Asus 1201N Reviews and Owners Lounge

Yes, of course everybody is interested in your coming heroic efforts with the 1201N, whatever it is that you are going to do! I have yet to mod a notebook/netbook other than RAM and HD 'adjustments', which I have done with all of mine but the Sony VAIO, which doesn't need any 'adjustments' for my purposes...that one just rocks, have had no complaints there.

I will be watching to see what you accomplish, since you apparently don't do overclocking or benchmarking anymore...maybe it's something that I can emulate if it doesn't involve actually making parts and pieces from scratch... that sort of deal would be out of my league.

But I agree about 3.25GB being plenty of scratch for a netbook, it really works well with a fast HD and a software tuneup of sorts, which anybody can do easily on the 1201N. I posted your video there...fyi...just to see if the powers that be will take it down more than anything, Hah! You did a nice job with the video by the way, ie it's cool to see somebody poised and creative enough to use music instead of inane talking on YouTube!

I did a bit of reading here and I also see that you're not a fan of SSD's, and same here...they pretty much suck in terms of reliability at this point. I have a good friend in Australia with a 17" MacBook Pro who, but for having a good backup system, would have lost his lunch basket with an SSD, a 256GB G.Skill unit that tanked and sank like a rock in the ocean one fine morning. I tried to tell him about them over and over, but he had to have one based on speed alone (240MB/sec speed!), however that changed his mind! I much prefer the faster platter HD's, such as Raptors for my desktops and SAS drives for RAID setups, and have had good luck with WD and Hitachi as brands over the years, not much else overall...pretty much stay away from Seagate, Maxtor, etc...

I really like the WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM series for notebooks, what with the 5-year warranty and Enterprise status going for them, and they are pretty speedy vs everything else. I am getting consistent 75-90GB/sec reads and writes with the 1201N and its WD Scorpio Black 320GB HD, with 125MB/sec burst speed according to HD Tune Pro 3.5 and BurnIn Test appraisals, and subjectively it really is noticeable as far as the GUI goes vs the 5400RPM Hitachi that was OEM with the 1201N. That is an excellent OEM HD however, so it seems that Asus chooses its parts well for the 1201N...both the Hitachi and the Scorpio Black score 5.9 points on Windows Experience Index rating, no difference there, but the desktop is livelier and faster with the WD drive in place.

Good luck with your Mods, whatever they are going to be! I will be watching 'from my beanbag chair' as you say, and will look forward to your efforts in creative improvement with the 1201N. I was pleased to 'discover' this site and will be stopping in now and then. It seems to have some interesting folks on board, with ideas aplenty.

rexrzer727

 

I just took another look at my estimated delivery date from Amazon. USPS plans to dump my 1201N at my door on Thursday the 28th, which is perfect for me because I don't have class that day. Hopefully if my workload isn't too cumbersome, I can swap out the HDD and the memory and load Windows with plenty of time to spare before sundown. Modding may have to take a backseat until the weekend. Because it is a netbook, I don't have much space to work with, so I may be throwing out "wasted" blocks from trial and error as I shape them on the dremel and sander. And I'm pulling those blocks out of my W870CU stash so I hope I don't screw up too many times.

The video that I linked wasn't mine, but thank you. All the credit goes to the author of that video. I was thinking of recording a tear down of this notebook before in my previous post, but I found that video while randomly browsing YouTube for 1201N videos, hence why I said "time saver." It would be pointless for me to make a similar instructional when there is already one up and is of very good quality.

I don't benchmark anymore, but I do still overclock to a casual and practical extent. All I want is to get a little more kick out of my W870CU's GPU as the factory clocks, in my opinion, do not take full advantage of the notebook's exceptional cooling power. So I overclock it just enough to get a few more frames from baseline while staying well within the temperature tolerance.

Right. I don't have much trust for SSD's just yet. But I have my eyes on that SLC Pulsar that Seagate has cooking for their enterprise sector. I'd place my trust in that drive. But SLC drives are going to be bloody expensive.

I'm going to mothball the Hitachi drive that comes with the 1201N. I'm not even going to bother turning it on for the first time with that thing in it. I'll probably DBAN it and sell it later down the road.

My only concern when thinking of modding the 1201N is the fan. The interior is a very low CFM environment because of the slow and tiny fan. This makes adding heatsinks less effective. For those that followed my M570TU cooling overhaul, I saw a flaw in my design where I completely perforated the backpanel. This alleviates the fan and allows better passive dissipation for the components, but it kills static pressure for incoming CFM drawn by the fan, which is more important for the 1201N because the CPU and GPU are much smaller and don't need a wide area for dissipation, rather it needs focused airflow. On my M570TU, it was still more effective than leaving the backpanel untouched because the intakes over the GPU only covered a narrow area just above the GPU core, but didn't have an entry point for the rest of the card. On my W870CU, I plan to leave the backpanel alone as all of the secondary intakes are in the center between and over the components and are spread out over a relatively wide space, so the twin fans will still effectively pull air over the CPU and GPU heatsinks. The 1201N is fairly similar; the intakes near the front of the notebook underside will draw focused airflow, moreso because the intakes directly over the fan are small. But from looking at pictures of the 1201N fan, the rotor is almost completely profiled as a radial turbine, meaning that the fan will draw more air in a "tornado" pulling air perpendicularly from the sides rather than from directly above. This makes this cooling system more dependent on static pressure rather than raw CFM. I have still yet to have the notebook infront of me to finalize how I'm going to approach this, but so far I just disclosed most of my plans on how to optimize airflow with the existing heatsink and the additional ones that I am going to add. I'm not going to go all out on the 1201N like I will my W870CU as this is only going to be my secondary notebook. But I will make it easy and simple enough so that it can be reproduced by anyone willing to get down and dirty for a more efficient machine. Maybe later in the summer I'll revisit my 1201N mod after I learn what works well and what doesn't work well with my W870CU mod.

 

You don't have to switch from Vista to Seven. If you already have Vista, then that's good enough as Seven is, in my opinion, just Vista SP3.

 

The key that's on the bottom of the unit also works with the 64 bit version of Windows Home Premium. (I had to activate over the phone to get this to work.)

 

Soviet Sunrise wrote:

"I just took another look at my estimated delivery date from Amazon. USPS plans to dump my 1201N at my door on Thursday the 28th, which is perfect for me because I don't have class that day. Hopefully if my workload isn't too cumbersome, I can swap out the HDD and the memory and load Windows with plenty of time to spare before sundown. Modding may have to take a backseat until the weekend. Because it is a netbook, I don't have much space to work with, so I may be throwing out "wasted" blocks from trial and error as I shape them on the dremel and sander. And I'm pulling those blocks out of my W870CU stash so I hope I don't screw up too many times.

The video that I linked wasn't mine, but thank you. All the credit goes to the author of that video. I was thinking of recording a tear down of this notebook before in my previous post, but I found that video while randomly browsing YouTube for 1201N videos, hence why I said "time saver." It would be pointless for me to make a similar instructional when there is already one up and is of very good quality.

I don't benchmark anymore, but I do still overclock to a casual and practical extent. All I want is to get a little more kick out of my W870CU's GPU as the factory clocks, in my opinion, do not take full advantage of the notebook's exceptional cooling power. So I overclock it just enough to get a few more frames from baseline while staying well within the temperature tolerance.

Right. I don't have much trust for SSD's just yet. But I have my eyes on that SLC Pulsar that Seagate has cooking for their enterprise sector. I'd place my trust in that drive. But SLC drives are going to be bloody expensive.

I'm going to mothball the Hitachi drive that comes with the 1201N. I'm not even going to bother turning it on for the first time with that thing in it. I'll probably DBAN it and sell it later down the road."

I actually do a bit of overclocking my PC desktops. I mean, with the Core i7 920 series you'd have to be nutz not to, Hah-Hah! I have two i7 920 PC machines I built, one is my main production machine in my photography studio, the other a backup and Folding@Home PC. They are both running EVGA motherboards, one Classified X58 and a Vanilla X58, twin SLI- EVGA GTX 285's in the main PC and a BFG GTX 285 in the Vanilla. There's lots of multi-media stuff in the main PC, including a 2TB RAID "0" boot HD system (twin WD Black 1TB's), an Areca 1680IX-8 SAS RAID Controller runs the I/O, plus there's an external Firmtek 4-Bay Hot Swap RAID eSATA Enclosure with a 4 x 1TB WD Black-fueled RAID 5 (for video and audio work)-- it's a piece of work, that PC!

Both those run i7 920 DO Stepping CPU's @ 4210Mhz on AIR, a 61% overclock (!), no H20 for me, with P. Megahalems cooling, and 9 and 7 Scythe High CFM fans respectively in each PC, so I'm into cooling very much shall I say, air cooling that is!

That Hitachi OEM 5400RPM HD will surprise you if you do turn it on...if you hit the 4GB of RAM first anyway...it's *not* that bad for an OEM HD. Hitachi makes good stuff, period. I like Hitachi, and I like WD for the past 7 years or so anyway...before that I was a Seagate man, but boy did that change quickly in 2005! I don't know if you remember the bad firmware SATA II HD's they were outputting for a couple of years, but that just ruined their reps and it's slow, and hard coming back...people are still leery about their stuff. I don't trust it yet, not at all. Hitachi and WD Enterprise I am into, period.

Yes, good find in that video so thanks for that...once I saw how easy it was I didn't even bother to look at back at it for reference, I mean that is one easy netbook to disassemble...the 1201N. Once I'd cloned the boot HD, after a 64-bit install, with Paragon's Copy Disk utility (Paragon Partition Manager Personal 10.x), which only took like 55 minutes or so, I was in an out of the 1201N in less than 20 minutes or so...it was just ridiculously simple to replace the HD.

The Scorpio Black by WD is a nice HD, this is my first install with it...I've used Hitachi 7200RPM 320GB HD's up to now mostly, but for a Samsung HM500LI in my Acer 5920 notebook, 500GB that one, back when they 1st were retail in August 2008. I use the Acer for a media dump, all RAW files when on assignment, and edit them with PS3 and Lightroom 2.x when I get a break, so I don't need speed there. Good HD, that Samsung...

OK, so you're gonna mod the fan area, maybe do a heatsink, etc inside the new 1201N...man, there's precious little room to work in there, it's a small and tight space routine! I don't know what you can come up with there, but I'll watch and learn I guess...it's just so small and that fan is the only one. Everest Ultimate says it's a low RPM fan also, turning below 1000 RPM mostly...let me see where it is now...yup even after a bunch of activity with this netbook for the past 4 hours it's turning only 590RPM... THAT is low RPM... I use a Logitech Cool Pad at home, the N100, so that helps cooling a bunch, an incredible amount in fact...I wouldn't have a notebook without some type of cool pad, all mine have something going for them.

Where the heck are you that USPS is taking more than a week to ship your netbook, LOL! WOW! That's some trip...I hope that they treat it nicely, and that it's double-boxed for you...mine was by Amazon.com, I mean they really wrapped it well, lots of bladders and packing paper in mine when I got it. Another thing you will like is the keyboard, it's got nice action, similar to my wife's MacBook Pro, or a Sony VAIO, chiclet stryle keyboard it is. Did you get silver? It's KUHL in silver, also, what with the blue LED activity lights, it comes up roses there...!

Well good luck, I'll be watching to see what you do to the little beast. So far so good with this new one, seems to have zero problems (knocks on wood twice!), but you're not gonna worry about the factory warranty from what I gather anyway...have fun!

rexrzer727

 

I ordered mine from Amazon.com as well, but I skimped and went with free Pony Express shipping. Usually USPS delivers before the estimated delivery date, but it's been storming all week here in California and I don't know if they can sort it all out in time.

With my experience with Hitachi, I've given them the nickname Sh*tachi. My family has had two 320GB Deskstar's and a 60GB Travelstar fail before; one of them was installed by me personally by request. Then again, that was back then. But from the way you describe it and from what I've been hearing lately, Hitachi has gotten back up on the good foot.

All five of my archive hard drives, all Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB drives are from the Barracuda 7200.11 firmware fiasco. Fortunate for me, none of them have failed and are continuing to store my data just fine. They are starting to approach the age where I usually replace my hard drives, so I will be retiring them soon and replacing them with three Constellation ES 2TB drives. I trust my data with Seagate.

 

hmm i think im gona go for the alienware m11x

seems like a machine for me for full portable gaming.

tho it is kinda pricey 1000$ pretty much what i paid for my g50vt-x5 but the the m11x seems like it would be the best small portable out there for gaming with 6k to 7k 3dmark 06 marks if that's true but if its true that would do pretty decent in old and new games.

even tho im happy with my 1201n great little machine and does game better than i thought it would but i need a more powerfull small machine for gaming... and i know the new ions will not touch the m11x sense its still uses atom well the new pinetrail but still a atom tho problee gona be like 4 or 500$ cheeper.

but ya i know what you guys thinking what did i expected out of the 1201n i expected way less than what it gives me now and im happy with it but when tech grows i need too follow it sometimes .. lol


im still gona upgrade the 1201n more like with the hyper x memory 4gb and a bigger and faster hdd like the wd black 500gb when it comes out

 

so you are going to use an M11x aand a 1201n ? I know the M11x is extremely powerfulll for an 11 in notebook, but isnt the idea of an 11 in notebook portability? and its like 2 in thick (well maybe i exaggerate a bit.) and i know they have tested games on it bont wont the 1.3ghz ulv cpu prove to be a bottle neck on gaming similar to the dual core atom on the 1201n?

 

hehe i use alot of computers and laptops lol

if i remember right i have well over 10 laptops lol and they do get use sometimes.

and well over 15 desktops and growing... i know crazy lol


if its smaller than my g50vt-x5 than i say its portability to me


the 1.3ghzs ulv is more powerful than the atom 330 sense its a low powered core 2 duo and i think it has 3mb which the atom 330 ony has 1mb.

but ya even that cpu problee would bottleneck in gaming but problee not much if it gets what they say 6k to 7k in 3dmark 06 who cares sense around those scores it can pretty much play any game out there with reasonable settings and they problee gona let you overclocked the cpu too so that would help even more


and sense the asus ul30vt with the 1.3ghzs ulv and with ony a nvidia 210 gets around 3400 score on 06.

the m11x has a GT335M card so it looks like it should double that score of the ul30vt

we should know when it comes out.

 

im surprised the M11x is not using the i7 like the ul30jt, with that it would be phenomenal

 

ya a i7 in the m11x would've been nice

but problee would've higher the price... which is kinda steep now

but if it was extra 200 more for the i7 i think i would've paid that

never know there might be options for better cpus when it comes out.


tho one thing that i don't get is why did they put a 11in screen in it instead at least a 12.1in sense it looks like they couldve easy done that.

 

i got couple ??s guys

i installed a fresh install of windows 7 64bit on my 1201n

everything went well and stuff but in device manager there's a yellow mark with coprocessor and i cant find a driver for it. got this fixed had too install a desktop ion chipset.


oh and for the sound it works and everything but the f1 keys wont work with the sound it shows the sound splash screen that it turning up and down and mute but it doesn't do anything to the sound.


got the sound issue fixed i had to download the newest ion driver and that fixed the sound issue some how lol

 

can someone please make a list of what drivers im gonna need and maybe where i can get them from if i do a clean install of win 7 64bit......please

 

So has anyone ran apps like Photoshop, any impressions with how something like that would run with a 1201N?

 

OK, I gotcha now, I understand...free shipping (!) is free shipping, I guess. I buy so much from Amazon.com that I subscribe to the "PRIME" thing every year ($79 annually for Free UPS/FedEx 2nd-Day Air on everything, [or $3.99 per item for Next Day Air] and anything they sell...but ONLY from Amazon.com not the marketplace vendors), and with computers and computer components that are 'fragile' I always opt for Next Day Air...with Next Day Air you can virtually *be certain* that your item gets treated with special care, and you can bet on that with virtually 100% confirmation.

I have had too many problems with things that got ground or USPS shipped in the past, and I am not wishing bad luck on your item at all, just commenting on my own personal experiences with ground shipping in general, and USPS but for Priority Mail or Express Mail, both of which are also special treatment situations. UPS Ground especially is very, very *hard* on the merchandise, it turns out, especially the farther something travels the worse it gets.

The last item that changed my mind about this subject is still vividly in my memory banks, unfortunately, and I'll never go back to having any faith in ground shipping because of it. I received an iMac G3 shipped from Oregon to Southern California, back in 2004, and it was so badly treated that the case of the computer was cracked in half, the screen split down the center, and the memory was shaken out of its carriers...in other words a total loss, and it really ticked me off. They not only treated it bad once, it was apparently drop-kicked multiple times by the nice, likely bored-to-tears UPS handlers at the shipping center in Southern Oregon, where all this apparently happened, because not one, but all sides of the iMac shipping container (the OEM box, which if you've ever seen one is incredibly beefy and sturdy...ie it would take a concentrated, deliberate effort to destroy one like that one got done) were caved in, corners cracked open, and generally just crushed to all intents and purposes, to death. Luckily for me and the shipper we insured it, and I eventually got reimbursed for all the $$ that was involved in the transaction, but what a sad thing to do to an innocent, perfectly good computer, you know?

So that's my sad and blue story, and you know that since I changed my thinking about ground shipping I have not had a single issue with either UPS, FedEx, or DHL shipping, not one issue of any kind since that 2004 incident, save for UPS "losing" a bike that was shipped to me for 4 days in LA's Vernon, CA shipping hub, the biggest UPS shipping center in California, it turns out...big enough to lose a bike, it turned out too! But eventually it got found and delivered to me, albeit 4 days late. Packages shipped to me these days are generally in 100% great shape, few dents, scuffs, bashes and crashes, and certainly no total losses like the above deal, and I remain convinced that I am doing the right thing with respect to getting things in good working order, especially electronics with their built-in fragility-- as you know it doesn't take a big "hit" to ruin a sensitive device like a computer, hard drive, video card, etc etc.

Now with all that in mind for background, here's hoping that your 1201N comes through the USPS system in one piece! Amazon.com double-boxes all computers and sensitive peripherals, so that's a good thing for any computer shipment, motherboard, video card, memory, hard drive, etc. The Eee PC boxes are not as sturdy as HP, or Apple boxes, so there is no way IMO that an Eee PC would come through a UPS, FedEx or USPS ground shipping routine in good shape if the computer was shipped in just the Eee PC box, and yes, some shippers (Tiger Direct, for one, for example) will ship a computer in the factory box ONLY, stupid as that may sound, but it does happen sometimes.

I am not trying to jinx or otherwise upset your mind about the shipment of your 1201N, just filling in the blanks in case you might have any, about shipping in general. I own a small company, and we do a fair amount of shipping of electronics, both incoming and outgoing, so all I am doing is giving you a little history and information you may or may not have at this time, and I hope that it's useful and informative.

I believe in calling a spade a spade, you know? I have no general *love* for UPS, or the USPS, as I am probably quite a bit older than most folks in this forum, and the others I frequent, and have been around the block a few times with shipping and shippers, and those 2 particular shippers deserve no special consideration per se because of the way they do business, their shipping business specifically, upon reflection and recollection of many, many years perspective on this subject.

I rank UPS at the bottom of the "big list" of shippers, absolutely the bottom, with USPS 3rd tier, and FexEx 2nd best, and believe it or not DHL/Airborne Express at the top of the heap, because they have, over the years, shown me the best service overall, bar none. When DHL went out of the USA shipping realm I was pretty much shattered, as they are my oldest shipping account, going back to 1985 when I first opened up a commercial account with DHL/Airborne. DHL/Airborne, in the USA, was the best thing I had going for myself and the company, consistently delivering things *ahead of schedule* and/or certainly on time, with absolute precision and the finest of care for everything from computers and peripherals to sensitive documents like presentation archives, media content (some video, some audio-visual, some graphical presentations...various sorts of things) that we use and/or produce for other folks, to heavier, less sensitive things, the whole gamut of items a company or an individual might be shipping. On top of that DHL/Airborne were the cheapest of all shippers to boot, especially considering commercial and company accounts/discounts, so my pocketbook has suffered accordingly since they left this scene in 2007, October it was as I recall.

We don't ship UPS unless they are the only resort for a given situation, where they are the only shipper who will do something particular, or going somewhere in particular as it can be sometimes, using FedEx exclusively these days, but for USPS Priority and Express Mail, and especially USPS Global Priority International Mail Service for non-domestic things, important letters, documents, media etc that is going overseas. So far so good since 2007, when DHL/Airborne shifted gears and became the world's No. 2 international shipper, concentrating only on that market and eliminating the USA completely from their dockets, as they had been losing their shirts here domestically apparently for years and years. Or so they told me at some point after they stopped domestic services.

Well, that's more than enough about shipping, sorry about that! I just feel strongly about those things, and with good reason of course, as my livelihood somewhat depends on good shipping, and I really don't need any more headaches than necessary! As for Seagate and their HD's in general, I have not yet climbed back aboard their train of commerce, although others have, many people I know are putting their products online and into the field and are having success at it, so good for you as far as skirting the disasters that happened a couple years ago.

I have a friend who owns one of the largest Mac/Apple aftermarket sales companies, I won't mention any names here but you can guess who that is I am sure, and they were stuck with something like 100K HD's back during the fiasco (as you referred to it) days, that is HD's with firmware issues, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB, 1.5TB HD's, both SATA and IDE/ATA HD's, and Seagate and his company made a deal. And that deal was that the company would get 10,000 or more HD's on the front, and he was given interest-free privilege with those HD's for a period of several months so as to be able to dispose of them one way or another, and dispose of them he did/his company did!

In fact I would say that he made a small fortune 'disposing' of those HD's during the 2-years or so that the problems were happening, but I also know the story of how much of a headache this all cost him, and it was pretty much God-fearing stuff he went through, aging him several years in the process I am sure, as I know him quite well...in that respect! But my Lord did Seagate Partners LLC have its hands full of bad firmware HD's, and they could not fix it! It just went on for so long it was incredible...So I am glad that you have had good luck with bad firmware HD's, and you are not alone I guess...many folks have skirted disaster with Seagate HD's since then, but I just don't like the taste of it, and I stay clear of the whole deal by not owning their HD's, and that is the end of my perspective on that.

Hitachi, on the other hand, came out of the "dismal days" of bad HD's themselves in about 2005.5, and they DID fix their problems 100% to my satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of most of the industrial community, business owners and the like, corporations etc...and those HD's that you referred to were a mere small blip on the radar overall vs. Seagate's HD problems. Hitachi Enterprise HD's have been known to be absolutely *bulletproof* for the lack of a better word for the longest time, and companies like Firmtek, LLC, the owner who I have known pretty well since 2004 or so, is a believer in Hitachi HD's, others being IBM, HP, Asus, Lenovo, and commerce-makers like AT&T, Vodaphone, and Southern Bell also use Hitachi HD's in the enterprise sector with absolute confidence.

The difference between Hitachi and Seagate is this: Seagate did not work through its problems satisfactorily WITH other companies, and by that I mean they pretty much said "screw you" with respect to the bad firmware HD issues that went on for so long, and they just kept pushing out HD's with bad firmware * in spite * of everybody knowing it was happening. They did little to correct the anomalies with their Asian factories in Malaysia, Thailand, and other places like that. While Hitachi/IBM went to great lengths to find out why and what was happening with their products, working WITH other companies who were buying their stuff 100% until things changed for the better, and the problems were solved.

That is why all those companies I listed above are still buying and using Hitachi/IBM HD's to this day, with full confidence and respect for their products, but I cannot say the same for Seagate HD's, and even though Seagate is back on their proverbial feet somewhat now, companies and people in general, with rare exception, are still wary about their HD's, and I mean their whole lineup, which is a shame because they make so many potentially great products, especially for Enterprise.

That's a lot of information, and I probably shouldn't have taken up so much bandwidth with it, but when I get started on something, at times, my fingers fly at close to 100WPM and before I know it I've written 5K+ words! If all goes well and you get a good Asus 1201N through the USPS shipping system, and if you have good luck with respect to the computer itself and you score a 100% healthy specimen, you are going to love it a bunch, of that I am certain. For what it is, I mean it is NOT a MacBook Pro or Lenovo top-line ThinkPad (whatever those are called), but for a $500 toss-in-the-bag PC Asus has just hit a home-run without any further qualification. I honestly do not know *what* they could have done better, save for including an ATI 4850 1GB PCI-Express video card system, but I guess that would cost more than the notebook itself, so that is out!

It's just the right size, weighs about the right amount to truly be portable and light still, has all the right software features OEM box-stock, has the nice keyboard ("chiclet-style") a touch-pad lockout (invaluable), top-drawer design and features overall, the GUI is down and dirty-good with xlnt function+keystroke action, the display is right-on perfect in terms of color rendering, LED-goodness, and HD functionality, the battery works aok fine with 60,000+mWh design, the RAM is big, BIOS is nice, so what's to improve?

I guess you bought black on black, and I guess that is great but I sure like this silver bullet here I am typing on, so they even gave us a color choice... nice! I dunno, after you get yours, you tell us what's in store for improvement I guess! We leave it up to you to fill us in on how to make perfect *more perfect*!!

rexrzer727

 

TL;DR.

It's going to take some time for USPS to deliver. My 1201N is coming from Kentucky, and usually east coast shipments make a transfer at the hub in Idaho before landing at SFO.

12 inches is perfect for me. Notebooks should not be any smaller than the ultraportable class. All productivity dimishes at a smaller screen size and lower performance. One of my cousins is an attorney and is using a 10 inch Acer from Costco as his primary notebook, stepping down from an aging 2006 17 inch HP DTR. I told him since he got it that he was going to regret it. And with all the business he throws at it as well as his multimedia and recordings, it's just not cutting it. Though he can easily put down the cash for a new notebook right now, he is just as thrifty as I am (it runs in the family). When I get my 1201N, I'll try to convince him yet again to step up to something that is workable and still portable. Just remembering that day makes me facepalm so hard.

With that said, for those looking for a better angle for disassembling the 1201N, you can reference this tutorial.

width='853' height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7mQWlwpdjYs&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7mQWlwpdjYs&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='853' height="505"></embed></object>

 

ThomH, please post an update when you get your rig. I am in the same situation as you, and hope to buy the 1201NB with the help of some Best Buy gift certificates, if in fact those are typos. The difference I noticed between the NB and the N (as listed on Amazon) is that the NB makes no mention of having a dual-core processor, and is listed as having only 1GB RAM and no Bluetooth.

 

It does make mention of the dual core processor, "Intel® Atom™ processor 330" the 330 is a only available in dual core. The 230 is the single core version (desktop, 64 bit but no speed step) and the 270 and 280 are notebook versions (no 64 bit but have speedstep). There is also the newer 450 I believe too.

 

Thanks, I was hoping that was the case regarding the processor.

I may just pull the trigger on the Best Buy version. If it only had 1GB RAM, that's easily remedied. I was hoping for internal Bluetooth, because I have a Logitech DiNovo mini that I want to use with it when it's hooked up to the TV, but the DiNovo has a USB bluetooth antenna, so not a huge deal.

 

I suspect adding bluetooth is pretty simple if you can find the module, it is a self contained antenna and BT device that that plugs into the motherboard on the bottom left, just take out the keyboard and palm rest and you can get to it. Finding a replacement part will be difficult, I think you are looking at about $30 off ebay and that basically negates the savings of the NB not to mention you have void your warranty to get there. Also the 1201N can be had for under $470 online so that is only a $20 premium over the NB and you get BT and 2GB RAM.

 

Can someone help me out here.

I am trying to figure out what netbook would be best for me. It's either the Acer AS1810T, or this one you guys all are discussing the asus 1201N.

I basically would like something for internet, word processing, light photoshop, and light gaming.

I seen that the cpu is much better with the Acer AS1810T, but that it's gpu is not up to par with the 1201N. Is the cpu in the 1201N really all that much slower for what I need it for?

I've looked at a bunch of youtube vid's and the 1201N just looks great to me. Should I be considering the Acer AS1810T, or should I just go with the 1201N guys?

 

go with the 1201N...suits your needs perfectly...plus its an Asus

 

Hey, sorry for the late reply. All my problems are solved and I am loving this thing. Everything works flawlessly. The only thing I can't do is play the lossless audio codecs (DTS MA, Dolby True HD) but I haven't tried very hard yet. The audio tracks were crashing TMT3, but when I run it AC3 filter, it solves all problems. I have not tried playing movies from an external drive, and probably will never need to. So far I couldn't be happier.

 

Yup, pretty sure I tried all that - nothing but Stereo audio still from MPC-HC. Not really sure what I'm missing but it's not a big deal as TMT3 works perfectly along side AC3 Filter. I'll have another look to see if I missed anything.

Right now, since everything else works one way or another, my main concern is finding some way to get the uncompressed audio tracks to play (DTS HD Master Audio & Dolby True HD). No luck so far but I haven't been trying very hard - I have a good test file now so that is my next project.

Mark

 

Hi Danny,

Don't let my original frantic posts scare you - all is well now and I have watched 10+ 1080p videos flawlessly on my home theater with DTS or Dolby Digital being sent through flawlessly.

I am using the included TMT3 with no issues now that I installed AC3 filter. I haven't been able to get my audio working properly with MPC or VLC but it seems as though others have had success.

The only thing I am going to work on now is getting the lossless audio codecs to work, but I haven't put much effort in there yet - the regular audio sound tracks are still really good and take up half the space on my hard drive.

The 1201n is a perfect media PC, and just as good as a regular PC - buy with confidence.

My next mission is to try overclock it, but first I need to figure out how =).

Mark

 

Hi everyone.

Quick review/concern. I've been playing with my 1201N for about a week now, and im content I guess. Reason for my not being thrilled is because I would of thought the preformance would be allot better with the new atom/ion technology. For example, it takes forever to get into windows desktop, about 1min. Some of the FB games I like to play, either they don't play at all, or they take like 3-5 mins to load, and don't work at all. Almost like it crashes.


And starting this morning, once windows started and I got to desktop, i heard a mini chrip sound from the computer, and the screen turned black with a lot of multicolor lines across the whole screen. The system completely crashed. I reboot the cpu, power button shutdown was the only option. I rebooted, and it did it again. I rebooted for the third time in safemode, and it was fine. I rebooted the 4th time, and now its fine. But when I come across these types of issues, it makes me wonder if the laptop has parts problems. Explaining maybe the below-par performance. I never had a netbook before. But seriously my old sony vaio with a 1gig centino with 512 out performance my 1201n.

Over the weekend I order 4g ram from egg. I hope it helps. But to the more experienced people here, should I be this disappointed at this point, or based on my review, could I have a bad machine. I really like it, but this lack luster start has been quite disappointing.

P.S

I did all the necessary updates. e.g. bios, asus software updates, and win updates.

Thanks for all replies!

 

P.S.S

I also went into msconfig, to stop unecessary background clutter, I stopped the windows restore background program, and when i ran the windows performance measurer, i got a 3.2 average score. Not so impressive ey

 

did you take a look at these links that I posted earlier. maybe will help.

http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=525X832&url=http://blogo.biz/?p=24

http://www.avforums.com/forums/computer-systems/630437-media-player-classic-mkv-files-5-1-help-please.html

 

0985504 - Something definitely sounds wrong there. Get that exchanged, the sooner the better.

 

0985504 ya i would get it exchanged like mastershroon said.


also never go by the windows performance measurer lol its not a true benchmark or anything just a windows benchmark which is kinda useless.

best bench too test it on is 3dmark 06.

 

Well, I just got off the phone with the wife and the 1201NB arrived from best buy and it does actually only have 1 gig of ram (crap ). I am not sure about the bluetooth yet but I will let you know when I get home.

I have another question for anyone who can help. If the 1 gig is 1 stick of ram and I put a 2 gig stick in the other slot giving me a total of 3 gig, will that make a difference (I guess it means dual channel vs not dual channel). If the memory is 2 sticks of 512, that pretty much means I am screwed unless I was going to upgrade to 4 gig anyways.

If I wanted to get ram, is there any recomendations? I might overclock but I wasn't going to replace the hard drive to 7200 rpm or open the netbook in anyway other than memory. Do I need to get pc2-6400 (DDR 800) if I want to overclock and maybe some links to the best overclocking without hardware modification.

 

well someone here overclocked at more than 2ghz with some pc2 5300 memory. the only drawback is that you lose on gpu speed since gpu shares ram memory.

another option would be to go with kingston hyper x ram which is low cas and should overclock well, but a bit pricey at 100$

I would imagine they put 1 stick of ram in your 1201, but I don't know. if you have 1 go with 2 gig stick. you will not lose the dual channel even though the sticks are not the same size.

 

Well, I just got home and there is no bluetooth on the netbook (1201NB from Best Buy). It only has 1 Gig of Ram but at least it is a single stick of memory and I could easily upgrade to 3. The surface is not glossy so that is good for some people. What is strange is that just by typing this in, there is a huge delay in the text input. when typing, the cpu usage jumps to 40% and then goes back down.

What should the cpu usage be at idle anyway?

 

i just ordered my 1201n from newegg!

i cant wait til it gets here!!!

ill be upgrading the RAM to 4Gb soon as well as the HDD. will i see any decrease in battery life from going with a 7200rpm drive? i know that used to be the case but i heard things have changed in the past few years.

any comments are appreciated.

 

Congrats, some guy. You will probably only see a single digit hit to battery life by switching to a 7200RPM drive.

More good news, USPS somehow managed to speed up delivery and dropped off that salmon-colored "we missed you" card in my mailbox while I was in class. The first thing I do tomorrow morning is swing by the post office and pick her up.

 

thanks Soviet Sunrise.

im thinking of getting this....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227251

and this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136342

what color did you get? i got silver.

 

I wish I could find a silver one in Canada or else I would already have one!

 

Well, the first day with my 1201n has actually turned out pretty well. The lagging that was happening before was from asus updating asus vibe in the background (I then took that program off). I loaded up XBMC which looks awesome on this netbook. I also hooked it up to my 52" 750 series samsung and the picture quality was amazing. This is going to be a great little portable htpc.

Would I recommend this machine 1201NB? Yes, if you don't really need bluetooth and want to upgrade the ram to at least 3 Gigs, it is definitely a better deal at 459.00. I am going to order a 2 gig stick and have a total of 3 (with 32bit, you max out at 3.25 anyhow). If you need bluetooth and are going to stick with 2 gigs of ram, then you are better off getting it on amazon or newegg.

 

well don't forget the ion takes 256mb of ram so you'll be at 2.75gig. is 500mb difference by going with 4 gig important? maybe not , unless you run big programs. of course its better if you run the same ram sticks.

 

I thought the 1201NB only came with a single core Atom processor? Are you saying it has a dual core?

 

You can always install a Bluetooth module yourself.

And yes, the Atom 330 included in the 1201NB is the exact same one as in the 1201N: 1.6GHz dual-core, with Hyper-Threading.

 

Thats what I always thought (because of the whole "dual channel" thing). I have been hearing that it all depends on the manufacturer and how the motherboard is set up. I do know that Asus sells a 3 gig model (1 gig in 1 slot and 2 gigs in another). I would be curious to find out if it really does make a difference and by how much. I ran system information for windows and it told me that the current ram was 1 gig of ddr2 800 (PC2 6400), so I ordered the Patriot 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220281

I hope that will be good enough, since it already shipped......, Newegg is great!

One other question, The wireless adapter finds the connection when I log on but it always comes up with limited connectivity and then about a minute or 2later it comes up with a full connection. Its not a huge deal but I really dont want to wait 2 minutes after the boot up everytime just to access the internet. Anybody else have this issue and a possible fix?

Edit! Never mind, I had turned off Boingo in the startup (thinking it was just useless addon software) and I think that is the problem. I'll try it when I get home.

 

Nice, I like the flat black much better than the glossy black but I really need the bluetooth for tethering to 3g on my phone when i'm not near wifi. Think I rather stick with the silver one with bluetooth already installed rather than go about purchasing and installing a bluetooth module.

This is pretty cool for people that don't need bluetooth though.

 

The funny thing is, Newegg had a mini module on sale yesterday for their shell shocker deal and it was made by ASUS and was only 9 bucks with free shipping. I would have ordered one but it was too late when I got home and found out this didn't have bluetooth.

On another note, I do love the finish of the netbook, I think they sprayed it with a thin flat black rubber finish.

 

Hey Soviet,

In those tear down videos, can you pick out the WiFi card? My 1201N isn't here yet, but I'm already thinking about swapping the Wifi card for the intel 5150/5350 WiFi/WiMax card to use with Clear. The intel card needs 3 antenna leads though.

Any ideas?

 

Hi Chop69. Yes, you can remove the wireless card. It's a half size, single antenna card. If you want to swap in the 51x0, 53x0, or 6300, you may want to take advantage of the additional antenna sockets and buy extra antennas and tape them somewhere inside of the notebook as the notebook only has one. For example, if you buy the 5300, you can buy two more antenna and tape one underneath the keyboard and the other one on the underside of the motherboard.

I just finished doing a light mod on my 1201N. I completely lapped the GPU/northbridge and the CPU cold plates nice and flat. I also replaced the thermal paste with X23. I don't have any temperatures for you guys yet as I have yet to install Windows. I also threw in my 7200.4 and my 4GB HyperX kit. After putting it all back together, the system POST's just fine and I get a black screen indicating no operating system installed. I'll get back to you guys tonight after I finish installing Windows. It's going to be a long day.

 

I got my Clear USB modem today along with my 1201N, and their service just isn't good enough yet where I would use it, so I'm going to hold off on the mod.

The 1201N is awesome though, especially coming from a Dell Mini 9. I think my MacBook Pro just became a desktop...

 

Anyone able to bitstream audio to a receiver and get dts master or dolby truehd? If this is possible, I'll be ordering ASAP.

 

So how are you all finding the quality of HD video connected to your HDTV? Do you find it laggy or overall pretty good?

Anyone else have any bigger app's like Photoshop running on this machine at all? Curious how well that runs on the atom.

 

Unfortunately I don't have any hd video to play on the tv. On another note, I took the netbook into the bedroom which is the farthest room from the router and it had a really tough time playing back a DVD iso on the network(using XBMC), I am pretty sure it is the distance from the wireless router that is causing this (it played fine the other day in another room), and I am sure that playing HD content over a home network will require a hardwire network connection (even at close range). I will try some online HD content and stream it to the TV and let you know (again, I think the wireless will end up being the bottleneck)

As far as photos are concerned, if photoshop was able to run, I think the picture quality will look amazing.