A8Js - Owner's Lounge

Hrm... I would have to do a clean install then. Gag me... Norton?

It is funny... when I used to work at Microsoft I always hated the calls that came in when people were running Norton... it is so invasive, uninstalling it is a huge pain and their uninstaller (as with most, sadly) does NOT uninstall everything.

Besides, I would never use it, not for the life of me. I have seen too many systems that had Norton Antivirus, but had a clean scan from Norton because it just missed them.

Since then I have relied mostly on free antivirus software (such as Avast), that is free for home users because they make their money in the corporate sector and are trying to actually attract customers. Every bit as good and free.

So what else?

 

Stock, "out of box", Asus windows install (only uninstalled Norton), results;

3DMark03 - 10086
3DMark05 - 4306
3DMark06 - 2690

COSBI OSMark Version 1.0beta7a - 1768

Geekbench 2006 Build 230 - 263.4

SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2007.SP1 - 5030 (Performance Index - Combined Index)

 

@stamar

How long does your a8js with 46 boot process take to boot into winxp desktop and no more cpu utilizing?

 

Im not sure how long but longer than I thought it would lol. Tuning is definitely needed.



OK

Everyone who said their dvd drive sounded like a airplane : I just burned a cd and I couldnt even hear it with my ear next to it.

Its the most silent dvd drive Ive ever heard. This is a huge discrepancy.

Mine is called matsh ita dvd ram uj 850s what is yours called?

 

that's what mine is, says Everest. and it is LOUD. there's no mistaking it and no matter of opinion at this kind of noise level.

i know you mentioned elsewhere that you didn't have the hard drive clicking problem either (which NHC fixed on my a8js) .. well, i guess you're just really lucky, unfortunately for some of us..

Maybe i should contact Asus about it.. i thought everyone had the same problem, but there's you.. so maybe not. (the loud dvd drive.. really loud). it burned a DVD fine though, so functionality wise it's alright.

 

I dont have hard drive clicking but I do hear the hard drive.

Ive got to try and reproduce this noise on the dvd drive.

Ive only used cds so far and I cant even detect that its functioning.

Burns a cd at 24 x with no detectable noise. its right next to my ear

 

How's everyones battery life? and anyone useing other power management tool other than Power4Gear?

Today i almost drained the entire battery, had it on for over 3.5hrs. Not sure if its true or not about not letting the battery go down to 0 charge, so i plugged it back it when i had 2% left. I was using NHC Max Battery Setting, with WI-Fi on surfing web and writing a paper in Ms-Word.

I think i might be able to get 4hrs out of the A8Js if i turned down the screen brightness and turn off wifi.

 

I just charged my battery once, let it drain to 25%, and then took it out for storage. I read it's good for the battery this way.

I also heard it's not good to drain these type of batteries to 0%.

 

Bbc and lh, you're both correct... it's not a good idea to completely discharge a LiIon battery. More precisely, it's not a good idea to make a habit of it... which people who are used to NiCd or NiMH batteries a prone to do.

Best bet for long term storage of LiIon batteries is to charge to ~40% then store somewhere cool.

Heat and discharging are a LiIon battery's worst enemies.

This page at Battery University should answer all your questions on the care and feeding of LiIon batteries.

 

go ahead and do me a favor

go to drive c, right click on windows folder, and look at properties.


when was it created on your machine?
Which sticker is on the front right is it power 4 gear or is it splendid?

 

Thursday, October 5 2006. and i have a Splendid sticker. i ordered in the first NA shipment, so before you.

 

Ok, I don't know if this has been posted before... but I JUST got my new A8Js and I know that I should convert the file system to NTFS but how do I go about this? And can I then re-partition the drives?

Any other basic steps I should take before getting into this?

Thanks

 

Hi,
After a fresh install of win XP Pro (not with the recovery CD's ), I would like to know exactly which drivers I need and also to put them in order (I mean the first drivers to install, the second and so on...)
If also some of them are not really necessary.
I'll plan to take all the drivers on Asus web page.

Thanks a lot to reply me.
I've made a french review of the fantastic A8Js.

http://forum.tt-hardware.com/topic-85344---TOPIC-Asus-A8.htm

Hope having your help.

;-) Crys

 

Well, if you bought an OEM copy of Windows, so that you could install without the recovery CDs, then you should read some pages back as you can actually use the Asus recovery CDs to install an OEM copy without any Asus bloatware or anything.

That said, if you are installing drivers, you don't need to install drivers in any particular order... it is irrelevent. I mean, I tend to install network and display drivers first, but that is just so I can connect to download other drivers and so that I don't have to look at such a small screen. <shrug>

So, do whatever you like, it really doesn't matter. As for necessary, however, all of the drivers really are necessary if you want your hardware to work correctly... so what do you mean?

 

mine is october 6th and power 4 gear

mine is the 1 week in shipment.

Just trying to see if there is a pattern.

matshi ta is the parent company of panasonic. This same cd drive is in too many notebooks to count without very many complaints of noise.

 

I'm just finishing up a gentoo install on my A8Js. Besides the default installation media not having a driver for the ethernet card, it's been pretty smooth sailing. The drivers for the ethernet card weren't functional for this notebook until quite recent kernels (I think it got merged into 2.6.18.1), but a number of distros have patched kernels or use the driver provided by realtek (r1000). Sound card is supported using the Intel HD audio ALSA driver. Wireless is supported via the ipw3945 driver package provided by intel. No clue about the webcam or media reader as I don't have a use for them.

I wish I could comment on whether or not they'll be auto-detected, but I've always been a "do it yourself" type of person so I configured it all by hand .

So far, I've had no stability issues, but I still haven't tested out suspending so there still might be possible issues there. I'll post an update in a few days once I've really tested it out (suspend, games, heavy multitasking, etc).

 

Arighty guys, I just received my A8Js by P1 (their MX), and its been great. However, I am sorry to spoil the techno topics, but I myself ain't very knowledgable in this area, so I might be asking newbish questions. I apologize in advance. I know I can check it, but P1 is sending my power brick to me and my lappie has no power.

Here are my questions:
1)Does it have a recovery partition?
2)other than skype and nortons, what else do I uninstall, I don't know these programs.

That's all I can think of, and yes I used the search funciton.

 

hey guys!

i'm the very happy owner of an a8js since one week now but i have one quite big problem:

the harddrive takes hours to defragment. the standard windows defrag util didn't even manage to defrag it completely, so i'm using O&O defrag 8.5 at the moment, but still it takes at least 5 hours to complete the job.

i still have my c and d partitions FAT32. does that make the difference or is the difference to 7200rpm drives so big? or even worse: is there sth. wrong with my drive?

i'd be very very thankful for any advice, since this is a real drawback for me.


PS: with my current settings battlefield 2 takes 5 minutes to load a map. on my old XP 3200+ AMD with a 7200rpm and 1GB ram it only took 1.30" max(!)

 

1) Yes. It takes up 1.86 GB.
2) I know that I have uninstalled those two programs, but I don't remember what else... But I am also interested in knowing what others have uninstalled and kept.

FAT32 takes much longer than NTFS to defrag. I think that that is one of the key advantages to converting to NTFS... Read/write speed may also be affected, but I am not entirely sure. Can someone else confirm/refute that?

 

Thanks jywc. So it does have a recovery partition. So, to say I were to reformat the whole HDD, would I need to burn the recovery drive? Or would I just use the Recovery CD to do a clean install? I myself have never done this, so I am not quite to sure if I should delete the partition or keep it.

Btw, just as clarification, I did not receive my power brick, therefore no way to recharge the battery. At this moment it only has 10min of battery life. But, its on the way, too bad its the weekend...For those who are confused by my post.

 

I'd definitly recommend converting the rive to NTFS, I'm sure that is why it takes forever. That being said, certain defrag programs take a lot longer than others, the windows one in particular takes a while.

 

Make sure you don't have any anti virus programs running, or any other program that might need access to the hard drive. If another application makes a call for data on the hard drive then the defrag utility will stop until the disk is free...

 

Hey, does anyone else have InstantFun stuck on and always running at startup and returning from hibernation? The InstantFun indicator light is stuck on on my machine (the one next to Caps Lock), and for the life of me I can't figure out how I turned it on, and how to turn it off.

 

ok i converted my system partition to ntfs and I'm defragmenting right now. the analysis took 2 seconds instead of the 5 minutes yesterday - looking good thanks guys!

flyingwok:

i had the same issue: i removed instant fun from the autostart (i think it was in the registry, but maybe also in the startup folder in the startmenu). now i can't use it anymore, since the .exe isn't running - but i guess i won't need it anyways

to remove the autostart entry from the registry follow these steps:

- click on the windows-icon
- click "run"
- type in "regedit" (without "");
- nagivate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Run
- search for something called "InstantFun"
- right click on that entry and remove it.

instant fun should be gone now

if you can't find any instantfun entry in the previous folder try the following folder in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Run

if you even can't find it there, then it must be in the windows-startup folder.

 

xlr8r:
Thanks for the tips, I searched through the registry and my startup folder and couldn't find anything that looked like InstantFun... which is bizarre!

 

On my A8Js, only the WiFi shortkey works, the other four doesn't do anything when I press them. I installed instant fun manually, still doesn't work.

Anyone else has this problem?

 

bizarre indeed i'm pretty sure that i removed it this way

maybe some start-up utility could help you out there (i don't have any experience there, so maybe try google)

 

all the buttons do something on my a8js

the instant fun button boots windows then starts up the little program.


way less than instant.

 

I tried them when I'm in windows already.

 

Hi all

Proud A8Js owner here as well. Bought in Sweden, comes /w BT and 1440*900 display (we thought we were going to get the 1280*800 one here, but got lucky in the end).

A few notes on the computer:

1. Fast as I ever wished it would be, especially graphics-wise. Coupled with my new Samsung 22" screen I can max out my games and get great framerates. =)

2. I have seen some threads describing grayness problems with different Asus machines, such as the W3J (?) and the F3Ja/F3Jp. I believe this screen suffers from the same problems. Very (maybe not light per se, but) grey. Anyone know of future Bios updates that adresses this, or maybe I'm the only one experiencing this problem. The screen has poor viewing angles too, but that was expected after reading up in this forum.

3. Build quality is very ok so far. Hinges are sturdy (so far), body don't flex, keyboard quite allright, overall good quality I think.

4. Fan scheme not allright. The fan is constantly on, which was a disapointment. This is because of the "support Tj85 Merom" thing? Could I try an older Bios version, or would I have problems with my T7200 then?

I would really appreciate comments on points 2 and 4. Thanks! /epatnor

 

Hi epatnor, I own a W3J, not an A8Js, I just want to comment on your number 2 question. The problem is not 'grayness', the correct one should be 'graininess'. It was concluded that the graininess issue is only found in notebooks with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600, and I don't think A8Js has this problem, since A8Js uses nVidia. To check whether you have the graininess issue or not, go to www.comcast.net and examine the blue background color carefully. The blue color should appear like a solid blue, not grainy. In notebooks with graininess issue, the blue color will appear grainy.

 

On mine, the 'running man' key doesn't work, probably because I uninstalled Power4Gear. The Bluetooth button does nothing since I'm using the North American version. The wireless button switches WiFi on and off. The button with the black rectangle and the white 's' (I think it's an LCD screen) switches between Splendid colour profiles. The key with the music note boots up InstantFun.

If you wiped your Windows clean, it's possible you need one of the Asus utilities to enable the rest of the buttons like ATK Media from the Asus CDs. I know that that program controls the action when the lid closes or the power button is pressed.

Anyone else have C:\Windows\ABLKSR\ablksr.exe running upon Windows startup? An examination of the properties of the executable reveals that it's publisher is "Asystek Inc". Nothing else gives any indication what it is.

 

Well, from my experience, the fan wasn't constantly on, or it could have been quite quiet. I can really comment since I only ran it for an hour or so. Just to let you know, my room is fairly quiet.

 

I took the plunge today and picked up the A8Js. This won't be detailed, just adding my 2 cents.

Bought from: http://www.canadacomputers.com -- they are cheaper than any other Canadian retailer, and for this weekend they are 5% discounted on every purchase made in store. I spent $1920 CAD after all taxes and discounts for the machine, 50 blank dvds and a ~$75 Logitech 4 button wireless mouse.

Anyway, about the laptop.

I can see why people say the outer case is scratchable.

My previous laptop was a Dell Inspiron 8600, very plasticy and I've never particularly liked the build quality -- although it is fairly rugged. The Asus is much more solid in comparison, and looks better.

I will confirm the light leakage from the bottom of the screen - to the extent where I was thinking about a return (I am picky and it seemed to be a big annoyance at first).. after using it 10-15 minutes however I don't notice it even after leaving the PC and going back to it.

Also confirm the bad viewing angles on this screen.. you have to position it just right. Low marks for this, its much more of an annoyance than the light leakage.

I *hate* the positioning of the function key.. they've put it where left-ctrl is, in the corner, and put ctrl to the right of it. Should have been the other way around IMO.

Touchpad is fine, but I hate touchpads. HATE with a passion.. hence the wireless mouse purchase (Inspiron has a tiny keyboard joystick which I think all laptops should have).

Runs fine out of the box, set to FAT32 (why???). Lots of pre-bundled crap you don't need and so far I haven't figured out exactly what everything is. I recommend a reformat and clean start. Too many icons in the systray for my liking.

No game is installed yet to test, but I'll go out on a limb here and say the performace of the machine is as advertised. No complaints here about performance in my usage so far (performace is why I bought it afterall).

No volume control on the laptop itself, or play/pause buttons.. bit disappointing but no big deal.

The buttons it does have are fast and responsive.. maybe redundant, but they are fine (one click to turn on/off wireless, one click fan mode, one click screen settings).. those are fine.

ONE CLICK INSTANTFUN is currently driving me bananas. The PC was fine until I pushed the button to see what it does... now every time it starts up, it opens up in INSTANT FUN rather than Windows. Instant fun is basically a noob interface for creating multimedia projects.. it's only one (fast and easy) click to get back in the Windows GUI.. but man is it annoying.

It plays a sound at powerup, have not looked to disable this yet but it needs to be done.

Speaker quality is crap.. but all laptops are. You can hear the sound (obviously) but it sounds "far away" for lack of a better term. But really who uses laptop speakers... headphones or hooked into a docking bay/auxilliary input is the only way to go.

That's about it for now.. I haven't put in an hour of use yet, nor have I reformatted...

 

I'm wondering about ablksr.exe as well... anybody know anything about it?

I've recently noticed that the upper left corner of my keyboard seems "spongier" than the rest... I had previously mentioned my tab key was a little funny. By "spongy" I mean that, when I press down firmly, the keyboard bends downward slightly and when I release, there is a sort of 'click' sound. The keys affected are: F1, F2, F3, 1, 2, 3. I'm a little annoyed by this

 

Unexplored so far.. I'm using the old (i8600) laptop for now...


But the fix for spongy keys on the 8600 was single sided foam tape under the keyboard to reduce flex on the keyboard. Simple mod but involved opening the whole thing up. Once again, followup post required.

 

Thanks, I guess I should'nt have mentioned the W3J as the problem is different. I was more referring to this problem that people have had with the F3P. My problem really is grayness .

Thanks again

 

Thanks for the tip! I'm not brave enough to open my laptop yet, though! Besides, the issue is tolerable. It's just a little disappointing I guess.

 

I've had my A8Js for about 1 week now. It's an ok laptop but by far not perfect. I guess you get what you pay for.

1. Fast. Nice.

2. Build is ok but not more. It will probably get scratched pretty easily as said before. I bought a neoprene Tucano "second skin" to protect it.

3. Swapped the drive to a 7200 rpm sata travelstar without any problems. Upgraded memory with a TwinMOS 1 gig stick, easy too.

4. Battery performance is quite poor, but I guess that is a price we have to pay with this kind of performance. About 2.5 hrs, power4 gear set to battery saving (internet browsing, wlan on, bluetooth off)

5. I don't like the touchpad, it doesn't feel very precise. The silvery finish is not good with sticky fingertips. If you accidentally touch the pad with more fingers than one it goes bananas. And the scrollbar feature is absolutely useless.
The "double function" button is hard to press and it's not easy to find the exact position to get a right or left mouse click.

6. Screen is ok, resolution is fine for this size of laptop. But viewing angles are really poor (vertical).

7. What bugs me the most is the cooling fan sound level. It's silent for maybe 5 minutes and after that the fan starts to spin. I find the sound level to be really annoying and the fan never stops even if the laptop just sits there doing nothing. I don't know what thermal policies Asus have but I'd rather have a hotter laptop than this hoover like sounding machine. I have tried bios versions 205 and 207 (and I think 204 originally installed), no difference there.
Maybe if I try to change thermal paste? But I'm not very keen on messing with warranty and I'm not that handy either.
Maybe it does have to be this loud with CPU and GPU this fast?

 

fan noise is very quiet on mine, but i'm seriously considering sending the unit to Asus because of the DVD drive. it's really unacceptably noisy and Stamar said his unit is not. the only problem is that i really need this laptop and can't afford to have it gone for long stretches of time, so it's bugging me a ton.

 

set to battery saving I get over 3 and a half hours battery life.

using the internet accessing the hd the entire time.

I THINK my machine has a different setting of the power4gear software. Anyone who gets 2.5 hours using battery saving mode has a different setting than me or a different battery right?

my windows folder says created oct 6th, I have a power4gear sticker on the front right of my machine not a splendid one. what about all of you?

 

i can get over 3.5hrs as well, but im using notebook hardware control instead. i uninstalled power4gear.

 

My DVD unit is mega-loud too , it's like standing next to a Black Hawk taking off. Not really a concern for me though, as I will not watch many movies on the laptop, just install / burn stuff.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

But, my machine came with bios 204 default too. And the release notes says something like "update fan control scheme" for that release. That's why I was wondering about the earlier releases, like the 203 if anybody tried that. Maybe the fan will spin in intervals on under that bios?

Btw, what harddrives do you guys have? Mine came with a 120GB Fujitsu MHV2120BH PL. Either this drive really sucks, or I have a bad specimen.

The drive is clearly audible just spinning, and it's kind of like a fine grinding noise. The "read/write" sounds are just fine, but the rotation of the disc inside does not sound good to me. Also, it's slow like engine grease.

What's up with Asus warranty on the A8Js? Can the enduser exchenge his/her harddrive without warranty complications?

Other than that - still LOVE this computer!

Cheers /epatnor

 

In addition to the loud fan issue I have another problem with the instant fun button. If I press the button it launches the instant fun (bloatware)application and the green led is also being lit. If I exit the application the led is still lit (in addition to this the capslock green led also stops working). If I reboot the instant fun led is still lit and automatically launches the instant fun application when entering windows. Very annoying indeed. If I deinstall instant fun application the laptop behaves just the same the only difference is that windows media player will be launched instead of the instant fun software. The only way to get rid of this (that that I have found) is to completely shut down the laptop. Now the led will not be lit and no software launches at restart. The caps lock led will also work as expected.
Am I missing something here or is this a bug?
By the way Epatnor the drive is easy to swap and there is no "sticker" that you need to remove. So if you are afraid to void the warranty you can easily change the drive to your original one if something happens. I bought a sata Hitachi travelstar 100 Gb 7200 rpm. Very nice. Ram is also easy to add, just a matter of snapping it in.

 

I am debating sending mine back over the light leakage on the screen.. the more I use my other screens/laptops the worse the A8Js is looking. I would consider returning except the place I bought has a crazy 15% restocking fee on opened returns.

 

I would not even mess around with the dvd drive. I would contact asus in fremont and your dealer and ask for them to send you another one.

Im not guaranteeing you they will; I have no experience with them.

But I would think they would rather send you another one than ship it both ways. No machine down time. Describe the condition. Mine doesnt sound like that and neither do most of the hundreds of thousands of users of that drive....

My hd id hitachi hts 541010g9sa00. Forum chatter describes this drive as noisier than average. My opinion is its noisier than average.

 

can you give a short review or explanation of the program youre using and what advantage it might have over power4gear?

I like power4gear a lot its an extremely stable program. It gives its notices through demanding games and doesnt need a window or cause crashes like ones ive used in the past ( sony something)

 

*Dal walks into the club and takes a seat by the fireplace*

As of 5 minutes ago I am officially a Portable One MX (A8Js) owner. First impressions:

1) Light leakage: It's there, but it's not severe -in fact it's a lot lower than my Vaio VGN-S560P so I can live with it. Color and contrast of the A8Jm's screen is better than any laptop I've ever owned

Converting the hard drive to NTFS now.

 

Notebook Hardware Control was mentioned in some threads on this forum, its a program thats like power4gear, has different modes to save battery or increase performance.

I got it here: http://www.pbus-167.com/
If you install it you need to patch it with the Core2Duo patch under the download link.

I like it because it gives battery status on taskbar, along with the flow of wattage when using battery or charging itll say like +25.5W or something like that. It also gives Hard Drive and CPU Temperature and CPU Speed as well.

Another feature is you can adjust the setting of the hard drive to make it quieter, and also adjust performance of the video card to save battery or give max performance like CPU.

 

New bios is available. It's revision 207.
But there is no information about the changes.