A8jm owner's Lounge

lol I haven't personally used one of those yet, we have two T43's floating around the office I think their doing ok, each one had the mother board replaced.. within like a week of each other they failed.. very solid machines though. I would have got one if they put decent video cards in them.

 

Does the A8J have an intergrated mic?

 

yep. and webcam from vimicro.

 

the mic is great. very handy for speech recognition software

 

and skype and such

 

its key for skype....the webcam and mic

basically one of the reasons i chose the a8j over other laptops and over the w3j.

 

the 7700 is not for sale

the 7600 is for sale in the asus estore for 155.

I am just thinking, IF its for sale would some a8jm users buy it

 

So if the vid cards are changable, is it possible for me to put an X1600 in my A8Jm instead of the 7600? I really wanted a A8Ja but they were never available in the US. Do you have a link for the estore? I couldn't find it on their site.

 

yes however what you are saying is sort of ignoring the basic premise.


If the x1600 was not for sale in the us, why would asus na stock it as a replacemnt part.

Asus e store has the 512 mb 7600 in stock. it doesnt have the x1600.
most people dont want the 256 mb x1600 lol youre going to be the first one.
The parts are compatible though if thats what you mean, plug in like a nintendo cartridge.

The 7700 might be for sale in asus e store.

 

Which Screws do I need to tighten? I've read the guide and its not particularily clear. Do I need to Remove the LCD Panel? At this point I figure I can remove the Hinge cover, and Remove the Front LCD Bezel pannel? Is this right? Also, which screws should I tighten when I get in there? Just tighten them all up?

At this stage I cannot even remove the Hinge covers, Im a bit nervous about jamming a micro flat head screw driver in there as thats not what it says in the guide.

Any help at all guys Please

 

You will need to remove the hinge covers, once you get them off once and see how they work they're easier to deal with, I didn't use a screw driver it's mainly about technique ( kinda a pinch/pull/squeeze affair ).

You will find the lower hinge screws under there, they are probably ok, the ones in mine that backed out were inside the top part, I just needed to get the LCD bezel up a bit, I didn't remove it all just up to the top probably 3-4cm shy of unclipping the top part of the bezel. I started the removal under the ASUS logo and got it up enough that I could get to the screws ( they're just to the outside of each hinge cover ) there are 2-3 screws on each side, Just tighten them up a little don't torque on them too much though I don't know how sturdy the threads are.

If you are not comfortable with digging around inside the machine the best be would probably be taking it to a local ASUS dealer or perhaps a company that sells a lot of laptops, they probably have someone around who can dig into it ( for a price I'm sure ).

Also as a note in my original post, I'm not sure what this does to warranty, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't cover anything you break when you go in there Thats the one thing Dell has all over Asus, we have them onsite here @ work at least once or twice a month fixing laptops, too bad Asus doesn't offer such a thing with it's ensemble units.

 

I want the 1600 for the avivo stuff since I do some video and web stuff where their converter is a really nice feature. I am wondering if the DVI port would still work? I would guess that it would since the A8Ja has one. Since there are several other ASUS notebooks in the US that use the 1600, I would think that it might be available.
The difference between 256 and 512 on these mid range cards is meaningless. The GPU isn't fast enough to use more that 256 anyways. I want the ati card for the features not so I can score 2pts higher in a synthetic benchmark.

 

the x1600 in other asus notebooks is not compatible. Its not for sale at the e store.

 

I think x1600 is soldered onto the motherboard instead of plug-in's with MXM like the 7600, which is one of the reasons why I went with A8JM instead of A8JA. However, Asus is also coming out with A8JP I think which comes with x1700, but this model seems quite rare. With X1700, they are also using MXM which means if you can get one you should be able to plug into your current video slot.

 

Not for sale in north america

 

Just got myself A8JM, I suppose I really could careless about the core duo 2. Yeah, I know it has bigger cache, 64 bits and support but it seems the real testing shows the difference between CD2 and CD is about 9% and 64 bit support, I don't think many applications will come out with 64 bits for quite some time and even if they do, they usually will also have 32 bits available anyway. I guess the go 7700 is nice since it will probably add another 1000 pts to your 3dmark5 score, but with mxm, you can probably get one somewhere down the road or perhaps an even higher end one.

So far I am quite impressed with the machine, mine came with winxp home but from what I have been reading, winxp home also supports core duo as the cpu is not truely two seperated units which would require support from winxp pro. Performance wise, it seems they are pretty much the same. So I probably will just skip the whole reformat->install xp pro route that everyone seems to be taking and use partition magic and possibly save myself from the headach of re-installing all the drivers. I also updated bio to 211 from 209 and didn't notice any difference whatsoever. InstantFun button still boots to windows. I did find out, however that if you press the InstantFun button whether in windows or from an off state, the InstantFun led will be turned on and there is no way to turn it off short of restarting your laptop. It wouldn't really be a problem except for the fact that when the instantfun led is turned on this way, your caplock led stop working. So I guess the idea is not to touch the instantfun button since it does nothing useful now anyway. I have read somewhere that some people have problems with running games on battery. I haven't tried playing any games yet, but browsing asus's forum someone posted this hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B896256&x=20&y=11 So if anyone wants, they can try it out and see if it makes a difference, the other way to improve performance on battery I think is just through the power management option.

I do have a question so far, however, if I do use partition magic to re-distribute the harddisk among two drives, will I experience a worse performance than if I just reformate them completely? Thanks a bunch.

 

What is not for sale? x1700 mobile card or A8JP. X1700 mobile card is not sold yet by asus anywhere. As for A8JP, it is really rare to find it, even in Asia, most retailer simply just don't carry that brand as A8JS outperform it anyway.

 

the a8jp. the a8ja was not for sale in north america also.

 

Meh, whether or not they are for sale doesn't matter to speedfrk's current situation anyway. So let's please keep on topic.

 

does the a8jm have an antenae worked into its case?

what have you owners experienced with wireless range compared to other wireless connections youve used?

Im going to be upgrading from an old school pcmia card and im hoping for a range improvement....

 

I don't find it any better or any worse than any other laptop I've used. It does have an internal arial in the base according to the assembly guide.

I did have to upgrade the intel driver as I had problems staying connected over long periods and having to re-boot. This happens from time to time after comming out of Hibernation and Standby aswell.

I find range is more affected by how thick your walls are and you Router DB arial than anything else.

 

If you resize using partition magic, you will still have to format your second drive once you make enough room for your partition.

You won't really notice serious performance issues so long as you choose NTFS. I have 4 partitions and no issues.

 

I finally got this done, It was a bit tricky especially the hinge covers which were tricky. Be especially carefull with the clips on the LCD bezel edge. I used a combination of a plastic knife, tooth pick, and small screw driver as tools. I was very carefull to avoid scratches as metal instruments often can.

Once in, I noticed that all the screws were loose, ALL OF THEM. I gave 'em a good tighten and its all fixed up nice. I am very happy with this laptop now I know that the hinges are made shoddy and can be fixed without issue. I hopped ASUS would give more quality in this regard not to mention the squeeky wrist wrests.

I was suprised to find an empty screw hole where an extra screw can easily be inserted to strenghthen things up a bit. (I did it with a screw and it worked but removed as I didn't have any spares. If I can get some the right size might add them in once the screen loosens again next time I fix it.

 

I know technically removing any aspect of the notebook is against warranty agreements. I'm currently looking to get a new keyboard and pamrest (like the whole chassis piece, and so ill cover the **** things this time). I'm kinda sure I can just pop out the keyboard after removing the screw, but what about the top chassis? I don't want to running into warranty-covered problems two months after replacing a 30-dollar chassis part.

 

I got a question about A8JM, it seems that whenever I am in windows, the harddrive led would flash every sec or so even if I go to safe mode. Anyone seen the same thing and knows what's causing it?

 

I get that too...

 

the led flashes when the hard drive is read?

 

omg such noobs

 

Why is the harddrive reading when the computer is at idle? What is it doing?

 

because here are background tasks being run?

 

Why are the background services accessing my harddrive at exactly once per second. The thing's like a clock.

 

Open Task Manager, then go to View > Colums > Select Colums.

From the list choose, IO Read Bytes, IO Write Bytes, IO Other.

Now click on the IO Write Bytes at the top of the colum so that it sorts by what has writen the most to your Disk. This should give you an idea of what is writing to your disk the most. In my case its X1Search, followed by ZoneAlarm and Anti-Virus.

You can also, take alook at CPU time,

All in all its very rare for nuthing to be accessing disk and processor ever. If you wan't that kind of system, (Eg: for Gaming) Build a Bare Bones install of XP, disable most of he services you don't need, don't install AV turn off Updates, and turn off all networking.

 

Well, the reason I ask is that it happens at a regular internal when the computer is at idle. I have used xp on two laptops and two desktops and I have never seen this kind of behavior before unless there is a anti-virus doing passive scanning, but I already uninstalled Norton so it shouldn't be the cause of it. I also tried safe mode, which disables all but essential services like RPC as well as disabling autorun items but the behavior is the same. So I was just asking if it is because Asus laptop's HD led is being overly sensitive or for some other reason. Which as madness explains it, seems to be the case of sensitive hd led.

 

u have never seen teh hdd light blinking??? it happens in ALL PCs I know....the hdd light blinks just like u described. its normal

 

It is actually the same a desktop's hard drive, whenever the hard drive seek the disks, read and write, and using for a virtual memory from the hard drive, it also make it blink. If you would like set the hard drive off, you must change the setting in "Monitor power" and "Power option properties", then you can see the timing for the hard drive on turning off.
Cheers

 

Thanks Madness, that cleared things up.

 

anyone got an answer?

 

Yes i popped out my keyboard to clean underneath it...even tho it was really clean. Just removie the screw and then u can pop out the keyboard. Just be careful when removing the cable from the motherboard.

 

Anyone had a prob with the screen coming out of video time out? On Friday during lectures I dimmed my screen to lowest when prof was going off on a tandgent, and the screen turned off after a few mins. When I tried to take it out of video time out, the screen brightness wouldn't adjust until I restarted.

Right now my screen timed-out while using battery and it wouldn't come out until I put it on sleep mode.

 

that is unusual. i did not encounter any problems like that while using it during lectures.

 

Must be something I've done in the past 2 days, never had probs before.

 

So can u remember anything unusual the last 2 days? New progs, BIOS updates etc?

 

Hmm, only things I've done have defrag, uninstalled F.E.A.R., installed (then unistalled) Daemon Tools. I may have tinkered with Power4 Gear before class; does it affect the laptop whether hard drive timeout is before or after video time out?

 

Hmm.. might be... how bout try uninstall and re-install P4G to see if default settings will solve this problem?

 

Hmm.. might be... how bout try uninstall and re-install P4G to see if default settings will solve this problem?

 

I've noticed, that my fan never really changes speed. When I boot up the lappie, it runs noiseless but after a few minutes, the fan speeds up. It doesnt really matter, if I'm gaming BF2 or if the lappie is idling with the lid closed (not on standby/hibernate). I'm using PowerGear at quiet office mode with the AC plugged in. The ambient temp is 20-22 so I don't guess thats a problem. Shouldn't the fan speed down, when the laptop is idling/doing light tasks?

 

No ideas? Anyone?

 

Which BIOS version are you using? From 208 and above, the fan seems to start running at low 40's and keeps on going at 3200 rpm...

 

The laptop came with 209. Ill try going back to 207...

 

Like I said, my old laptop and my desktop don't have hdd light blinking all the time, they only light up when heavy hd task happens such as searching or scanning or loading. So I am not sure what are ALL PCs you know, maybe just the newer ones.