*Official UL30VT-X1 Owners Lounge*

Uhhh...it doesn't matter if it is doing anything or not, it is STILL going to consume power. That's like leaving a light on in your car and expecting for your car battery to be just fine and dandy when you come back later.

The advertised battery life is with no overclock and integrated video on. Manufacturer's will always advertise the longest time possible, so most likely with the lowest screen brightness, disabling any background processes and letting it just sit there doing nothing.

On the other hand, you have the video card on (probably the cpu overclock also) and you're expecting 10 hours of battery life. You are expecting way too much.

 

Heh ok. I know it's going to consume power, that's why I subtracted 25%. Your analogy is not quite complete though - it DOES MATTER if you're doing something or not. It's going to consume MORE if you are actively using it. Meaning that 3.5 hours shrinks even more when e.g. actively playing a game or decoding video.

The advertised battery life is with no over-clock, integrated video, doing nothing, and with a different battery. So yes, they are legally covered with their asterisks and crap, I just thought some people might wanna know how it holds up in real usage scenarios. And I think they have been slightly more deceptive than most other companies in this regard. Enough to surprise me, anyway. So someone like me may find that info helpful. If you don't that's ok too. :-D

 

The 12 hour battery life has probably always reflected on the 8 cell 5600mAh battery, but for the X1 which doesn't come with it, Amazon seemed to just copy paste the generic specs of the UL30 series machines.

 

I have just received my UL30VT-X1. The vertical viewing angle is horrible to me. I have not seen any references here to that problem, and only a very few scattered ones elsewhere. I have turned the brightness down to about 40%, but have not tinkered with the color profile at all. Does anyone else have this problem with theirs? Is there, perhaps, some display setting that might make this problem less apparent? Thanks in advance for your consideration of my question.

 

Yeah... it has been hinted at here, but yes the screen is pretty bad unless it is pointed DIRECTLY at you. This is a hardware issue, unfortunately, so there isn't much you can do.

I really do love the machine. I know it seems like I'm coming down hard on it here but I'm just trying to make sure people know what they're getting into. Luckily for me I can always point it directly at myself and be near an outlet.

 

Yeah, you'll definitely need to go outlet hunting with this laptop...

 

Ive' found you don't need the RealTek Audio Drivers, if you uninstall them the Windows 7 drivers for HD audio device take over and work just great.

 

Personally (though I never did do a clean install), I uninstalled the OSD software. I don't need no fancy animations!

Does anyone's upper-left power profile switcher button work as a standard user? Surely not everyone is running as an admin.

 

Ugh.. Gizmodo just released a list of the Best Windows Laptops of the year, and the UL30Vt wasn't even listed! The UL30a made the list.
http://gizmodo.com/5421823/the-best...+(Gizmodo)&utm_content=Google+Reader#comments

The UL30Vt should have DEFINITELY won the best of breed for the sub $1000 laptops. The Dell studio 14z took the prize. Talk about uninformed journalism!

}:^)~

 

Not everyone is going to like this laptop. It's not possible.

 

amazon now has it in stock for...$950...

 

Eh, but not Amazon selling it really. Hopefully the REAL Amazon will get it back in stock for the original price soon.

 

whoa 950....
they probably figure we'd go ahead and buy it with demand low

 

Really? The OP's photo of the screen makes it look glossy?
I would really like to know if it is or not. If it is not then I will be buying it.
Also, someone said that $950 is not the right price?
How much is it normally straight from Amazon?

 

It's normally $800 + tax + shipping. Right now, it is the REAL Amazon, not from a third party.

edit: nvm you are right, it is third party, Techno Intelligence.

 

@Thisislaw, it is a glossy screen. I think he was just commenting that it seemed less glossy than other laptops. I hate glossy screens, but bought it anyway, and I can't say that I'm too disappointed. I know everyone seems to be commenting that the screen is sub par, but I think it is a pretty good screen. Its no macbook pro, but its not $2000 either. And if Amazon gets them back in stock they *should* go back to their $799.00 price tag.

 

I got a response from one of the Swedish retailers, and the UL30VT-QX030V also comes w/ a 4400mAh battery. What versions, is any, of the UL30VT ship with a 5600mAh battery?

 

none, yet.

if the UL30VT-A1 comes out (probably in a few months), it is speculated to have the 5600mah battery and will probably be around 50 to 100 dollars more.

i think it's easier (and cheaper) just to buy a ul30vt-x1 and a spare 5600mah (while keeping your 4400).

 

Just received my 5600mah battery in the mail today (from Buy on Ebay)! Will install it tonight and see how it fares over the next day or so.

 

Yeah...I should correct that. It was late and I think my eyes were just bad.

Still, not as mirror-like as plenty of other screens I've seen.

 

is it OEM from asus?

 

I can't believe they compare the Dell 14z to a MacBook. You cant say a computer without DVD is a better deal than one with a drive. I not saying the Macbook is the better deal, its just the list maker needs to compare two more similar laptops. I wouldnt put a laptop with integrated graphics up against one with dedicated.

 

Back in stock! Kinda..

Shipping: Back-ordered. Due in stock December 14 -- order now to reserve yours

$799!

EDIT: Never mind, it's gone.

 

Does anyone know if the wireless card inside is full sized minipcie or if its half sized? I was thinking of getting this laptop, but if I do, I want to switch the wireless card with a 4965 AGN from my xps m1530 since I use a dual band 5ghz router (the card inside the asus doesn't support the 5ghz band).

 

Hey anyone know off hand if these things require a 7mm drive or will they accept a 9.5 also. I was thinking of getting an SSD and never even knew there were more than 2 sizes of 2.5" drives. Also any recommendations on an SSD?

I was using it today, so consider it confirmed. Even downloaded a file at at 5.5MB/s. best wireless card I have had in a notebook yet.

 

Thank you for this update. Please let us know how it goes. If it isn't too much to ask, please take a picture and I'll put it in the FIRST page with the other photos. +rep.

 

I see. If it is normally $800, then that is a decent price. I was ready to buy it for the current price before I found out it is a glossy screen.

I really hate the glossy screens. How bad it it if you are directly outside in the light?

That is okay.
Yeah, if you thought it wasn't glossy then it probably isn't like super glossy or anything like that.

I wonder how well a 13.3" anti-glare film would work.
Everyone likes the battery life?

 

I'd have to say that visibility is sunlight is pretty bad...not a good outdoor laptop. Battery life is not as advertised but still very good.

 

This in and out of stock condition has been confusing. On the first night it went out of stock (Dec. 6 or 7), it said the same message you just said, and it would be in stock Dec. 9. The next day, it was gone, and then someone on this thread said they saw it would be back on Dec. 10. Now you saw Dec. 14. So I'm guessing that each time they put it back on the site, a few people buy them up, and then the date keeps being put further out. At this rate, it seems like it may be difficult to get one by Christmas. I guess I haven't seen this at Amazon before, but I've never been watching an item so closely. I'm still reading reviews and this thread and hoping to make a decision "soon".

 

has anyone gotten the nvidia notebook release 195 to work? it says that it cant locate harware/drivers andexits setup. i have nvidia card enabled but do i have to go into device manager and disable intel?

 

First batch of UL30Vt that were sold in Malaysia came with 320gb HDD,2GB RAM,5600mAh battery and 2 year warranty. The product code was UL30Vt-C730WHP2G320GXB for black and UL30Vt-C730WHP2G320GXS for silver. Perhaps you can check if these codes are also used in Sweden.

No news on 2nd batch or even its availability on this side of the world.

 

For those who are looking to do a clean install. Here are the basics.
1. Download or make an *.iso of the version of the windows 7 64bit you want to install.
2. Use the Microsoft windows USB/DVD Tool to create a bootable usb drive (minimum 4GB drive required) *available for download again at the Microsoft store.
3. Download all the drivers from the Asus website and the utilities you want to install to a separate usb drive or external hard drive. (Power4Gear, Wireless Console)
4. Insert bootable drive and restart machine. Press F2 at startup to enter bios and under the boot menu, change the boot disc priority so that USB is first. Then under "hard disk drives" change the order so that the usb drive is first.
4.Press F10 to save and exit. PC will reboot and the usb drive will be recognized and installation will begin.
*I recommend making the recovery disks before hand or making backup images of your partitions for factory backup and then reclaiming the 14 gig recovery partition during install.

 

I see. How good? It is advertised as 12 hours? Is it 10? Or less?
Anywhere else to buy from other than Amazon?
Since I would have to order from Ebay otherwise...
I could buy the ASUS UL80VT-A1 but it's build quality is not so great...

 

re: The 5600mah battery from Buy on Ebay: Yes, it's an original Asus battery, I plugged it in and BatteryBar indicates it's got the extended capacity (it gives a reading in mWh but it's proportionally higher than the same capacity metric for the regular battery). It looks identical to the 4400mah battery, which coincides with the descriptions of it in the A series laptops.

 

In step 1, you say to either download an ISO file or make one.

1. To download, where do you suggest getting the ISO? If we go to the Microsoft store, we will be charged for it (I think). But we already have Windows 7 Home Premium installed on the UL30vt, so why should we pay for this ISO file? So do you have a preferred place to download this ISO from?

I think the Windows USB/DVD tool only works on ISO's from the Microsoft store, so if the ISO is obtained elsewhere, I'm assuming some other tool must be used to create the bootable USB drive.

2. If we "make" an ISO instead, there are many references to doing this online, but they seem to vary widely in how to do this , and I don't know how reliable they are. So can you refer me to the "best" reference for doing this?

Thanks for your help.

 

Ok, I just put my review on the first page, be nice people.

 

1. Torrents are your friend. It is not illegal to download a copy of the installation disk. You own a license of windows 7 home premium. It would be illegal to use a bootloader to get around having a legitimate product key.
2. the windows usb/dvd tool will work with any iso of windows. Not just those you download directly from MS.
3. Making an iso requires a physical copy of the retail dvd which of course we have but only in the bloated form that Asus packages it in.

 

If you have a dvd of Windows 7 you can used Daemon tools lite to make an ISO. Its free and only one of many programs that allow you to create "backups" of CDs/DVDs

 

you can find a link to the ISO here:

http://lifehacker.com/5391688/iso-downloads-and-fixes-for-windows-7-student-download

(windows 7 home premium; i think there's a link in there for professional)

 

You can just read my review...

 

anyone had any problems booting from a usb drive on the ul30vt? i created an iso from my win7 dvd using imgburn and then used the microsoft win7 usb download tool to put the iso on my 8gb usb drive and make it bootable. when i boot (both on my desktop and my ul30vt), i get "disk read error. press alt-ctrl-del to restart"
i managed to get it to work once on the ul30vt (somehow) but after win7 copied files to the disk and restarted, it gave me the disk read error again.
any thoughts?

 

great review, iclicku.


mind saying a few words about the SSD? is the performance noticeably different? do you see a boost in any games? how about battery life?

 

Good job. Sums it up nicely.

For those interested, I've been redoing my experiment from yesterday (Keeping the laptop nearby with messenger running and refreshing a few websites every 20 min or so) with the integrated graphics instead of the G210. Has been running 4.5 hours now and battery life indicator still shows 53% remaining. I'm happily surprised by how much longer you can go on integrated graphics performing the same tasks. Apparently just having the dedicated card running slurps down the battery over 2x as fast.

 

like someone else said, it's not simply a matter of integrated or discrete.

when the discrete is running, the integrated is sapping power too.

 

Now you're beginning to understand. Glad to hear that you're getting better results.

As for the SSD, boots times are greatly reduced and game load times are reduced as well. Overall system performance is better and feels snappier. Feels faster than my fiance's Sony Z750.

 

Sorry to be dense here, but this is all new to me. I've been trying to figure it all out for several days. I did find an ISO a few days ago by googling for "windows 7 home premium 64 bit iso". It was referenced on the mydigitallife site. However, the WUDT gives an error when I enter that filename, i.e. it says something like "This is an invalid ISO file". So I've been searching for a "better ISO" and finally decided to ask you since you had posted some interesting information.

This was the ISO that I had downloaded.
http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso

I do not have any copy of a Windows 7 DVD. I haven't bought this notebook yet, but I'm getting close. However, you seemed to say that any DVD supplied with it will have all the bloatware. I'm trying to create an "original" Windows 7 install on a USB drive. When I do get this notebook, I wanted to be prepared to do a clean install because it seems like several people have had questions about exactly what bloatware should be removed. Starting from scratch and then adding drivers and utilites sounded like a pretty good idea to me.

So...either I copied some kind of invalid ISO (doubtful), or I got a bad copy of the WUDT. However, I just went and got it tonight after realizing it had been put back in the Microsoft store after fixing the open source issues. It should be the most recent. If someone wants to run it on that digital river file mentioned above and let me know their results, that would be great. If not, I'll keep trying!

Thanks again.

 

where do you download the microsoft windows 7? could you use the same one as the one that came with the laptop?

 

This is to the windows 7 home premium student upgrade which you can still use to do a clean install. Just don't enter the key until after installation has finished.

 

does this add extra weight to the laptop?

 

I am downloading it now and will see if it gives me problems with the windows usb/dvd tool.