetooth mouse with USB charger and batteries
Power adapter with cable tie
6-cell battery
Recovery and driver CD
S-Video to composite cable
Telephone cable
Dust cloth
Manuals and paperwork

The complete package (view large image)

Build & Design

Lid closed (view large image)

Lid open (view large image)

Optical drive (view large image)

Indicator lights (view large image)

At first glance the notebook may look matte black but upon closer inspection you can see little silver flakes and this covers the whole of the laptop including the keyboard and touchpad. When you open the notebook you'll immediately notice the latchless system, the hinges are firm yet induces little wobbling when you poke the screen. The minor problem that I have with the latchless system is that the more acute the angle of the lid is, the higher the tension so you could end up closing the lid with an unintentional slam. The one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb on this laptop is the 1.3M pixel webcam, it may not be discrete but it does give the design of the laptop some flavor.

The carbon fiber and plastic mixture used to make the body offers a solid design and accounts for the little flex around the laptop. The lid is made of magnesium alloy and plastic which blends well with the rest of the body; however when you twist the screen there is still some bending but not enough to worry about it. When pressing the screen there is no noticeable rippling unless you absolutely hammer it which by then it wouldn't be a laptop anymore.

In particularly hot weather the laptop can be prone to hot sweaty fingerprints (more like hand prints) which does take some buffing to get rid of, and this isn't helped by the fact that the laptop can get quite warm to the touch.

Screen

The screen can be blindingly bright in a dark room and is enough to light up the keyboard as well, however I find myself rarely using the screen at 100% brightness unless I am outdoors in the sunshine. Fortunately this laptop did not suffer from the 'dead pixel syndrome' and as my first ownership of a glossy screen, I like it. This screen reminds me of the X-Brite displays used in the Sony VAIOs and produces rich color tones but this notebook does not feature LED backlighting.

Horizontal viewing angle (view large image)

Vertical viewing angle (view large image)

Light leakage (view large image)

Light leakage from the screen seems to be biased towards the bottom and may become a problem when watching scary movies or photo editing. However, it makes up for it with relatively wide viewing angles especially on a horizontal plain so the person next to you can see what you're up to.

1.3M pixel webcam (view large image)

The webcam is fixed onto the chassis and cannot be rotated like the ASUS W5F notebooks. The image quality is good enough for video messaging but lacks details when taking large photos as demonstrated below:

Sample picture taken outdoors from webcam (view large image)

Speakers

Screen mounted speakers (view large image)

The speakers are located on the bottom of the screen and can be best described as generic. Don't be expecting 'thumping bass' or 'block rocking beats' as these speakers are more suited for vocals or classical music where there is less need for low bass or high trebles. Surprisingly there is little to no crackling when the volume is cranked on the highest setting which is loud enough to be on shouting terms, at least there is an S/PDIF out audio socket to stream out the sounds digitally.

One thing I love about this laptop is the jog dial as you tilt the switch up or down to change the volume, and if you push the button inwards it mutes the sound.

Processor and Performance

The T7500 is no slouch when it comes to raw performance (well at the time of writing) and topped off with the Santa Rosa platform the increased memory bandwidth linking the CPU and RAM further increases the performance which is generally reflected in gaming, encoding and benchmarks.

The 1.5GB RAM is more than enough to run Windows Vista but you may want to upgrade the RAM later in the future as games and other software become more bloated in terms of memory. However the heavily criticized 512MB of onboard RAM leaves only one upgradeable slot which reduces the ability for future upgrades. But once you have upgraded a 2GB stick of RAM to make the total 2.5GB; even then this is more than enough unless you do lots of photo/video editing, CAD work or other memory demanding tasks.

The GeForce 8400M G should be enough to cater for the 'light gamer' who does not require high graphics settings for each game, and it is also reassuring to know that your laptop can support DirectX 10 for future titles (although it might be a bit choppy) as well as the added benefit of hardware H.264 decoding.

The included hard drive is the 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 which is one of the best 5400rpm hard drives in terms of performance, heat and noise. This means that boot up times are relatively fast and average transfer rates should not be far behind 7200rpm hard drives.

Benchmarks:

3DMark05

Link to Detailed results for 3DMark05

3DMark06 comparison results:

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Asus W7S (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G 128MB RAM)	1,082 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU)	1,069 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, ATI X1700 256MB)	1,831 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks

Link to Detailed results for 3DMark06

PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Asus W7S (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G 128MB RAM)	4,759 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,925 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,377 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,591 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

Link to PCMark05 Detailed Results

Super Pi comparison results:

Notebook	Time
Asus W7S (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500)	0m 56s
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500)	0m 54s
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	0m 59s
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	0m 58s
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	1m 01s
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300)	0m 59s
HP dv2500t (1.80GHz Intel 7100)	1m 09s
Lenovo ThinkPad T61 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo Intel T7300)	0m 59s
Toshiba Satellite P205-S6287 (1.73 GHz Core 2 Duo Intel T5300)	1m 24s
Toshiba Satellite A205 (1.66GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 34s
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T2400)	0m 59s
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo)	1m 02s

HD Tune

(view large image)

Overall the 3DMark benchmarks show that the GeForce 8400M G performs about the same as the GeForce Go 7400, however in PCMark the results are quite good compared with similar specs probably due to the 2.2GHz CPU, the Santa Rosa platform and the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 drive.

Heat and Noise

One thing that is slightly annoying about this laptop is the amount of heat it produces. What is even worse is the exhaust vent is located on the right hand side where the mouse would be, off course you can just move the mouse away from the vent but it still warms up the area. Even just typing this review on the laptop the keyboard is warm to the touch and the palm rest is getting to the point where it makes my hands sweaty. Maybe I am just being over critical but I guess cramming a 2.2GHz processor and dedicated graphics into a 13.3" laptop isn't a cool job. Either way this laptop is warm.

The software I used to record the temperatures of these components are 'Notebook Hardware Control', 'RivaTuner' and 'HD Tune' to measure the CPU, GPU and HDD respectively. Here is a table showing the different temperatures achieved:

	Idle/ degrees C	Load/ degrees C
CPU	58	76
GPU	74	90
HDD	46	56

Just by looking at these results they are generally hotter than I am used to seeing and the one that strikes me the most is the GPU with a load temperature of 90C. Although it is still functional at this temperature, I would be more comfortable using a notebook cooler just to cool things down a bit.

Underneath showing the CPU, HDD and RAM (view large image)

By looking at the internals of the laptop there is only one cooling fan and one heat sink to cool both the CPU and GPU. Given the small chassis of a 13.3" laptop the heat would be heavily concentrated and so the little HSF may be a little overworked; this might explain the 'hotness' of this laptop.

What is remarkable about this notebook is the lack of noise it produces. When you're surfing the internet or watching a movie you won't be able to hear the fan at all unless you are in a totally isolated room but even then, all you can hear is the 'whoosh' noise as the air brushes over the heat sink. However when you start doing CPU intensive tasks like benchmarking, the fan starts to become audible which is similar to the sound of the DVD drive spinning. This might suggest that Asus wanted to sacrifice some of the noise for heat in order to make it a quietly pleasant experience to use this laptop.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Overhead view of keyboard and touchpad (view large image)

After groping the keyboard in various places, I have eventually found a little flex around the area of the 'F11' key. Though not alarmingly flex it shows that this keyboard is not perfect in that sense. However the keys themselves are not mushy but are firm and bouncy, given the full sized keys this keyboard is nice to type on. One thing that annoys me is that the 'Backspace' and 'Enter' keys are shortened to a point where I keep pressing the keys next to it instead, at least the 'Ctrl' key is on the bottom left corner of the keyboard.

The touchpad is offset to the left side of the laptop and has the same smooth texture as the body. After using the touchpad with sweaty and cold fingers it still picks up the movements. Sometimes I find myself touching the edge of the touchpad which activates the scroll feature but other than that, the buttons give a firm and loud 'click' sound when depressed.

Input and Output Ports

Front side (view large image)

Back side: DC input, S-Video out, USB 2.0 port, Kensington lock port (view large image)

Right side: ExpressCard slot, volume dial, microphone-in, line-out, Firewire, USB2.0 port, VGA Out (view large image)

Left side: RJ-45 LAN port, RJ-11 modem port, USB2.0 port, 8-in-1 card reader (view large image)

Horizontal profile (view large image)

The location of the three USB ports is new to me. One is located on the left side, one is located on the right and the other is on the back. This allows some flexibility in connecting the laptop to certain devices but the problem with the dispersed USB ports is that wire management can become messy; especially when you have the adaptor plugged in.

One word of warning, the VGA out socket does not have screw holes for the cable to securely connect to the laptop.

Wireless

As stated this variant of the W7S does not include the 'Wireless N' but instead includes the Intel PRO Wireless 3945ABG adaptor. The transfer speeds are normal and I find that I can pick up the signals of my neighbor's wireless router. The Bluetooth adaptor built in works fine with the Bluetooth mouse included with this laptop.

Wireless and profile switch (view large image)

Power button (view large image)

There is also a switch on the top left corner which allows the WiFi and Bluetooth to be switched on or off.

Battery

Size comparison between the Bluetooth mouse, power adapter and battery (view large image)

The battery included is a 6-cell lithium ion battery rated at 4800mAh and like the previous models of the W7, the battery protrudes from the body just a bit. The sales person at the shop told me that I should be expecting 3-4 hours battery life of general use; at first I had my doubts and so I decided to prove it. Whilst using the 'Battery Saving' profile from the bundled Power4Gear software, the battery lasted 2 hours 32 minutes (40% brightness, wireless on, idle laptop). I wasn't too happy with this time and I wasn't too surprised either given that the Sony FZ series lasts about the same time, though this does reduce the mobility aspect of this laptop. My second test consisted of testing the notebook under heavy gaming where I played BF2, during in which I had used 'Performance Mode' and managed to squeeze 57 minutes (100% brightness, wireless on) before the battery warning indicator came up. On the whole it should be safe to say that the battery life on this notebook is not something to brag about by current standards.

There is also a button on the top left corner that allows you to switch the profiles in concordance with the Power4Gear software which I have found to be quite useful especially when you have the sudden urge to play a game, one flick of the switch and the laptop is already in 'High Performance' mode.

Operating System and Software

Windows Experience Index score (view large image)

On this particular model of the W7S it comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and when I switched the laptop on for the first time I was greeted with the usual load of bloatware. After uninstalling the unnecessary programs I still had 61 processes in the Task Manager was not satisfied until I did a clean install of Vista. As usual the driver and recovery CDs are included with the laptop.

Customer Support

I have encountered no major problems yet so there is no need for me to use their customer support. Even if I do find a problem I would probably use the Asus online support forum first as it is surprisingly resourceful with its developed online community. There is one thing that is hard to match and that is the 2 year global warranty which comes with the laptop. This is reassuring and makes me a happier customer; unless I decide to modify the internals of the laptop.

Conclusion

(view large image)

People say that first impressions always last, and I believe that this is true with this laptop. The first few times I used it I fell in love with the screen, and then you start to notice the little details that make this notebook beautiful such as the quality build. Overall this laptop packs performance in a portable laptop and has graciously met my needs. If I were to sum up this laptop in three words it would be: solid yet sleek.

Pros:

Toggle volume switch
Location of USB ports
Bluetooth mouse and laptop bag bundled
Good screen and viewing angles
Quiet fan
Solid build
Card reader
2 year global warranty
Sleek styling
Latchless system

Cons:

Exhaust vent on right hand side
Generic speakers
'Enter' and 'Backspace' key a bit short
Short battery life
Bloatware
512MB onboard RAM
Palm rest and keyboard gets uncomfortably warm

Apple PowerBook Review

2007-09-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

by Gabe Lipson, USA

Overview and Introduction:

Apple PowerBook G4 15.2" (view larger image)

The Powerbook is Apple's desktop replacement notebook, but unlike most PC notebooks in this category, the Powerbook is not bulky, nor is it thick and heavy. In fact, the Powerbook is about as thin as mainstream notebooks get, and as light as I could imagine any laptop with this size screen. As far as configuration goes, I opted for the 15.2 inch widescreen version with a 1.67 GHz G4 processor, 512 megs of ram, a 64 mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 video card, and a super drive.

Reasons for Buying:

I was very apprehensive about buying the Powerbook because I had used PC's for my whole life. In fact, I was comfortable enough with PC's that I had become the sort-of neighborhood mechanic. When it came time to choose a computer for college, I had in the back of my mind the aesthetic appeal of the Apple line of computers and hoped that I could find a windows laptop with a similar look and feel. After what seemed like endless searching, I came upon the Asus W3v, which hadn't even begun to ship to the US yet. So, I put most of my eggs into one basket and decided upon the Asus. But, when they started shipping, I heard nasty things about palm rest heat that scared me away enough to go to my local Apple store and test-drive a Powerbook in the flesh. In a matter of minutes, I was sold.

Where and How Purchased:

I bought the Powerbook at an Apple Store, figuring they would present me with the best warranty options available, and because they honored a student discount offered by my college. The salesmen were very friendly, and offered ample help during the purchasing process. While ringing me up, they registered the notebook and offered a bundle of Apple services (like .Mac), which I refused at the time, but may consider in the future.

Form & Design:

Apple PowerBook G4 underside (view larger image)

The first I saw of my laptop was its minimalist, but beautiful packaging. Apple seems to take quite a bit of pride in aesthetics and ergonomics, which somehow doesn't hamper function. Nestled between product manuals and a power brick was the aluminum notebook. I don't think there is a single notebook on the market that has a better or comparable look and feel. The Powerbook is very thin, just heavy enough not to feel cheap, light enough not to be a burden, and large enough that the screen doesn't strain my eyes after a good amount of use. Needless to say, I was proud of my purchase before turning the computer on. After using the Powerbook for a few weeks, the only potential problem I have had is that the bottom gets extremely hot when there isn't a proper amount of ventilation underneath it. This means that laying the Powerbook on a comforter while video editing may turn out to be a no-no. Also, because the computer is aluminum, this excess heat can actually cause the case to be a slight bit flexible, so your best bet is to keep it on a desk or to buy a laptop pad that dissipates heat. Still, I have never had a problem working with the notebook on my lap.

Apple PowerBook G4 top view (view larger image)

Apple PowerBook G4 left side view (view larger image)

Apple PowerBook G4 right side view (view larger image)

Screen:

One of my worries about going with the Powerbook instead of a comparable Sony or Asus notebook was its lack of a brightview type reflective screen. I had heard and read that this screen coating really helps with accurate color reproduction, and that notebooks without it would produce muddled pictures in comparison. So, I drove over to Best Buy and looked at laptops and found this to be entirely true with one exception -- the Powerbook. If you compared the reproduction of the color white between brightview notebooks, non-brightview notebooks, and the Powerbook, you saw clearly that all but the coated notebooks and the Powerbooks produced a yellowish tint that really detracted from their vibrancy. After playing around with the Powerbook, I am even more satisfied with my purchase because the uncoated Powerbook screen doesn't have the glare associated with brightview notebooks. Plus, the Powerbook is equipped with a light sensor underneath the speaker grills which enables it to automatically dim and brighten the screen in accordance with lighting conditions. I have not yet experienced any problems with brightness, and am wholly satisfied with the screen quality. I also lucked out and got no dead pixels. The 16x10 wide aspect screen also makes viewing documents and web pages side by side a breeze, which is a positive change I could not imagine giving up. The 1280x854 resolution also makes text and images the perfect size for viewing.

Speakers:

The speakers on the Powerbook are about as good as any other notebook's. They do not get immensely loud, but do get loud enough that I never need to put them on the highest setting. They lack a great deal of bass, but that is understandable considering the size of the drivers. One complaint may be that the speakers aren't situated in the front like those on the HP DV1000, so you can't listen to music with the lid closed, but so far I haven't figured out how to leave the computer running with the lid closed anyway. I would still recommend a good set of headphones for anyone interested in watching DVDs on flights, as the Powerbook plays movies beautifully.

Processor and Performance:

I was very worried about buying this Powerbook because of the fact that it still only has a G4. I was always under the impression that the Powerbook was meant to be a portable version of the Power Mac, which meant close to comparable performance in the past, but since the G5 produces so much heat and uses up so much power, they have held off putting it in a notebook for some time. But, my fears were tamed when I read an article explaining that the G5 was originally a server processor comparable to the Intel Xeon chip, and that for mainstream use, the G4 is still comparable to most Pentium M's. This turned out to be correct. All tasks seem very responsive compared to my 3 GHz Pentium 4 desktop. I have hit very few performance bottlenecks, excepting a rendering job that I did in final cut pro that took a little while. Still, the same process took about the same amount of time on my windows computer using Adobe Premier. The 80 Gb hard drive in the Powerbook is 5400 rpm, which is not as fast as they come (7,200 rpm), but also doesn't eat up as much battery life or produce as much heat. Because of these tradeoffs, I think that Apple's inclusion of a 5,400 rpm drive (which is relatively new to the line which used to be equipped with 4,200 rpm drives) was a good idea.

Benchmarks:

It is very difficult to benchmark an Apple computer next to a Windows computer because, minding the inherent pun, they are like apples and oranges. Still, I looked around and discovered that the program SuperPi that is recommended by notebookreview.com had a Unix version that was ported to the Macintosh. So, I downloaded the program and had it calculate Pi to two million digits, just like others had done with windows machines. The results I got were very impressive.

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Apple Powerbook (1.67 GHz G4)	1m 36s
Gateway 7426GX (AMD Athlon 3700+)	1m 39s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86GHz Alviso Pentium M)	1m 45s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Alviso Pentium M)	1m 48s
IBM ThinkPad T41 (1.6GHz Banias Pentium M)	2m 23s
Compaq R3000T (Celeron 2.8GHz)	3m 3s
Dell Inspiron 600m (1.6 GHz Dothan Pentium M)	2m 10s
Dell Inspiron 8600 (1.7GHz Banias Pentium M)	2m 28s

To make sure that this test was valid and that the Super Pi port to the Mac wasn't somewhat flawed, I downloaded a program called PiCalculator, which calculated Pi to 2m digits in a minute and 29 seconds. Like I said, daily tasks never skip a beat.

There is an apple benchmarking program called XBench that has become the gold standard of mac benchmarking. On XBench I got a score of 143, which is about 6 percent slower than a comparably equipped 1.8ghz G5 iMac. This was with all performance settings on high and the computer plugged into the wall. Yet, this cumulative score included the lower end video card that I bought. Powerbooks with the 128 meg ATI card tend to score better because a graphics performance test is factored in. In the area of sheer processing performance, my computer got a score of 196, which essentially means that the G4 is not dead as long as the G5 is too hot to put into a portable.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Keyboard and Touchpad in the dark (view larger image)

The keyboard on the Powerbook is wonderfully spacious. Even compared to other full sized notebook keyboards, it feels much more comfortable to use. Apple made wider keys that don't have a lot of depth, but have a great deal of travel, which makes it feel very responsive. Also, along with setting the screen's brightness to look best with the amount of ambient light available, the light sensors activate a network of fiberoptic keyboard lights when a room is dim, making nighttime viewing much easier than with a USB light of sorts. The touchpad, also, is very responsive. A lot of PC laptops I tried out had almost slick feeling track pads that became a hassle to use after long periods of time. Also, the ability to scroll through web pages and documents by brushing two fingers down (or across if you want to scroll sideways) the touchpad is very intuitive and very useful. It has become second nature. When I first bought the Powerbook I was worried about its lack of a right click button, but after a good amount of use, I have actually come to like Apple's ctrl+click arrangement. With touch pads on other notebooks, I remember accidentally right clicking all the time, just because there wasn't much differentiation between the buttons. With ctrl+click, you get all the functions of right clicking, and after a while, it too becomes second nature. I also bought a Bluetooth mouse to accompany my Powerbook (which has a scroll wheel and a right button), and all three buttons worked like a charm from the start. Apple's inclusion of Bluetooth 2.0 was a nice touch, also. It means that when these devices start to hit the shelves, I won't have to use a USB dongle to satisfy new compatibility issues.

Keyboard and Touchpad (view larger image)

Input and Output Ports:

The Powerbook comes with a very nice array of ports which lie along the sides of the computer. On the left hand side there is a PC Card slot, a headphone jack, a line-in/microphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, a phone jack, and a DC Power connector. On the right side there is a DVI monitor output port (the computer comes with a DVI to VGA adapter), an S-video connector (the Powerbook comes with an S-Video to RCA adapter), a gigabit Ethernet jack, a Firewire 800 port, a Firewire 400 port, another USB 2.0 port, and a security slot. The port placement is, in my opinion, very effective. You can use the USB on the right hand side for a mouse (if you didn't buy Bluetooth), and the left hand port for a hard drive printer that isn't wirelessly connected. I have heard a few complain about the fact that they included only two USB ports, but with so much becoming wireless these days, I really don't see the need for any more (especially when a 4 port USB hub the size of a cigarette lighter costs 15-20 bucks). I also played around with the video output. With the Powerbook, apple gives you the ability to not only mirror the screen, but also to extend it in any orientation you choose. It was fun to play around with, but is a novelty I don't see myself using often. You can do these same things when you connect a TV. The Powerbook automatically recognizes what resolution is proper for your particular set when you press the "detect displays" button. Overall, picture quality is as good as my standalone DVD player's.

Wireless:

The Powerbook came equipped with an airport extreme card, which complies with the WiFi 802.11G standard. In my household, wireless reception is very good except for in one single room upstairs. This probably has to do with the construction of my house, but overall I'm happy. What was amazing was the minimal amount of steps it required to set up different network profiles, and how easily it connected to my network. My windows machines never played that easily. In fact, I had two PC's that would never connect to the same workgroup without producing huge errors. It turns out that my Powerbook was able to connect to both of them without any problems (once I figured out that I had to turn on windows networking). I have heard that the iBook gets better wireless range than the Powerbook because it doesn't have a metal case that interferes with the signal. Still, the antennae are located underneath plastic strips along the edges of the display and seem to do their job nicely.

Battery:

I could very easily say that the battery doesn't last long enough, but the approximately 2.5-3 hours of time I get with a single charge seems to be standard among notebooks with large displays and heat-hungry components. Still, I have never run into a problem, per say, with its lifespan. Watching a DVD, I was able to get two hours and twenty seven minutes of life in power saving mode, and doing normal web browsing and word processing I am usually able to get in the ballpark of three hours.

Battery meter LED charge level indicator (view larger image)

Operating System and Software:

This Powerbook came with OS X v. 10.4 "Tiger." I am incredibly happy with tiger's performance thus far. In fact, I boxed up my windows desktop last night because Tiger has spoiled me. It is inherently more intuitive than windows, and Spotlight is simply amazing when it comes to finding things in a snap. Even if you're in an "open with" dialogue, you can use spotlight to find the right program to open a file with. It makes the somewhat less impressive finder system much more manageable. I also really like the new dashboard feature. I figured that this was a novelty that I wouldn't use a lot, but it turns out that I download and use widgets for little tasks constantly. Also, expose' is fantastic. The ability to show all open windows at the touch of a button and to choose one from the lot makes computing a hell of a lot easier. This computer is a workhorse, and Tiger is as well. I also love the fact that "Force Quit" actually works. In windows, we all know that trying to close programs with ctrl+alt+delete becomes a huge hassle. Plus, the diagnostic utilities available with tiger abound with features I had only wished Windows had adopted. Aside from just outlining memory and processor usage, it provides a windows-like task manager of sorts that goes into much greater detail about specific processes.

Customer Support:

I decided to wait on purchasing the extended 3 year warranty, but as of now I have a single year of coverage and 90 days of free phone support. I actually called the tech line with a question a few days ago, and they were very responsive and friendly.

Complaints:

My one complaint is that apple doesn't let out information about upcoming computers so they are ble to keep prices high before new launches. Because of this, I worry that in a week they will announce a G5 Powerbook, and I will have spent $2,300 for an outdated product. Other than that, I have no complaints.

Praises:

I think I've outlined enough praises in this review. Still, I want to reassure any Windows user that there really isn't much hassle in moving from windows to Tiger. It has turned out to be well worth it, as it has shifted my love/hate relationship with computers toward the more positive end.

Conclusion:

This is a laptop that fits in more categories than I ever imagined a single computer could. It is thin, light, powerful, beautiful, has a gorgeously large widescreen, and it makes me happy just looking at it. So, would I recommend this computer to anyone? Absolutely. I would recommend this computer to everyone if I could. Still, my only reservation is that it is very pricey.