ASUS U500vz/UX51vz Owners' Lounge!

Guys I needs advice.

despite being carefull I still managed to scratch my screen

It is not deep, and is barely noticeable on the white background, but is pretty clear on the dark one. Only the outer plactic cover of the screen is damaged but not the screen itself.

Of course I can live with it, but any siggestions on what to do in this situation are highly appreciated. Is there a service to replace the screen cover or do I have to replace complete screens? Has anyone had any experience with polishing those scratches?

 

No, everything is default and I am not able to reproduce it. I am right now trying to find a way to reproduce it so that I can do troubleshooting correctly.
It only happened like 6-7 times in 3 months so it's not easy to reproduce.

 

I am hesitant to answer this honestly, given all of the complaints about fan sound recorded here. But since I received mine the first week of December I have never had any problems at all with fan noise. I run Mint Linux and a clean install off Windows 8 Pro. I broke the RAID and run Linux on one hard drive and Windows on the other.

I could never hear the fans online, ever. I am 54 years old with a lot a rock 'n roll playing and listening over the years , but my 20-year-old son can't hear them either. And my neighbor (who owns a software company and owns many laptops) drools over my Zenbook and he said that he can't hear any fan noise coming from it.

Updated the bios about two weeks ago, but I cannot detect any changes whatsoever. I do not run the fan control program, nor do I have any heat issues, this is the coolest running laptop I've ever owned. No gaming for me, but I run some intensive audio apps that also drive heavy graphics use.

I realize that this sounds like a completely different machine than everyone else's here, but it is the truth! I only have one complaint, and that is the touchpad seems to be too far to the left for me. I make, many mistakes from touching the touchpad while typing. When I get some time, I plan to figure out a way to quickly disable the touchpad driver in both Linux and Windows. I use a wireless mouse and don't need the touchpad. I type 120-130 words per minute, so that is a huge issue for me. But I recognize that everyone's typing style and ergonomics are different.

The performance is absolutely killer, and the sound is amazing for a laptop!

 

I haven't taken actual measurements, but what I can say is that the alu surrounding the keyboard in the regions close to the screen gets lukewarm after some time without fans running. Nothing worse.

Once you start doing intensive stuff, the fans will kick in anyway. Your example is a good showcase, as simply starting Photoshop will make the GPU fan spin. To me having the fans run when there is actual load is no problem, and once they are in running mode, there is no increased heat issue anymore.

 

I haven't measured but after playing some game for a few hours the upper mid section of the keyboard gets hot. The problem is that the GPU is mounted just under the hot spot and so heats the keyboard by conduction and radiation. The heatpipe assembly doesn't touch the chassis AFAIK.
Still have no problem using the keyboard when hot BTW

 

Just in case anyone else is still struggling with dual boot, I added my method as an answer here:

Windows 8 Dual Boot Ubuntu 12.10 with UEFI broken Windows boot manager - Ask Ubuntu

Oh, and the fan does seem a little loud, and bear in mind that I'm moving from an ancient Thinkpad T61p that ran at around 80C under light load and regularly shut down from overheating. Performance in every other respect is fantastic though.

 

Just an update and to chime in on the fan.

Had mine since mid Novemeber. My initial impressions reviewed previously have not really changed. I have not updated the BIOS nor am I running the fan control software.

Still Like:
• Super fast machine.
• Very nice size and weight – always getting compliments on the thinness.
• Great display.
• I don’t run any games, just programming tools and word processing but I have not had any heat issues on any part of the machine including the keyboard.
• Good battery life.

Still Dislike:
• The fan or fans do run continuously but very quietly. I hardly ever notice them unless the room is perfectly dead silent. I do like that they do not come on and off which I find more annoying than continuous running.
• The power supply is clunky and does not stay plugged in dependably.
• The SD Card reader is junk and I don’t use it.

It is interesting that at least one user has no fan noise - maybe caused by multiple actors. Anyway it does not bother me.

 

Hi guys,

I want to buy one and i live in Singapore, but the stores here doesn't have it. I guess i have to get it shipped. Any idea whether the warranty can be extended to other countries? And which website should i check out to get one?

Thanks.

 

There is (or at least was) a couple of companies that offered to do matte -> glossy retrofit and the reverse which involves changing the front film. Sadly I can't remember any names and a quick search doesn't find any :/

 

Does anyone know what case/sleeve to get for this? I'd like something that fits nicely around the laptop, and allows me to then put the laptop+case in a bag to carry around and protect it from scratches whilst in the bag. I live in both the US and France, so can buy from stores in either country.

I have purchased this, as it was one of the highest rated 16" sleeves on Amazon, but it is too thick for the laptop! It floats around in it:
Amazon.com: Case Logic LAPS-116 15 - 15.6-Inch Laptop Sleeve (Black): Computers & Accessories

Has anyone found a nice slim case for it? What do you guys use?

 

What about MacBook Pro sleeves?

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

I dont know - the reviews for the sleeve I purchased say that it fits their macbooks perfectly, but the asus u500vz just floats around in it...

 

A bit off topic, but isnt it time for you to get your u500 soon alfling? )

 

Tom Bihn #1 horizontal cache. Will pull the link and original email from their Support advising me on which size and post tomorrow. Am on my phone right now. $30

 

Yeah, but unfortunately it will be available in my country in March they're forcing we to wait also for the Samsung Chronos

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Hi,

A question to owners, does this laptop suport three independent displays (i.e. two external monitors plus internal one)?

And will it suport high definition monitors? (found a note that it is limited to 1080 only, is it true?)

 

Same here, my hearing is still great and I am really not bothered by any fan noise.
You really need to sit still and listen to hear it.

If there's anything to be bothered by this machine I would say the crappy SD card sticking out which means it's not usable as extra storage and the fact the recovery partition eats 20Gb (anyone succes in deleting it?)

Other than that it's a superb machine!

 

Hi guys,

I've been wanting to buy this laptop for a long time now but I've been trying to wait out for the Touch screen version in the US. Do you guys think it is worth waiting? Have any of you heard if it will come out sooner rather than later?
Obviously I've heard about the fan noise issue but it doesn't seem to bug most people, but I've been kinda wanting to wait that out as well to see if a BIOS update or something fixes it.
Lastly someone recommended the Tom Bihn horizontal cache sleeve - are case sleeves that fit snugly still rare due to the scarcity of 15.6" thin models like this one?

Thanks and sorry for all the questions

 

Yes you can do the built in screen and two externals. One via HDMI and the other VGA. All can do 1920x1080 which is full high definition.

 

Thanks a lot for the answer. I was in doubt as my work HP EliteBook supports only 2 (i.e. When I use 2 externals then native should be switched off)

I plan to use it with 2 monitors of 1920x1200 resolution, which is a bit higher than full hd. What do you think, will it work well?

 

Although the hdmi spec allows for higher resolutions than 1080p, most implementations do not. Vga should be no problem for 1920x1200, but it's no sure thing that the hdmi will go higher than 1920x1080.

 

I have a few 1920x1200 at home i'll try to remember tonight to test them to see if it will support both at the same time.

 

Wondering if anyone has tried deleting the rescue partition?

Seems kind of bulky to reserve 20Gb on a 128Gb SSD for something that looks to be included on the DVD that came with it.
Suggestions anybody?

 

Asus doesnt include an actual Windows disc, just a drivers/utilities disc. You could use your own disc if you have one then delete that partition. Its nice to have it on there though if you want to do a system restore they make it really easy to when its intact.

 

I can verify it will support 1920x1200 via HDMI but i forgot my VGA adapter at work so I wasn't able to try both externals at 1920x1200 at the same time. I'll give it a shot tomorrow night.

 

Thanks bamaster for the recommendation.

I'm a new UX51VZA user - have been reading these threads regularly for a while - then received the machine three weeks ago. Just recently the USB port on the right-hand side next to the mini display port completely stopped functioning out of nowhere. Tried Disabling power settings for USB Root Hubs & Generic USB Hubs in Device Manager, tried uninstalling and re-installing all three USB Root Hubs and both Generic USB Hubs, and nothing has resolved the problem. No power to this USB port at all - no illumination on inserted thumb-drive LEDs - zero sign of functionality. Created a support ticket with ASUS as well as the company that originally modified the machine (authorized modder) to upgrade to 12GB RAM. Will keep the forum posted.

Also, there are no games played on this machine - just office applications and two browsers with perhaps 50 tabs open. Occasionally Firefox has to be restarted as it eventually slows to a crawl. This rarely happened on a budget-friendly Samsung laptop with much lower specs. No apparent issues in Chrome.

The fans have been noisy once, sounding like a mini vacuum. Updated the firmware and haven't heard the fans work that hard since then. They're still audible but this device is not used in silent environments, plus the load is relatively basic between office tools and browsers. Small trade-off for a thin notebook with a lot of power.

Startup and restart times are blazing fast, almost instant. Keyboard thus far is fantastic. Touchpad isn't as smooth as previous budget Samsung notebook, in fact it's oftentimes quirky, but typically an external mouse is utilized. Touchpad might be considered least-appealing component. Display is great out of the box and will soon be calibrated with Datacolor Spyder 4.

Card-reader is functional but certainly not for constant external storage due to protruding card. Haven't experienced any loose connections - in fact most connections, especially HDMI are extremely tight - with card reader or other ports.

The plastic speaker-cover which can be seen both when the notebook is open and closed does seem a bit flimsy relative to the overall build quality of the machine which is extremely solid.

Thanks for any help regarding the USB port, and good luck to potential buyers!

 

I dont think you should blame a slow and crashing firefox on the laptop itself - I have experienced similar issues on alot of different machines, until I changed to Chrome. Will never go back.

I agree that the touchpad is not ideal, but i love it's size and the clicks Its allright.

"The plastic speaker-cover which can be seen both when the notebook is open and closed does seem a bit flimsy relative to the overall build quality of the machine which is extremely solid." <- Can you please describe what plastic part you are referring to?

 

Hello everyone, I was wondering, is there a central place for hints on setting up the ux51? There is so much information in these threads here but I feel a bit lost.
I bought the Zenbook recently and I saw lots of commercial Windows8 tiles greeting me so I wondered whether it comes adware-d out of the box.
Furthermore I caught some malware during download of a cpu temperature monitor, that was the quickest infection I ever got . Well done.
So I'd like to set it up from a clean Windows installer.

From what I have read so far its easier to install a windows 8 than a windows 7 because of all the driver issues.
Do we have a tutorial on how to make a full backup of the system (the partitions needed to set it back to factory state, partition table, raid setup, ...)
Plus on how to remove all the partitions and install a fresh windows 8?

Many thanks.

 

You are better off just using the built-in Windows 8 recovery, unless you want to break the RAID and possibly run into issues when u want to recreate it. The recovery image is not that bad, just uninstall some ASUS software that seems unnecessary and it's almost like a fresh install.

Btw you should utilize the refresh/reload features in Windows 8 if you need to reinstall it!

 

I used to only use Firefox too. What I noticed is about half way through the day it would slow way down. I started using Chrome and dont have that issue. Its also faster the Firefox ever was.

 

Yes, I've deleted the rescue partition when I installed Ubuntu on my laptop. You can boot from a flash drive with Ubuntu and delete the rescue partition with the "dmraid" tool.

 

Same here, something about this computer does not seem to like Firefox, while Chrome and IE9 work just fine. Two-finger scrolling seems to also work much better on the other browsers.

 

The silver plastic covering that's situated between the display and the keyboard, running along the F1 key to the Page Down key, with perforated speaker holes. If you grab the machine with lid closed from the back end to, for example, slide it into a brief case, it feels like this plastic covering could be bent with a strong enough grip, whereas the rest of the notebook feels very sturdy.

Firefox and one other regular-use remote-to-local printing client have had to be replaced or modified due to unusually poor performance. All other business applications run very fast. Also Start8 is highly recommended for those who still want a Win7-style Start menu.

No response yet regarding inoperable USB port, will keep the forum posted.

 

Those perforated speaker holes you speak of are in fact just a sticker featuring black dots. Though I like your description better.

 

Just ordered mine. Can anyone recommend a sleeve/case? Reading through this thread there are lots of tweaks mentioned but are there some things you all recommend I do on the first day of arrival? The tweak to control fan speed for example?

Cheers.

 

Firefox seems to work just fine, and two-finger scrolling can be tweaked using about:config
mousewheel.delta.delta_multiplier_y 250
mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount 2
mousewheel.acceleration.factor 5
feels quite fine.

 

Hey owners,

I think I'm going to become one of you very shortly. I just want to make sure of something: do all the SKUs use the GDDR5 variant of the 650m? This is the site I want to buy from due to price for specs, but it says GDDR3, and obviously I'd prefer GDDR5. Is their listing accurate?

 

It is 99.9% inaccurate. There are no reports of any laptops out there with GDDR3, but there are multiple reports of sites that list the wrong type. It is guaranteed GDDR5.

 

Hello everyone,
I've stopped following this thread for a while, and now I'm thinking on buying this laptop.
Can anyone summarize the problems / annoyances with this laptop?

As far as I know, the fan issue was fixed with a BIOS update, and the software can now completely control the fans behavior.
I also read something related to the power supply, and the touch-pad, if I'm not mistaken, can anyone clarify that for me?
Orangegate, keyboard flex, CPU/GPU throttle, proprietary SSD's, are any of this a real issue?

At least for me, this is a near perfect laptop.
Thank you all.

 

Hello!

I want to buy this ultrabook but can only find the model with the i7 3612qm and not with the updated i7 3632qm as shown here:
ASUS - Notebooks- ASUS UX51VZ

Is there any information as to where we can buy the new model?

Thanks.

 

With the Nvidia card enabled, my laptop almost always wakes up to black screen and needs a reboot
The Intel card is good enough for me but it won't transfer the picture via HDMI... ARGH
I wish I had the time to do a clean install....

Orangegate - not an issue unless you're into photo-editing software I guess
The fan issue - i'm still on the old BIOS because I heard the 204 BIOS lowers the battery on-time and mine is bad enough (has never shown more than 4h no matter the power plan ). The fan control software does its job. I don't use it since I am used to loud laptops and i don't wanna risk it.
CPU/GPU throttle - I don't game so can't help you, sorry
proprietary SSD - i guess it's a problem if you want to replace it
touch pad - it's very competent WHEN you use it. But when you don't really use it, it gets in the way too often, with the cursor jumping around while i'm typing which is extra annoying. I mostly use mouse though.
power supply - my gets very hot. could be a defective one. still wondering if i should file a claim for that - give that my battery life is not at all stellar (people have reported 7hours windows expectation)
keyboard flex - not existent at all. the keyboard is nothing short of perfect.

Very good points for this laptop are the 8GB ram (extendable), the awesome screen and the lightness/thinness

 

Tom Bihn Horizontal Cache size 1 is perfect.
http://www.tombihn.com/PROD/TB0350.html

I've never heard the fan on mine and have owned it since December 5.

 

Anyone ever run into an issue where the laptop all of a sudden says that is has very low battery left (6% this time), but like 3-4 seconds later jump up to the real battery level (31% this time)? This have happened before, like 2 or 3 times and the first time was like a week after I got it (so it's not related to my charger issue). Not sure if it's software or hardware...

 

Thanks for your response. Could you possibly post a picture showing how tight the fit is? I'd be ordering one to London so returning it would be a hassle. It looks great though and there don't seem to be any other high quality good fit options out there.

 

Backed up all data and just reinstalled OS. Went with the entire Reinstall rather than just Refresh to be sure. USB Port still dead. Something perhaps worth noting is that where there used to be two Hard Disc Drives appearing in My Computer, there is now only C: with 200GB total (maybe the system restore partition gets hidden after a Reinstall, I'm not sure). Device has only been handled very carefully / no drops, spills, etc.

During my experience: ASUS email support seemed novice, with chat support being slightly better. ASUS email support instructed me to reinstall OS before even asking what my Power4Gear USB settings looked like, which surprised me. Still haven't heard back from original retailer/upgrader 5 days after submitting the original support ticket and my 30-day return policy is quickly approaching. Hoping they get around to noticing my suppot request soon (*cough* *cough* Hutsady, thanks in advance!).

Will keep the forum posted. So far, awesome machine, but QC seems lacking on a device this pricey.

For those of you who have reported being on your second and third machines, I now understand that you are not just the unfortunate anomalies.

Good luck!

 

What's the current school of thought regarding prolonging battery health. Do you just plug it in at the wall whenever you are using it or should you charge to 100% then unplug? The only hard and fast rule I've read is to avoid hot environments wherever possible as hot=quick demise for a battery.

 

I'm sorry to hear that you haven't gotten a reply. They are supposed to be replied to within 24hrs. Did you fill out the service ticket on our site? You dont have enough post's to PM me so click on my name in my sig and it will send an email to me. Send me your info like order number, and email address you used when you opened the service ticket and i'll get it look into asap.

 

Many thanks, Hutsady! My first submission may not have made it to its destination via the online form. I sent a follow-up email and got a very prompt response including insight and more thorough tips and inquiries than what was provided by ASUS' own tech support. You guys are great!

 

Awesome, glad to hear our service guys are taking good care of you. If I can help with anything let me know. One more post and you can PM me.

 

Hello members and owners of UX51VZ,

I will become an owner of UX51VZ in a few days, I sure hope that my unit will be properly QAed in factory, and that it won't come with any faults. I plan to use it as a working machine, using CAD applications (Nvidia Geforce cards are generally really good for that usage). Looking forward to a relatively light machine with powerful HW and very nice screen!

One question for the owners: did you find a replacement/compatible power adapter? I would like to have a spare one that I would have permanently plugged in at my work place (as now I have with my HP EliteBook 8510w). Is there a compatible power adapter either original from Asus, or from some really good manufacturer? Or are there some kind of converters from existing power adapters to UX51VZ plug? Because I see that my HP charger is also 19V, 4,74A 90W and I have a bunch of those sitting around, and it would be great if I could use them via some adapter or something.

Any suggestions, findings, anything? Thanks in advance