Asus N50 Owners/Buyers Thread

Thanks for moving it E.B.E!

And thanks to Avanish11 for the Bios headsup, indeed it worked from the Bios from the HDD, rather than the Windows software. I don't know what "Fancy Startup" is it seems to be a new option i noticed in there.

 

mine just came in the mail today. Looks pretty spiffy, I'm scared to touch it atm though because I don't want greasy fingermarks on the top!

Can I get a quick rundown of whats safe to uninstall and what would kill my computer?
oh and also any programs you recommend downloading on a fresh laptop. (ie: ad-aware, spybot, openoffice, etc.) =]

 

Yeah it took me two weeks to take the plastic off the top cover....
It is very glossy and shiny when you do take it off though, lucky it comes with a cloth....

I did a complete reinstall of Vista x64, so i cannot tell you what to uninstall.
The only Asus software i installed was the ATK driver to allow the touch sensitive media controls and OSD, and UPEK Fingerprint software.

Every other driver was found or updated from the original manufacture, i.e Nvidia etc... But no extra software for me like Power4Gear, LifeFrame, Asus Camera, MS Office Trial, Asus Wireless Console, or OSD2. (I like to be minimalistic on my laptop) I also disable security center, defender, and sidebar, and disable as many unnecessary services as i can. But this is obviously up to the individual, I just to try and maximize battery life and performance as much as possible.

In terms of things you should load... I used to use Spybot and Ad-Aware, but have not used them much lately, but it's likely not a bad idea. I find that with Firefox3 with additional Adblock Plus + NoScript addons, is all i need to keep that stuff to a minimum. And IE7 sucks.

I load WinRar, VLC Media Player and SMPlayer, as these are the two best media players, and WMP just sucks. I decided to use Foxit for my PDF reading needs due to it being smaller rather than Adobe this time, so far so good. Maybe some other utils like CoreTemp to keep an eye on temps, and ImageBurn for CD-DVD recording.

Welcome to the club!

 

So...where's the love for this laptop? The little sister (N80vn) seems to be doing great sales-wise but the n50vn isn't by any means the cool kid on the block, despite getting a great review (sans display, a very common thing with the N series) by german site notebookjournal.de. Is it the lack of e-sata? less usb ports? poor speakers? I want to get it over the N80vn-GP011C mainly for aesthetic reasons (also for what it looks to be a better keyboard) but the lukewarm reception it had has me on the edge. Any owners of the N50 in the house willing to review this baby?

 

I'm planning on doing a review on my N50Vn-A1B after I upgrade to vista 64 bit, because 4GB of system RAM plus 1GB of VRAM doesn't make any sense.

BTW, e-SATA is on the front of the laptop, beside the headphone/mic jacks.

The keyboard is very well made. Compared to my old laptop's keyboard, Gateway MT6828, the keyboard is extremely comfortable to type on. The keys are slightly curved to cradle your fingertips and the keys themselves are wider than regular laptops' keyboards.

I haven't experienced any keyboard lag like other Asus laptops have.

Speakers, indeed, suck.

Don't take the plastic cover off of the lid! It might look a bit odd, but it sure as hell looks better than having a scratched up glossy surface. Get a skin for it if you care about aesthetics.

 

I am interested in your upcomming review avanish11, as I am thinking of buying this model. Woun't you have trouble with drivers for the 64 bit?

 

Added to the Info Booth and to the Reviews and Owners' Lounges Index. Thanks!

 

Asus seems to have 64 bit versions of all the drivers on their site, but we'll see.

 

My N50 should arrive today and im planning on installing vista x64 as well. Will post my first imporessions here as well.

 

Had to make a decision so I pick mine up in 3 days time.

 

Hey what do you guys think about this one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220461&Tpk=n50vn-x1b

Seems really good for the price. Is the color scheme the same? Looks slightly different.

 

Just signed up here, I recently ordered the Asus N50VN-B1B, its in Miami now, can't wait for it to get here. But if this is an owers' lounge, count me in.

 

Just got this baby with the mail, so far im really impressed with its looked.

tip or new users: If you install first time using the recovery disc, shut down your laptop when he finishes part one and asks for the driver disk. This way you will have an (almost) vanilla vista and you can decide yourself what to install and what not. (used this trick on other Asus laptops before. )

 

I just got the Asus N50Vn-C3S. Installed vista 64 on it to have full access to the 4G of ram.

The only issue i'm having is with the audio. The audio from the built-in speakers is ok. When connecting external speakers to the line-out jack however, I hear a pop/click at the beginning and end of a sound every time a sound plays.

Is anyone else having this issue? is it just me, is it vista64? is it the realtek audio system, or is a laptop model issue?

Thanks,

 

I bought mine today (N50VN-FP058G) & like what I see so far.

I returned an HP Pavilion DV7-1019tx notebook, which was a replacement for a previous DV7-1019tx that had faults.The replacement had the same, plus more, faults as the first one, which I bought 4 months ago.

On the Asus, I went to make my first restore point & was presented with this under Available Disks:

VistaOS (C (System)
Data (D
VistaOS (C (Missing)

the box adjacent to VistaOS (C (Missing) is ticked.
If I leave that box ticked & tick the 'system' box, the 'create' box becomes unavailable.

If I untick the 'missing' box, I get asked if I am sure I want to turn off protection for that disk. I have chosen to back out & not install anything until I find out what this 'missing' is all about.

The 'missing' has a folder symbol associated with it & the 'system' has a disk symbol with the Microsoft flag above it. The 'Data' just has a disk symbol.

This notebook has one 500GB HDD, in two partitions.

In My Computer, there shows two HDD (partitions),
1: VistaOS (C 211GB free of 232GB.
2: Data (D 222GB free of 223GB.

What is that third option 'missing; & why is it ticked by default?

A Recovery DVD came with the notebook. My first thought was that the "VistaOS (C (missing)" was the recovery partition that was/is on the HDD. If I show hidden files/folders & system files, no exta partition is shown.

Shown in the Disk Management Console are three partitions.
The first one (Primary) partition has no name, letter, or file system associated with it and the size is 9.77GB, of which 9.77Gb is free so there is nothing on it.

The second (primary) partition is VistaOS (C NTFS & says it has System, Boot, Page File, etc, on it.
The third (Logical Drive) partition is the Data (D .

It looks like that first partition is hidden & would have been for the Recovery Partition.

I will have to wait untill Monday before I can ask Asus New Zealand about it.

Any comments?

Freakish123, you have a model which is close to mine (I have no TV tuner) what are/were you presented with in the

System Restore & in the Disk Management. Did you look before you installed Vista 64 bit?

 

Sorry for the delayed reply, I would imagine it is as you say and meant to be a system recovery partition, but unlike most others Asus don't seem to use the HDD for partition but use DVD discs instead. So you could delete the partition and merge it back into the C or D drives if you wish. It does seem like a weird oversight on Asus Nz's part.

I didn't check before loading Vistax64, But i only had C and D drives, i manually created a third drive for recovery partition, and another for Linux via disk management so i would of seen a hidden partition then..
(ps is the lack of TV the only difference on the 058 model?)

 

Freakish123, I don't know your complete specs, I just remembered from a previous post of yours that you mention/post that your N50VN had a TV tuner. I suspect that, apart from the tuner, we will be the same.

Phoned Asus this morning & the Australian Help Desk answered (I'm in NZ). He said that it is a recovery partition & to ignore the reported 9.97GB 'free' as it is just reported that way.

The 'missing' should not show in the System Restore & he did not know why it was ticked by default. I commented that the Recovery Partition should not appear in the System Restore & he agreed.

I unticked the box, accepted to turn off System Restore on 'missing' & ticked apply. I ticked the C: (system) drive but the 'create' button was still greyed out. I closed the System Restore down & reopened it, to find that the missing' folder/drive had dissapeared & the 'create' button was active & the C: (system) was ticked. All sorted, now I can use the System Restore the way it was intended.

Asus said that using the Recovery Partition, when doing a recovery, is faster than using the DVD & installs the OS, including drivers & software, whereas using the DVD, one would have to manually install drivers & software from the
CD's that came with the Notebook.

 

Im looking at getting a N50V in the near future. Just one thing that I am really concerned about:
I am going to use this laptop for dvd, music and gaming mostly and hence I want a pretty decent sound effect. As far as i understand it comes with S/PDIF which means it can be connected to external speakers with a toslink cable. I wonder if anyone has tried hooking it to a 5.1 sorround sound system such as a logitech 5500 and what the sound quality's like...

 

Hmmm, In thinking about it some more I actually thought that the 9.97Gb drive was the "Splashtop Linux" drive. As i figured the reason Windows couldn't recognize it was because it was formatted as ext3, Linux partition. If your interested what it is, try loading a Linux Live CD to see if it can read the drive. (or better yet boot up into Splashtop to see)

I'd like to believe Asus support on this one, but i doubt the image is readable if Windows cannot access the partition. Generally Windows puts a hidden directory on a known partition for Image recovery called WindowsImageBackup. Glad to see you got it all working anyway.

What are everybodies thoughts on their N50 now they have had time to play with it? PS. I notice the N51 model on the Asus support website, perhaps we have already been superseded?

 

Well i can say that HDMI output only allows 2 channel output, which is really quite stupid because as far as i can tell this is a driver limitation and not hardware. Why wouldn't i want my Bluray equipped movies to output 5.1 via HDMI or optical/SPDIF is beyond me.....

As for SPDIF i have not tried it as yet, but I'm trying to source the correct cable tomorrow and try it out. I fear it won't allow me to do more than 2 channels like HDMI.

The SPDIF options do show 5.1 dolby digital surround as an option, but weirdly unlike my Realtek desktop machines i don't have the DTS 5.1 option in the Realtek software. But i think it will both output and sound alright, if it's on par with my other Realtek devices. I will keep you posted when i try it on my AMP soon.

 

Many thanks freakish123!!! Looking forward to your update. Yet another question: how did you get yours so cheap??? I'm in New Zealand. Harvey norman is offering a discounted price at 3100nzd with the same specs as yours (1g graphic memory, T9400 process, HD 500gb etc)..... Any possibility i can get it cheaper from an aussie online store and get it shipped?

 

No problems... There was an online price of $2439.00 AUD, http://www.alwaysonsale.com.au/aos/products/18543-asus-n50vn-fp024g-154-inch-notebook/ that i got JB to match. HN over here had them advertised at $2900.00 AUD (JB still have them listed @ 2798).

If google is right the $2439 AUD is around $2915 NZD, So it is possible that you could get it slightly cheaper once you added postage to NZD, but not by much i guess. Warranty is global 2 year so that isn't a problem with Asus.

You can get the US models over here like the A1 and B1 models are available cheaper. http://www.p4laptops.com.au/laptops with a 15 inch widescreen.htm

Unfortunately with our dollar(s) as they are the retailers are using the economy and dollar as a reason to inflate prices a little more, at the moment.
So prices haven't exactly been going down since the N50 started shipping..If i see a better online price i will let you know.

 

About the 5.1 bit, i ordered the N50, should get it by tomorrow, i hope. I also order the 'Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1', external sound card, bad news is that will be late. I will be running the Logitech x540 speakers, but as soon as I get every thing i'll let you guys know what it sounds like. Though that might be more of a test of the external sound card than the Laptop's capabilities. That said, i may not have opted for this laptop with out the sound card, 5.1 is a must have for me, for movies and games

 

Momos Lover, if you buy from Harvey Norman, like I did, don't forget to ask for the form to obtain the free return flights, that Asus is offering. Harvey Norman in Lower Hutt did not know anything about it & when I phoned the 0800 Asus line, they got me to phone Auckland, to get a form sent to me.

The offer is in the Flash advert on their home page http://www.asus.co.nz/

 

Many thanks for the useful info! Hope your trial with the surround sound system works out well today. Keep us informed!!! Merry Xmas!!!

 

I've got one of those creative external sound cards as well. But since the n50 has got it's own optic output i wonder if there is need for an external sound card. If you dont mind, could you please compare the sound effect with the native sound card vs the external one and let us know??? Thanks heaps and merry Xmas!!!

 

Many thanks for the useful tips old farter.... May i ask how much you got it for from HN? Many thanks!!!

 

I ran into a couple of problems with vista x64. First of all, I couldn't find a driver for the fingerprint reader. Second, I tried to install all the asus utilities, like smart login, power4gear hybrid, and NB probe, and whenever I tried to run them, it says something like this program only works on asus laptop.

 

$3,399
Four months ago, I bought a HP Pavilion DV7-1019TX from Harvey Norman for that price. The N50VN was listed as $100 more but, as I got a refund for the DV7, they agreed to the lower price. The option was for me to go spend my money elsewhere, if they did not agree.

What city/town do you live in?

Merry Xmas all.

 

Hamilton... they offered me a cash discount. but still dearer than getting it from aussie.

 

No probs, Merry Christmas... I managed to not get one today as JB wanted $80 for a Belkin cable, and i see i can get them for $12.95 from elsewhere..

I know the fingerprint reader works in Vista x64, I have "TouchStrip Fingerprint Sensor" under device manager with UPEK driver 1.9.2.118. I also have "Protector Suite QL" loaded and use the fingerprint scanner for login and Firefox passwords. Try the CD or perhaps Asus website or UPEK website. I can't remember where i got that one from.

I have not loaded the other applications like P4GH and Smart Login, I will give them both a go though, However one of the reasons i formatted and reloaded was to get rid of all those types of applications.

Bluetooth was the only driver/hardware difficulty getting to work initially in x64, but i resolved those issues. However there are many bits missing from the Asus website for 64bit compared to 32bit Vista in the software and utility categories i noticed, it seems NB manufacturers like Dell and Asus seem slow to uptake and truly support x64, as seen by the fact we didn't get Vista Ultimate x64 for our 4Gb ram to begin with. (61 Files for Vista 32 and 28 Files for Vista x64, So not a huge surprise but kind of slack none the less.)

 

Apreciate it

 

installed windows XP on Asus N50VN. Caps ON indicator is always ON. Where is problem ?

If I'am not wrong it's from new bios ver.209

 

I've had no issues running Vista x64, everything from the CD worked fine aside from a couple of the ASUS programs, and I'd steer clear of the audio drivers as the Microsoft installed are superior in sound quality. Bluetooth worked for me from the standard x64 install, so I'm not quite sure why you had issues.

The only real issue I've found is that the Bluetooth/WLAN switch on the front doesn't properly work—I'm not sure if it works properly in x86, though. It turns them off, but switching it back on requires pressing FN-F2 after returning the switch to on.

Yeah, it's a 209 problem. Once the caps lock starts getting stuck on (even if you do not use the caps lock, it will light up and become stuck in that state whenever the power is on) you either have to flash back to 204, or deal with it being lit up all the time. Once this error begins, a lot of FN keys stop working properly.

 

Yep it's from the new bios version. Same thing happens with mine. Sometimes it stays off, even when you turn Caps on.

 

Hi guys,
I made a purchase of the N50 VN about two weeks ago, been wanting to post here my thoughts for a while but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm loving it at the moment, here are a few quick thoughts:

• Fairly chunky and heavy, definately one of the more fatter 15" I've ever seen, but the screen is also one of the biggest 15" I've ever seen too, almost feels like a 17".
• Speaking of the screen, i find it a joy to look at after increasing the contrast to almost 50% from its 10% default. The vertical viewing angles are a bit to be desired, I find it nearly impossible to find an angle where the colour seems consistent from both extreme top and bottom. Black is black though.
• Keyboard is wonderful to use and trackpad is the best I have ever felt.
• 3dmark06 score of 4600-4700ish, expected a bit more actually, but this is before any sort of tweaking. Crysis and Farcry2 can run very well on medium settings
• 32 Vista instead of 64 is a bummer, but everything runs at a pretty blistering speed, I don't mind.
• Air Ioniser: This makes me laugh. Either on or off through ASUS' own software, but who really knows what the hell its doing
• Speakers: As other people have mentioned, pretty..poor. However, first thing I did was snooped around in the multimedia options and turned off one of those horrific 3d sound/surround sound emulations, which actually is turned on by default. I don't know why ANY company bothers with this; they always sound like music filtering through a massive anteroom lined with foam. Turn this off, and the sound becomes at least not worthy of talking about. I tried headphones also for a very quick test: No noise floor or interference to report, which is good.

A note about the keyboard though: I think I've read some peoples comments about the keyboard missing some letters when typig, calling it keyboard lag. I sem to be experiencing this. his is being written on my aptop right now, moving at the speed that I normally type, and this is how he paragraphs are appearing, wihout me ging back to ix any letters that sem to not get recorded. As you can see, its actually pretty ad. Anyone hav eany sort of solution for this? It is rther frustrating having to ouble check everything I type to make sure the compter regitered it.

 

Uninstall the included touchpad driver, and allow it to install the generic driver. Most keyboard issues disappear.

 

There does not seem to be any documentation about the Sound Management.
Anyone know where I could find it?

I hooked up a Toslink optical cable between the headphone jack & my Marantz 6.1 amp. I played a non Blue Ray DVD that has DD5.1 & DTS.

DTS is not supported.

In Realtek Audio Manager/Digital Output/Default Format, choose "Dolby Digital Live(5.1.surround)". My amp shows that it is receiving a 5.1 signal but will only play through the two front speakers, unless I go to Start/Control Panel/Sound/Realtek Digital Out/Properties/Dolby & tick "Dolby Pro Logic llx".

Then all my surround speakers output sound. The display on my amp does not change to show that it is receiving a Pro Logic signal, it still shows 5.1

As I have said, bugger all documentation as to what the selections in the sounds options do, in relation to the Realtek stuff.

 

question for you guys who did a clean install of x64.. after you install x64 is the expressgate OS still on there and usable?

 

I replaced the drive so I'm not sure if the standard install used a separate partition for it, but you can install ExpressGate after x64, regardless.

 

It took me a while to figure out what that external USB IR dongle even was, as I couldn't find any documentation on it in the manual, and discovered it only by accident by plugging it in, and then accidentally pressing a button on the included media center remote control.

I agree completely, this thing is absolutely useless. It is incredibly big for something that is just an IR receiver. Whats the use of a remote control that can slot subtely into the side of the laptop, when to use it, you have to carry round a receiver bigger than the size of a desktop mouse?
As it stands, it renders the remote control completely useless. Would have been a great addition to the laptop but alas, the remote now sits along with the IR dongle locked away in a cubboard with my other spare computer parts.

There was a cable that also came with the laptop which I have yet to find out its purpose, its a short cable that seems to convert, from what looks like a 3.5mm female to a PS/2 male (this is from memory, it doesn't look quite like that). I'll try and get a picture up of it soon. Anyone know what this cable is for?

 

Thank you very much, this seems to have fixed the lag completely, as you can see =)

Odd though, as I even cross-checked the version of the touchpad driver before and after I uninstalled/re-installed using Vistas default, and the version was exactly the same, which is the same version that is listed as a driver download on the official ASUS N50 drivers website. How bizarre. Thank god for internet communities to work these problems out for everyone!

 

I have tried this solution, and it worked. However, the Microsoft mouse driver won't let me disable tap-to-click, a feature I find very annoying. Are there any other solutions to fix the keyboard lag?

 

That's not PS/2. It's S-video. I found it odd that my laptop came with it, since my laptop doesn't have the external tv tuner or an s-video port.

 

Unfortunately, you won't be able to disable tap-to-click without the driver+software installed, and it seems like it's the software that causes the issue. You might try playing around with software and see if anything in there might reduce the lag, but I didn't fool around much before I replaced the hard drive.

 

I have tried different synaptics drivers from laptopvideo2go.com as well as a couple of solutions on this forum (disabling EdgeMotion, etc). Unfortunately, the only way to stop the keyboard lag is by using the microsoft driver. Tap-to-click might have been something I could get used to, but the fact that this driver lacks that Synaptics PalmCheck feature means that I still end up having problems typing anyway. It is odd that Asus would sell a laptop that's functionally unusable. I can only hope that a BIOS update will correct this problem in the near future.

 

When I uninstalled the touchpad drivers that came installed and rebooted, windows didn't install a microsoft driver but the exact same synaptic driver that was on previously, but miraculously, this has fixed my keyboard lag problems, and it even kept all my touchpad settings like my tap-zones and tap-zone functions.

Maybe if your windows is installing a microsoft generic touchpad driver, try downloading the synaptics driver from the ASUS N50 support website, uninstalling your driver, and installing that one instead. Not sure if this will work, but I do know that the driver I'm using now that seems to have fixed the keyboard lag is the exact same version as the one you can download from the website.

 

Ditto, consideirng the other end is a female connector, what do ASUS expect us to do with it?

Also, it came with this strange connector that is a long, thin black cable that ends in a red plastic knob-thing, looks like a radio antenner for stereos. Have you figured out the use of this thing?

 

Hi I have been searching the net for information on the N50 series series for a while. So thanks to the person who started this thread. I had a xps 1530 I bought for 900 on dells refurb site and it was great but after doing some thinking I realized that it sucked for the price i payed for it and the specs it had. So went on cregslist and sold it for a little more then I got it for. Then after searching for a new one I know asus has descent ( aka teh best! ) So After about two hours of searching I went to newegg and get a N50Vn-X1B. Does anyone else here have this same one? I just want to know about the build quality before I open the box in 2 days and become depressed? And how is asus support site on issues with their notebook support, Will i be getting a decent service like i got with dell where they kinda get stright to the point and fix the issue or will they say nono it works and jack me around. (I live in texas by the way)


*Heres the link to the model I bought http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220461

 

To be honest, there's no way to use it with this laptop, short of buying a laptop Card that has an S-video port.


The build quality on the laptop is VERY good. The keyboard is rock solid. No flex whatsoever. The LCD hinge stays put, even if you literally pick up the laptop and shake it, and it does this without being a pain to open/close. Pressing on the LCD lid doesn't cause any ripples on the display, so that's good. Pushing down on the palmrests causes the laptop to move down a bit, but that is because of the soft rubber feet on the bottom. Pick up the laptop and get it off it's feet, and there's no movement.