ASUS UL30 Owner's Lounge

Would you happen to have bluetooth as well?

 

Yes I do have BT.

On the other hand, it was way more expensive: over $1100 (incl. VAT). But everything is more expensive over here...

And the black and glossy handrest is awful: not only a fingerprint magnet, but also a DUST magnet. I have dust all around the keys, screen, touchpad.

 

Does anyone know what size hard drive the UL30 series uses? Is it a 2.5" or one of those tiny 1.8" drives? I would like to upgrade to a 7200 RPM drive but that requires a 2.5" HDD size. My HP 2510p uses a 1.8" drive and it is a disappointment.

Does anyone know how hard it would be to swap out the drive?

Thanks

 

I'm 99.99999999% sure that it is a 2.5" drive. Most ultraportables(12.1 and under, not counting netbooks) use 1.8" hard drives and even those are going out of standard nowadays with SSD's.

 

I'm 100% sure it's a 2.5", as I swapped out the 320 GB my -X3 shipped with and swapped in a standard 2.5" 500 GB. (Shipping/back order logistics made the -X3 the way to go for me, I would have happily spent extra for a -A1, but Amazon had them on a 1 week delay.)

Yet another reason to go with Asus, btw, 3 screws and a HD swap ftw.

 

i wonder if we can swap out wifi cards and put one with wifi and bluetooth?

 

i used to have the same idea of adding the bluetooth modulus in the laptop, but after experienced with the IOGEAR usb bluetooth dongle, i think i like it the way now. I have owned two BT Equipped laptop in the past (msi wind & hp dv4t). Both laptop requires some time to connect to my BT mouse after windonws start, sometimes it even fail (I guess it is HP's issue), but the IOGEAR makes life simple, i don't even have to take it out. I just leave it in, and once the computer turns on, it even connects at the logon screen. So i would rather spend $19 bucks on the BT dongle instead of thinking ways to adding internal BT modulus. Just my thought

 

internal bluetooth is just more convenient for most, considering you don't have to worry about carrying the usb dongle or having it stick out when using your laptop. I also find that I use all 4 of my USB ports at time, so having them all free is important to me

 

one thing i have nticed which kind of bothers me

as this is the first led LCD display i have owned.

when i dim the display at 50% or so parts of the screen i can see flicker lightly.. like i can catch it with the corner of my eyes if i am staring in the middle.

doesn't happen at full brightness

 

Just got a UL30a X2. Dropping in a Samsung 256gb SSD was a breeze, though I counted 3+4=7 screws, with the extra four on the carrier tray under the hood.

After reading an earlier poster's difficulty with Ubuntu 9.04 I opted to try for the 9.10 beta install on the fresh ssd. I was not able to get the laptop to boot the ubuntu icnstaller from a 16GB SD card, although that might be the fault of my unfamiliarity with the BIOS or if it's a true limitation, it might be fixed with one of the recent Asus bios updates. I next tried the 9.10 netboot install. PXE boot into the installer worked fine but ubuntu 9.10 netboot had no love for the wired OR the wifi adapter. Use of a USB wifi stick solved the problem, but then a friend lent me a USB ssd stick with the Ubuntu 9.10 installer so rather than wait for the download I just rebooted and installed from that. The BIOS considers a USB stick to be a "hard drive" and one must change the hard drive boot order to get it to boot from the USB.

From that point installing to the ssd went like a hot knife thru butter. To my surprise, the wifi and wired networks function in the full 9.10 install. I have not tested the microphone or webcam yet, the earlier poster declared problems with those. My problem is that skype does not run on 64-bit ubuntu 9.10 (not the currently available skype builds anyway), and that would be my app of choice to test sound and webcam.

After running powertop and making the suggested changes to reduce power consumption, I'm burning about 7.5 watts when on battery power with default settings. The battery monitor app says it's 60 watt capacity so I guess that would give me 8 hours.

Update:
Skype install just needed some dependencies and wasn't working with gdebi-gtk but did work directly with dpkg. As with the previous poster, my webcam is flipped on 9.10 and the built-in mic doesn't record audio. I have no problems with screen blinking and the brightness function keys work without trouble. powertop is predicting 10-12 hours of battery with the screen dimmed fully.

 

10-12 hours in ubuntu is great news, they must've optimized the power saving settings. Last time I used it, my laptop's battery life would be cut by about 40% doing the same tasks I did in windows.

 

UL30A uses a 2.5" SATA HDD.

2510P deviation: You can put a 2.5" HDD/SSD into your 2510P using an optical bay caddy. See here. Could consider using a 2.5" OCZ SSD (as master) and keeping the 1.8" HDD for data (as slave).

 

Anybody tried connecting the UL30A to a draft N 5GHz router? I tried with a D-Link DIR-855 and I get freezes and video driver crashes during a large (8GB) file transfer at maximum throughput (laptop right next to router).

Please let me know if you have seen the same problem.

 

always forgot to post a picture of my battery wiggle fix....

here u go, the yellow plastic strip is what i have added.

 

Excellent! Thanks for the pics. I'm going to work on this over the weekend.

 

no pro, make sure to sand down the plastic to be below 0.51mm, i think 0.45mm is good for a snug fit...

 

I had to RMA my Ul30A-x2. As well as the wireless signal strength being noticeably lower than it should have been, I developed serious hard crash issues.

I also found email tech support to be utterly useless. Not only was the gentleman I was dealing with reading off a level 1 tech support script, and not understanding the details in my email, he was also taking 3-4 days between responses.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the phone tech support is outstanding. I talked to the RMA department, explained my symptoms, and under the 30 day DOA warranty, had an RMA code and shipping label for Fed-ex in 45 minutes.

 

Thanks vicdeng! Definitely looks like something all UL30A owners should do.

Let us know if the new unit works out better for you. So far so good with mine. Fingers crossed!

 

Vicdeng, Thanks for the battery wiggle fix!

For others, I found that three layers of the screen protection plastic (on the screen for shipping), cut down to fit on top of the left and right top rail (on laptop), gives a nice snug fit. Makes it a 2 min job.

 

An update on the ubuntu upside-down webcam issue: the fix linked earlier in the discussion does not work on ubuntu 9.10, and the linux video developers have explicitly discouraged that approach because it requires kernel modifications. Instead, it can be fixed with a 32-bit build of libv4l version 0.6.2 or later. I built it from source and installed it to /usr/lib32. Then when running skype, I use the following command:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so /usr/bin/skype &

and presto! I no longer look like an antipode!
other webcam-using apps can be similarly prefixed with the LD_PRELOAD on the command line, and it might even be possible to put LD_PRELOAD into the systemwide profile, haven't investigated yet. Anyways, hopefully this will help someone somewhere.

Unrelated topic: I updated the BIOS to 206 to get the BIOS overclock setting. It works smoothly at 4%, but at 5% gnome fails to start on my laptop. I get a running linux and command prompt, but no gui. Maybe 5% is more than some circuitry in the Intel GMA4500 can handle?

I also have a weeeeak wifi signal with lots of connection drops.

 

I remember I had a wifi connection problems with the default manager in 9.04, the connection would consistently drop and the signal was weak when available anyway. I remember switching to some other network manager that fixed both of these problems, unfortunately I cannot remember the name. I think it was wicd (maybe that was the pre-installed one)?

 

Thanks nightfox91, I looked around a bit and discovered this thread:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/414560
It looks like somebody broke the linux wifi driver for the atheros cards and the ubuntu folks are scrambling to get it fixed before the final 9.10 release. I just applied some patches to use an older wireless driver and it works very well now!

 

anyone install the windows 7 driver for vga from the asus site?

when ever i restart my pc i get pop up if i want to run some intel files


annoying

 

UL30A-X3 here. Love it so far, except that the touchpad is way too "grippy" for my taste... oh well. Nothing's perfect, I suppose.

For anyone that ordered from Amazon - their page advertised a carrying case and optical mouse, but mine did not come with one. I called to complain, and they offered me two options: 1) return and replace, or 2) 20% refund off of the purchase price. It was a pretty easy decision. $136 is now being credited back to my card, bringing the cost of this notebook down to $550. KILLER!

Also, to remedy the loose battery, I cut small strips of masking tape and stuck them to the battery at the top of the topmost slots. Fixed!

FWIW, I have no wireless issues with mine.

 

Hi!

Anyone tried booting Asus UL30 from usb stick?

thanks for help!
Piotr

(I posted this question in the other thread by mistake, sorry.)

 

what do you mean boot of the usb stick?

i installed windows 7 from booting of the usb stick if that means anything to you

 

that sounds optimistic


I twice tried to boot kubuntu in a shop before purchase to check wifi card interop., but it seemed to consequently ignore the stick. Of course bios boot sequence was set to "removable devices" first and, of course, the usb stick would boot my dell inspiron.

Let me ask: what exact model do you have (only if there are chipset differencec among UL30 models)? did you make a bootable usb yourself? does it matter, which USB slot you use? Any special bios settings or maybe using boot menu can help?

thanks!

 

I'm having this problem every time I start up Windows 7. It keeps trying to install the Artheros Ethernet driver over and over and I've tried updating the bios but that does not solve the problem. Does anyone have any idea what could cause this problem?

 

Hmmm... I'm running windows 7 x64, installed the driver from the Asus site, I was surprised to see they already have the windows 7 drivers section.

Never had any problems.

 

Wish Amazon would have given me that option. When I get mine back from RMA I will call and heckle them. 20% off would buy a nice case

 

That's good to know...thinking about this machine, and putting Karmic on it....

 

Question for the US owners, is the UL30 capable of playing fullscreen Hulu 480p?

 

should we install the


kbfilter.exe file for windows 7... is it necessary?

 

hey guys im planning on getting the asus ul30 and i was wondering where you guys bought it and how much? i tried amazon and newegg but i cant find it anywhere except ebay, but thats sketch. also i live in the u.s.

 

^ Wait for October 22nd. As others have said, the Vista versions are cleared out to make way for the upcoming Windows 7 models.

 

Two new BIOS versions have been released by Asus for the UL30A, just days from one another. Looks like both updates have to do with 3G/bluetooth, which North American models don't have.

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=8CwAK6XZ0pekc7aI

BIOS 208 - 2009/10/09 update
Solve the bug of 3G driver cannot be installed when press F8 to do manufacture mode.

BIOS 209 - 2009/10/12 update
Fix the issue that MF210 3G card and Bluetooth cannot be detected.

 

What if it WAS there but BIOs couldn't detect it.

 

Ooooooo, Friebie...............

 

lol, nice one. How I wish that's the case.

 

Woohoo! I just pre-ordered the UL30A-X5 from Amazon for $680. One model (UL30A-A2, $780) was boasting 16 hours battery life but when I checked out the details, it also had an 8-cell battery same as the X5 model. Oh well, I'm happy with the one I bought. Besides, I prefer black.

 

The picture of the UL30A's right side on Amazon shows a slot above the memory card reader, is that the SIM slot?

 

Check UL30 manual at Asus support site. It states something about SIM slot in selected models.

 

Yay!

I just pre-ordered the UL30A-A2 myself from the same place ... I just could NOT pass up the extra 4 hours of battery life!

 

Lol, if they had a black UL30A-A2, I probably would have gone that route. Since not, I'm trying to hunt down the 5600mAh 8-cell battery.

 

I would prefer a black UL30A-A2 as well. Its one of the reasons I'm planning on going for the UL80vt at this point.

 

I also would prefer a black one ... but to be honest if the battery life IS what is advertised then imo itw ill be TOTALLY worth it.

 

I thought long and hard about getting the machine with the changing graphics as well - nVidia and intel ... but I don't game, so it would be kinda moot for me. I do, however, spend LONG periods of time away from a plug, so battery life is a must!

 

Mycanid, I agree, the graphics aren't my major concern, I really just want the Turbo33. I consider that a huge advantage for whenever I really do need the power (which would be rarely anyway).
I can also justify the slight size differences and extra weight for a dvd-drive and the graphics/turbo features.

 

Growing less fond of Asus tech support by the day.

Called on Friday, guy I talked to said it was repaired and fed-exed out, but he couldn't give me a tracking number.

Called today (Monday) and got guff from Asus about faxing my invoice with my RMA (and I did that before I returned the machine on the 9th, and put a copy in the box.) CSR also said that the techs were still looking at it, and that the machine status indicates that it may be replaced. They are supposed to call me with an update within the next 2-3 business days, but not happy with the widely varying stories from Friday and today.

 

Understandable.

I already have an external usb dvd burner, so there is no extra cost for me in that field, and having "studied" my software usage over the past several months I know that for myself the un-turdo'd laptop would be more than adequate for me.

It IS helpful to know exactly what you want though!