ASUS N71JQ Owners Lounge

Well the back cover has this dotted wave design in brown color which is printed on the top of black background.
So if there are lot of reflection on it then the dark background seems to dominate. It looks more dark than brown in this case.

 

-just purchased ASUS N71JQ -also first laptop so bit of a learning curve - has anyone purchased Office that is included for 60 day trial? -how much is it and is there a better way to get it? -using an usb mouse curently - other mice recommendations?
hillbil

 

Thanks mate, sorry for late reply! It seems that the N71JQ is going to land in the UK next Friday. I need to resist buying anything else til then. It comes out just after my birthday as well!

 

I don't know how to order the office. I had my own copy of Office 2007 Enterprise available to me through my work. I installed that one.

I am using two different mice with my notebook. When I am using it at work i.e. as worksation then I have my notebook connected to external high resolution monitor (1900x1200) and then I am using Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro (Keyboard+Mouse).
Here: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Cordless-Desktop-Wave-Pro/dp/B001DJ9GOS

For mobile applications I have the small and compact logitech cordless VX Nano mouse all the time in the laptop bag.
Here: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Cordless-Laser-Mouse-Notebooks/dp/B000TKHBDK

 

No problem, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

 

Office is about $200 for a decent version. Have you tried Open Office? I would give it a try before buying Office.

www.openoffice.org

I use it and it's pretty much just like Microsoft Office, but FREE!

 

Couldnt agree more why spend all that cash on Office when OpenOffice is free and works just as well. Been using it for years.

 

I agree with you. OpenOffice is the free alternative to Microsoft office and I use it also at home.

For me the notebook is used for work and I get Microsoft products at very low prices through my company's shop.

 

I just got my 3rd n71 from asus. Finallly one that looks *hopes up* like it's functionnal and non defective !! wohoo !! Restoring image now .. almost done

i think this might be of interest for some of you guyes

Ati leaked 10.3 with mobility support. From 10.3, mobility drivers will be included by ati themselves and it looks like asus will be part of this

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33959849

 

Thanks for lettin me know about the back panel, I also wanted to know if this has 1080p resolution playback for blu ray, or if not would it just be best for me to save the extra $400 and get a n61jq-a1 or x1 and replace the hard drive.

 

Turbogear: Thanks for your documented report. It does looks like i5 might be more suitable for my sensitive eardrums

 

The screen is 16:9 and has a resolution of 1600x900.
It is not 1080p which would have resolution of 1920×1080.

I personally had a look at both N71JQ and N61JQ. The main reason why I went for N71JQ was the higher resolution. The N61JQ has a resolution of 1366x768 which was too less for me.

Lets hope that finally everything works out for you. So far you had lot of bad luck it seems.

Yes, I already heard about this new Catalyst driver 10.3.
This is still beta version, but I think by mid of March we will get the final version. ATI's monthly release of drivers is always around the middle of the month.
We are luck from now on we will not need to mod desktop drivers to work on Mobility Radeon.

 

Ive lost points for my ram and processor from the windows index. Ive got 5.5 for ram and 6.5 for the processor instead of 5.9 and and 6.9 as on pg27. They were orginally the same but also the remaining things have gone up 6.9 for aero and 3d and 5.9 for HDD. Ive oc'd the GPU but would this drop the ram and processor speed and boost evrything else? does it make a huge dif also on system performance it says ive got 4gb ram but only 2.9gb available is that normal. cheers

 

It seems to me that when OC'd the GPU is taking away 1GB of system memory.
That could very well explain the drop in the memory performance index and the total usable memory the Windows shows you.

Maybe stop OCing for a while and do the Windows index again to see if this is really the case.

 

no its still the same without oc'ing. its very strange not that im a computer whizz it might just be the norm? maybe something ive downloaded or program im running how much does it say is available on everyone elses.

 

It's very strange.
After stopping the OCing maybe reboot the system and see if it shows the ram amount correctly.
For me it shows the complete 4GB to be available to the operating system.

 

dunno wat i did mucked around in msconfig now memory is back at 5.9 and reading 3.93gb and processor is at 7. i might leave it alone now haha

 

Hey, so once again, could the new guys post your CPU and GPU temperatures under load?

Curently, the highest temperature I saw both in HWinfo and Everest were 87°C... So far only 2 ppl posted, that their temperatures barely reach 80°C, so I need more confirmation before I return it to service :/

Thank you

 

Ffffffffffffff oh goodness thank you. Hopefully this will fix an issue I've had with SecondLife.

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this forum.

 

Is the 17inch screen on the N71JQ nice and bright?

 

For me it is. In a dark room it's brightest setting actually starts to hurt my eyes so I have to turn it down.

 

First proper video review in HD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2B-YzBR93Q

 

nice review. it doesn't get 3h of battery tho, only 2 max for me.. doing basic surfing and other random stuff.

Do any of u hear a little bit of cpu whine ? it's not that loud but i still hear it a little bit. All 3 laptops i had from asus had this noise. Maybe im being picky lol

The brightness is really great, if anything it's a little too bright on the minimum setting. I watch shows before going to bed on it and it's def bright in a dark room on the lowest setting. The highest setting is really strong, eventhough the screen has quite alot of reflexion.

 

Yes, I was also surprised that this guy was saying 3 hours of battery life.
I have seen reviews from him before. His information is not always 100% accurate.

In the biginning I also heard a whine from the fan, but strangely I don't hear it that much anymore. Maybe my ear got used to it or the new Windows and drivers installation fixed this.

Yes, the brightness of the screen is really good. I was expecting it to have low brightness as as my old M50VM, but it surprised me.

 

I agree, the whine is not very loud but just enough to annoy me. I uninstalled Power4Gear and it made it better a bit. Using the same ATK drivers as you. The whine is only hearable (if that is a word) when the cpu is idle. I think im going ot ask asus to cook a lil bios that tweaks the voltages a bit

My last Notebook had the exact same "Whine" problem. IT was a Dell inspiron 640m, but that one was really loud compared to this lappy.

Otherwise Very happy with it, the screen is great an you really don't need 1080p on such a small screen(i consider 17 inch small).


Im doing some video encoding right now with MediaShow Espresso 5.5 and it's pretty fast. Im converting a 5.5gig Hauppauge HD-PVR to a 400mb divx AVI. Cpu usage is just about 30 % ans GPU 100%. oh yea, 40 minutes to convert a 1h show, not bad. I'm using the stock asus video drivers. Might try the 10.3 when i get a chance

 

So it seems that Media Show Espresso is really able to utilise the ATI Stream to do transcoding.
If I get the time, I will try to transcode a video on both my laptop and on my home PC which has ATI HD 5850 in it for comparison purposes.

 

I don't really notice the noise issue as there's constantly noise around me. But when I didn't have a fan on the noise from the laptop was barely noticeable, save for where there's a CD/DVD/etc in the Blu-Ray drive.

 

Well after some more digging i found a fix for the "Intel Cpu Whine" issue. I don't take credit for this but it's valuable info so ill repost it here .
(original post #546 here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=448894&page=55)

Basically open the Recording Devices, select your mic properties, Go to the listen tab, check listen to this device and put the "playback through this device" to a device you don't normally use so you can still use the mic normally.
The original poster says to mute the mic but since i use it alot for skype, this was not an option.

azing simple fix for the "high pitch cpu whine" issue with intel notebooks. Im so glad i found it.

My previous fix was the "RmClock -- run HLT command when os is idle" fix but that ate my battery

Hope it can help some people out there !

Jov

 

Anybody else using the UEFI mode?

So I have deleted all the partitions on my Hard Disk and then enabled UEFI and installed windows in the UEFI mode.

What I see is that there is no improvement in the boot times, but actually the boot times got little bit worst.

So before I enabled UEFI, after I press the power button the ASUS logo appeared and then the Win7 animated logo with the message Starting Windows was coming and the system was starting to boot.

Now after enabling the UEFI, after the ASUS logo the windows message comes Starting Windows and then system stays there for about 8sec before the animated logo comes and Win7 starts to load.

So what I see is that the boot time is about 8 to 10 sec longer than when I had no UEFI mode.

I thought UEFI should make the Win7 load faster, but I am disappointed.
Maybe the ASUS bios is not optimised to use UEFI more.

 

Can you please explain how is this supposed to fix the CPU whine?

 

Can someone let me know which are the 2 best reliable places to purchase this labtop? thanks

 

I tried UEFI mode when i got my 1st N71 but like you, it didn't seem to improve load times. What sucks also is that i was having trouble with apps that access the bios, like CPUZ, they would not put up much information.
What i ended up doing was reformatting everything and removing UEFI. It looks like it's still too young and not widely adopted to succeed.

I have no idea. but it worked for me lol. Ill take whatever works at this point, this is my 3rd N71 in 1 month and everything works great other than that noise.

Since the Whine probably does not come from the cpu directly but from the motherboard. My guess is that enabling that function uses that X amount of voltage more to make that sound go into an non audible range. I haven't had time to really investigate but most posts i read were pointing to the fact that the MotherBoard power phases were to blame. Anyways, worked for me without too much hassle

 

In the US i think http://www.powernotebooks.com/ are good and also http://www.xoticpc.com/ They also offer custom stuff for this lappy.. like the thermal paste, which i recommend

Im in canada and i bought it At www.pccanada.com they are ok (really fast shipping) but have no aftersales support or return policy. The one they sent me was defective, i then dealt with Asus and their great RMA dep to get a new one. You do get a DOA from asus if it's defective and still within 30 days of purchase.

Jov

 

For USA you can add to this list Gentech PC.
They also offer customization options and their service is also very good.
I bought mine from them.

http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchan...e=N71JQ-A1&Category_Code=AS17&Product_Count=6

 

Yes, I hate the situation also.
I think I have to format my PC again to remove UEFI. I can also not access the bios info using CPU-Z anymore.

I went for it, because lot of people on the internet were saying that it improves on the system boot time, but it seems that for N71JQ this UEFI mode is not very well optimized from ASUS.

Sometimes you learn new lessons the hard way. It was stupid of me that I did not make an image of the system before I decided to try UEFI mode.

 

Is it worth loading? Please describe its uses. Is it a trial version only? If one accepts the included Office 07 package will they upgrade to 2010 free?

 

What does that mean ? i dont understand

 

This is a software cd that accompanied the computer - "the all media disc burning software" it says. Perhaps all N7 purchases didn't include it - if so, I'm curious about its usefulness. My second question involving Office 2007 that's also included loaded as a trial version is: will Microsoft include a free upgrade to 2010 when it's released and how much do they want for it? I noticed in this weekend flyers for Best Buy and Future Shop it sells for $149 including free upgrade to Office 2010 when released. I'm in Ontario, Canada.

 

Well if your looking for a cd burning software you should look on the net, there are some free ones like http://cdburnerxp.se/

I've never had to buy Office because i have it for free from school or work. It can't hurt to buy it from Futureshop. The trial will be compatible with the futureshop version *I think* Worst case, just uninstall the trial and install the version you got with Futureshop.

 

Turbo, do you have a "Unknown device" in the device manager, i installed every important driver from asus's website.

Jov

 

No, I don't have any Unknow Device. All the devices are working well.

I just finished installing Win7 Ultimate again.
I have got rid of the UEFI.
Now the windows boots faster.

Did you install the Webcam and Card reader drivers?

 

yea, just tried installing the card reader drivers but i didn't try the webcam ones. I figured it was alrewady installed since i skyped the other day

 

Load the driver CD (autorun) which came with it.
It will display a list of the drivers. Check if you have any of them not installed.

 

I don't get any whining in mine, but I do sometimes get a strange buzzing noise from the right end of the keyboard, mostly in the right corner of the wrist area. I am thinking it's one of the harddrives spinning, but I'm not sure. Sometimes you tap it and it goes away. Sometimes there is no noise at all. About the loudest thing on this lappy is when the fan spins up, which is off and on. It stays cool mostly, except for the left side vent which stays warm, and sometimes the far left of the keyboard. I'm too lazy to figure out what's under it, but that's the warmest part, and it's barely warm to the touch.

 

If the buzzing sound is coming from the right side under the wrist area, then you have the same problem that I had.

It is the primary Seagate drive which is producing the vibrations. I had the same problem.
I have removed the primary drive, and I replaced it with the secondary Seagate and these vibrations (buzzing sounds) stopped.
I have put the primary HDD in an external enclosure and it still produces these buzzing sounds. If I tap on it or tilt it then it stops buzzing.
This is an indication that the spindle of the HDD is having some problems.


It seem the primary HDD is kind of defective. I called ASUS about it and they adviced me to send it back and I will get a replacement hard disk for it.
They told me to RMA it and indicate to them that it is the primary drive so they will install the operating system on the new drive before they ship it to me.

 

Okay so should I back up all my stuff and call about an RMA? It seems to do exactly as you indicated, in terms of buzzing and stopping if you tap or tilt it, and it's under the right wrist area, yes yes. I hate Seagate, ugh. My ThinkPad had Hitachi and I LOVED it.

I guess I'll call about an RMA then, probably on Monday. What a pain, but I guess better now than later........

*cries*