* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

you can buy a 500gb for $75.

The extra 1 year warranty would be worth $25 if you do the math. I think the A1 is the better choice. I bought the X1 because I had to have it!! couldn't wait for the A1 to be in stock.

 

Guys I have a question about dual displays (again..sorry):

If I buy an external monitor whose resolution is 1920x1080 and I wanna run both the laptop and the external can each have its own resolution? or would I have to run both at 1366x768?

 

I have a Zalman NC2000 and this laptop fits perfectly on it. The cooler also works great. It has 2 fans and something like 900 cooling vent holes. I bought it a year ago for my G50VT-X1. It runs off of a USB to USB connection and the USB slots are right next to each other on the right rear so it's perfect.

It pushes out some nice cool air - when cranked up at first I thought it ran kinda of slow but that was deceiving.. it kept my G50 nice and cool, the air is distributed evenly throughout all those holes.

Highly recommend this cooler.

 

Sorry for the double post - forgot to hit "quote"

I have a Zalman NC2000 and this laptop fits perfectly on it. The cooler also works great. It has 2 fans and something like 900 cooling vent holes. I bought it a year ago for my G50VT-X1. It runs off of a USB to USB connection and the USB slots are right next to each other on the right rear so it's perfect.

It pushes out some nice cool air - when cranked up at first I thought it ran kinda of slow but that was deceiving.. it kept my G50 nice and cool, the air is distributed evenly throughout all those holes.

Highly recommend this cooler.

 

Not sure about this model (N61) but I ran a 23"LG HDMI monitor off of my G50VT-X1 no sweat. That machine has Vista on it so I had to monkey around with it but I believe with WIndows 7 it is a lot easier to do. When I unplug the big monitor from my G50 it reverts back to the laptop 1366x768 no problem (and that is under Vista) so you should have no problems. I plan on doing the exact same thing that you will be trying with this new N61

 

You can run your external monitor at a resolution independent of your laptop's resolution. It will support 1920x1080 for your external monitor.

 

Hi guys! Just been doing some testing to see what performance is like and also found a way to keep a persistent colour profile even while playing games! Not sure what the Asus bods do, but they certainly have zero clue on how to calibrate and LCD. The stock settings is nothing short of horrendous, with a massive blue tint.

Well here is Risco to the rescue!

1. Download my calibrated profile from a few pages back and follow my guide.
2. Download Monitor Calibration Wizard from here http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp
3. Do no calibration, just type a name for your profile and click save.
4. Tick both load at startup and persisten profile.
5. Done!

Now each time you boot windows the profile will load, and it will never get unloaded when gaming and also exiting a game! I tested this with Crysis and it totally solves the blue tint. The LCD is actually very good once calibrated, the vertical viewing angles are not so good but the horizontal are excellent! This also gets rid of the washed out look that it comes with.

Now on to gaming, here is how to get maximum performance while gaming on battery:

1. Choose High performance mode in Power4gear
2. Now go to the ati control panel and under powerplay choose maximum performance for battery.
3. The second is the big one, I could not figure why I was getting shocking performance on battery, this is what solved it.
4. I can say after testing a little, there is no noticiable throttling in games, fps was same on battery as on ac.
5. Of course with those settings battery life is about 45 mins in a game lol. Still enough for a quick stint if away from a power point.

 

Thanks for your help Donald and Mike.

BTW Mike, what model is your 23" LG? I am looking at the LG 2353V. Is it the same?

 

Hi everyone. I got my N61 yesterday from Amazon. Actually I was pretty surprised they shipped it in the factory box with no additional packaging. Any way, I unboxed it and was pleasantly surprised by the color -- dark, I mean very dark brown. It looks glossy black and very nice. My pleasant mood faded when I fired the laptop up around 8 pm or so and walked away to let it do it's start-up stuff and can you believe when I came back to the laptop it had a message on the screen indicating it had recovered from an unexpected shutdown?!

"The previous system shutdown at 8:41:25 PM on ‎3/‎5/‎2010 was unexpected."
"The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000124 (0x0000000000000004, 0xfffffa8004b448d8, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 030510-24726-01."

Looking over the logs I found that the laptop had a BSOD. It captured a dump but I haven't looked at it yet. I'll post what I find out once I run the dump file through Dumpchk. Note that I have not added, changed or installed anything on the latop yet. So, I have some questions/requests for the group...

Has anyone found this message in their system event log? I have it logged 8 times in a row. "The speed of processor 1 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 55 seconds since the last report." This is a desktop replacement laptop so I'd like it to not throttle. I haven't looked in the bios but if I find where to change the settings and turn off throttling will I have problems with the laptop?

Has anyone else's N61 blued screened right out of the box? If so post your details.

Please check your system event log and let me know if you find the following unique events logged:

Error - Source ACPI - ACPI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal PCI Operation Region (0x4), Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance. (logged 6 times.)
Error - Source AVOLSNAP - The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because the shadow copy storage could not grow due to a user imposed limit. (I didn't impose anything.)
Error - Source DISK - The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR2. (This is looged 7 times and immediately after the above error.)

Thanks in advance. Peace. dp

 

@PantsOnFire I don't know if it is the same problem I had when I first got the machine but installing the intel matrix storage manager fixed it. It has the AHCI driver. I saw in my logs a similar disk error to the one you received.

 

Same thing happened to me but I called amazon and they made an exception and issued me a refund because it's not their policy to do so. Call them! Just be kind to the customer service rep. Here is the confirmation email they sent me.

"This refund is for the following item(s):
Item: ASUS N61JQ-X1 16-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Dark Brown)
Quantity: 1
ASIN: B00352LQZS
Reason for refund: Account adjustment

Here's a the breakdown of your refund for this item:
Item Refund: $29.97

We'll apply your refund to the following payment method(s):

Visa Credit Card: $29.97

Refunds typically complete within 10 business days and appear as a credit on your statement."

 

I'm new to devices with E-SATA and ExpressCard 34. The N61JQ has one of each, so I wonder what are your recommendations about good accessories to look for for these ports.

What do you use / will use in the future your E-SATA port?
What do you use / will use in the future your ExpressCard drive?

Also, guys, do you know if it in order to send video from its HDMI to RCA we need just a HDMItoRCA cable or we need something like a transcoder box or something?

thanks!

 

Thanks for the color correction, will try to use it when I my A1 comes .. who knows when? Damn it. Greg you might want to add that to the 1st page.

 

Thanks Adamal. Just read the write-up for the storage manager. Mentions for raid 5 or 10. I have one drive. Does it matter?

 

A new inquiry for you cool and wise owners at the lounge

What method do you use to import video into your n61jq?

And here is a challenge, nowadays, what would be the best/easiest/cheapest method to import video from an old Samsung D354m camcorder (MiniDV) into the n61jq. This camcorder only has a S/video out... What do you say, what cables or devices are the best to get video from it into this laptop? Do I need a video recorder? from the express card, maybe?

 

I'll be using the E-SATA to hook up an additional hard drive. I'm just waiting to run out of space on my two usb 2.0 models. For the express card I'm going to add firewire since this laptop didn't come with it. My video camera requires it. For now I'm just using the wife's laptop.

 

It doesn't. Although it is an optional raid controller I've had three ASUS laptops and on two of them I needed that driver with windows 7.

 

Very nice. Have Bad Co 2 for the PS3 and was thinking about getting it for my N61 as well. Now I will. But for now I'm going to sign off here and go play it on the PS3. Frag out! Peace.

 

I just bought that game for the PS3.

 

I just got done doing that a few minuites ago. Go Risco, Go Risco, Go Risco!!

 

Hey, how do I get rid of this pink A on the text box? I'm not sure if it's part of the language functions or what.

 

If you have firewire on the camera, I'd suggest that you purchase a firewire 800 express card and then a firewire 800 to 4 pin adapter. It would be the best video capturing you can get from such a setup. No dropped frames what so ever.

 

Come on Wishmaster! You have been with us here in the 4 different N61 lounges from the start. You know the answer to that!
What I want to know is how are you going to find a way to get one of these things to India. Or are you looking for something similar there. What does something similar to this cost over there?

 

If you're in the beta report it to blizzard. I'm sure one of the starcraft forums could help you out. I doubt the laptop is causing this issue.

 

just called them, they decided to refund it!

said they would make an exception this one time only since im a valued member (prime+spent thousands this month).

thanks for the tip

 

I have the 2361VG... it has a nice semi-gloss screen, and a really crisp display

 

Deathwinger beat me to it. Buying an express card => firewire adapter is your best bet.

Edit: NotebookReview does not tolerate the discussion of topics associated with software piracy or the violation of software EULA. On a side note, it seems there are a number of respectable(and free) video editing programs for Linux that would make acceptable replacements for costly professional alternatives.

 

Does anyone know if this is a good laptop for graphics editing (Photoshop)? Having good accurate colors and brightness on a screen is something I really need. What's the diff between Radeon and a Lenovo Y550P's NVIDIA graphics card?

 

This is not a good laptop for photo editing due to the poor viewing angle (you will find that gamma varies very strongly with the tilt angle of the lid). Brightness is very good. The N61JQ graphics card (Radeon HD 5730) scores ~8000 in 3DMark06, compared to ~6000 for the GeForce GT 240M in the Lenovo laptop ( source).

Edit: here is a test to see what I mean by viewing angle and color: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php#angleGrey

 

well, the 969 was a little too tempting. so i had to ditch sense and confirm to be sure.

Well, I have someone coming from the US to India, in May. Thats how i plan to have my N61 here.

A similar rig here (if at all, i can find one), will cost a BOMB. we are easily looking upwards of 2000 USD (converted, of course!)

cheers!

 

Actually it is not too bad once you configure the colour profile. THe horizontal are quite good, only the verticial suffer badly. Download my profile I posted a few pages back, I actually have a newer updated one, it is configured for roughly 2.2 gamma.

 

I've already calibrated mine the way I like (minimum gamma, reduced blue slider about 1/5-1/4). The gamma control is pretty meaningless given how sensitive it is to screen angle. I guess if you are really using the laptop in one spot, you could manage some photo editing; however, the top of the screen will still look different from the bottom if you are reasonably close to it.

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm a bit disappointed, surprised in how big of a difference there is from the top of the screen to the bottom... Even if the screen were opened vertically (90 degrees to the keyboard), and I looked at the screen perpendicularly, I'd still have this problem?

I purchased a Lenovo Y550P for a good deal but have been hearing about problems with it crashing, so I was going to switch to this alternative.

 

when using sisoft sandra 2010c to benchmark cpu, the sound goes to weird with strange sound for quite a while with freezing, is there anybody else experiencing this?

 

the freezing is normal...the sound thing I'm not sure I didn't hear any sound when I was benchmarking mine

 

Any idea of where I can get a 9 cell battery?

 

i was playing mp3 with winamp while benchmarking. you might try to play a mp3 clip with winamp then start benchmarking to see if you get same weird...

 

Ahh... You read my mind. My hackintosh disks are all old though. I am going to look at updating my images to the latest version and then adding MacOSX to my N61.

I have installed MacOSX on every computer i've got for the last few years. I do need to admit that Win7 isn't too bad so I am mostly doing this to compare the N61 with my Macbook Pro using Mac standards. ;-)

UPDATE: It is the stance of NotebookReview not to discuss Hackintoshing here. Due to this, this will end my discussion with this message.

 

I knew there was something very special about N61 owners. They all have PS3's! When I got mine years ago (yes, the original 60GB), it was like I was the only one. Now we are all coming out of the wood work.

Time to exchange our PS Network ID's so we can all game together. I think I am LordDavon on there also.

 

You can either get this laptop and buy a good external monitor, or go with the Dell Studio XPS 16 with the OLED display.

 

Price drop on the A1 over at BTOTech, $1012.59 NIB. Customization options will set the base price at $1080 though. Currently sold out but Eddie says he should have more in by the end of the week. With $22 UPS ground shipping this is still the cheapest price I've seen.

Just took the plunge and ordered one along with a 80gb Intel SSD for a dual hdd setup. Hope it comes soon.

 

Or you can run it with VMWare 7, like I am. Less fuss and more portable. If you do get a hackintosh working definitely post a how to.

 

i just got my x1 today from the US,(i stay in india).The screen looks very good
and it plays games like a dream.
the video's not great quality but hey i did what i could!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpfrKyJhxY
it looks laggy but be assured that it's looks that way because of the screen capture software.It actually runs very smooth.

 

I would hope this laptop is good for photoshop, after effects, etc. as it is sold as a multimedia laptop after all.

 

I was specifically referring to the monitor.

 

1366x768 screen looks good to you ? then what you will say for Full HD/1080p screens

 

Typically, due to the keyboard placement, people look slightly downward at the screen when using a laptop. Maybe if you were looking straight at the screen, with eye-level aligned with the center of the screen, you would not notice the color effects. But in typical use, images (photos) on the screen will look slightly different at the top vs. the bottom. This occurs with all laptop screens, but seems worse with the N61JQ.

 

Made a thread about it here ( http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23425710302&sid=5000) and a blue told me there was no such function in SC2. So coming back to this board, does anyone know of any 'text tool overlays' that maybe come with ASUS's bloatware that could cause this? I've already uninstalled most of the garbage that came with the laptop so I'm really at a loss.

 

review of x1. first post I think, but felt I should give my opinion on how pooryly laptops are made these days.

Bought mine from amazon after my t61p stopped working from a failed video card problem that was not recalled by lenovo (never buy from them again). I bought this laptop within a couple days of my t61p breaking down since it seemed like a pretty good deal.

I bought my t61p (2.0ghz core2duo, fx570m videocard) about 3 years ago for $1000, it was a great deal, great computer until it broke. Used it for solidworks and cs3.

Review: This asus is poorly made. Compared to my 3yr old t61p, you have a computer that is thicker & heavier, crappier lcd screen and cheaper materials than 3 years ago, what the hell. The plastic panel that encloses the lcd creates glare and decreases viewing angle! What genius thought that would be a good idea, have you heard of mocking it up and testing it before making a million of these laptops? The rubbery palm rest coating is mm's thick an peeling at the edges after putting it my computer bag 10 times. Is that called durable these days? My x1 is going to look like crap after one more month. Lifting the panels to look at the ram you see that the components are not snug, so much space between the case and the electronics that it feels like a secret hiding compartment. They do this because corporations like this, don't care.

Computer companies make inferior products under different company names (asus, gateway, etc), under different price points and we the consumer think its a good deal when comparing the specs to their sister company. I have to say, this is not a quality product and I expect more out of my $1000.

 

Why don't you show some pictures of your laptop? It's not the palm rest or the plastic panels this laptop was made for. The hardware inside your computer is SUPER! So take better care if it's plastic, Asus obviously put more money into the hardware (quad core, ATI graphics card, etc) than it's design.

I'm not going to keep listing the pros I already know about this laptop, but I recommend that you research your purchases A LOT more if you're going to post such dissatisfaction.

No offense, but I don't like people putting down the laptop I dream about (and have ordered)