Asus UX31E Zenbook/Ultrabook Owners Lounge

Flashing Bios
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/174395-bios-update-guide-asus-notebooks.html

Asus' Rep on the Forums
http://forum.notebookreview.com/member.php?u=222484

Anandtech's Excellent Video Review of the UX21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7YxrWIAVjY
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review
And a user review...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/582672-asus-ux31-ultrabook-83.html#post8023942

Poor WIFI performance?

Noisy Fan?
Update: my clicking fan has suddenly disappeared after 2 days of persistent clicking. I don't have a hypothesis for what cured the clicking fan except for a "break in period." I ran Prime95, just to verify I wasn't going deaf, and no noises were apparent, except for the whoosh of the fan.

Unresponsive/slow to respond touchpad?

Buying from Best Buy?

SSD Performance
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/582672-asus-ux31-ultrabook-post8068873.html#post8068873

 

Funny how the lounge starts with disappointments

 

The initial excitement wears off and reality sets in.

I've come to expect it with 1st gen products.

 

Funny I haven't seen that many complaints on taiwanese based forums regarding people who bought them in Asian market...

 

Maybe they will trade with me?

 

Got any links to these threads? Would be interested to see what they're saying

 

So, as the original poster of the wifi fix, i can report it's still working fine for me.

I called Asus to report the problem. I'd suggest if you have a minute to do the same, as the more people report it, the quicker we can get a driver update.

 

For the touchpad, their also seems to be a bug fix in the BIOS 2.0.6:
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download UX31E

 

You get yours yet? J&R got mine to Canada pretty fast.

 

Yep, this afternoon! Yay!

 

I've attached the output of dmesg, lspci -vvv and lspci (short) from the bootable Ubuntu 11.10 installer (On a USB key).

If you have any specific request about Linux, ask!

I'm away, installing...

 

Thanks for the Linux info. I can see it's using asus-wmi for the hotkeys.

Does click and drag work with that touchpad?

It doesn't look like the touchpad is being recognized correctly judging by dmesg. Do you know what brand it is? It's either synaptics or elan. You can tell by going to the mouse control panel in windoze.

See if it shows up as either of those in xinput list

 

I trashed windows (and rescue partition) after copying over the rescue DVDs and upgrading the BIOS...

The touchpad, if I remember correctly, is the synaptics.

EDIT:

As for click-dragging, you mean dragging a window by its top bar?
That does work...

Though double/triple finger don't seem to work by default nor does clicking outside of the lower part (where the buttons are "drawn").
I'll check that after fixing up a working desktop for now. ;-)

 

Yes, I mean clicking and dragging anything - whether it's a window or an icon, or just selecting text. Thanks again!!

edit: Oh, sentelic.. haven't even heard of that brand. Also I mean with the physical buttons not tapping.

 

Hi RR1RR,
I am curious to know how the machine works under linux.
Does everything work fine? Can you hibernate and resume?
How is the battery life?
Thanks a lot for your help!

 

Damnit, damnit, damnit to hell.

from the dmesg

" ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it"

Looks like this computer is affected by the power regreesion bug in the recent kernel lines.

Have you tried forcing it? This could explain the problems some people have had with hibernate.

 

@WorBlux pci_aspm=force at grub boot. It should not surprise you in the least, this is standard fare for laptops these days ever since that commit. I have had to force it on all of my systems.

The hibernate problems may be associated with the xhci module for usb3, there are some scripts for unloading it correctly that you can find by searching for pm xhci suspend.

 

Sleep crashes the machine for now but I haven't had time to try the grub fix yet neither could I test anything really...
I'll see what I can do tomorrow, hopefully!

ubuntu thread here too: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1861469

 

I'm waiting on mine to ship, so I'll be joining this group soon enough.

I'll be working with Arch/Ubuntu/W7x64 on this configuration, thanks for the link above.

 

Thanks for the link

 

Fix Ubuntu (or Linux) Suspend/Hibernate Not Working Bug | Code Central
This prevents it from actually going to sleep (I still have a functional ssh while it "sleeps") and when opening it again, I'm not getting anything back on the screen (except a black screen!).
So still searching ;-)

 

My main issue with this baby is weak wireless connection. I have set maximum wireless connection in the power settings. I do not lose connections, which is OK for typical web browsing. But the throughout I got is miserably less than 2 MBytes/sec. At this speed, it is not possible to stream smooth HD videos, like windows media center recordings. Switch to wired connection, the same HD videos play without a hiccup. I am wondering if anybody has tried streaming HD videos.

 

@RR1RR have you read the pm-suspend manpage and tried some of the quirks?

You can also try using s2ram from the uswsusp package if all else fails.

 

Are you sure your are connect to N speed? 2MB/s is the max you could get from G connection.

 

I don't see anything that could help in pm-suspend, though I could randomly try them all I guess...

As for uswsusp, s2ram says I don't have a swap space (which is true as I thought I’d use a userspace daemon for that if I ever needed any...), so I guess I still have some testing to do but I haven't had much time for research!

I'm hoping someone at Ubuntu is getting this laptop and save us some trouble... hehe ;-)

 

I am pretty sure it is 802.11n.

 

Hi All,

Thanks for all of the information posted so far, well done!

I am thinking of buying a zenbook and having only Ubuntu on it - I have a few questions:

Battery life? how long and is it on the 11" or 13"?

What is the ubuntu (or other distro's) boot time? Snappy?

Does all hardware work right away?

How is the graphics card? Is desktop composition snappy?

Clearly the suspend doesnt work but hopefully a solution is found soon since this is one sexy bit of kit

 

Haven't tested the battery life just yet.
The boot time is insanely fast:
~6 seconds from the BIOS to the login, less than 20 seconds from the time I touch power to having firefox auto-open after typing my password! (including typing time).

All the hardware seems to work, except:

Suspend : It crashes when you bring it back, we just need someone who knows enough about the internal PM management so we don't have to spend hours tracing down the bug ...

Touchpad : it works as a basic touch pad, no clicking above the button, no multi-fingers scrolling or anything, but for now it's not the biggest issue...

USB Ethernet : I didn't try much, but it wasn't recognized directly by Ubuntu, maybe this can be fixed, I know a lot of adaptors are supported but that's external anyway.

As for desktop speed, is super fast, composite seems to work well, haven't tried any crazy 3D games but it's all snappy for desktop usage!

 

Do you know what the maximum resolution external monitor is with the UX31 under linux? I've got an old Dell 3007WFP that does dual-link DVI at 2560x1600, as well as an adapter so I can use it with DisplayPort. I'm guessing there's no HDMI->dual-link-DVI or HDMI->displayport adapter that works at that res, but I don't know if I can buy a new 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 monitor and get it to work with the UX31 under linux with the HDMI port (allegedly HDMI 1.3 works at that res, but I've never seen it first hand). I really like almost everything about the UX31, but if it only works with up to 1920x1200(/1080) monitors, I'm not sure if I'd get one.

Thanks,
Miles

 

Pretty good user review from Amazon:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/582672-asus-ux31-ultrabook-62.html#post8007980

 

Yes, that is an excellent review (seemed like an honest, unbiased comparison) but I was specifically interested in Linux performance on this laptop.

I am thinking I will go with the zenbook and linux rather than the macbook and osx. Normally hardware problems like this are sorted out over time and the zenbook is a better deal.

I would be tempted to dual boot but with only 128GB, there is only space for one OS!

@RR1RR, what are your initial thoughts on battery life with the zenbook and linux? On my previous laptop, windows definitely performed better than linux but I think that's just a sacrifice you make when running linux for now So would you say you get 4-5 hours on the 13" zenbook?

 

Asus UX31 Zenbook review - Pocket-lint

is that true, any users can confirm this?

 

I think all the problems are related to proper setup and optimization for the machine.
I'm sure the stock-tweaked windows does perform better than my stock-untweaked Ubuntu which would probably give me 3 hours?
(I didn't really test yet but the fan was spinning a lot).

One strange issue right now is that the brightness of the screen was changing from time to time to random settings while on battery...
I don't know what weird part of the power-management setup would do that as I don't think there is a light sensor on this machine, right?

In linux the multi-finger usage is not working by default in Ubuntu but as far a as a regular touchpad with 2 buttons goes, it works as expected
(Though I don't switch laptop every 3 months so I may not be the best person for comparisons!)

EDIT:
Interesting thread about the touchpad:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1862078

 

Hi, I'm new here. I've had my UX21 for a week.

I have no wireless problems, but will need to get used to the shallow keyboard and the not-good-for-fine-control touchpad. Overall everything is great, except for serious issue I found with the audio combo jack. I have already contacted Asus and Newegg for replacement, but I wanted to see if anyone else had similar issues or if mine was just an isolated case.

Audio from the combo jack is very distorted when I plug in headphones. Everything comes out mono, sounding like a comb-filtered side channel in a "mid-side" mix. As an audio engineer by training, I suspect that the "return" conductor in the TRRS jack is not wired properly, so the left channel is trying to return through the right, and vice versa.

This happens with any kind of playback, regardless of the type of headphones, software, file format, etc. I don't have any processing in my software or the driver settings. I have the latest drivers off the Asus site. The external speakers sound fine (pretty good considering the small chassis) and the problem doesn't happen with an external sound card, so it has to be the jack (unless it's something way more serious with the sound card).

I don't have a headset (headphone+mic) that uses a single 4-conductor 3.5mm plug, so I don't know what the behavior of the jack is like if I use a true combo plug. A combo jack, by definition, should work with regular headphones though.

Again, I'm just writing to see if others have experienced this problem. It may not be readily apparent because there's still something coming out of the jack. Humor me please and get your headphones, listen to a couple familiar songs, then let me know if they sound normal or weird.

 

Has anyone noticed that the hinges do not hold the screen's angle very well? For example, when slightly rocking the device by the palmrest?

 

@noxxle99

Can you clarify what you mean? If you mean that the angle changes because there's looseness in the hinges, then no I've not noticed any of that.

I have noticed that the center of gravity gets funny when the screen is opened all the way (tilted all the back), such that the entire laptop will very easiy tip backwards, but I think this is just a result of the whole thing being so light.

 

I mean that if you have the screen set at a little bit more than a 90 degree angle, it tends to open wider with slight rocking.

It is easy to test. Set your laptop on a soft surface, such as a pillow. Open your screen to about a 115 degree angle. Gently rock the laptop by pressing down on the palmrest area. The screen will gradually open further.

My x220 doesn't do this, even if I rock it with considerable force.

 

@noxxle99

i just tried your test and no, my screen is not exhibiting that behavior. in fact, it feels pretty "tight" now that you've brought my attention to it. again, i know this is a ux31 forum, but i speak for my ux21.

have you tried listening to music through headphones with yours?

 

I'd like to preface this post by saying I've had UX21 for about a week and I absolutely love it. Having said that...

Audio jack has been tested with 3 pairs of earphones and there is definitely something very wrong, at the same time external speakers work perfectly.

I can confirm the lid has a large range of positions where it is incredibly loose and simply snaps back under gravity.

I am experiencing wireless problems even after driver updates but I don't have another computer to test that theory so for now I'll blame my router.

Touchpad performance is by far the absolute worst thing about this laptop (I did update all the drivers and the bios using Asus Live Update and Asus website) although I'm hoping future driver updates will fix that.

I will be calling Asus for a replacement once they sort all these problems out. If these 4 issues are fixed this laptop is a 100% keeper for me.

 

I'll test the headphones and get back to you.

Can you make a youtube video of your ux21 rocking while the lid remains firm? I'm starting to wonder if my hinges are defective.

 

Tested with the headset linked below. Quality remained good. No crackling. Are you sure you have the latest drivers? Don't rely on the ASUS update utility. Go to their support website for drivers.

Newegg.com - RAZER Moray+ 3.5mm Connector Canal Mobile Gaming Communicator

 

Im seeing this too. Its some kinda auto brightness on the notebook. I have this on my Asus tablet when its set on auto brightness. When there background lighting the brightness seems to go up.

 

Yeah I installed all the updates through ASUS Live, then went on their website and clicked every driver update I could find.

 

thanks noxxle99 and yxo2 for trying out the audio jack.

noxxle99, do you have a set of regular headphones/earbuds that you can test with (one without a mic). those with mics an additional conductor in the plug that usually changes the logic of the jack.

@Mique: I agree with everything said about the keyboard and trackpad in the pocket-lint review, except for the gripe about "the laptop sticking into the base of the palm." I have no problems with the ergonomics.

Keyboard: It's true that you do have to hit the keys a certain way for the press to register. You can't press at an angle, and can't hit the edge of the key even if you press straight down. This is a problem for any key not in home row. I am having to keep my eye on the screen whenever I type to make sure characters don't get missed, which I shouldn't have to do. This accuracy issue affects things such as transcription or when filling out registration forms where you have to "verify your password/email" by typing it a second time.

Trackpad: [1] The latest drivers do not have sensitivity control (for motion nor for tap-to-click) nor a palm guard feature (rejecting motion if the area triggered is too large). [2] It does have a feature that disables the trackpad when you're typing, but there is always a delay when it re-enables itself. This is awful for someone who uses hotkeys a lot and just has to type one letter here and there. [3] The two-finger scroll has an initial jump when it is triggered (this is maddening). [4] As a result of the lack of tap-to-click sensitivity, I am using the physical buttons at the bottom of the trackpad. While the trackpad is large, but the button region is narrow. As a result, the cursor will sometimes jump downward when I try to click (maddening as well) because the thumb I click with triggers the bottom of the motion region.

My gripes about the trackpad are a lot more severe than my gripes about the keyboard. However, all of the mouse issues I listed can conceivably be fixed by better trackpad drivers that I hope are delivered in time. Likewise, I feel like I can "adapt" my typing style to work with the keyboard. Therefore, the input problems have not been a dealbreaker for me like the audio jack issue I posted about earlier. Have you had problems with the sound through regular headphones/earbuds (not a headset with a mic)?

 

Tested headphone jack with the following. Amazon.com: AKG Acoustics K-240 Semi Open Studio Headphones: Musical Instruments

Didn't notice any quality difference. Maybe I just don't have the ears to notice the difference.

I haven't had any issues with the "sharp edges" either. But you and I are using the UX21. Perhaps it is an issue with the UX31.

 

I played with it some more and I think I was able to recreate your problem. I can't get it to occur while rocking, but if I pick up the laptop by the front of the base such that the (keyboard and trackpad are now perpendicular to the ground), the hinge does not support the moment caused by the screen's weight, and it opens all the way by itself. Like you said, this ONLY happens if the screen were open past a certain angle (a little past 90) to begin with.

 

If I hold the base perpendicular to the ground, gravity will pull the lid all the way open if the angle starts at 60 degrees more. So yours stays put even if it is at a 90 degree angle?

 

Thanks for taking the time. The problem I encountered, if present in your zenbook, should be readily apparent, especially if you listen to the same section of a [modern contemporary*] piece, through the same headphones, first through another device and then through the zenbook.

[*not solo instrumental music because they usually aren't produced with as much stereo separation - sorry, i'm kind of an audio dork, lol]

 

What are you planning to do if these issues cannot be resolved by driver updates. It probably doesn't make sense to replace the laptop now since there's a good chance you'll get one with the same problems. Is it possible to request a replacement 2-3 months down the road when these issues are (hopefully) cleared up by ASUS?

 

New review (UX21). AnandTech - ASUS Zenbook (UX21) Review