C90S Review

Actually I checked. The card that is made for the slot does not have an infrared sensor, it is software controlled. Also, it isn't the antenna, it is the connector. The little screw thing on the back of the TV is called an F connector, in Europe and some parts of Asia they use MCX, or MCX compatible parts. In order to connect an MCX male port to the F male connector from a cable box, you need one 30 dollar cable for SMA-F and one 57 dollar adapter from MCX to SMA.

 

what slot are you talking about? i mean the little sensor thing to the right of the card reader...maybe it will work with the express card media remotes like the ones that come with HP laptops. i think i saw a laptop here in the forums that has the same little plug the c90 has and it even had a picture of the adapter that can connect it to a regular coaxial. it was a short cable thing maybe 3 inches. i think it was on an actually official review here at notebookreview

 

maybe, I can't find that kind of cable though. but unless the express card remote operates through some mechanism that isn't infrared then I don't think it will interface directly with the hardware. It may be able to be recognised by the C90 and the C90 relays the information to the card, but that would have some amount of lag (still would be fine though). If you can find that cable somewhere I will worship you forever.

 

this may be a random post, but swoley i've been reading your posts about getting some bugs either hardware or software, while alex is not. Regardless, are you both satisfied in your overall purchase price/performance and would you purchase again if you knew about some of the negatives? I will be making my final decision on a laptop monday and been following the asus c90s for months now.

this will probably be my deciding factor based on your opinion.

Sorry to interrupt your conversation.

 

If you break into Alex house and take his then I highly recommend it. But seriously, if you get one like his that works its EXCELLENT. the few cons that alex pointed out are the only things to be worried about. ive literally been on the laptop for about 4/5 of the last 3 days and its solid. i mean its really small too...thats was one of the first things i said to myself when i pulled it out of the box. only things is...i cant comment on battery life...but will probably get to that tommorrow so be on the lookout

 

The point of this thread is really for questions like yours...
Knowing what I do now, I would still buy the C90, I really do love this computer. By the time you get yours I would expect we would have these problems ironed out and be able to tell you exactly what to do if you experience the same ones.

 

also, the performance I got out of default 2.66ghz and 500 core/500 mem on gpu were pretty good...im talking about in game performance. check out my in game video thread to see. and that was in xp with stock drivers. in vista with the new 163.11 drivers (claimed to be the ones the finally equal xp performance) it will be even BETTER. i dont think you can go wrong here. it is very load when overclocked though and low-med loud when stock.

 

No problem.

As of right now when I look at the performance the c90s gives and how much it costed it was definitly a great buy.

It looks nice, it has all the features (hdmi, esata, ect) a super top end screen, and what feels to me like a perfect keyboard.

Its a no brainer to get it.

Now the downfalls.

The touchpad really isnt so great, the buttons are tho. So get yourself a external mouse and thats easy to remedy. the touch pad does work its not like you cant use it. when your on a high res screen tho its just not so fun.

The battery life none of us have really tested yet but expect probably 90min tops in power save mode so remember this thing is for light work away from the plug.

The video card was a major letdown in what we expected it to be, it is still playing any current game with highish settings tho with no problems and havs what seems like alot of room for overclocking, then of course later on you can always replace it with a better card.

Really all that I have mentioned is ok and I would accept it.

the only major problem I am having right now is I cant run from battery power, soon we will know if swoley has the same problem or not.

This is a brand new system, the memory issues will be resolved no doubt with new bios as time passes. And my issue with the battery may be isolated, maybe I got a lemon?? it happens.

If thats the case I'll still be happy as long as I can get it replaced with no charge to myself, it will be a pain to remove all my hardware tho, and have to find a box for it and send it back.

So I say yes its a good purchase, I cant think of anything else out there that would have fit me as well.

The G1S would have been very close but I just cant be a big fan of the gamer look, but I love the black and the touch pad on it.

Also you will really like the fast cpu speeds in the C90 when you run some cpu benchmarks or do something like video/audio encoding or watch HD movies.

It also lets me have a movie background for vista, the sidebar up, and run a high end visulization on winamp all at once wich would cripple most systems

 

yes i have been keeping close eyes on your videos as well as alex reviews and trying to get a feel for all the kinks everyone has been seeing and fixing. My only thing i'm hesitant about is the bios not registering or stating the clock values right or something along those lines.

 

Well, we don't yet know if it is a simple typo type error (just posting the wrong speeds) or if it implies something more serious (actually not knowing what RAM is in the system). Apparently GenTechPC has the new BIOS that fixes it, so there should be no worries about that, as you can get it through us, or simply asking him to burn it on for you if you order from him.

 

The stock bios just runs the ram at a lower speed, Asus guys thought it was easier and safer to have a default ram speed thats lower so everybody would have ram that would work.

However there is a new bios that fixes this, infact Ken is posting it on the forums here shortly. Its beta but it runs the ram at full DDR2 667. I'll try it out and hope it remedies a few of my problems. Then I'll have to retest all my test for my review

My theory is that in normal mode performance will go up since it will be ddr2 667 instead of 466 or what ever it was, in game mode my performance numbers may go down since there will probably be a divider in place.

When I say performance goes down, I dont mean as a whole I mean vs my old wprime scores wprime and other cpu task like that love a 1:1 cpu/ram ratio.

 

I'm downloading 162.18 drivers right now, are they any good?

 

If your on vista NO, get the 163.11.

 

trust me i tested them all... on the c90 and an 8800 gtx desktop

 

well they arent bad but its a waste to use them when you have the almighty 163.11 which are being praised as the driver that finally matches xp performance....get it from laptopvideo2go.com with the modded .inf file...youll be fine...but no gpu overlocking on them. highest version you can get that allows gpu overlock is 158.45. trust me i tried them all

 

Hey guys I just thought of another possible pro of the c90 that goes along with the upgradeability. Say something happens to your processor, or something happens to your video card and they fry... wouldn't it be that much easier to replace? You could potentially fix it all on your own correct?

 

correct. they are easily user replaceable.

 

What does everyone see as the advantages of the c90s over the dell 1520? CPU speed I suppose and potential upgradablity, but does that justify the significant price difference? I ordered a c90 before the dell was available, but if I was ordering now I'm not such which I would go with.

 

Superb review! Great job.

 

Did you guys try 165.01? I don't get why this one is such a high version when it came out a few months ago and the newest driver is 163.11. Any info?

 

Swoley, V, and Alex. After all of your testing, which Operstaing system would you recommend for the C90S? ][V][IKE

 

So basically ordering the c90s with a tv tuner is a waste of money?

 

nvidia has completely lost its mind with drivers....NO ONE knows the driver naming scheme anymore and YES they are much older than they should be. the newest driver IS 163.11 and is the best driver out and is being called the driver that finally gives XP performance on vista.

 

I recommend Vista. For one, if you disable UAC and superfetch it makes it much faster. Also with the new 163.11 nvidia drivers its just as fast as XP in most games. Compatibility may be a problem but they are fixing game compatibility left and right and at the moment I cant think of a game that cant run on vista that doesnt run on xp even if you do need a patch or fix.

 

I recommend Vista Business, doesn't hold you hand as much as Vista Home, but isn't as bloated as Ultimate.

 

performance going to be that different between Premium and Business? Only thing is its doesn't the media which works well the the tv tuner card I was plannin on getting from HP

 

It is basically the difference between XP Home and XP Pro and XP Media Center

XP Home sucks, XP Pro is good and XP MC is overpriced for the features.

 

/deletemessge

 

it isn't, because you would have to buy the card and install it separately later in the summer when it is actually released. Then you would need the adapter cord (which should come with it), so if you want a Tuner, go ahead and buy one now, that way you don't need to wait.

 

my issue was that business doesn't have the media center with it which was the reason I choose premium when I ordered so I could use a TV Tuner with me at college. I just worried going to lose performance with premium and I don't think I would be able switch to business now if its that much better then premium for performance wise. Then again I tend to worry to much about my new laptops

 

You can use a TV-Tuner with Business, you just use the supplied software, instead of it being natively integrated.

 

kk now to see if i can still switch to business on my order I hope I can

 

AlexOnFyre i like your review, i been waiting for this a long time... but now i decide... i prefere compal, i think its a best buy for now. it didnt need oc to get 4000 points on 3dmark06, this tell me a lot about this 2 laptops...

Thank you for your help

 

it uses the same Graphics card, so I don't know how that is possible...

 

I believe it's due to the RAM clock. Some 8600M GTs are using GDDR3 at 700MHz while others are using GDDR2 at 400MHz. Quite a difference. I'm not sure which version the Compal has though.

 

Even so, the g1s doesn't get 4k w/o overclocking and it uses the 8600m gt 256 gddr3

 

3dmark06 should not be the reason you choose your laptop. Those numbers mean very little when they are that close and depend more on real world gaming.

 

Whats the name of the utility/software thats for the biometric scanner?

 

running 3dmark 06 right now with new bios forerunner, soon as its over (or i crash) I cant ell you

 

im holding my breath

 

Crashed :/ also the new bios seems to make it take longer for windows to load, maybe paranoia but the screen stays black for a long time after it loads and before the windos vista splash comes up.

as for the touchpad software.. Synaptics Pointing Device is what its called.

 

The highest score I can get is 3814.

 

And how do you achieve that score Alex?

 

158.45 drivers, overclocked to 500/550 and in gaming mode.

 

Since it looks like I'm the only retard to order a lower cpu, when I recieve mine I will run through the tests you guys used and see what numbers and increases I get. Since I have a less powerful chip, the gaming mode should OC it to the full 20%.

 

Actually you get access to "overclock mode" wich is 20%, we only get game mode wich is 10%.

The E6600 is probably the best sweet spot. I only got the e6700 because I got it super cheap, id not pay full price for one.

 

I'm getting mine with an e6600, which should (hopefully) be arriving tomorrow. Once I assemble everything I can offer my impressions. I'll only be using 2 GB of memory at the moment, so that may skew some things.

 

crisisback has the e6600 and was only getting 2.793 which was weird. he PMed me...it was with 20% too he said

 

thats correct I think, Alex did the math 20% on the 6600 is still short of 2.93ghz but the difference will be so small, it was more than likely a better choice than the e6700 for the money by far. Then since the fsb is higher his ram should be going faster too (unless there is a divider) wich means his performance may be better.

 

It should be 2.88 GHz