A8JP Owners Lounge

Well, I decided to be a copycat and start a lounge for A8JP owners. While not specifically for North American users, I've run into a few things and tips to share since the A8JP is new to North America.

I hope that other users will post their info, as well as any questions, so that we can all get the best out of our new notebooks.

Beefdonkey's Excellent Review is a great place to start, and there's plenty of good info there.

The Asus Notebook FAQ is a great resource for all Asus notebooks, especially if you're buying your first Asus. I was worried (never heard of Asus, couldn't buy one from a brick-and-mortar store, etc.) but am very happy with it.

Batteries: This is a strange area. Since the A8JP has a short battery life (2:35 with average use), I wanted a backup. Batteries aren't available for the A8JP from any of the usual online battery vendors (as of 1/20, anyway). I contacted Asus Support and they referred me to The Asus Estore, which does not list the A8JP.

Asus Technical Support (excellent by the way) said that the A8Js battery would work in the A8JP. Asus' Estore said to use the "A8JC/A/M/A8F-1A BATTERY MODULE". Well that's conflicting to me and didn't want to spend money on another 2.5 hour battery.

Instead, I decided to get a Portable Power Station from BatteryGeek.Net, which is supposed to give 5+ hours on one charge (good review and pics Here.) If you click the "Free Battery Audit" button in the top nav bar, they'll provide you with personalized recommendations. This one comes with multiple tips (so it will work with other devices (in addition to Asus, it's can be used with all devices which require a 3V~28V power supply: iPod, PSP, MP3, MP4, DC, DV, PDA, Cell Phone, Digital Camera, CPAP device, Laptop, etc.)

I had a couple of questions and emailed the Battery Geeks. Their responses were detailed and easy to understand. Especially for someone who doesn't know his amp from his Watt. Like me.

It should arrive Friday and I'll post more info after trying it out.

Monitor: I believe the monitors for the A8JP are the CMO screens (Chi Mei Optoelectrics). Mine is a CMO. You can check yours by following the steps here: Determining Asus LCD Mfg.

Clean Install: I needed to re-install the OS (Windows XP MCE). It went easily and quickly. Basic instructions are in This Post and subsequent ones. I installed the drivers manually. The driver CD menu is easy to understand and you know what you're installing.

 

Nice thread for us A8JP owners much appreciated.

If we find Vista drivers lets post with comments I plan on upgrading this weekend.
Also ordered additional Ram and a 7200RPM hardrive looking forward to my goodies for my A8JP.

 

sanpabloguy, did you buy your A8JP from NewEgg? I am hoping that mine comes with a CMO screen as well. Are the viewing angles decent on yours?

 

What is the official Max Memory supported by the A8JP? I'm reading 2GB, but wouldn't I be able to use 2-2GB sticks for a total of 4GB?

Not that I'm going to need anything over 2GB anytime soon, but I'm just curious.

 

Yes, I ordered mine from NewEgg. Arrived nicely packed and everything in order.

I thought I'd seen one post saying that the user got an AUO screen, but it might have been purchased in Europe. Can't find it now. Otherwise, I've only seen posts saying CMO for the A8JP. Viewing angles don't seem too good, though. I usually am looking at mine straight-on, but from even small angles there seems to be washout around the edges. Turning down the screen brightness seems to help a little.

I don't know for sure about the max RAM for the A8JP, but I believe it's 2GB, which should handle most things for the next couple of years. I think the MoBo and the processor can affect the max RAM.

 

Hi there, mine arrived this morning. Bought this from Germany and I'm from Finland. Clean instal, ahoy!

Btw, found this superb sleeve for A8JP. It's Tucano Guaina medium. They say it's only 32cm wide (laptop about 33,5cm) but because it's made of neopren it's just snug for A8JP. Highly recommend it.

 

My LCD is a CMO1416 this info can be retrieved from Everest.

 

Pallonaama - do you have a link to buy? Sounds interesting. I've been looking for a sleeve.

You can also find your monitor info by going to Device Manager, expand "Monitors" on the right pane, and right-click the Plug-n-Play monitor. Select Properties | Details. The first line that appears will look something like this:

DISPLAY\[THEN STRINGS OF TEXT]

The first few letters after "DISPLAY\" are the initials of the monitor maker (which are described in the post linked in message 1).

So a CMO monitor will show DISPLAY\CMO[STRING OF TEXT]

 

Sanpabloguy, I bought my sleeve from the local retailer so I don't know where you could get it.

Did some googling though and this is the sleeve from US amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Tucano-BLK-Ne...8/ref=sr_1_7/102-8924604-8970559?ie=UTF8&s=hi

Hope you find one for yourself because this is JUST the exact size.

 

I also have the CMO screen and don't have any problem with viewing angles. I also don't see any of the backlight leakage problems that people with the AUO screens report. The only real issues I have with the screen is that whites could be whiter, and there should be an option for higher brightness. I'm using mine in the VIVID mode, and it's still a bit dark. I don't know if I would use a high brightness option, but it would be nice to know that I have it. The one thing I have noticed when looking at the screen from an off angle, is that there is a lot more glare. But of course I expected that from this type of screen. So, from an angle, the screen doesn't get washed out. It just has a lot more glare; which should be expected.

 

Here's one too:
http://www.provantage.com/tucano-bfgu-m-141~7TUCA00L.htm

 

I have a question. What can I do about the fan on this thing? It's so loud and annoying and it NEVER shuts off when plugged in.

I came from a relatively silent Lenovo 3000 V100 to the A8Jp and it's like night and day. It seems as though it spins up as soon as I click my mouse button and the CPU activity jumps as a result. I could understand it spinning up after a prolonged period of high CPU utilization, but it just spins up so quickly to the next fan speed level during general usage. So it's a constant up-down, up-down during general usage.

And this is just an out of box install of XP with a few apps installed after I first booted it up. I also ditched all of the bloatware preinstalled.

Also, using NHC, temperature readings are hovering at 56c - 58c when it's idling at 999MHz. which seems extremely high. My 1.66GHz Core Duo V100 would hover between 43C and 50C.

I just wish there were a way to spin down this **** turbine!

 

In addition to using the Asus settings, there are brightness settings on the Fn keys that operates independently of the Asus settings. I fnd them more useful. It might be F5 and F6 to adjust brightness. One's a solid sun; the other's a hollow sun.

I recall seeing some other posts on fans in Asus NBs. I don't have this problem though. Mine's very quiet. The fan on the NB cooler is louder than the fan on the Asus. For me anyway.

 

Hey I was curious what GPU drivers you guys are using. The catalyst 7.1 or the Asus driver that came with the notebook? There also seems to be a fix for the Omega drivers to get them working with the X1700 so anyone using them?

 

I've been using Catalyst 7.1. You can get pretty detailed control. Found that I messed things up enough I needed to use the handy "restore defaults" and it worked perfectly. I didn't install the Asus GPU controls. But Power4Gear does have an affect on screen appearance, too.

I'd be interested in trying the Omega drivers if there were more info. Do you have a link on where to get or a how-to?

 

This is what I was able to find. I decided to just copy the whole post so that you would not always be clicking on links but this is were I got it. Its the 7th post. Good to know that the catalyst 7.1 are working though.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=201686

 

I've used my laptop for a couple of ours now. I love it! (not that I have a choice because I invested a large portion of my savings in this)

Gotta say something about the fan though. I don't find it too loud but the place for the exhaust could be better. I have relatively little space on my table so that my hand is close to the notebook when i use the mouse. When the "**** turbine" is spinning I find it rather unpleasent when the air warms my thumb. That's just a minor thought.

 

Amazing. I didn't even know about the separate brightness controls. I now have the ability to make the screen brighter than I am personally comfortable with. This is great. I now have it set at about 3/4 of full brightness, and am very happy with it. THANKS A LOT SANPBLOGUY!!!

As far as the fan is concerned, I think mine is very quiet (this may just come down to personal preference). However, I can't say the same about the Coolmax laptop cooler I purchased from Newegg. The thing is incredibly loud; so much so that I'll probably have to buy some replacement fans if I'm going to keep using it.

 

Can anyone give me any idea why a clean install of XP MCE is running at 56-58C at idle (999MHz)?

It simply doesn't make sense, and I've have plenty of ventilation around the laptop.

 

Did you install only MCE? Or did you install the drivers CD during setup?

If you did a full install (not just MCE) you probably got Norton back and that might explain it.

I've never had the issue of the drive constantly running or a high CPU rate when idle. Except when I originally got it and it had Norton on it.

 

This is straight out of the box from NewEgg. I uninstalled Norton and am running:

NHC
AVG Antivirus
Comodo Firewall

Those are the only background applications running. I also have FireFox and Thunderbird open.

Again, this is no different than my previous Lenovo notebook, yet the processor is reporting 56-58C

 

the fan might seem to bother some ppl. i took it to the 3rd floor of the university here, and man i definitely could hear the fan; of course, the mouse clicking was far more noticeable. i tried it out by playing a game, and it didnt seem to be audible at around 3 feet. most ppl wont notice, but i guess you would. as with the screen, its nice for just one person, seeing as u can directly see it, but if other ppl are looking at it, then that can pose a problem. other than that, everything just rox on this laptop

 

Maybe I should ask this question to see if the sound of my fan is abnormal.

How many "steps" does the fan have? 2 or 3?

I've only heard two: 100% thrust and afterburn

 

mazda 3s: The numbers you posted look within normal to me - the temps look ok. I'm surprised it's not warmer after being on for 15 hours.

As far as CPU Clock, that's well within the range of the T7200 clock. As far as I can tell anyway. This article was pretty informative:

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2808

It claims the T7200 has a CPU clock speed of 2.0 GHz.

 

Oh, I'm not concerned about the clock speeds. It's 999MHz idle and 2.0GHz full blast. My only concern is with the idle temps and loud fan.

 

Your CPU idle temps do not seem to high, I have seen some much higher temps in the mac forums and the HD temp is normal. Remember that the C2D can go up to 95C before it automatically shuts of the computer, so you still has 40C to go. I would consider anything over 60C a high idle temp. From what I have seen others post who have C2Ds 45-55 is the norm. (of course that is jumping manufacturers, so different cooling is probably being used)

 

Greetings,

Let me start by saying that this site and forum have been excellent resources leading up the my ultimate purchase of an A8JP off Newegg.

It arrived yesterday and I spent most of last night tinkering with it. I haven't bought a laptop since 2000 and was thrilled to discover this laptop with the Asus Name, immense power, and a reasonable price.

First off, I'm a stickler for too many things running in the taskbar, so I un-installed a bunch of the things I wasn't going to use - I dropped norton for AVG, downloaded firefox and a few other programs I use.

One problem I ran into immediately was attempting to combine the 2 partitions into one. The reviewer of this notebook from notebookreview.com explained that he just used the NTSC converter on the desktop to do this: When I attempted this it converted the partitions from FAT32 to NTSC, but did not merge them into one. I attempted to use windows disk manager to do this without success (I am new to partitioning in general).

I then said screw it, I'll do a clean install of windows which would hopefully allow the partitions to combine when reformatted, but I couldn't get the laptop to boot from the CD to do this install. I tried using the f keys and I even tried a copy of XP pro that I have but couldn't even do a clean install (I've done clean installs in the past, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here).

In the end I've just decided to live with the two partitions for the time being until I get more experienced with this stuff.

Another issue with this notebook appears to be updated drivers for the relatively new X1700 video card. There is a thread about obtaining the best drivers here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=100360

I've never had a dedicated GPU in a laptop before so this is another area I'm going to wait until there's an official release I suppose (if someone has an easy solution to obtain the best/most up-to-date drivers please post).

One other question - there appear to be 2 seperate bluetooth managers running on this machine (system tray). Is one better than the other? Can I remove one of these and still use bluetooth?

Again, this is a great community here and I'm thrilled as ever to have landed on this notebook thanks to the help of this site and forum.

 

Posted a new thread for my issue.

 

Congrats Bones! Here's some info I can throw out that might help:

Two ways to do a fresh install:

1. Press F9 repeatedly during boot up. You'll get reinstall options that way. I believe it reinstalls from the recovery partition. I've not done it that way.

2. This is the way I did do it: Put recovery CD in drive, reboot. During reboot, repeatedly press the Esc key. You'll get the option to boot from CD or from HDD. Choose CD and you are on your way. You can skip the drivers CD (just power off when it asks for it; then power back on and finish installation). You can choose the drivers to install after the OS finishes. The drivers CD has a menu you can use to choose the drivers to install.

3. At the beginning of the installation (of #2 anyway) you get an option for the number of partitions. Only 1 or 2, IIRC. They don't allow you to clearout the recovery partition. You could use something like Partition Magic if you want better control of your partitions.

I'm not sure why there are two Bluetooth managers. My guess is that one is for bluetooth devices and the other is for bluetooth management. There's a shortcut key to turn BT on/off on the row above the Fn keys.

 

Also the reason your comp is not booting from the CD is probably because it is set to boot from the HDD. To change that just go into the BIOS (hit F2 when just booting up) and you should see some options to switch from HDD to the CD drive, there are also a few other options like USB but don't worry about those. Just set the boot order so that the CD drive comes first.

 

Brent,

thank you for your post. In my desperation last night I did not try hitting ESC with the recovery CD in. I was swearing it was one of the Fkeys. I will follow your instructions and should be good from there. My last clean install was years ago so I must have forgotten about ESC for CDROM bootups. so, recovery partition aside, I should be able to consolidate the C and D drives into one larger C. thanks again.

EDIT: Refined Power - thanks for your suggestion. I will try your BIOS adjustment if I'm still having trouble. Thank you.

 

Is it just me, or is the touchpad really annoying? With it being made of the same material and painted like the rest of the body, it's not very easy to use with your finger. My finger just drags along like wiping your finger against glass.

And if you finger is the least bit wet from perspiration, look out.

 

You could get some clear Contac paper from the hardware store (or a PDA screen protector) and put that on. It should peel off just fine if you decide you don't like it. They don't use industrial strength adhesive. It would give you a little resistance without making things look ugly. Don't know how it would affect the responsiveness, though.

I use a BT mouse and set the touchpad to not turn off if the BT mouse is active, so I haven't used it much. Never really liked touchpads.

 

Brent and Refined Power,

thanks again for your clean install tips. I successfully performed a clean install of windows and installed the drivers I wanted to use.

However, the single partition hardrive ended up a FAT32 drive (not sure if this was normal). I went ahead and converted it to NTFS, but my "total size" of the HD is listed as 107 GB. The recovery partition is not listed under 'my computer' - Is this normal? I realize the formatting of HD disks reduces the overall usable space, but I've never seen 13 gigs rendered unusable (perhaps I'm just not used to HD disks this big and the ammount of space that is typically rendered unusable in HD's this large).

Is this ammount of usable space about what everyone else has?

 

Hey there happy to hear you got the install to work. As far as the recovery partition I think when you reformatted it was lost in the process, but that does not matter because you have the XP disks (they serve the same propose) I am not sure how much of the HDD you typically lose when you reformat Good to switch to NTFS though as I hear they are slightly more stable than the FAT32 file system.

 

what resolution do you guys set ur a8jp to?

 

I'm not sure if you know this, but there's a difference between Advertised (Decimal) hard drive space and True (Binary) space. Check the link below
http://www.pcguide.com/intro/fun/bindec-c.html

Just a quick example, when I go and buy a 120GB hard drive for my laptop, put it into my computer, then check the size of it, it is 110GB, this is because manufacturers use Decimals while computers use Binary.

Windows XP takes up roughly 2.5-3GB, then you add whatever else programs you want.

So the advertised Size will always be bigger than its true size in a computer.

Another example is 500GB = 460GB (Binary) This is the true value in a computer.
60GB = 57.7GB (Binary) This is the true value in a computer.

Same goes with USB Flash Drives (Keys), a 4GB flash drive is really 3.85GB not a full 4GB.

 

Congratulations, Bones. Glad it went smoothly. HDD size is never what's advertised, per milestone's message above. There's logic behind it, and your numbers sound OK. The recovery partition does not show up under My Computer. You can see if it is installed by doing the following:

1. Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management.
2. Click Disk Management. It's in the left pane, under storage.
3. You should see something like the attached image. If you don't have a partition called Recovery, it is gone.

You can also do some basic partition management from this screen by right clicking on one of the drives. I believe all you can do here is delete or format a drive, though.

Hope this helps.

 

I got mine 2 weeks ago , its much faster compared to my ol faithful Fujitsu of 5 years. The WIndows MCE is annoying me since it seems to take a while to boot up and does not really seem to have any real purpose. I have hooked my laptop up to my HDLCDTV and it works well teamed up with a wireless MS Keyboard and mouse. so basically I can work with a 32" screen! I bought a cheap DVI cable for 15$. It does the trick.

Not really run any games on this yet. Also not too sure about the ATI Vid drivers for the 1700. Any other tips on what others have been doing.

 

Guys,

Thanks again for your help with the HDD issues. So far the notebook is running like a dream. The fan runs constantly, but it is the quietest fan I've every had on a notebook. I've been very impressed with the quality of this machine relative to the price. The only minor quibble I'm dealing with now is the bluetooth defaulting to "enabled" everytime the laptop boots up. Not a major issue but I like minimizing the amount of software that starts on boot-up.

Other than that and the video card drivers we're still waiting for, this laptop is amazing.

 

Hey guys,

Quick question, pretty often after I hibernate my computer it will revert my screen saver back to no screen saver. Anyone have this problem and/or know how to fix it aside from having to reselect my screensaver all the time?

 

Go to Start/Run and then type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) That should give you a variety of options were you can control what is starting at bootup

 

Thanks RP - I'm learning a lot here - thank you.

yesterday my DVI to HDMI cable arrived from amazon so I hooked up the laptop to my Toshiba CRT HDTV - The picture was nice, but with some overscan and blurry icon text. I'm going to try the powerstrip software this week (I keep reading about it on other boards) and see if I can configure that display to act as a second monitor. I have this crazy idea of wanting to be able to use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard from the couch.

I also received the 2GB G-skill ram from Newegg which I promptly installed (the most cramped RAM compartment I've dealt with though).

 

I must have missed out on the option where I can turn the touchpad off. Can anyone point it out to me?

Also, it seems that BT automatically tunrs on every time I reboot or resume for hibernate. Can someone check what BT related services they have running using msconfig?

Lastly, I'm using the Intel pro wireless manager software for wireless networking , since I like the interface. My msconfig shows 2 services for wireless. Can anyone verify which processes I actually need for the wireless to work?

Infact, if someone has a system that they believe is running really quick out of the box with minimal services, PLEASE post a screen shot or list here of your list.

Other than that, I'm pretty satisfied with this laptop... was expecting a little better battery life, but im also going to remove P4Gear since it causes hibernation issues with my machine when its plugged in.. anyone else notice that?

TIA!

 

Under the control panel, mouse, there is an option to disable the touchpad when there is an external mouse connected. That is the only way to disable it that I know of.

Regarding your hibernation issues, I performed a clean install of windows, installed power4gear, and cannot even hibernate my system anymore. Is this the hibernation issue you're referring to?

Finally, I will mess with my msconfig settings later tonight and check on the BT powering on issue which has been bothering me as well. I'll post if I find a way to fix it.

 

hmm..seems like this whole image of MCE is a lil f'ed up out of the box. Turn off P4g in your msconfig and you will be able to hibernate...as long as P4g is not running....I only have problems when im plugged in to power brick with hibernation.

I am about to uninstall P4G, and hopefully can get some answers on the BT and Wireless services.

 

I just stopped P4G from running at startup. I can see uses for it when running from battery, but not most of the time.

One of the BT programs is for WLAN, the other is for BT devices. You can see which is which by hovering over the systray icon. I did disable the BT service in a folder called Toshiba on my Asus (graphic attached from Startup tab in msconfig). It has not affected WLAN.

 

Interesting to see this. Mine definitely was: USB ports wouldn't work right, several other odd and seemingly unrelated issues. A clean install fixed everything nicely. Have been very happy with it since doing that.

And upping RAM to 2GB has really been nice. Haven't tried any gaming yet, but noticeable improvements in webpage loading, no lag when several apps open at once, Acrobat is very fast, can do several things at once with an antivirus scan running with no noticeable lag/drag.

 

Ok i owned A8JP about 3 months everything was fine.
I found out this laptop material is not so good because it is very easy to get scratched especially the touch pad areas and i hate the stickers around there.
Anyone can provide some hints how to remove the stickers? I also bought a laptop sleeves to prevent scrathes but it still very easily get scratches
I also get a slow startup like it need to take about 1min.
overall it is a kickass laptop

 

Brent, I have the BT manager disabled as well.. but I'm running 2 services at startup right now that both deal with WLAN:
ZCfgSvc.exe
and ifrmewrk.exe,

both of which are in the programe files\intel\wireless\bin directory.

I want to know which one is needed ( if any )... any recommendations?

The other wierd thing I notice is when the laptop comes out of hibernate, it has issues setting the background on the screen until I refresh it... anyone else noticing this?

All in all, small bugs.. still a kickass laptop...tried playing Metal Gear Solid on it yest ( yes I know its old and the graphics suck), but it was fun having a GPU that can actually render some of the stuff properly as opposed to crappy software rendering!

Now, all I need to do is figure out how to stretch battery life to 3+ hours with WLAN on !