A8jm owner's Lounge

Serioulsy, How many different ways are there to open a laptop.

You press the release catch and slowly firmly open the lid.

The hinges on this are a joke!!! Much worse than any cheap ****ty Dell or Acer I have ever used. At least the hinges on those lasted more than 12months.

I've just tightend mine for the second time in 3months!!!

 

my hinges have been fine since buying the notebook (6months now). mabye other ppl with dells have hinge problems too.

 

I was just wondering what puts more tension on it opening from the middle front which is intuitive or
opening from the back which is going to put less leverage on it.


I take you guys word for it that its fragile and Im going to be watching it.

 

Problem is, anyone who does know what they're doing would NEVER blindly attempt to cross-flash a BIOS. Oh, if the BIOS isn't compatible rendering the machine unbootable, how exactly do you reflash your old BIOS?

Short answer is, short of physically swapping the chip you don't.

 

Where can I find the updated drivers for our SoundMAX sound card? I looked on the SOundMAX site but i dont know what driver to pick...

 

I have given this a lot of thought.

You are right.

At first the hinges appeared heavy duty to me because they were so large.

Heres the basic problem in engineering. the hinges are about 1 1/2 inches from the edges
if you open the lid from out side the hinges you will torque them. they are only designed for up and down wear.

To open and close the notebook and avoid this problem i think a8j owners should open the lid only from the direct center and raise in with 1 finger 1 thumb from the direct center.

theres a reason most other designs the hinges are on the edge of the lid.

this design is poor.

 

I've been having an on and off prob with my DVD Super Multi drive over the past couple of weeks. Sometimes when Il using my machine, the DVD driver won't eject when i press the button. I try it again 10 minutes later, and it finally ejects.

I remember trying to eject from My computer and it saying 'Windows is busy with eh drive' or something like that. What could it be?

 

Time to test out vista RTM and office 07 RTM .

My windows installation got F**ked over by some spyware. My start menu and taskbar is unclickable its really wierd. No virus nothing found. So i was going to format and 'lo and behold vista rtm is umm available so i thot i'd give it a shot and let the A8Jm owners how it is

 

sounds like a plan. I didnt like either though.

 

There'a new 212 bios in the general A8J section of the Asus download site. Has anyone tried it?

BIOS 212
To protect the plastic case from being melted. If LCD is closed and CPU temp. over 90 degree C for 5 minutes, then system will do hibernation automatically.

 

i don't see the BIOS you mention
i'd love to try it (although i don't have windows installed right now, so i can't)
what a pain.
install windows just to do a BIOS update...

 

yeah saw that but its not in the A8Jm section yet so im not switching to it. Also I dont think i'll ever have the lid closed when cpu is at 90 degrees :O

 

In the list of the A8J sub-models, choose A8J rather than A8Jm.

 

I'd assume it's for A8Jm since the last one was 211, while for the newer A8Js it's more like 204 or something.... in any case... still no Merom support,,, kinda dissapointing again

 

OK, what the heck, my burner is still acting up, this time failing to burn 50% of the time. Is it the software (Nero) or is something wrong with my lens?

 

btw vista and office 2k7 running beautifully. altho gaming performance no upto xp standards and here i thought vista will have better performance.

 

Finally got my very own A8Jm (yay! )

However, I've just got one problem with it. I've been trying to copy an ISO from a DVD to its hard drive, and it keeps telling me I dont have enough space . However, the ISO is only 4GB, and my C drive has 55GB free, and the D drive has 36GB free. I can't copy to either one of these drives.

I've successfully transfered a 2GB ISO though, if that tells you anything.

How do I fix it? Thanks in advance.

 

My guess is that you have not converted your drive to NTFS, the maximum file size for FAT32 is around 2GB.

If you A8Jm is fresh from ASUS just run the shortcut on the desktop, if not just google how to convert FAT32 to NTFS. It's simple to do

 

I'm having trouble with standby. I have 211 bios and ATK Media 1.13 installed.

IF my computer is standby for a long time, it doesn't come back out. Anyone having this type of issue.

Oh and i'm using the nvidia driver from the A8Js section.

 

Whats the difference between the Power 4 Gear profiles "Super Performance" and "Game"?

 

Does anybody know how to adjust the brightness and contrast of the webcam ?

Mine seems to be pretty dark.

 

i would suggest a brighter room. im not sure the camera can be adjusted/

 

yes it can thru the im program u are using

 

BUTTT if you launch it from my computer, then its not adjustable.

 

hmm no idea in vista i cant see it in my computer, but if he was using the webcam for its intended purpose aka web conferencing then he cud adjust it

 

I figured it out.

In either skype or msn you can adjust the webcam settings. The settings seem to be global, if I adjust the brightness in skype then it carries over to msn and the my computer webcam thing.

I was trying to do this from control panel or right clicking on the camera in my computer and selecting properties. I wonder why you can't do the same thing from control panel.

 

I 've been wondering for a couple of days why my A8jm keeps making a clicking noise when I close the lid -- I think I now know why.

The Left Side is starting to come apart! What the heck! I guess I should send it to a service centre...God, why is this happening around exam time...

 

Send it in ASAP.

 

honestly, with those thumbnails, i dont even know what i am looking at.

 

its the LCD lid, between the outer lid, and its connecting piece, on the outside of the hinge.

 

What's the situation with the Merom compatibility BIOS update? With Vista just around the corner, I want to upgrade my processor. It seems Asus is focusing on the A8Js and just ditched us folks who bought Yonah computers with the hopes of upgrading later.

 

i think it's deliberate
if they allow for Merom, people will install it and
a) break their laptop and try to get warranty
b) not buy a new Asus laptop for another 2 years

either way, it's not in Asus' interests to do so.
just use Vista x86 for now.

 

I'm wondering if the delay is deliberate as well.

However, I don't think an end user upgrading from coreduo to core2duo will prolong the life of a laptop despite 64bit. The processor is fast by today's standards, but next year, Santa Rosa will offer a bigger jump, and a different socket, so our upgrade paths are limited. I think it will also take more than 2 years for 64bit to be a requirement on most software.

I think a lot of people bought the A8 because of Merom. There are faster 64bit versions of the software I work with, and I wouldn't mind buying Vista/XP Pro x64 and a new processor to use it.

Perhaps I'm being optimistic, I hope they put out a Merom bios as a courtesy to their clients who bought the A8Jm.

 

If I use the 32-bit version of Vista for now, and end up upgrading to a Merom processor when Asus eventually releases the new BIOS, wouldn't I have to pay for another copy of Vista?

 

I don't think Microsoft released that information yet. The 32 and 64bit versions are supposed to have different product sku, so you might have to buy another copy, or pay MS online for an upgrade.

I'm more worried if there will be 64bit signed drivers for everything. http://www.tech-recipes.com/microsoft_vista_tips1426.html

 

And that's not even taking into account that the 64bit edition of Vista, like XP 64bit before it, is completely pants...

 

IS that sarcasm?

64 bit is entirely worthless. Dont worry about it. It wont even actually be useful nevermind the standard until your a8jm is your email machine in a few years.
If you are a linux user thats a different story. Not really but its useful

The biggest thing about the c2d cpus is they are just a lot faster. Right now the last cpu that can go in a a8jm is the t2700
The c2d has a whole other line up of chips you could upgrade to.
And as opposed to the old pm where the upgrade is only to a higher mhz of the same thing, these new c2d chip upgrades are going to make a bigdifference with higher chip cache to use the 2nd core better.

 

Every now and then, I get an error reporting "USB device Not Recognized" even when I don't have anything plugged into the USB port. Once this error starts reporting, I can no longer use any of the USB ports. Would this be a software or hardware issue?

 

when u dont have anything plugged in to ur machine, the built in webcam however is still plugged into the usb hub. So it cud be something to do with that ?

 

I realize that the webcam is also plugged into the USB port, but how could one USB device affect all the other ones. Each time this error is reported, I can no longer use any USB device.

 

I'm finding my A8Jm a bit slow (it's stock), and I would just like to know, what's the best first upgrade to do? Go for 2GB of 667 Ram? or a 7200rpm HDD? Which would cause the higher increase in peformance?

Is the ram that comes stock 667Mhz or 533?

 

I would go for a 2gb ram, I think memory is more effective than hdd speed. The ram in my a8jm is 1 stick of 1gb ddr2 667mhz.

 

****ing fan noise, once it spins up it starts producing a very annoying whining sound.

 

Is there anyway that I can get my 4.1 sound system to work with the laptop? It's the Logitech Z560s. They have one plug for front speakers, and one for the back.

 

buy a usb soundcard or one for the express slot <-- i dont know how easy it is to get these, but the usb ones are easily available and sound good

 

Any one having problems with their power settings? At first i didnt mind, now its just annoying.

Like when I change the 'turn off monitor/hard disks/standby" settings to "never", it works for like a few hours, then reverts back. This is especially evident with the screen saver. I have the ASUS sceensaver on by default (with the music and webcam) and I reset my screensaver to NONE and click apply. BUT somehow every now and then, i can hear the screensaver playing its song when the monitor is closed or i come by my laptop and see it in motion. Why wont it just stay off?! I have the latest BIOS (2.11 i believe) and i am beginning to believe its Power4Gear. Can anyone confirm or have/had similar issues and corrected them?

 

for the a8jm i believe it's 533mhz. (a8js is 677 i think?)
and do know that 7200rpm will decrease your battery life

 

for the screensaver, you can uninstall it alltogether from the control panel

 

I'll finally have time to get it fixed, this week or next, and I was wondering if you had to bring any documentation, receipts, etc. when you went.

I guess I'll format before going to see if I my my DVD drive problem is only software-based. 60% of the time it won't eject, and the time it does, it doesnt detect the disc 75% of the time.

Where the heck did all these problems come from?? I mean, I hardly use my DVD drive...

 

Did any of you guys buy a case for your a8jm? Im looking for a case thats smaller than the one that came with it and leather.