ASUS UL30 Owner's Lounge

Hi,

I have got my UL30A (Win7x64) for a couple of days and I'm very happy with it. I have a few questions though and I would be grateful for every advice:

-I noticed that when I'm listening to music using WMP, I get occasional "hickups"/"stutters". I checked and the latest audio driver is installed? Any ideas?

-I also noticed that the hard drive spinning noise is quite noisy (Hitachi 320GB). I didn't notice that in the beginning, so I'm not sure if it changed. My initial impression was that it was really quite and I couldn't hear anything from the laptop. Anyway, first I thought the fan was on, but then I realised that it was the hard drive spin. It's not very loud, but clearly noticable. Is that normal?

-Is Asus Live Update useful at all? I noticed that quite a few of my drivers are outdated, but it keeps telling me thay my system is up-to-date.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Cheers!

 

Min brightness. Wifi/Bluetooth off. Exit any programs that you don't need that are running in the background. Do a clean install to get rid of any bloatware that causes processes to run. My battery life is excellent, even on moderate power saving mode.

 

I bought my UL30A the other day from CPW, for 350 pounds this really was a deal! I did a quick and dirty mini-review if anyone is interested.
ASUS UL30A – Mini Review the gurusan's blog

Have you tried any other player like Winamp or Foobar?

It's not the quietest hard drive, I think it's normal. BTW these come with a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (well at least mine does).

Nope, in fact I uninstalled most of the Asus software.

 

What kind of battery life are you getting out of your SU2300? What is the capacity of your battery (in whr)?

 

For general browsing and windows use I'm getting around 10 hours with about 40-50% screen brightness. The battery is a 63WHr

 

Stable at 255FSB (1.53GHZ).... with .9V...temps max out 57/59 core0/core1

 

I also bought one from CPW for £349.

I'd like to fit internet Bluetooth. Does anyone know what part I need to order in order to do this? I've not taken it apart yet so I'm not too sure how easy it is to fit either.... Any ideas guys?

 

Oh, and also I did a fresh install to get rid of all the crap it was shipped with. I just need the Asus software for the top left button and to change settings on the webcam - what two programs do I need to download off the Asus website to do this?

 

what are you using ot OC?

 

This is exactly what I'm looking at... unfortunately the UL30A with O2 is only available on a 2 year contract @ £30pm (+ £80 up front). I'm currently with O2 (I also have an iPhone) and have a rolling 1 month 1GB contract and a Huawei dongle - which is just about enough for me. I like O2 connection manager (apart from too many pop-up messages) and to have one integrated would be ideal.

Anyway the deal gives 3GB + O2 wifi which on a dongle would be £15pm - taking away the £10pm I'd have been paying anyway that puts the cost of the laptop at £560 (or £800 if I never used the 3G) - basically a hire-purchase scheme.

I'd much rather buy the laptop outright - preferably identical to the O2 model so does anyone know if it's available as a stand-alone (O2 officially say not) or can the U30A be modded with a WWAN card like the Acer Timelines?

 

Quick little problem with the media keys on my UL30. Before installing any drivers, the media keys (Fn + arrow keys) just all mimicked either the home or delete key, I can't remember which. Now that I installed the Media Hotkey driver from Asus' UL30 driver page, they always just open Windows Media Center or control that. I don't use WMC, I use Foobar2000. Is there any way to re-map these hotkeys to be something more generic so that I can set them to be hotkeys in Foobar? Thanks.

 

I have a question about the touchpad driver for the UL30A-A2 that I have. It came with the Elan Multi-finger software, but I've found that I don't have the precise control with the touchpad on this notebook, as I do with the (3 year old) Macbook Pro I also have. I've noticed some mention about using the Synaptics software for this touchpad. I was wondering if that is to be installed in conjunction with the Elan driver, or separately? I've downloaded the latest driver available on the Synaptics site, but haven't done anything with it yet. Thought I would ask the question before I install anything else.

Thanks for any information that can be provided.

OK, this is a couple days later, and I decided to see what one software driver offered more or less than the other. So I uninstalled the Elan package, rebooted, and installed the Synaptics package. Rebooted again, then looked at the settings that Synaptics had, that the user could configure. Underwhelming, is the comment I have. I have uninstalled it, and reinstalled the Elan software. It gives me a bit of control over the touchpad, and even though it's not up to par with the Macbook pad, I'll undoubtedly get used to it. My memory isn't that great, but I remember that I wasn't happy with the Macbook pad either, until I got used to it's idiosyncrasies. Now it's the yardstick I use to compare others.

 

A wiki for the UL30 has been created here http://asus-ul30.wikispaces.com/ . Please create an account and apply to be a contributor. I currently merged the information from the first post of the UL30VT Owners lounge page into the wiki FAQ and updated the dated information at my discretion. Please add any information/pages to the wiki about the other UL30 models you feel to be valuable. I will be adding more pages such as a direct link page to the most recent drivers.

Thanks.

 

Great stuff, thanks Asuspinner. That type of page for a machine should become the go-to resource, rather than a user like me reading thru dozens of forum pages to find nuggets of useful info.

 

Does anyone know how the F keys are assigned during the boot sequence? I cannot find this documented anywhere, which key takes me into the BIOS for example?

If anyone has the list of F keys and their function during boot, or can point me to the proper docs, I would very much appreciate it. Thank you.

 

I don't know what all of the function keys do, but I know that F2 gets you into the bios (setup). I had the hardest time figuring that one out. I think F1 might allow you to change the boot order (or ESC - not sure which)

 

To any advanced owners of the UL30-series notebooks: I encourage you to correct and update the technical specifications chart on the official UL30 Wiki.

 

I updated a little on the UL30 Wiki. I have the X4 purchased from Newegg and I updated that one with the info I know to be true.

 

Hi all,

Sorry if this has already been answered, but I was just wondering about how long you guys have had your ul30 for before any problems arised (stopped turning on, hard drive crashed, became incredibly slow, etc... or hopefully no significant problems have occurred thus far )

Also, if anyone purchased their ul30 in store, what store did they purchase it from?

And how is the asus warranty/customer service? About how long does it take for them to fix your problem and ship it back out to you?


Thank you in advance!

 

I'm really digging the UL30, absolutely in LOVE with the battery life and weight/size/price combo, but a few things are holding me back at the moment. I haven't been able to get my hands on the UL30 in a store, so could anybody care to comment on the (1) build quality/materials, and (2) keyboard user experience?

And (3) I'm currently on a 2.26 GHz Core2Duo machine, so I'm worried about the 1.3 GHz ULV processor. For general word-processing and heavy browsing (say... 2 windows each for Firefox and Chrome, with 10 tabs per window), do you think the UL30 can hold up? I don't intend to game, so besides heavy-duty graphics, what other tasks could make the UL30 strain and lag? Thanks SO much for all your help! I'm this close to pulling the trigger! =)

 

Well, I'm using it for multi-track recording with Audacity and music-generating with Band-in-a-box and other music editing software. Very processer-intensive at times. It's definately not as fast as my wife's new Imac, but the lags don't cut into my productivity, a few seconds here and there...

 

Thanks a bunch for your input, Moosebear! I'm not looking to do anything intensive, I'm just curious how far you can push a ULV processor as I don't know the real-world performance differences between them and mainstream Core-i processors. I think this UL seems like a really great pick-up!

 

I have had the UL30A for about a month, now, and I have noticed that it is pretty slow with some tasks. I use it mostly for web surfing and email, so it doesn't bother me too much, but as a comparison, I just got through setting up a quad-core AMD processor (955) for my dad and whereas windows fly open on his, they take several seconds on the laptop. I think that may be due partially to the hard drive, though. I'm seriously considering getting an SSD and I think that will REALLY improve performance. At any rate, it is good enough for me, but it's something that I think people will have different opinions on and different experiences. It takes a while to boot up compared to what I'm used to, and I'm just a little disappointed there.

Also, I'm disappointed in myself for not realizing that the UL30VT has a 30% overclock feature on the processor and the UL30A does not have that feature (even though they use the same processor). The overclock would have been nice when I recently made a short (2-3 minute) HD movie on my laptop from my HD camcorder. It took about 1.5 hours to render (yes, you read that right, 1.5 hours to render just a few minutes).

Don't get me wrong, I love my laptop, I just want to have my cake and eat it, too. I absolutely LOVE the battery life and for almost everything I do, it's plenty fast. I output America's Got Talent to our HDTV the other day and it looked fantastic - no stutters, etc - it was perfect.

Don't know if that helps, or not, but just consider that how fast it is depends on your perspective.

 

sorry - doouble post *blush*

 

Hi all !

Just now registered to post a question that's very important to me :

Living without electricity is a reality for me, as well as the shoestring budget for everyday living.
OK.
So my plans to buy a new Asus UL30VT-QX030V is a *major* step !
The most tempting aspect obviously is long battery time..

QUESTION :
How long does it take to re-charge an empty battery ?

- That's really essential to me, as I'm dependant on librarys and the like to get the nessesary mains
voltage for charging stuff (like phone, torch-light batterys, MP3 players et.c.).

In real life, I could probably not cope with more than five hours in one go,
but then it's perhaps possible to charge the Li-Ion batterys in portions ( say 3 times three hours or something ),
without 'memory issues'.

Anybody *knows* about these things ?

I'd REALLY appreciate any advice or other input - thanks a lot !

Cheers!
// B.E.N.

 

Thanks for your input! The amazing battery life is what's got me hooked, and is making it difficult for me to pick a different 13" laptop.

Performance-wise, how long on average do you think it takes to boot up? And besides rendering HD movies (I probably won't do that), when else do you see any noticeable lag? I'd primarily use this for basic note-taking and classwork, so a couple Word docs and 2 windows each of Chrome and Firefox with 8-10 tabs per window. Do you think it could speed through that pretty well? Thanks again!

 

From the moment I pushed the power button until the time when Windows 7 was up and running and logged in to my wireless network took about 1.5 minutes. I also notice things like when I click Internet Explorer, it takes about 20-25 seconds to open up and let me start using it (ie click on the URL bar and type something).

But I tried opening up 3 separate word documents with pictures in them and 2 Firefox windows with 10 tabs and 2 IE windows with 10 tabs and it handled all of that with no problem. Of course, with things just sitting there, it's only using 3-5% of the CPU and only about 37% of the memory.

I don't know if this helps or not, but the Windows 7 Experience Index rates this computer at 3.4 (the lowest score from the graphics). (The Windows Experience Index is a rating of your computer and it ranges from 1.0 to 7.9 - the higher, the better your computer). It rates the processor at 4.1, the RAM at 4.8, the Graphics at 3.9, the Gaming Graphics at 3.4 and the Hard Disk transfer rate at 5.5. Note that this index is only runnable when the unit is plugged in.

Also, the speed and performance numbers I gave you above is when I was using the laptop in high performance mode which uses more battery. Right now, the battery has 72% remaining and it says it has 6 hours left. If you want to conserve more battery power, things may bog down a bit more. But they would handle word docs and web pages just fine. It's when you are actually using the CPU and memory for something that you may have a tough time multi-tasking.

So, I ran another test. I had everything I just mentioned open but I changed the mode to Quiet Office which uses less power and I started opening up new tabs to youtube and playing videos. I eventually stopped opening new windows at about 6 videos playing and then went back to word and opened up a new document template and started messing around there (the noise was deafening with all of the videos playing at once). It handled it just fine. I then went to the performance monitor and it was using up about 30-50% of the CPU and about 43% of the RAM. Then I closed all windows as quickly as possible (using Alt-F4) and they all closed immediately with no lag and now the memory is at 27% and the CPU is at 1%.

I don't know if all of that helps or not, but it sounds like for what you plan on doing, this laptop will do just fine.

(oh, by the way, now that I am in Quiet office, it says there is 70% battery life and 7 hours, 9 minutes left)

 

Mnrbradley, thank you so much. That was most definitely helpful, and I can't believe you actually took time to open all those windows and videos, much appreciated it and worthy of a rep!

It's been an agonizing (but exciting) week of laptop research for me, I'm down to the Toshiba R705 and the Asus, but I think I'll probably have a decision within the next 24 hours. After reading so many reviews and asking so many questions, at a certain point, I just gotta just pull the trigger and take a leap of faith!

 

I'm very close to buying the UL30A-A2, and I found a great refurbished deal here:

from mwave.com

does anyone have any opinions on refurbished laptops? and buying from mwave?

free shipping + 70$ discount seems like too good a deal to pass up, but im worried about the warranty.

do refurbished asus laptops get some kind of manufacturers warranty as well?

 

Hey everyone, i've just got a ul 30a and I'm liking it apart from one thing.

I seem to be having a problem with the touchpad buttons 'slipping'

For example, if I left click on a scroll bar and scroll up and down, it will start scrolling but then it will stop as if I have come off the left click button even though I haven't. It only works faultlessly if I press the left click button really hard when I scroll, it then works fine.

It also does the same when i'm trying to highlight some text unless I hold the button down hard.

Is this normal, does anyone else find this issue?

Cheers

 

So, this morning I plugged in my laptop to see how long it took to charge. It was at about 47% capacity, so I am assuming that however long it takes to get it to 100% capacity is 1/2 the time it would take to get it from completely depleted. At any rate, it took less than 1.5 hours to charge it from 47% to full. I didn't see the light change from orange (charging) to green (charged), but it happened somewhere between 1 hour and 1.5 hours. So, my guess is that it would take 2-3 hours to charge completely from a fully depleted battery.

Hope that helps. Note that I am in the US - not sure if power supply in other areas would cause charging to vary.

Also note that it takes longer to charge if you are using the laptop. I had the laptop turned off when I charged it.

 

remember.. this is not a regular notebook and not meant to be that. It's more in between netbook and notebook. Knowing that and being happy about it, it's perfectly fine, powerful and snappy

 

Just had my audio go all crackly on me recently. Updated to the audio driver linked on the Wiki page and it sounds great again.

 

Personally, I think the UL30 is a laptop. It has enough power to do everything a budget laptop can do and much more than what netbooks can.

 

Agreed. Even the UL30a is fine for video editing, music production, playing hi-def videos via hdmi cable into TV... and the VT is fine for gaming... what exactly can it not do? Maybe takes a second or two more than some processors, but really, who cares? Worth the trade-off to me. Although I'm no shill, having had a nightmare experience with customer service. (and I don't go saying that lightly)

 

Hi can anyone tell me if this laptop is cooler than the acer timeline at the bottom? and can u put it on ur bare skin lap?

 

also can you overclock the UL30A like you can do in the VT series?

 

From the UL30 Wiki FAQ

This is a great resource for this kind of question: ongoing thanks to all contributors.

"Can I overclock the CPU?

Yes, users report up to 1.9 GHz for VT models with the dedicated graphics card (the A models can only overclock up to 5%). Here's a CPU overclocking guide:
Overclocking the Asus UL30VT/UL80VT/UL50VT (Beyond Turbo Mode)"

 

I uninstalled most of the bloatware from my box, but the Asus Multi-Frame Utility is something I've found useful for working with two programs on one screen.

I was having troubles with it though. There is an updated version on the site linked above through the wiki, I got that and it now seems to work fine.

 

Hi, just wondering, have you recorded anything using the UL30 sound card? if so, hows the latency ? I just bought an ASUS Xonar DX desktop sound card and it sucks... 500ms latency (already using asio drivers on it)

 

Hi everyone,

I have just bought myself a UL30A-QX131V and I absolutely love it but I have a small issue with the power4gear button.
When I first boot up the laptop the button works fine but when it goes to sleep and I wake it up the button stops working
I will have to shut down the laptop and boot it back up before the button will start working again. Choosing restart doesn't work and I have to completely shut the laptop down and boot back up before the button will start working
Also when the button has stopped working I can still use Fn+space to change the power4gear settings so the software is still running fine
Do you think this just a windows 7 driver problem or is their something wrong with the actual button and need to get my laptop repaired?

Is anyone else having this problem or is it just me Thanks

 

Did you install the latest Power4Gear Hybrid Utility (Version 1.1.35)? You should also consider updating all of the Asus software here

 

Hi, Yes I have power4gear 1.1.35 and I have just updated everything and the button still stops working after the laptop goes to sleep

I think I will just return the laptop anyway as playing 1080p video is extremely jumpy and unwatchable even with 4GB of ddr3 ram and a 1.3ghz SU7300 and most up to date display driver

Very dissapointed :cry:

 

Yeah, that's really surprising. It does sound a bit like you may have a bad laptop. I never had any trouble with the button or playing 1080p video.

 

What model is the core i3 refresh of the UL30?

 

3 weeks into college and my UL30VT is working great. And when everyone else's battery dies, mine is still going strong.

Also, I encourage all advanced users to contribute to the UL30 Wiki.

 

Hi, I have had my laptop for a little over three weeks now and I have some problems that I couldnt target in the wiki or with a google search.
1. My battery is around 6 hours with just normal web browsing and the occasional video. I am getting a new battery sent to me right now, but I was wondering if it was a hardware problem. I currently have it on the "balanced" setting.
2. Every once in a while a youtube video that I am trying to watch will be green, and if I move the cursor or scroll it will go back to normal for a second and then go back to green.
3. I have the most updated elantech drivers, but there is no pinch zoom. Can someone link me to drivers with that feature?

 

I have also had this problem. This happens whenever the computer accesses the hard drive, as the 'swishing' noise is always accompanied by the hard drive LED flashing. The noise isn't a clicking or anything indicative of damage; it is just very noisy when accessing the hard drive, I suppose. In my room with a fan on, I can't hear it, but in quiet places like the library, it is very irritating. I am sort of at a loss to do with this: either bear it, or wear headphones all the time?

 

I can confirm that the hard drive is noisy. My solution was to replace it with a SSD and put the original drive in an enclosure making it an external drive [still noisy]. I have the UL30A QX-159V with the Seagate ST9500325AS hard drive .

 

Thanks for the confirmation. My UL30a-a2 has the same hard drive.