ASUS U Series Bamboo Collection Owners Thread (U33JC/U43JC/U53JC)

Can anyone with a u33jc comment on the screen? Especially on the white backgrounds? I received mine and had to send it for DOAR since it was red/yellow compared to my wife's u35 and my desktop dell lcd. Even on blacks i noticed a bit of redish tone to it...Thx.

 

It would make sense that lower resolution uses less bandwidth.

But as to low-light, I found my ASUS 1.3MP netbook doing better in low light than my U30Jc 0.3MP.

 

Unlike my Dell, my ASUS U30Jc came with a program called Splendid (hotkey Fn+C), an ASUS utility that changed the color tints very subtly yet noticeable. It let me adjust those tints and color bias on my screen. For sure the U35Jc also comes with Splendid and has the same hotkey. Did you try that hotkey color gamma change on your ASUS before you sent it back?

 

Yes I did, even on the brightest setting with cooler colors the screen was still yellow on sites with a white background. I also noticed it when the notebook first boots up on the black screen with the asus logo, there's a definitely a red tint on the screen...It's actually the first time that I've ever experience this...I go thru at least 20 laptops a year (setup for people at work) and I've never seen it so prevalent. On the u35, the screen was definitely brighter and true to color. I wish it was something that I could have overlooked, but I just didn't think I could deal with it on a daily basis...Hopefully, they'll have one in stock and get it to me soon...

 

Oh, a reddish tint on bootup? That sound more like an out of sync or something-is-wrong kind of screen! Hopefully you'll have better luck on the next one.

 

People who have received the u33jc. Can we hear some more from you as to whether you are happy with your purchase.
Pros/Cons etc?

Thankyou in advance

 

Totally happy with my purchase. Would buy it again.
Pros: great built quality, quiet, very chic looking, nice keyboard, great battery life, very well balanced between speed and battery life, optimus, speakers sound good for a laptop, screen is for the money better than expected, doesn't get hot, bluetooth, USB 3, I personally doesn't care about WIDI,

Cons: bloatware, trackpad needs some time to get used to, clicky keyboard but typing is a pleasure,

 

Hehe, this actually made me do a double take. I felt nearly positive they would be on the bottom front like your U30Jc, and then I heard sound for the first time and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It really sounded like it was coming from the space above the keyboard. Anyway, they are in fact on the bottom front like yours, but it really did throw me off when I first heard sound. I can understand why the reviewers might have assumed they were up top above the keyboard.

The sound is good enough for a notebook. They don't exceed or fall short of my expetations for notebook speakers. I use my Shures for any serious listening.

I am very happy with my purchase.
Pros:
*Possibly my favorite thing about this computer is how quiet it is. I have not once heard the fans kick on to an audible level and there has been no HDD noises or anything else. It is whisper quiet. My girlfriend and I each had our computers out last night and I heard the fan noise and thought, oh, so it does get loud. Turns out it was hers. Ha. Her HP gets so dang hot that you can't really use it on your lap without a cooling pad. I always have my U33 on my lap and it is only a little warm. VERY nice.
*The keyboard is quite pleasurable to type on and was so from the moment I started using it. The touchpad is taking a little getting used to as it has no physical boarder. This is mainly a problem when I try to do the vertical scrolling on the right edge of the pad. I am getting a feel for it but I still miss it sometimes. I need to get some multitouch drivers installed and then I will be very pleased.
*The build quality is very good. I can easily hold the computer by an edge with one hand and it always feels sturdy. The screen shows a fair amount of flex on the back from the lower third on down. Not enough to be too concerned but it could be sturdier. Since there is so much flex at the bottom of the back of the screen, I am going to assume the chrome bits are plastic since this is where the widest chrome bit resides.
*Performance is very good. I am still getting things set up, but everything responds quite snappy. There are times though when I feel the HDD is holding things up a bit, like on startup. Those hybrid drives are becoming VERY tempting.
*Battery life is also very good. I brought it to school for the first time today and after sitting in class for an hour I looked at the batter life and it said about 8 hours left. Granted, I'm not doing much in class besides taking notes and some occassional web browsing, but still. Even now I am yet to charge this thing today and I still have 45 minutes left. I turned it on the High-Performance setting as well when I was at school since I knew I wasn't going to need 8 more hours of battery life. Simply awesome.
*WiDi is also a huge plus for me. I have only tried it out once last night but I was quite impressed. Ever watched a movie on TV that you actually own? Yea, me too. That is going to be a thing of the past. WiDi just makes it so easy to put that movie up on the TV. I have had the HDMI solution on the HP and I could just never bring myself to hook it up unless it was movie night or something. Now I just run a program and I am up and running. Love it.
*I feel the aesthetics speak for themselves but I will say they are quite stunning. This notebook is beautiful and people will notice. It seems there are Macbooks and then everything else. Among the many Dells, HPs, and Toshibas I see all the time at school, this thing is certainly special. It doesn't just look like another plastic machine, it looks like it was actually crafted to be something beautiful, and it is.
*The chassis is very sleek as well which I love. It isn't the thinnest out there but it feels well proportioned.

Cons:
*The screen is certainly the biggest downer. The flex on the screen is a little disappointing for an otherwise very solid machine.
*I am still getting used to the hotkeys. I am used to having dedicated media buttons for volume and pause/play. It will get some practice to get used to the Fn combos.
*The bloatware is a bummer but I didn't deal with it too much since I did a clean install. Some of the Asus Utilities are actually quite useful though so I suggest reading the very well put together Utility and Bloatware guide.

I think I covered the main pros and cons. Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

The whites are on the yellow side. The screen could be a few notches brighter as well. Honestly, while it doesn't bother me, the screen could be better. If I could change one thing, this would be it. Doing a direct comparison to my girlfriend's LED backlit HP dv4t screen, hers definitely has whiter whites, gets brighter, and seems to have deeper blacks as well. Just an all around better screen. I wasn't expecting that since I never thought hers was that great, but it is certainly better than the one on the U33.

I am hoping that I can adjust it to make it a little better. Any advice, Quatro?

I can't be certain as I don't yet have the Nvidia tool that displays which GPU is active, but I am almost positive it was using only the integrated GPU. Seeing that Nvidia demo on YouTube where they are using WiDI with Optimus working perfectly normal drives me crazy. Why can't I do that!? Thankfully, performance was quite good. I just hope that proves to be the rule and not the exception.

 

I bought that case for my U33JC, it fits very snuggly. Feels like it offers good protection due to the memory foam. The accessory pouch isn't going to hold anything thicker than a few usb keys or discs; if I fit my usb dvd drive in there the corners of the drive look like they'll leave marks on the case since it's so tight. If you don't need to keep accessories inside the case it's great.

 

Advice? I have the same problem! The screen is the one thing I wish I could change on my U30, esp the gray-blacks (light bleed). My whites feel pretty good. The blacks are pathetic when filling large areas like in a full-screen movie. I've tried fiddling with the Intel contrast, etc and it improved some things, but hurt others, and the contrast in a movie still reveals pretty washed-out blacks.

So my advice is learn to live with it. Except for when I watch a movie or HULU, the colors and the blacks feel pretty good (MUCH better than my Dell) and seem crisp and vibrant.

As for heat, I sat my 4-yr-old Dell in my lap the other night. Ouch! It gets so hot on the bottom, my legs began to sweat! And its fan was noisier. In that, the ASUS is waaaay superior.

On multi-finger gestures, I think I have bad news. I believe the limits are built into the touchpad's hardware (or not). Why do I think this? Both my ASUS U30Jc and my ASUS 1000HA netbook use a similar ELANTech touchpad. Even the same drivers. But my netbook allows for two-finger & three-finger swipes. The U30Jc has no swipe option period. Overall, the netbook touchpad (at $300) offers far more touchpad options and multi-gestures.

Just to be sure, I then took my supplied ASUS 1000HA touchpad driver and installed it on my U30Jc ... no extra multi-gestures. So that says to me it's hardware-circuitry chip-based.

The recommended touchpad driver ASUS supplies for the U30 does have some gesture like 2 or 3-finger taps, but no swipes.

So you may be waiting in vain for a touchpad gesture upgrade ...

 

If it makes you feel any better, I got the U43JC-X1, and it came with multi-touch. I use two finger scroll and two finger tap all the time. I'm not sure exactly what that means for you guys, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

I have a couple more notes about my observations so far of the U33JC.

The laptop is very sturdy, much more so than the U43 I saw at Best Buy. This is mainly due to the lack of an optical drive, which is the area in which the U43 bends most. It is heavier than I expected, and feels similar in weight to how I remember the weight of a macbook/macbook pro.

Body-wise, this is the best looking notebook I've seen, but of course that's subjective.

Battery life seems very good. In Arch Linux I ran the laptop for a little under 4 hours with the wireless on and the battery was reading around 40% remaining. I have not yet optimized it for battery life so I'm assuming that under Windows with Asus' power-optimization software (and without bloatware/security software eating the cpu) the life should be quite good. Also, it's quiet! I love how quiet it is. The air coming out of the vent can be hot, but I have not once heard the fan kick in. I also don't hear any high pitched noises. I have not yet had the computer on in an environment where I have been able to hear anything other than occasional clicking of the heads in the hard drive.

This is what bothers me most about the laptop: 1) The screen! It's so glossy. It's glossier than my Acer netbook. I place fingerprints on the glossy bezel every time I open the notebook. Why could they not have put in a matte screen? 2) The touchpad. Unlike others on this forum, I really like how it responds and how my finger slides on it. However, I cannot get two-finger scrolling to work. I usually don't mind finger-on-the-side scrolling. However, because there is no border on this touchpad, it's often hard to find where you need to place your finger in order to scroll. You can't tell by feel without finding where the right side of the mouse button is. I can't even get two-finger scrolling to work in Linux even with the options set for it, which have worked for me on other laptops. This leads me to believe that Quatro may be correct and that it could be a hardware limitation. Seriously, why? One more minor thing - the bezel around the screen has curved corners that actually covers up a few corner pixels in the screen. Maybe they did this for aesthetics, but I find it a little odd.

As for buttons: The ExpressGate button works such that if the button clicks, the laptop powers on (on that note - ExpressGate sucks. Why couldn't they have used a nicer Linux distro... even the one they put on the original eePC would have worked! That thing booted in five-ten seconds and was very easy to use. ExpressGate is seriously gimped in comparison). Same for the left mouse button and the keyboard keys. If it clicks, it worked. However, For the power button, if I press it lightly enough, I can get it to click without powering on. Same for the right mouse button. I have a feeling it's luck of the draw. It isn't so annoying, just press firmly enough and it works every time. Keyboard is great in my opinion, but although I don't feel it had to have backlit keys I really would have appreciated it if they were slightly fluorescent so that they'd glow a bit from using the screen. As it is, in the dark I usually close the screen a little more than usual so the screen's backlight shines on the keys.

I've been trying to set Arch Linux up on the computer and have been having a few issues. First, the Intel video driver's modesetting doesn't always bring the screen back on when it kicks in. During boot, when it enables it will either come back after a split second or will just never power the screen back on, in which case I need to reboot for it to work. Also, there are two things I can do to hard-lock the machine. Trying to use the webcam is one thing, and using powertop to autosuspend usb devices is the other thing. Wireless (and wired) works fine, have not tried bluetooth. Sound works after running alsa-config. Sound quality is good, although the microphone volume is on the low side compared to my Acer netbook. I'm using the latest stable 2.6.35 kernel. Hopefully once the hardware has been out a little longer these issues will be resolved.

All in all: Very nice notebook. Has some annoyances that they could have easily fixed for not much money. I'm happy with my purchase.

 

Interesting Case1 and I observed the same, so think this is "normal". I totally agree with the rest of your review.

 

Thanks andrewmatta for your review!

I have a quick question for the people in the UK. On the asus.co.uk website, the processor of the u33JC is the i5 430M but I was in store today, the shop was advertising an i5 430M but I checked on the properties of the computer ( Right click on Computer and then Properties ) and Windows was stating the processor used was the i5 450M. What about you what do you have?

And also, apart from the slight difference in Mhz, is there any other difference between i5 430M and i5 450M ?

By the way the model number is the ASUS U33JC-RX068V.
I have also noticed that there is no mention of WiDi in both the asus.co.uk website and on Amazon. Does this model really have WiDi ???

 

This is definitely incorrect. Hardware-wise, a touchpad is either capable of detecting multiple inputs, or isn't. There is definitely no hardware reason for why a device can detect multi-finger touches, but cannot detecting multi-finger swipes. It's all the software, guaranteed, either due to apathy from Asus/Elan, or because of Asus/Elan's desire for artificial product stratification.

On a tangentially related note, I can't believe a company like Asus has a driver site like they do. A good 50% of the time, there are "too many connections" and it refuses connections. The other half of the time, you're treated to a clumsy menu system circa the 1990s with a healthy helping of Engrish throughout. I thought Asus was a major player in the US notebook market, but their website certainly doesn't show it.

I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit and after going through Asus' (horrendous) driver site, I have multi-touch. To clarify, there are individual binds for 1-3 finger taps and 2 finger swipes. Nothing else is user configurable from the control panel UI. This is obviously a limitation coded in software.

 

I keep getting a GfxUI.exe - .NET Framework error with the U4J3C. Can anyone help? It says "Unable to find a version of the runtime to run this application". I used a .NET Framework verification tool and I had 2.0. 3.0, and 3.5 installed correctly. I even downloaded 4.0. Any advice?

 

Well, the Asus has landed and I'm busy playing with my new toy (translation: uninstalling crapware/installing stuff I need), but wanted to add my $.02 on the weight issue. Pulled out the digital, kitchen scale, and it came in at 4lbs, 10.375oz. That's with the Seagate upgraded HD, which probably makes little to no difference.

I'll quickly add that the keyboard is better than I expected, and actually pretty good. I really like the mouse pad, even though ergonomically, having no borders is ridiculous ... the coolness makes up for it.

Regarding the mouse button, I have an old iBook G4 laying around and had to go back and forth a few times before I really noticed that the Asus takes extra effort. But the iBook has a pretty "soft" button, but my old Lenovo work laptop was about the same force, and a Dell eBook (of some type), I had to use for a while makes the Asus feel like soft butter. Overall, I wouldn't have even noticed it as an issue unless somebody mentioned brought it up.

What does bother me, and I'm assuming I'll get to the bottom of it at some point, but I'll throw it out there if anyone knows already: the cursor jumps to the far extremes of the screen like there are hotspots on the mouse pad. But I haven't been able to get it consistent. I haven't updated any drivers. For example, I'll start scrolling upwards (mouse button down, sliding my finger up the mouse pad) and the cursor will go from the middle of the screen to the top. Don't understand why that happens yet...

More thoughts when I'm done messing with it and getting it set up to my liking.

 

Could one of you lucky peeps who have received the U33 give us a rough estimate of your new laptop's weight? Is it really around 3.7 lbs like the Amazon specs say, or more like 4+ (without the adapter).

If it's over 4 lbs, like a lot of the reviews have said, I'm thinking I may go for the Lenovo Y460, whose price has been dropping and weighs not much more.

Thanks.

 

Well, both Case1 and NBB1 have weight it at around 4.6 lb, so guess its true.

 

Oh, I have 2-finger scroll and 2-finger/3-finger tapping, but so should Case1. It's extra multi-gestures like 2-finger/3-finger swipes that we don't have.

 

I'm not arguing, but I do have a question. If that's true then why do I have 2 & 3-finger swipes on my ASUS netbook but NOT on my U30Jc and both have an ElanTech touchpad and both are using the identical ElanTech driver? Both have 1-3-finger taps and 2-finger scrolling.

Not all touchpads offer the same range of multi-gestures, that I know for a fact just by reading around on the boards.

Mine list taps, scrolling & swipes on my netbook but only taps & scrolling on my U30Jc. Your U33Jc lists taps, scrolling & swipes? All three with muti-finger gesture meanings? Are you sure you don't mean 2-finger scrolling?

 

It is almost undoubtedly due to market stratification on the part of Elan. The Elan drivers are in fact unified drivers for all of their different models, similar to how nVidia and ATI have one binary for all of their different models. So really, "using the same driver" just means that all of the different drivers have been rolled into one. And depending on what the driver detects as the hardware, it will permit certain features to be used.

The touchpad included in the U43 (and likely the U33, I'd imagine), are capable of supporting multi-touch, as evidence by support for two and three finger touches, and two finger swipes. The inability to customize the swiping gestures are purely due to software limitations, not hardware limitations.

EDIT: You seemed to have edited your message from under me. The touchpad is capable of detecting and independently resolving multiple inputs. Two finger tapping and three finger tapping could not exist otherwise. But what is happen is that the software is what is limiting the interpretation of these inputs. There are many possible explanations for this, but the most likely is that Asus elected not to purchase certain features for their touchpads due to cost minimization. Elan gave this permutation a unique hardware ID, then turned them off via software. The fact that you are using the "same" driver is 100% irrelevant.

 

Then it still comes down to the same ... Case1 will probably be waiting in vain for any touchpad upgrade that would grant him more gestures. If it is limited by hardware ID telling the software what gestures to unlock and what potentials ASUS was willing to buy (which still sounds very similar to hardware-limited) then those limits mean there's no magic driver floating around somewhere that will unlock more potential gestures from the touchpad ... or if there is, I'd love to know about it. I miss my swipes!

BTW, this article quote supports what you're saying:
"However, for marketing reason, Synaptics' official standard drivers for most Synaptics' TouchPads do not support multi-touch Synaptics Gestures. Synaptics’ drivers lock gesture features on all non-supported OEM notebooks and laptop PCs, except for certain gadgets such as ASUS EEE PC. So multi-touch is disabled even though touchpad hardware does support them."

Clearly I need to read more ...

 

The end result is similar, but not exactly the same. If the hardware supports it, the question is hacking the software in such a way that it will enable it. This is a possibility, though I obviously cannot say how likely it is. On the other hand, if it was a hardware limitation, there would never exist a possibility of gaining multi-touch swipe support. A possibility vs. an impossibility.

 

So what predetermined function does the 2 finger swipe on bigdoof's u43 do?

Thanks for the information fellas. I'm looking forward to when the u33 is in stock on amazon.com, and hoping for that $150 gift card to work. Waiting patiently...

Edit: read your post more closely...so you can bind different functions to that gesture.

 

That makes complete sense. Well put.

 

I can't actually find on the ASUS website or any retailers listing WiDi for the UK version, personally I'm not bothered about it but wouldn't be surprised if it was still there.

To answer your question about the CPU, the 450 is a newer chip and has twice the DMI bus along with a slightly higher clock speed.

 

Hi there,
I`m a fresh owner of the U33jc purchased in Germany. I'm afraid it seems that "our" version of this notebook does have an atheros wifi card (according to the device manager).
I also searched for the WIDI option without success (I think the intel wifi card is crucial for WIDI operation), as well as bluetooth is not integrated so i have to use an external usb dongle.
Apart from that I'm so far very content with this notebook.

Regards,
harhar

 

Can you tell us which model you have harhar? and which processor you have ( by checking on the computer properties ) ?

WiDi is something I really wanted to have in this notebook. I don't see why they would put it in one model and not another

 

@GottaFeeling:

Could you tell me where in the UK you have seen it? I live in Luxembourg and have been searching for a UK version and have been told they are not yet available.

@harhar: Did you get a qwerty model in germany? if so where?
very disappointing no widi! Can anyone confirm EU models have no widi? also no bluetooth?? very surprising.

@ All:
Have been following this thread for weeks but appart from the above the screen worries me. I like to edit photos (just hobby not too serieus) so a good screen would be nice.
Can anyone recommend another 13 (or 14 max inch) with dedicated graphics and decent screen. Dont like plastic, that was a reason I was attracted to this laptop. Maybe the new Samsung coming next month?

Appreciate any of your thoughts!

 

I got the RX 044V with i5 M450, bought it at notebook.de last week. It's QWERTZ, as I am german and used to that layout that's just fine for me

Strange thing they got different hardware configurations (BT, widi), it's a pity. But maybe there's a workaround for Widi, no idea... BT dongles got really small nowadays so that's not a big issue I think.
The great bamboo look, the graphics performance and battery life still made me buy it despite of these minor annoyances.
Let's see if widi works well in the first place, I heard very different opinions so far...

 

There might be a way to get WIDI capability yourself.

There was some discussion a while back (Quatro can probably chime in here) about WIDI automatically being associated with the appropriate Intel wireless network card.

Presumeably, the wireless card that is in your u33 is NOT the Intel one and by simply replacing with the appropriate Intel one, you would automatically gain WIDI capability by simply downloading the appropriate software from ASUS.

 

The UK version of the U33JC DOES have bluetooth.

 

OK, I give up. How do you get any multi-finger swipes/taps to work, especially two-finger scrolling (something that I use religiously on other laptops)? I didn't do a clean install, but I've tried the drivers on the Asus site, messed around with as many settings as I can find, and not only can't I get multi-touch type stuff that's even listed in the "eManual",[EDIT: I rebooted, without making any changes, and suddenly the problem I'm about to describe went away. Still don't have multi-touch] I can't get some of the extra features shown in the Synaptics Touchpad properties software to work, such as "EdgeMotion" ("When your finger reaches the edge of the TouchPad, the pointer will continue to move in the same direction until you lift your finger.")

In any event, it's very frustrating. Any hints on how to enable it?

Thanks!

 

You're right. It is that easy ... yet if only it were that easy!

Getting to the wireless card in the U33Jc to change it out may be quite a challenge. It is mind-blowingly difficult to get to in the U35Jc. You have to almost completely disassemble the base of the unit & remove the motherboard to do it!

 

Synaptics? You aren't using an ElanTech touchpad and it's corresponding driver?

 

My "mouse properties" say "Synaptics Touchpad V7.0." That's how it was when I got it, IIRC. When I was having problems, I updated the driver using the file "Version V14.0.19.0" on the Asus website.

In the Device Manager, I have one listing under "Mice and other pointing devices": "Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad."

Nothing about ElanTech in a search of the HD or under "All Programs." ...

[Moments later...]

Went to the ASUS U33JC web site, the "V14.0.19.0" with "2010/06/15" date is Synaptics. The "Version V7.0.5.10" with the "2010/02/23" is ElanTech. You have to download both files to see that they're different since the listing makes it appear that the more recent file is a new version of the old file.

I'll try the "old" file, the ElanTech, and see if that straightens out my problems...

EDIT [Even later...]:

After removing the Synaptics drivers and using the Elan drivers, the mouse pad is both better and worse. It exhibits none of the jerkiness/jumpiness that appeared with the Synaptics drivers when I tried to "drag" items around the screen using the mouse button and the pad (the double-tap-hold-then-dragging was not a problem). As far as stability, it's improved.

OTOH, I now no longer have the myriad of adjustment options. The Synaptic adjustments provided a lot of extra features (none of which being two-finger scrolling, which was the initial impetus). The Elan "adjustments" are limited to changing the functionality of the left and right mouse buttons, and absolutely nothing else (additional adjustments can be made in the "default" OS mouse adjustment window such as speed, mouse trails, etc.).

While I'm happy to have stability, I'm still missing any two-finger dragging.

 

I have no idea which is the maker of your touchpad. By your Device Manager listing, I would have guessed Synaptics as Device Manager tries to look at the hardware (I think). Weird that it lets you install either one. Are you using the US-version of the U33Jc or what?

Anyone else (Case1) want to chime in as to which is the maker of your touchpad and therefore which driver he should use?

Case1 or others, how many multi-gestures do you have listed in the touchpad options?

Device Manager tells me that my U30Jc has an "ELAN PS/2 Port Smart Pad." (Unlike you, my ASUS drivers page only lists two versions of ELANTech drivers, no Synaptics.)

I'm using ELAN Smart-Pad driver 7.0.5.10.

Opening the touchpad options, my categories are:

• Copyright
• Button
• Tapping (1, 2 & 3-finger)
• Scrolling (2-finger)
• Drag & Drop (1-finger)
• PalmTracking

What I appear to be missing (at least) is 2 & 3-finger left & right swipes and pinch & zoom. There may be more.

What do any U33/43Jc owners show?

 

I tried installing both on my U33JC-A1 and the Elan driver said that it could not detect compatible hardware, whereas the Synaptics driver was able to install and work. I'm very annoyed that this trackpad does not seem to support multitouch. I don't care about gestures, I just want two finger scrolling and double/triple tap for right/middle clicks.

 

Well, to use the well-known phrase, that sucks.

 

Hmm...maybe since the U43 touchpad driver allows 1-3 finger taps and 2 finger "swipes", you may want to try it out for kicks. I believe bigdoof said he has those touchpad functions working on his notebook. He never confirmed if it was 2 finger swipes or scrolling after quattro asked though. Hoping it works for you guys, since the u33 and u43 are both a part of the bamboo series with the bamboo touchpad.

These problems hopefully will be resolved, since most people tend to dislike the stiffness of the buttons. I tried out the u43 at best buy and also didn't like the stiff buttons. hoping asus updates the site with new drivers soon.

 

I'll certainly try that, I'm just worried that the U43 has a different touchpad than the 33. Also like I mentioned earlier I can't enable it in Linux either so that's a worrying sign that it may not be supported.

 

How does Optimus work on the U43JC? Whenever I try to start up a game it says I'm using Intel HD graphics instead of the Nvidia.

 

I think you can set which programs you want to run with the 310m under the nvidia control panel. Also might want to try to leave it on performance mode instead of battery saving mode when you play games.

 

I just bought the U33JC today in a shop called MicroAnvika. They seem to still have it in stock so hurry up!
The model I bought is the U33JC-RX068V, the specs include bluetooth, no optical drive, a i5 450M ( and not a i5 430M as advertised ), 4Gb ram and 500GB HDD. I haven't played with it yet but in the shop I noticed that the integrated Wifi card is not an intel one so Widi is most probably not available.

According to the following video at around 1:10, they show that the integrated wifi card is just below the HDD and therefore should not be too hard to replace. Was it the same on the U35JC ? Also XoticPC is proposing the Intel Advanced 6200 wifi card on their customisation page for the U33JC. So I guess, they just buy the laptop from Asus and replace it themselves.

 

@GottaFeeling I LOVE YOU, I'm going to try and cancel my other order and order from there, it is £75 more, but i've waited a month and am being asked to wait another and I need this for University, THANK YOU!

 

I hope they don't run out of stock soon, need to wait for my refund to be issued, the website I bought mines from (asuslaptop.co.uk) a month ago just doesn't answer any of my queries and told me I'd have it two weeks ago.

 

haha, wacky coincidence that I missed NBB1's post about the weight because I was writing my own post at the same time if anyone had weighed their machine!

I somehow missed Case1's own reading of 4.6 lbs, but I guess that's confirmed then with two observations. What a bummer! And not cool of Asus. In my opinion, for these smaller laptops, weight is one of the primary specs, and missing your specs by .5 lbs (15%) is a shady business behavior. Oops, sorry, that 15" screen is actually 12.75 inches. Teehee!

 

I'm pretty bummed about the extra .5 lb too on the u33, since the laptop is pretty much the same weight as the u43. A loophole with Asus is that they list the U33Jc to weigh 3.96 pounds with an 8 cell battery...but the question is which 8 cell battery? They have two options listed on their site, and the United States got the beefier one. That just might be why it weighs about an extra .6 pounds.

 

Happy to help!