A8JP Owners Lounge

it works
cheers

 

My friend has a problem with his A8Jp. We downloaded the 7.1 version of the catalyst driver but we couldn't finish the installation since it stopped at the middle and stated that it wasn't compatible with the system. Anybody have or had a similar problem?

 

I just bought my A8JP but have a problem with the monitor refresh rate. On the laptop LCD, with the refresh rate set to 60Hz and 1440x900 resolution, I have no problems. But when I connect my Proview PL926w 19" widescreen monitor and set the resolution @ 1440x900 I get these horizontal lines that run vertically up and down my screen and after a while it gets annoying. I tried to turn up the refresh rate but the only refresh rate I can select is 60Hz. Those horizontal lines are getting to be hard on my eyes when I'm either gaming or just browsing the web. Any suggestions as to what I should do?

 

i started to hate my A8JP...because my A8jp is getting very high temperature, always hang especially i play lan game (Counter Strike)... Don't know what to do, i checked my windows task manager and the CPU Usage is always more than 50% and PF Usage is about 496mb... Can someone help me? Cause i don't want to hate Asus, i still want my next notebook is Asus...pls!! cheers

 

I am about to install and use NHC for the first time. Did any of you guys have issues or need to uninstall anything to make this work properly? Thanks in advance

 

what OS are you running? also what high temps that you have? reading through some posts seems like people are complaining of loud fan noises but on mine i dont even hear the fan running on idle. only when i press my head against the side where the vent is i hear something. running a game is a different matter.

for those who have vista installed and are missing video drivers, x1700 cuz ati and asus do not have it available on their websites.. go here. the page is in german but you can easily figure out what is what.

 

the temperature is always around 67-70 celcius and i also can hear a very noisy fan which is freakin annoying...

 

Where is this i've never seen it I thought the only combination to disable/enable touchpad is fn+F9

 

On my A8Jp, there is no function button to turn the touchpad on/off.

The only things that work are Fn+ F9 and setting the touchpad to turn off when a USB mouse is being used.

 

Sounds like you have a bad fan. My fan is super quiet when running. Maybe its not working right, and that can lead to high CPU temps. Are those temps idle, or on heavy load?

 

Woot, ive finally joined the A8JP club, got it from UPS today (newegg)

 

the high temps for both...it will hang if i try to heavy load...cause it is impossible for me to hang like a freak for only playing counter strike with the lowest resolution setting...

anyway i will try to format/recover the notebook just to proof that it is not influence by viruses...

 

Has anyone flashed the firmware on their DVD drive yet? I may have a problem: I am loading data from my desktop to my A8jp via Sony DVD-rw. I am burning and erasing on my older version of Nero on my desktop. After I load the data on my laptop and try erasing it using the newer Nero I get an error saying can not erase.

I am unsure if this is a version issue or a media issue or a drive issue. Anyone with some info would be great.
,G

 

Does anyone know if we can change the hotkeys to open another program? Since I removed Intel wireless management, the hotkey says can not open Intel wireless.

 

Hi, I'm about to pull the trigger on buying an A8jp... is there anything that owners of this notebook can tell me that would sway me towards or away from it? I'm definitely looking at a 14.1" notebook that will act as a desktop replacement, and the only other alternative I could find was the dv2000t from HP. The main thing I'm worried about is the screen. Thanks for the help.

 

much better screen in the a8j than the dv2000

much brighter, higher resolution clearer. No comparison.

 

Quick question. Is the drive on the A8JP an actual Lightscribe drive? I read the review a while back and it says that "Lightscribe software is included, but the drive doesn’t support it."

I wanted to double check before running out and buying some Lightscribe discs.

 

No, it is not a lightscribe drive.

 

Yup, lightscribe's just part of the Nero software that comes with the A8. It doesn't even install it as far as I could see, just gives you an html page saying what it does.

 

HI,
this section for the A8JP users is great.

i just got my lappy after 2 month of research.

and i have a few questions:

1. how do i upgrade the bios? is it recommended?

2. what drivers do i need to install and what i can pass on their install
(do i need the instant fun or multiframe ???? what do i need and what not)

3.is there new driver that support the X1700?

4.when i got the lappy it was with MCE and 400MB of ram was used when first it was turned on and that is a lot,
do you know what programs that are pre-installed or services on the msconfig i can or need ro remove to free RAM on startup?


-ThanX

 

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8Jp

 

Quote " Anyone know where these puppies are made in?" end quote S3an



There Hencho en China, I'm afraid. I was hoping Taiwain but nope.


wp

 

Bought mine last monday and I'm getting problems with my LCD.

1st it was 2 dead pixels and ASUS refused to replaced the machine and I only bought it for one day.

However, I've discovered another 2 very small hair line bubbles within the screen. Due to this reason, ASUS accepted that it is a defect. I originally asked for a total replacement of the whole machine from the reseller but they convinced me to get it LCD repaired alone instead.

The first LCD replacement, still had dead pixels and so they replaced it twice.

However, I'm still not happy because the screen now flickers in brightness every now and then with the AC adapter connected.

Now this is a more difficult problem to demonstrate to ASUS as it could sometimes happen every 5min or 30min.

What should I do? Live with this subtle flicker or haggle ASUS to do something about it??

Sigh, i rather live with one dead pixel than to have a LCD that flickers only now and then.

Firstly, I thought it was the unstable voltage of my house's electricity but this problem also occurs at my friends house when I'm lanning.

So, what do you guys think I should do?

 

Poeter, I really don't know =/
If I were to be in your situation, I would be !@#$
My A8JP haven't arrive yet, I hope I don't get any defects or dead pixels
These few days, I'm more worried than excited about it.
=(

 

Just got one from Newegg.

 

How was the screen on yours mint?

 

I meant to say I just ordered it. Once I get it, I'll let you know.

 

It's such a shame that the reseller didn't have anymore of the A8JP other than the demo.

I had to go with the full refund and drop the bargain that I took.

I went to another reseller and ordered W7J. Hopefully this time I won't have any problems since it's confirmed that it's made in Taiwan not china.

I have really lost trust in any product made by china now. I'm so disappointed. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if it was made in Taiwan because products made in china tends to have a less strict quality control in my opinion even though they may be manufactured the same way as Taiwan.

 

Got my a8jp last wed from newegg and I love it so far... no dead pixels.... nice crisp screen.

Only thing I am havin problems with is every time I wake the computer up or I turn it on it launches Windows Media Center. I went into media center and turned off the option to launch MC on startup but that had no effect. anyone have any suggestions?

Also I only have 1 gig of ram but I ran into the same problem of the computer not wanting to hibernate so I looked for a patch and found that in SP2 for XP PRO, and MCE have a problem with that. But I just downloaded this patch http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909095 from the site and it seems to of solved the problem.

My only regret that I have it in now is goin with the 14in. instead of a 15.4. I am just not satisfied with my screen real estate... BUT I love this thing other then that.

 

Im quite confused about the latest drivers. So does the mobility 7.2 drivers work or no?

 

heh, my main gripe is that its too i big... i thought 14.1 inches would be nice, but then when i started lugging it around school and such, i finally found out it was too big. its a shame though, cuz my last laptop was 15.4 and it was ridiculously huge for me; i should have gotten a 12.1 inch but i wanted the a8jp

 

i just installed them and have had no problems in the last hour. but i haven't gamed with them yet.

 

Hey guys, snagged an A8JP 2 weeks ago from Newegg. So far, it's been mostly smooth but there are those few annoyances which is why I'm posting. Hopefully somebody knows how to resolve them:

Media Center: opens every time i boot or come out of hibernate. At one point it had stopped doing it (no idea what I did), but I opened up Media Center again via the hardkey on the laptop, and now it's back again. If I press it again, it appears to close, but the lit up MCE button above the keyboard stays lit. I did notice that when it wasn't happening it was unlit.

LCD Brightness. EVERY time I unplug power, the LCD dims. Yes - I know about the LCD power saving feature in the bios - that is off. And if I plug power back in, it brightens up a little bit, but not back to full brightness. So every single time I unplug power and replug power, I need to adjust brightness.

Previous issues: Laptop wouldn't stay hibernated if I had the power plugged in. I had to unplug power, then hibernate, otherwise it would come right out of hibernation again. Annoying as heck. The fix - uninstalled a bunch of the asus stuff - I'm not sure who the culprit was, but I'm guessing it was power4gear.

Touchpad also does suck, but I've gotten used to it. The scrolling is very lame and I had to tweak the size of the scroll area so that it was slightly larger.

I'm tempted to wipe the thing and just install XP Pro. I've heard of a few people doing this right from the start - maybe that should have been my first install as all the tweaking and bugs have been a huge waste of my time. I'm curious - does anybody who did a fresh install (without all the asus stuff) have any of their own issues that is hardware related? And does anyone have solutions to my first two issues?

The thing is still usable, my LCD seems flawless, and it runs games and other apps just fine - once I close freakin MCE and adjust the brightness for the 756th time lol.

 

FYI, i downloaded and installed the latest bios: after doing this, my LCD brightness issues occurred.

 

@ Gizak

The day after I got the laptop I did a clean install of MCE using the supplied restore disk. I then installed the drivers (mostly from the asus supplied disk, a couple from the web), and finally partitioned the drive into NTSC.

The machine has been running flawlessly:

- hibernation
- standby
- screen settings (love the CMO screen)
- audio

everything has been running perfectly. Highly recommend a clean install. (btw I HAVEN'T flashed the BIOS) - not sure if that makes a difference.

 

It seems there's a high rate of "funky" OS's on A8JPs from NewEgg. I had the same problem (and if you look back, several other people did too).

Since re-installing the OS with the recovery disks (do not put in the drivers CD, just power off after the OS is done and power on), things have been great with mine. You can selectively install the drivers from the CD or the web, as Bones said. I'd convert C and D to NTFS prior to reinstalling the OS.

 

I play UT2004 and mines runs about the same same CPU temps as well. Might want to run a tester on your ram and see if it has a problem. I am currently RMA'ing mine I think the video card went bad I cant get it to boot and if it does its not stable very long. I tried the back up disc but it wasn't any help.


wp

 

I installed Vista Ultimate 32bit on my notebook. And it had crashed twice a week for unknown reasons. Sweet huh.

Anyway, the components that makes up the A8JP, do they all have XP x64 driver? I'm retrograding to XP next week.

 

Hi. I have ordered A8jp yesterday. Next week should arrive
Thank you all for useful comments in this forum which drove me to make a decision.
I was thinking about battery lifetime for a while before finally made an order. Just curious, does anyone tried to install something like Win98 or 2000 on this laptop? Can it improve situation with battery lifetime?
I know, many features would be probably not available; some problems with drivers may appear as well, but to work in MSOffice in the plane/train should be enough though.

P.S> How about Linux???

 

ok, is there a 64bit driver for the X1700 and the audio driver? for x64 Vista

 

I have found this for X1700 (WinVista)
http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/treiber/grafikkarten/ati/ati_mobile_catalyst/

 

Dumping Power4Gear in favor of just windows power management and NHC has increased my battery life by 30 minutes or more. I sat on the couch editing photos for 2 hours last night (Photoshop bumps it up to 2ghz for any/every action) and then surfed for another hour. Around the 3 hour mark, I had 14% left. As much as I liked Power4Gear, I'd recommend trying to run without it for a few sessions (just kill the process) and see if your battery life also goes up.

 

My one day review:

Overall: solid, but a little disappointed

Likes: price, hardware, quiet

Dislikes:

1. Screen--I have the CMO (Ching Mei) and the verticle viewing angles are horrific. I can't tilt/angle the screen so that it looks of uniform brightness.

2. Touchpad--the left touchpad button is harder to press. This is not my imagination and I'm skeptical that repeated use will improve it. I also am having a hard time scrolling. I do not know why as I've never run into this type of problem on any notebook before. I have adjusted the settings.

3. If anyone wants to take it off my hands, let me know. I think I'm moving to the macbook pro.

 

How bad are these viewing angles and are there any pics floating around? If you use the lappy mostly by yourself why should this be a concern?

I'm also concerned about the graininess issues that seems to be affecting some A8Jp notebooks. Does it affect all A8Jp notebooks or just some?

I ask because I've ordered an A8Jp, and I'm seriously considering backing out.

 

Differing opinions but I'll give mine:

Pro's
- I have the CMO screen and it's the best screen I've ever used (this is my 4th laptop i've owned). I notice a significant reduction in eye strain when compared to my work computer. Viewing angle is great, colors are vibrant and crisp. [run at 1440x900]
- stability (after the clean install of windows + selective drivers, everything runs perfectly. NO crashes or CTRL+ALT+DELETES)
- Good hardware inside relative to cost

Cons
- the touchpad isn't the best (not a big deal for me, I use external mouse 90% of the time)

Bottom Line: Best notebook I've owned, in value and performance, hands down

 

does anyone know why ati would release a graphics card without proper drivers for it? because I'm starting to become ticked off that drivers haven't come out for it. Also, has anyone emailed ati support about this? I wonder if they'd even care.

 

alright guys, how the hell do you rightclick on the touchpad?
I tried pressing on every single section of it, but nothing works.

 

Well my two primary concerns were with the touchpad and screen the too.
The touchpad: Admittedly I am not the strongest bloke on the block but I've been around laptops for a while and don't think needing to put your wrist into a left click is any place close to normal.
The screen: I agree the best way to put it is that viewing angle is 0. i.e. even when looking at it straight on my screen doesn't give even brightness.(See pics on page 12 of this thread)
PPL on this forum have been telling me that there is something wrong with my screen, so I RMA'd it after trying all the updates/tweaks.
ASUS replaced the touchpad with a new one (Or they had someone click on the left button real hard for a couple of hours.) which is much better now. I also think the plastic sticker on the new part actually improves the feel/traction.
They ignored/missed/forgot my complain about the screen end of story its going back again in a couple of days and I'm keeping my finges crossed that it is a defective screen.
And BTW I would suggest you check out a macbook in a shop before you opt for that because I did and I wasn't impressed by their screen either.

 

this review has a detailed screen analysis:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-A8Jp-Notebook.2649.0.html

 

update day #2:
the screen is still no better, and looking head-on, the uniformity is not good enough to me. Of the Dell's, IBM's, Sony's, Apple's that I've owned, this screen is probably in the bottom 25%. I have the CMO screen. YMMV, as is the case with all screens these days. Same notebook can have wildly different components.

touchpad: definitely the worst or 2nd to the worst I've used. Scrolling is hard for some reason, and it may have something to do with the design of having everything feel like one big smooth slab of space, rather than having divided the touchpad and buttons like a traditional computer. Looks cool, but function isn't good. And I usually NEVER pay attention to a touchpad's construction on a notebook. The left click is not going to get better, in my opinion, with time. The right side is fine.

Anyone wants to take it off my hands, fine. It's not going to be classified as defective in Asus' mind since every model is made that way.