* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

Yeah ally I've got an NC2000, and while it's a great cooler in that it's solidly built and all and does blow a lot of air, I don't see much effect with the N61. In reality, I don't really think the N61 needs the extra cooling, I haven't seen any part of my notebook (GPU or CPU) getting over 70 degrees Celsius with or without the cooler. I've done some heavy gaming and 3d modeling too. That being said I'm still glad I got the cooler just because my last laptop had some major cooling problems, but honestly, I really don't think you need one for this laptop to have a good experience. I do have IC Diamond thermal compound though too, and it's still to be seen how much effect that has on the temperatures.

By the way, if anybody wants me to do any tests/benchmarks with my cooler/ thermal compound, I'd be more than happy to as long as I don't have to pay for anything. I want to post some comparison temperatures for everybody, but I'm not exactly sure what benchmarks or stress tests are best to use for this kind of thing.

 

You can repeat my test (just the part without the cooler) to see how the thermal compound helps: link

Both of those downloads (Prime95 and HWMonitor) are stand-alone EXE's (no installation) and are free to use.

 

Hello all. Newbie here, based in South Africa, where we are in the unenviable position of not having choices on the model to buy - UNLESS I buy from overseas and incur hectic shipping costs, customs costs and still often the sites won't sell to us in the 1st place - plus if something DOES go wrong the return costs are again prohibitive... :-(
So the option of this machine I CAN get locally is the N61JA, no Blue-ray, 500GB HDD, 4G 1033 RAM, i5. Local price - again we get nailed - is the equivalent of US$1245.

That aside, I am considering this machine; I was worried about the screen but I see many on this forum aren't fussed by it, my current question relates to the keyboard.
I understand it is the "chiclet" type, my problem is a tested an Acer Aspire last week which had a similar keyboard and HATED it - found I was making a LOT more mistakes on it (compared to the Acer Travelmate keyboard and/or regular desktop keyboard). The buttons just felt - yuk!
But perhaps the Asus version is a better one? How do you folks find typing on the keyboard?

And I see other people have asked about the battery life but I don't see many answers; given that this is the i5 version how do you suppose it would do?

Thanks
Di

 

Got mine on Feb. 28 and it does say 1 year on the box, but they said, don't worry, just show newegg receipt and it is for 2 years.

 

Mine also came with Kingston 1333 RAM and Hitachi hard drive, That is why I don't want to return it.

 

So what do you guys suggest in terms of keeping it cool? I had just ordered this yesterday and when I receive it I plan to undervolt it.

I've read about 60 pages of this post so far, and it seems most of everyone came to agreement that coolers/pads don't do very much on this laptop... just the positioning on the bottom or what?

My brother has a NC2000 from ZALMAN and that thing's a beast for his XPS. It's quite pricey but worth it, I was thinking of purchasing the same one, till I read brochiller's post. I do some gaming, usually not heavy stuff like crysis or anything, more like warcraft/dota/hon/maybe bfbc2/sc2 range. I never really had a system to handle new games at maximum quality so I might in the future. I don't have the extra thermal paste for I purchased off Amazon so everything's stock. My main concern for this product is it's heating, ALOT of laptops fail in the long run because of heating issues and I don't want that. My warranty is only 1 year, and fixing hardware stuff on laptop is very hard/costly. I plan to keep this for many years.

Do you guys think I should get a fan? Yes/No? If so, any recommendations other than the NC2000? Thanks.

 

Looks good, if I may add some suggestions after viewing some of the other lounge topics...

Possibly pictures and youtube reviews? This laptop is still very new and it was hard for me to find reviews/hands on information about it till I stumbled on this site. I believe it would be useful for anyone looking to buy this.

 

try to use intel burn test with 8 thread: http://downloads.guru3d.com/IntelBurnTest-v2.3-download-2047.html

i got 86C max for CPU.

 

Theonee, I wouldn't even consider returning it if I were you. 1 year or 2 years it probobally won't matter in the end. My beef is false advertising but mine is working well so I'm not taking a chance returning it even though Screwegg offered me a credit to do so.
I just would not 100% count on you having 2 years on your Warranty. Your Warranty is with ASUS not Newegg. It is recorded by the serial number of your laptop. If you call ASUS and have them check that serial number I bet there records will say you have a 1 year Warranty. If so someone from ASUS can tell you on the phone that they will honor what your Newegg reciept says. But in reallity 16 months from now will they really do that. What I'm interested in is Newegg changed the web page to a 2 year Warranty about the time you bought it. Now it's back to 1 year just like they did before. It would be helpfull to some of us if you called ASUS and had them check your Warranty using your serial #. If you already did that let us know what they said.

 

Just picked one up! On the way home now to test it. Finally the wait is over!

 

Thank's for the input. I added a link to the youtube videos currently available.
Pictures take up to much room and the first link is to ASUS with good pictures.
I will add some links to pictures posted by our Lounge Owners.

 

Welcome to the club Risco. It's about time you pulled the trigger! I like the input you give to the lounge and am looking forward to your feedback.

 

There are definitely reseller-specific caveats. For example, some stores don't qualify for 1 year ADW (Best Buy, Micro Center, etc.).

 

Yes, I agree with you about the caveats. But the ADW caveat you speak of hasn't changed four times in the last couple of months (2year-1year-2year-1year).

 

Same here (see attached). My available memory was jumping around, so I used "Custom" and just typed in the maximum value (I didn't know you could keep clicking "Maximum" to do the same thing). Did you do the thermal compound upgrade on yours? Mine is stock from Amazon.

BTW: did you see my recent post about power consumption? I remember you were concerned.

 

I'm no expert on keyboards but I really like this one, especially the rubber coating on the deck.
Logic would tell me that the i5 would give you longer battery results. But I have seen some here give a technical analyisis that said it would not (way over my head). If it was an i5 that offered switchable graphics that would help with the ability to extend battery life.

 

Why would they name your wife 123? HA! What does the w stand for?

You know, you need to stop stealing from your wife! ;-)

Just kidding buddy.

 

My dads from Amazon (X1) came the same way.

 

W is the first letter of our last name. We always use allw or gregw and gregw was taken.

 

Thanks mate! Just got home, the guy I bought it from was really nice! I managed to barter him down to the net price of £1080. We get robbed over here price wise, but it worked out the same as morecomputers. Also means I have a shop front to go to, and he is an official reseller.

Only one snag was he got it running for me, but spelt my name wrong! Even if you change the username, it has all the sub folders wrong. He also enabled trend micro, when I already have NOD 32. So I decided to restore the partition first to stock ( gives me a chance to test it too! )

I also have a fix for the blue tint, there is way too much bias on the blue. I will post up a colour profile later for people to download.

 

yeah, i did the test with maximum ram. thermal compound is original stock from ncix (got IC7 but have yet to apply it).

the power consumption seems to be a bit risky for the adapter(if considering the worst scenario of charging empty battery at max workload, it will cause either throttling or something serious). CPU has max 55W, GPU max 26W, that's already 81W, plus south/north bridge+LCD+hard drive+USBs, battery charging consumption, 90W adapter is too shabby.

 

Agreed. I sent a request to ASUS for a 120W replacement. No response yet. I don't think it would be hard to go over 90W with this hardware. There does not seem to be any power-limiting hardware in the laptop itself; it will happily pull 115W from the 90W adapter.

 

I just ordered the X1 at amazon.com for $969.03 and it will arrive on Monday. My credit card adds one more year to the manufacturer's warranty.

 

Did another recording for Left 4 Dead 2.

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BoBFn1njrGk&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/BoBFn1njrGk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='480' height="385"></embed></object>

Settings (everything maxed)


Unsurprisingly since it's a Source game, it runs like butter. The phone ringing and dog barking are not sounds from the game.

 

Installing all my windows update now. Can the Asus backup be done on an external drive? I would like to do an image to that, rather than multiple dvd! Is ran Asus update and it says nothing to update. I assume all my drivers etc come via that?

BTW it came with 5400rpm drive and 1066 ram for UK spec version.

 

Answer your phone, your dog is calling!!!

 

I use Macrium Reflect to image my OS partition. It saves space by omitting page/hibernate files and compressing the image. You can choose the output (specific drive, burn to DVD, split into multiple files); I just keep the image on my data partition in case I screw up the OS somehow.

I don't think the driver updater is very good, especially considering the fact that the newest drivers are not even posted on the "N61Jq" section of the support site.

 

I just done a quick by eye calibration for the lcd. Let me know what you think, this is with lcd brightness at -6.

 

Does anyone else have problems with getting esata to work?
I cant see the drive in bios or the os...ive tried multiple drives that I know work.
they work on the esata port on my desktop.

I have the controller setup as AHCI in the bios..

 

I asked Powernotebooks if it was worth it to upgrade the RAM with my Asus N61JQ-A1 order. They said they didn't recommend it and once the price comes down it would be a better time to buy. With that in mind and the fact that technology is advancing at such a rapid speed these days, the prices will drop by a lot by the time summer (in USA) rolls around!

My plan is to wait until June and then upgrade to either 6GB @ 1333 MHz RAM or 8GB @ 1066MHz RAM

 

how do i make use of this calibration profile?

 

If you need that much RAM it's fine...but I think that a more worthy upgrade would be to get an SSD hard drive! At least that's what I'm planning to do once prices go down.

I really think that you will notice a real performance upgrade by going to SSD instead of increasing the memory.

I was hoping for 160+ gb SSD for about $200 but I am starting to doubt that's gonna happen this year so we'll see how much SSD I can get for $200-$300 in about 3 months.

 

Hmm, I haven't looked too closely into what SSD drives and why they are so much better. I've heard some of my more involved tech-friends talk about them but never asked much about them. Would you care to enlighten me about the Solid-State-Drives that are so highly priced?

 

Download the file, the right click and choose install
Click the start menu, the type color
Select color management
Click advanced
Click change system defaults
Click advanced again
Tick use windows display calibration
Close that window
Click devices
Tick use my settings for this device
Click add, and select the calibrated profile, then ok
Select the profile and set as default

 

The earliest I've heard SSD are going to have price drop is Q4, with mid 2011 before anything significant happens.

 

Congrats! So finally you have made your mind and got yourself a birthday gift.

The ASUS update is buggy. It never found any updates for me. I don't use it any more since many years now. I tried it with my N71JQ, but still it finds nothing. IF I go to ASUS website, I find lot of updates that apply to my notebook.

You can go to ASUS download site to get the latest drivers and apps:
http://support.asus.com/download/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

On this website you see three fileds. In the first select Notebook and in the second field select Drivers for getting list of latest driver or select Apps to get the latest applications. Leave the third field at defualt and press Search and the site will take you to a page that will display a list of drivers or applications.

 

So, now that many of us have our laptops, has anyone else experienced this issue: hotkeys (e.g. volume, touchpad disable, calculator, etc.), including the actual hardware buttons at the top of the keyboard, stop working after the laptop has been on for a while. Some keys still work (brightness, screen blank) but do not give OSD feedback. Rebooting fixes the problem. I have the latest ATK Package driver (V1.0.0003).

 

thanks for the help! the profile looks much better than what I had done.

 

That has happened to me once. I didn't make a big deal about it, just rebooted the pc. It's probably a driver issue.

 

Well, here's a good article that'll tell you about SSD drives.

http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/a/SSD.htm

Basically they are hard drives made entirely from NAND Flash modules instead of spinning magnetic disks like traditional drives. They are extremely fast (about 250 MB/s read and 200 MB/s writes) for a good quality drive, and will get a lot faster as the technology advances.

The problem right now is that cost is still very high and capacities are very small compared to traditional drives.

I've never had or tried one, but according to reviews they make the computer respond almost immediately to commands like opening programs.

Consider saving some money for one of these bad boys

 

Tech support has been no help so far. It happens frequently to me, maybe because I RDC into my A1 often. Someone else posted a similar problem here, although his case seems to be deterministic/repeatable (by suspending/waking the laptop), whereas mine is not. I wish there was a way to restart the hotkey services so you don't have to reboot.

 

It wouldn't hurt to to a system recovery. Maybe something is conflicting with that ATK driver

 

Could be drivers or poor BIOS coding. ASUS is notorious for writing bad DSDT.

 

I've had problems with that in the past with my m860tu, it ended up being the Esata cable. Try using a brand like SIIG, it was recommended to me by Seagate and it works extremely well with all my Esata drives now.

http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-CB-SA011...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1267839305&sr=8-10

 

Check that your antivirus is not blocking the HControl.exe. If I remember correctly then this is the program which controls all the ASUS hotkeys.

Maybe next time you get this problem, stop and restart this process using the Windows Task Manager.
I am not sure but maybe this way you can make the hotkeys work without rebooting.

 

Definitely not being blocked by AVG; in fact, the process is still running even after it happens. I am unable to restart because of access restrictions. I guess I could try to modify permissions to take control of the service, but I'd rather ASUS just fix the problem

 

even if the same cable works on my Desktop?

I'll see if I can dig one up and give it a try...

Iv'e had my n61jq-x1 for about a week now with a OCZ vertex 256
I replaced a unibody macbook pro...
All other laptops were too big or too small...I liked the new machines MSi is coming out with (the ones with the 5850), but I didn't want to wait...

My only real gripe is the intermittent squealing.

 

Amazon just had the price reduced by $30 with free ship! 4 Hours after I ordered at full price, cool.

 

I downloaded Everest Ultimate Edition, pretty good program that reports everything about your PC.
I generated a temp report

Temperatures:
CPU 61 °C (142 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #1 61 °C (142 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 61 °C (142 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #3 61 °C (142 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #4 61 °C (142 °F)
Seagate ST9640320AS 35 °C (95 °F)

 

since the X1 is at amazon for 969$, A1 still worth the extra 100 bucks just for an additional 180gigs.

Just checking- does X1 have 1 year warranty regardless of where it is bought?