*Official UL30VT-X1 Owners Lounge*

5 left! hurry guys! haha. i really hope this comes sometime by the end of this week or early next week.

 

I just came home from work from a hectic Target Electronics shift. I'm glad I checked Amazon. I just purchased 1 of these. There should be like 4 left.

I'm gonna have an awesome Christmas!

 

Sigh. It's gone.

I guess I definitely will be holding out for a newer model, whether it be the UL30vt-A1, or something entirely new.

 

Look at it this way! By waiting you'll get a better screen, a better battery, other improvements and driver issues will have been resolved. I'm waiting thats for sure.

 

Amazon is asking $949.00 again!
Man that suck's!

 

No they aren't, Techno Intelligence is.

 

Again, amazon is not asking it, Techno Intelligence is. Write them a nasty email!
Jay - Ha beat me to it.

 

OK!
Techno Intelligence is asking $949.
Anyway it's way to much for this laptop.

 

argh i can't believe i missed it again!!!! arghghgh

 

ul30vt-a1 has a better screen than ul30vt-x1?

 

But no 210M for graphics:cry:

 

Don't think so. I think major differences between the a1 and x1 models are:

1. Comes in silver
2. Comes with a higher capacity battery

Just got mine today. No problems with any of the hardware yet.

Didn't do a fresh install, just took off some of the bloatware. Anyone mind giving me a list of bloatware programs that are safe to be uninstalled? I know it was mentioned earlier in this thread (my bad!).

Overall, the laptop is pretty much what I was looking for. The centrino sticker left some pretty nasty residue, but nothing some rubbing alcohol won't take care of. The screen has bad viewing angles, backlight bleeding, and some banding, but I'm not as picky as before and for the price, the UL30VT is the best bang for buck.

Still wish it had a backlit keyboard. Anyone try fitting a U80 keyboard in their machine yet?

 

I was just suggesting that the next version of the ul30vt will probably come with a better screen, as will be the same with the next version of the ul80vt. Just guessing though.

 

I doubt it will. Asus has been pretty standard in it's release of these model lines. The color and battery difference will be most likely.

 

I couldn't agree more about it being one of the best laptops.

An interesting thing with my BT is that it won't work if I would have the laptop on my lap and have the mouse 6inches underneath. Its fine unless it's that specific scenario so it may be that it is definitely the antenna's orientation for others?

The Fn+F2 will disable wireless but BT is tied to this?? I find it annoying when I use my mouse.

I'd like to see the insides of this guy but I want to keep mine unopened for the time being. IT'S JUST TOO PERFECT! I want to keep it as minty for as long as possible lol.

 

is it confirmed that the a1 will come in silver?

 

Nope, just hearsay and speculation.

 

Hi guys, finally bit the dust and decided to join nbr as I've been lurking this and the previous speculation thread for a long time now. =)

I've actually been following the developments of the 30VT since early october when there were rumblings at the possible 30VT, which then someone brought up on an Amazon thread. And two months later, it gets released.

This is definitely an awesome laptop in my books. It almost matches every criteria on my list of a laptop, and the major ones being: weight, battery life, processing/graphics power and price.
And I think theres a huge market for laptops like this. Im not sure why ASUS or any other manufacturer seems to NOT take notice of this. The ones that did exist were high end Sonys and Macbooks which cost a fortune.

Now post CULV, and manufacturers still seem to stick in those integrated graphics cards that cant even handle youtube properly. Sure the average user wont even care about the nitty grittys but the market for the "average" user seems rather over saturated imo. Theres a huge glutton of similar configured laptops that cram the aisles of every big box store.

Anyhow that said, kudos to ASUS on their VT line. But like I said, Im not sure why ASUS couldnt forsee the demand. They could have been possibly projecting sales based on their 80VT sales, and hence the backlog of demands for the 30VT. Or more simply it could just have been a manufacturing process which caused the backlog. This shortage is really in a bad time for ASUS, especially heading into christmas and more importantly, with CES2010 around the corner....

BUT, now with CES2010 coming up (Jan. 7th), I think we can expect to see a boom in CULV laptops that will debut. Lets see if any other manufacturers step up and challenge the VT. For those (read: Canadians) waiting on the 30VT either X1 or the speculated A1 and won't be receiving one prior to 2010, you might as well wait until post CES to see if any announced laptops look promising. The earliest those will start shipping will be probably late January if you can wait that long.

Not sure what exactly I was trying to get to with this post haha...but thats my 2cents worth I suppose.

 

Thanks guys!
But can't I use the optical drive inside another computer to create an image file with imgburn and then copy the file to the UL30vt either via LAN or with an external hard drive and finally virtually mount it with daemon tools?

 

Thanks for the numbers!
+1 rep for your quick answers
I'm used to play with low settings already so than I suppose it will work just fine for me

 

Yup. Isn't that what they said though? You have to use an optical drive from whichever machine to generate the image file, find a way to transfer it over and then mount it.

Is your question more along the lines of whether or not it has to be an optical drive connected to the laptop as opposed to being connected to another machine? If so, no, it doesn't matter.

 

@1K3

Agreed. But as usual, play the waiting game only if you don't need/want a laptop at the time.

The only other laptop I was considering was the MBP, but with it's inferior graphics capability and steeper pricing, I ended up buying the Asus.

That said, after the initial excitement of finally getting the UL30VT, I am a LITTLE disappointed in how unforgiving the viewing angles of the VT's screen is, but I'll get over it.

 

If you guys plan on gaming on this little bugger and it appears to be held back by the GPU, it might serve you well to turn off the Turbo 33 on the CPU as it will result in huge power savings. According to AT:

3DMark 06 for 1.3Ghz stock is 30 watts power draw.

3DMark 06 for 1.7Ghz is 38 watts power draw.

If you have the 84 Watt hour battery, those constant 8 watts would result is slightly over an extra hour of usage. Not bad for gaming... It would probably get this thing to over 3 to 3.5 hours of run time.

I will test this when I get home, but also keep in mind that AT's numbers are with a Kilowatt meter and are on the A/C side... So depending on the efficeincy of the power bricks ability to convert AC to DC, we can probably scoop 20% off of those numbers. In other words, 24 watts versus 30.5 in the above scenario. Take 84 watt hours and divide by 24 and you will get 3.4 hours of run time. Seems extremely likely in this case... As my 63 Watt Hour gets 1 hour and 55 minutes with turbo enabled. 63 watt hours and divide by 30.4 and get 2 hours and 11 minutes or so... Pretty close calculation.

Anywy, just thought I would share this BECAUSE often times, the GPU will be holding performance back, which means that the CPU can be down clocked with very little real world performance drop off in many games. But again, this is game dependant for the most part... Test it out and report and see if lines up with AT's review - I know I will.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3689&p=12

 

I'm not sure if you found it yet, but the switch is Fn+F2 for me. It opens up a little display box and you can check off bluetooth/wireless, but I'd also rather see a physical switch instead.

The display on the UL30vt is what is bothering me the most. The vertical viewing angles are pretty bad. While sitting on a desk, I have to move the screen angle if I change my posture a slight bit. I never had to do this on my older Asus F3sv series, which had a significantly larger screen (15.6"). The glossy screen also detracts from the view quality as well...at least LCD OFF (Fn+F7) also serves as a free mirror.

 

With regards to the absent optical drive, if you have a desktop computer with a disk drive in it, you can map the disk drive over the network. That way you can just throw a cd into your desktop and use it on your laptop. Only problem is when there is no CD in the drive you get the "unable to map network drive" message.

I'd just map it and install all your games and software you have dvds for, and then delete the mapped drive.

 

so how do we use the turbo Fn+space or what ???

 

For those unclear... Turbo is controlled in the Power 4 Gear application. If you want to disable Turble, you will need to load Power 4 Gear, and then in the lower left hand corner you have the ability to turn it off. If you turn it off (or on) it will require a reboot. So Turbo is NOT controlled by the Function + Spacebar key. That just controls the power profiles, which incidently will be able to control Integrated + Dedicated GPU among all your other power settings.

Edit ** One more note: Turbo is enabled by Default. It is 'aways on' regardless of whether or not you having 'power saver' or 'performance' profiles selected. To disable it, read above.

 

If I do not have the turbo button option (but have Power4Gear installed) is the cpu always overclocked? Or not overclocked at all?

What driver am I missing that will let me enable/disable the overclocking? (I had thought I installed all necessary drivers, but apparently not)

The graphics switching and power modes all work fine, so this seems to be a separate driver I need.

Thanks.

 

[This is also posted in the UL80VT thread]
I have two questions.

1. I'm trying to calibrate the screen to get optimal display settings (color, gamma, etc.) for both integrated and discrete graphics modes. Can someone who has done this already post the "settings" they are currently using for both modes?

2. Similar question for the trackpad. Can someone please post the settings they have the pointer "speed", scrolling speed etc. - I find the pointer a little sensitive/finicky and wanted to try some "optimized" settings.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated!

 

Anyone notice that from Anand's review, the HPMini 311 and UL80VT (Integegrated stock 1.3Ghz) pulls the same wattage under CPU load (Cinebench)... That is incredable... Seriously. Seriously incredable. The CULV's are what the ATOM *should* have been... The Atom *IS* Garbage... I can say that now because I have owned it.

Has anyone played around with overclocking/underclocking the nVidia GPU? I would be interested in underclocking it to conserve power under load. Lets face it, a 1.3Ghz CULV & 9400M was the perfect match for power/performance. So maybe down clocking the GPU (undervolt, even?) and leaving the CPU stock could result in some great battery life while gaming. I'll probably be playing with my laptop tonight since I will be getting my new battery at some point today.

 

ok thats good to hear
now about the button that switches gpu
i understand high performance mode G210 gpu
integrated graphices
what is that third option

 

What kind of protective sleeve do you guys recommend for this laptop? I saw one posted earlier, but I forgot what page it was on.

:3

 

what exactly does maximum processor state mean? I see this in each category of power4gears, but i'm not sure what that setting means.... lower to get more batter life? or?

 

zeroshock III`

 

Yes. (very late reply, but maybe someone else will find it useful)

 

I just got confused when stauffer4918 said "your going to need to get an external optical drive either way", doesn't it mean that I need an external optical drive?..

Anyway, you three answered my question and for that I thank you!

 

How about the new and supposedly improved ZeroShock IV?
http://www.gearzap.com/blog/2009/12/zeroshock-iv-advanced-laptop-cases-launched/
Does anyone happen to have this version and could give some impressions about it?

 

Hello.

Has anyone tried out how much PassMark scores while in turbo mode? I'm a bit worried about the processing power of CULVs.

 

didn't know they had a fourth edition

 

That Zeroshock IV looks pretty sexy, but doesn't have the outside zipper compartment that the ZS III has.

http://www.gearzap.com/zeroshock-iv-advanced-laptop-case-13-3.html

It seems like they replaced that compartment with a smaller non-zipper compartment on the inside of the case. I have the ZS III and I am very happy with it. I've posted about the ZS III a bunch of times before in this thread, I'm just too lazy to go dig them out, so go search for them if you want to know more ;D

 

Ah, good point, now I only need to decide if I want the compartment on the inside or the outside.. Yeah I remember there was some talk about it but since the in thread search doesn't work it's a pain in the to get to.. maybe tomorrow at work

PS. Can't wait til Monday when I'm going over to Stockholm to pick up my UL30VT!

 

Still on the issue of XP drivers from several pages ago.

I tried the XP virtual machine on Win 7 Pro but unfortunately it doesn't allow you to install graphic card drivers on the virtual machine. It comes with a 16 bit 900x600 graph driver and thats it.

It means that my old software still does not work and I need to make a dual boot win 7 / XP.
Anyone in the meantime had any success finding XP drivers for this Notebook ?

Thx,

 

I've toyed around with XP compatibility mode and this was my main tweak with it. I read that it wasn't possible to adjust the driver and you were stuck with the slow default ones. Have you tried just running your software in 'seamless' mode? (installing it to the virtual environment then running it from windows 7 start menu).

Otherwise you can do the dual boot, or you can do Virtualbox, which is much more versatile IMO.

 

Yea you and me both. We got so hyped up with Nvidia's Ion only to realize that it's completely Atom's fault we're not getting what we wanted.

But then again, I thought switchable graphics weren't staying around so I was looking for a good combination of battery and performance at the time. I lost that gamble =/

 

I would like to get a bit of input here. I have been spending WAY too much time reading these forums over the past couple of months, and had decided on the UL30 A2 before the VT was released. Drawn by having the best, I am leaning towards the VT. However, the question is, do I really need it?

I do not game. I do hope to use this as my primary multimedia source for streaming video from Netflix, Hulu, etc. I do multitask w/ various office and windows applications, but I do not edit videos, etc.

Therefore, will the A2 suffice for the next 3-4 years, or should I spring for the VT?

Thank you.

 

Just come from a talk with the guys from tech and they told me that I indeed need to have the XP as the boot o.s. if I want to work without problems.

So, just remains the dual boot option which, without proper xp drivers, is probably a headache.

 

There is a version of the UL30 that comes with a XP Pro downgrade CD, so I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult. That version came with the 4500MHD, so I'm not sure if there are drivers for the Nvidia 210M.

 

UL30VT-A1 (more or less) announced!

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-model/...ft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B002XZLURC&store=pc

ASUS says:
Due to overwhelming demand for the UL30VT-X1, ASUS will start selling a sliver UL30VT model in January. I apologize for an earlier post on another topic regarding there being little or no chance of a silver model coming before the end of January. The silver model just showed up on a report and I had no warning. Expect to see it available for pre-sale the last week of December and start shipping a couple weeks later.

 

totally saw this sh*t coming from ASUS. they always do this type of stuff and announce model after model.

 

Well, it's great for those of us who did wait! Patience is key. And I'm sure I'll slightly regret it after CES '10 as well. =)

Such is the way of these things.