M50Sv: Review & Owners' Lounge

im waiting on a tax refund

The m50 is on my short list but i want the 500 gb one that goes for 1400$

with the wsxga screen
The only owner that reported says it comes with the cmo screen from the g1s, the good screen.

not the bright one that this reviewer has from auo

 

Lol, if my memory serves me right, werent you waiting on your tax refund last year when you got your a8js?

 

oh ya but its two years ago

youre right there I bought an a8js from you two years ago Ill shop your stuff definitely I have nothing against btotech.com

Im an annoying shopper though Ill have everything figured out before I roll.

and that was august too not tax time. So it was all out of kilter.

I have a feeling though youre talking about wiz33 who just posted he bought an a8js from you a year ago.

I could be wrong but I bet this time of year is one of the biggest business spikes in the laptop business

 

I think i want one thats the 9500 gs and the 500 gb hd there should be one like that when these ones go.

This is just thinking aloud.

The newegg price right now gives no love to the tax return time there was a sale when it was 250 off.

 

Man I am getting this tomorrow. Got rid of my HP and finally see a decent machine. Ken let me get your number so I can place an order.

 

You can send me PM regarding any sales questions.

 

Just dropping in with a quick review from a heavy business/light gamers/light media users perspective.

1st I just want to say thanks again to Ken at Gentech, ( i saw the guys post about Kens number above...dude you can get it off their website I think it's gentechpc.com) I had actually planned on buying the f8, but after seeing this review, then calling Ken directly, he told me some of the differences, and I decided on the M50sv-a1. My brother has the A8 (same size as F8) and I'm glad I got the M50. The extra screen real estate when communicating is well worth the extra tiny amount of weight in my bag.

I bought the XP disc, with plans to nuke Vista, and have my IT guys put on the XP. So far, I really like Vista. Some things are a pain the ass, like I bought UT3 (having been a die hard UT2004 gamer before I started my business, but for some reason Vista has issues with Nvidia drivers still. That's a Vista issue, not an M50 issue.
The only other issues I have with Vista is that much of my old software (office 2000, adobe acrobat 5, yaddah yaddah, isn't compatible with Vista). We actually moved to Gdocs so thats not an issue, and I just bought the lastest Adobe. No biggie. I have many many tasks open at one time, and i have to say, the interface for switching between tasks (via alt tab, or the new uber-cool alt windows key 3D mac-style window switching.....or even just hovering over the taskbar-buttons with the popup active thumbnails (like even the thumbnail shows the video being played in the window...super cool)) makes multi tasking SO MUCH easier, sounds lame but for this reason alone (a very business-oriented reason) i don't want to switch back to XP. On the networking side, the other comps are running win XP home, and after setting the workgroup to our offices workgroup name 'MILKYWAY' I can't see, nor can they see my computer (anybody have a fix for this?). None of us here are that IT oriented...we can install operating systems but as far as networking we are relying on our old hack skills from the days of Quake 2 and WC2.
So on the operating side, I have an unopened winxp home for sale, as long as I can start to see the new computers, and I really like Vista.

On the computer side, I have absolute ZERO complaints with this machine. My brothers Grey A8 suffered from easy scratching on the case, so far, my black M50 is fine. I love the feel of my keys, I love the number pad, I love where all the accessory ports are. The finger print reader leaves a bit to be desired (it works about 1/4 of the time...and it's generally quicker to just type your pwd, why don't they start moving the scanner/take a quick still shot...instead of moving the finger) but hey it's like 1st/early 2nd generation I think. It rocks. I wouldn't change it for anything. My brother loves his Asus A8, and I think we're diehard Asus fans from now on. And Ken, I'll keep ordering from you into the future. We cannot get the latest machines up here in Canada so I really appreciated the help over the phone.

One more thing I'm looking to 'customize', does anybody know if you can re-assign keys on the keyboard? I do a lot of typing, with numbers. I need my home and end key's, and I need my number-key pad...at the same time, without pressing the numlock key all the time.

DOES ANYBODY KNOW HOW TO RE-ASSIGN keys? I would re-assign the right hand alt key to Home, and the right hand Ctrl key to End.

So really, the M50 rocks, and I need to fix the networking issue with XP home computers within the same workgroup, and re-assign 2 keys if possible.

I'd highly reccommend both Ken at Gentech, and the Asus M50sv-a1.

Oh, it's super super fast too.

I'd give my experience 9.5 out of 10 in having it for a month.
-- also, i screwed with my audio settings in the realtek HD audio manager and it boosted my sound 40% if you need it louder.



Ryan

 

I have had my M50 SV- B1 for about 1 month. Here's my quick take in my new laptop. I think it's helpful to know that I do a bit of gaming (FEAR, Warcraft 3, resident evil), a lot of movie watching, and websurfing.

DESIGN:
The overall design is something of very professional yet it doesn't look dull like the thinkpads. It is glossy and sheek. As you all know, it does attract a lot of smudges, but with one quick wipe, it looks as new as the day it was out of the box. Also I like how the different materials form one piece; as in the material where the power and quick launch buttons feels like black brushed alumnium, bordered by a nice chrome lineing, and sheek piano black glossy material. Also ASUS adds the unique factor because it isn't yet a popular mainstream brand (relatively speaking that is).

KEYBOARD:
The keyboard feels nice and rigid. yesthe top F1, F2... buttons have a bit of flex but I don't use function keys that often to care. THe number pad is very nice to have. Since I do quite a bit of data analysis on excel, it is very handy. One little flaw is you will need some time to get used to the location of period key for the numberpad. Another minor flaw is that the key's are pretty hard to strike fast and accurately at the same time. What I'm trying to say is if i'm typing pretty fast, i would miss a letter every 15-20 letters because i'm not concentrating on trying to hit the key hard enough.

SOUND:
The altec Lansing speakers are pretty nice. The sound is nice, and I haven't had any problem with the volume being too "quite" like some have mentioned.(and I didn't mess with the realtek sound properties). You do get a slight a very slight hint of bass with these speakers.

PERFORMANCE:
It is a fast computer. It has slower process than the popular M50sv a1 model which has i think 2.5 ghz, but it's fast enough for me. I wanted to have the bluray because I don't have ps3 and I think without the bluray, the HDMI port would sort of be a waste. So I wanted to be future proof with the bluray drive. the bluray looked pretty good. I say pretty good because the screen (wxga+) isn't powerful enough to fully show the true definition of bluray. But it was still a good HD experience. I haven't done anything graphic intensive other than occasional FEAR playing. When I put the specs to Maximum with resolution of 1024 by 768, it is a bit choppy, but on high it is quite playable. I mean if you were a HARDCORE gamer, you woulnd't buy M50 right?

MISC:
Battery life is.. sub 2 hours no matter what i try. but I don't care too much about that. Only thing is the screen is pretty bright, but compared to my vaio that I recently got rid of, the screen is a bit grainy i think. I don't know if my eyes get tired because the font's smaller than what i'm used to (which is vaio's wxga vs m50's wxga+) or if the screen is just grainier. That would be my only pet peev.

Overall, I give my 1 month experience about 8.5 to 9 out of 10. I like having it around and I am infront of my laptop about 8 hours a day Ithink. I love it.
Thanks Gentech.

 

I just ordered mine with Ken today cant wait to try it out. After returning my HP I hope this is the notebook.

 

Just got done installing windows xp and everything is pretty much faster than vista... cool laptop so far!

Only one thing: the unknown device called ITE8708 is the infrared receiver right?

 

Correct. IR receiver drivers on the CD won't work on XP.

 

A generic google search for keyboard remapping software might help...

Also there is the ASUS Notebook keys (see the Info Booth sticky) but I feel that's geared more towards the hot-buttons / media keys rather than ordinary key remapping. Check it out nevertheless.

 

2 things: first, yah i'd reccomend Ken at Gentech, that's where i bought mine.

second, not sure what audio engineering means but if it has anything to do with selling your own snippets of audio sounds/tracks, i know these guys who are just launching their business and it's set to be the istock photo of the audio business. rippleaudio.com

cheers, ryan.

 

Yea Gentech have been great so far

 

Thanks to Gentech for the FAST shipment of my Laptop. I paid for the XP disk to be included and actually got the laptop with it installed. I didn't even select the option to have them install it.

I would've recieved the laptop even faster had it not been delayed by four days of sand storms in Iraq. Dealing with the post office to ship things to Iraq isn't easy.

I'm very impressed with the laptop itself and also with the effort and personal attention from Gentech.

I couldn't say enough good things about them.

Thank you Ken and thanks for the unbaised review.

 

Hi all first post here I have the M50SV-AS027C i'm in the uk its a great laptop BUT.... I hate vista I have BSOD's all the time so ive ordered another hdd (wasn't sure whether the restore disk would work after formatting the drive?) & i'm gonna install xp..

my questions are all the drivers working for xp?? I have read the other posts and made instructions up ready for the change over & how does the system perform with xp?

And last but not least would anyone be kind enough to post a link ( or host a file) to all the drivers for xp on the M50SV as asus dont provide one .

Great forum guys I look forward to chatting

 

ken has already done that in this thread i believe.

 

Well, Mine (from Geared2play) just made it into the office when I was out to lunch. I just got it unpacked and it's going thru the first boot setup now.

This will take some getting used to going from a 14.1 back to a 15.4 (was using 15.4 before) but the unit really look good. Will be back after I get to play with it a bit.

 

We did go through a name change almost 2 years ago. why wont the admins change my user handle? whyyyyyyyyy? someone please change my user name to the correct site. not that i dont like the old one but i just cant seem to get rid of it. obviously it is still my user name

 

I'm torn...
Question about the which version of the M50 to get:

Newegg has both the 50Sa-X1 with 1gb ATI 3650, 4 gb Ram, and T9300, but 1280x800 screen.

Or the 50Sv-A1 with 512Mb Nvidia 9500M Gs, 3 gb Ram, and T9300, but 1440x900 screen.

Both come with Vista Home Premium which is 32bit I believe. I will not be going 64bit. Other dealers most often have the 50Sv-A1- I haven't seen the 50Sa-X1 yet from a dealer.

So...anyone with experience with both of these? Is 1440x900 significantly better than 1280x800? Or experience whether the increase in screen resolution is worth "losing" 512 Mb by switching to the 9500M from the ATI? I had read a few suggestions the ATI was more power efficient (as it is a smaller die than the Nvidia), and increasing the Ram and vid card memory does sound very appealing...

Anyway, I'm about 95% set on the M50, so I'd appreciate your help to decide what to buy. Most concerned about the difference in screen between the 1440x900 and 1280x800 vs. the vid card and ram. My current monitor on my desktop is non-widescreen, so it's difficult to make a comparison at home.

I would use it to play Oblivion (I bought it but quit because my current computer can't run it as well as it should), GW (probably GW2), do some mild non-HD home video editing. No blu-ray (so the B model I don't care for). I would want the computer to be very future proof, as I currently use a 2.26 ghz P4 desktop that is 5-6 years old, and occasionally use an extremely old Inspirion 5000e "clone" (from Powernotebooks). So I take care of my machines and make them work for me for a long time, and this would have to do the same.

 

Stick with the A1 version (with the 9500m GS). The X1 (or any model with a X suffix for that matter) are cheaper/watered down versions made exclusively for Best Buy and large chain stores as an effort to decrease competition with smaller authorized Asus resellers. I would also highly recommend purchasing an Asus through a reseller instead of larger companies, simply due to better CS.

 

i bought an m50sv-a1 from gentech and im waiting for it to arrive i was wondering would it be able to play Age of Conan on all high graphics?

 

It's hard to tell since the game isn't out yet. But according to the recommended specs, I doubt it can run the game on all high settings and/or high resolutions. (recommended GPU is GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent which translates to about the 8800m gtx for notebooks)

 

I'm looking to buy a brand new notebook, I think M50S is great. Any bad things about it ?

 

Ken, your videos are taking a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time to load

 

Love mine...give it a 9 to 9.5 out of 10. With that said, I think the screen is a little grainy. Wish the battery lasted longer. I think the multi-media touchpad is just ok (I've actually turned the multi-media capability off, so I'm just using it as a regular touchpad).

But, with those small gripes aside, I really, really like mine (esp. once I went into the equalizer and figured out how to make it much louder).

 

I have a question to ask. Hope some can answer it. Thank you

Did anyone try to clean install Vista? How did you do it?

 

OK. Everything is working great so far. I only have one gripe with this laptop. Is there anyway to disable the "mode" button on the trackpad. I keep hitting it accidentally and then I lose pointer movement. It get's to be a pain after a few times.

 

Go to your mouse properties in your control panel. Device settings -> settings -> Tapping -> Dual Mode -> uncheck "Switch to button mode by tapping in the upper-right corner"

 

I did - fresh install of vista ultimate. I formatted the entire drive, did some partitioning (the way I like it), and just installed from the dvd. Then, I inserted the Asus DVD with all the drivers and just installed the drivers. I installed none of the optional software exepct the hotkey stuff. That was it.

The only problem i can see is that my camera is not recognized. I haven't had time to figure that out yet.

Hope this helps.

 

just wondering can the m50sv use the new HDD Samsung 500gb 5400RPM??

 

Are their any ASUS 15inch notebooks with the HD 3650?

 

Yes. ASUS M50 Series M50Sa-AK023C

 

Sounds like you clicked on it to stream/load it into your browser. For videos its always best to right click the link and save the video to your hdd and then watch it.

 

It has a 500gb hdd in the M50SA and its the same laptop just a few different components. The Hitachi is the one they use if I am not mistaken.

 

1: Boot with recovery DVD
2: Proceed to Vista Recovery
3: When the Vista recovery is done it’ll eject the DVD and ask you to insert the drivers CD, don’t insert the drivers CD, instead just turn off the computer by holding power button.
4: Turn the computer back on and it’ll boot straight to Windows desktop with absolutely no drivers and softwares, a clean installation of Winodws.
5: Insert drivers CD and check only the drivers and software you want to install.
6: click start and walk away, it’ll install the checked drivers and softwares automatically.

 

Is there any way of duplicating the recovery partition on the HDD provided in the M50Sv (250GB HDD) to another HDD? I'm interested because a 320GB or 500GB 5400RPM HDD seems more appealing but the recovery partition is really handy, not saying the recovery cd's aren't handy but yeah.. Anyone clued on this matter?

Thanks!

 

I suggest Acronis True Image, it has worked well for me (XP partition, not recovery). I suggest you backup & restore the MBR as well as the recovery partition.

 

Had a look at the Acronis apps, they look like they have just the right features! Though Acronis Migrate Easy looks like its made for transferring a HDD onto another HDD, OS and all.

Thanks for the tip E.B.E. repp

 

True Image does that as well.

 

Thanks. This will really help.

 

I was wondering if anyone has tried undervolting this laptop yet. If anyone has have you seen significant battery life improvements?

Thanks

 

You won't see significant batt life improvement out of Core Duos & more recent (anything more recent than Pentium M) because for some strange reason the voltage for the minimum multiplier is locked... can't be changed. And a current laptop CPU will most of the times be idle in typical desktop usage (I mean emailing, browsing, document editing etc)

Undervolting will be felt when the CPU is pushed to full blast, where the voltages can be decreased. Drop in temps, fan noise, power.

 

Thank you, I'm going to try it tonight.

 

Hi all - This is a great thread and much thanks to everyone who helped me decide on the M50Sv. -downgraded to XP for the sake of CAD Software.

I have a small issue with my M50 and just wondering if anyone else experiences it. I can hear a constant high pitched ring emitting from the notebook. It's barely audible but definitely there. -Seems to be coming from the left side near the fan.

Just wondering if I'm the only one experiencing this..

Thanks for any suggestions

 

Google for the "core duo CPU whine" and you'll be enlightened.
I think that's what you are suffering from. Find the 'run HLT instructions' fix and see if that removes the whine. If so then that's definitely your problem.

or, does the whine "stutter" when you scroll browser windows etc? Does it dissapear when the CPU is pushed to full blast?

Info link: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=3516
(I *think* I got rid of the CPU noise for good, on Core Duo. Please read. [Archive] - Tablet PC Forums, Discussion and Support)

 

Hi all, i plan on buying one of these the A model in perticular next week from Gentech, and just have 1 question. I plan to upgrade the HD to one of the 7200rpm models, and just wondering if i do so, will they still pre-load vista onto it with the new HD before shipping it?

Thanks in advance, and can't wait to order this bad boy

 

Probably Ken will answer himself to the HDD question.

But be aware that nowadays the difference between 7200 RPM and 5400 RPM is not so clear-cut, if it ever was... see for instance here:
http://barefeats.com/pb12.html
and here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hard-disks/average-read-transfer-performance,675.html

In the latter you see that the first HDD is 5400RPM yet it beats all the 7200 RPMs lower on the list...

 

^Wow very fast and informative response, i thank you for that.

Well i guess my question would be then since i primarily will use this for gaming, would the 5400 stock HD or one of the 7200 sea gates perform faster given the options to upgrade with. All my friends are stuck on the fact that 7200's are just flat out "better" and i myself am not nearly up to date like you guys and they are so i was just taking their word for it hehe....perhaps not the best move?

 

The 320gb and 500gb 5400rpm will most likely be faster than the 200gb 7200rpm hard drive.
And yes, if you purchase the hard drive upgrade from gentechpc, they can help you install vista with all the necessary drivers onto the new hard drive prior to shipping.