*Official UL30VT-X1 Owners Lounge*

i recommend cccp's codecs and it will allow you to use windows media player to play all formats including mkv

 

Yeah, I started doing some research and found the VLC's mkv support is outdated.

 

Just installed the latest K-Lite codec and am thrilled. With the lowest CPU setting (1Ghz-turbo), and integrated graphics, CPU usage is about 30%! That's awesome! CCCP codec didn't even give me that good results-CPU usage was about 80-90%! Plus all the stuttering is gone. Thanks guys!

Edit: Even with turbo off, lowest cpu speed is 800mhz on integrated graphics, it still plays well with no skipping at all. Since this is my secondary machine, that's all the processing power I need! If I need to do some serious computing, I'll use my HDX18T with QX9300 quadcore.

 

Test this: http://www.bigandfree.com/11047869

 

Now that few of you's here own this laptop, can someone update me with the viewing angle problem? I cant decide if I should get this or the UL30A-A2. Only thing bothering me with the UL30a is the wifi issue. Hope the wifi is different on this UL30vt

 

The UL30VT-A1's have intel 1000 BGN cards, Mine seems pretty stable. When the 6300's come out I'll grab one for the ABGN x3.

 

my ul30vt-a1 doesn't have intel... "Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter" here. it's stable enough though. i think they have resolved the previous issues some of the ul30-a1 users reported.

 

My UL30VT-A1 came with an atheros wifi card. I have yet to see a dropped connection or poor signal.

 

i have the same card and it only dropped my internet a few times so far...hopefully it's not a reoccurring thing

 

to be honest the viewing angles are that bad...if you have the laptop sitting on a desk or table, it would be fine...if you are using it while in bed, get ready to adjust it a lot....

 

Is it just this particular series of Atheros thats causing trouble?
My 4 y.o. Acer uses an Atheros AR500SG card and I've had no trouble all this time. I've used signals with one bar of reception on hours without dropping.

At first when I read that the asus packed an atheros, I was actually kinda glad it did after having such a good track record on my old Acer.

 

I had mine for a month or so use it all the time! Battery life is definitely in the 6 hour range for the first model. Viewing angles are still garbage and the keyboard is not as stiff as I'd like. Everything else works great.

I own two SSDs (Intel 80GB gen 2 and OCX Vertex 60) and think they are a waste of money. I put back the stock 500GB in because all the SSDs do is reduce the boot/hibernate times by 10 second (whoopee)

 

Just checked my ul30vt-a1 and it also has this issue. I don't think I would have ever noticed this!

In general, the build quality is solid but it suffers from fit-and-finish issues like this.

Example: I am a "heavy press" typer and I noticed significant flex on the left side of the keyboard. This was driving me crazy because the keys on that side of the keyboard would frequently make a little "springy" sound when pressed too hard which broke my concentration and made me think I was destroying the keyboard. I ended up popping out the keyboard and found that the keyboard itself is actually quite sturdy but sits in a shallow bay that is slightly uneven and this was causing the flex and springy sound. I used a tiny bit of styrofoam to even it out and now it is fine.

Overall the performance and battery life is so darn good that it greatly overshadows these issues. I am a developer and this thing is 2x faster than my old Dell Latittude D620 (Intel T7200 2.0 GHz, DDR2, 667 Mhz FSB). I was pleasantly surprised at the performance as I was anticipating only a slight performance gain offset by better video and battery usage.

 

Alright, nuts to the JT, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the VT-A1. So, thinking ahead already, it comes with Win 7 Home, and I have a copy of Win 7 Pro. Can I install Win 7 Pro from a flash drive? I don't think I'm interested in keeping whatever software Asus ships with it so I don't mind a complete reboot, as long as the drivers and stuff will be ok.

 

I have zero experience with Win7, so take that into account.
However, If it's anything like Vista, drivers and utilities should be relatively easy to install from the dedicated disk provided by ASUS, and the upgrade to Pro should be painless.

 

Atheros here too. Only mine is AR5B95 according to the sticker on the back, while Device Manager lists AR9285... what's up with that?

 

Indeed the performance is quite good on this. It's more than acceptable for me. My other laptop is the HDX18T QX9300 quadcore. I did install a 7200rpm ST9500420ASG drive on it and it feels snappy enough. I never did use it with the 5400rpm stock drive. It's now in my enclosure.

My previous laptop before this and my HDX18T was a Dell Inspiron 9200 with a 2.0Ghz Pentium M. That was stolen this past summer and anything after that was a huge upgrade.

 

I install Win7-64bit Ultimate on it. I did a clean install and then use Asus' driver CD to reinstall the drivers. It's SO MUCH easier than downloading them from the website. Just be sure to not install all the junkware that came with it.

I followed this wonderful guide to the junkware from Asus at NBR and it was very helpful ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=380681).

 

Hm, well I don't have an external dvd drive, so flash drive is my only choice. I imagine I can also put on the asus drivers, hopefully it works as well as yours went.

 

I recommend buying an external drive. I think it's very useful especially for installing software that's not downloadable. I know that's rare. I bought Lite-On's ETAU208. Works perfectly on single usb-port power.

 

Just a quick question to everyone in their bios. Under Advanced->IDE Configuration, does anyone have the option "Free Fall Protection"? I am wondering whether that shows up only because I have the Seagate ST9500420ASG drive with G-Force fall protection.

 

Nope, not in mine with the stock 500GB drive (VT-A1 model).

 

Right, after fixing HD playback issues, I've noticed that every time my computer comes back from sleep\hibernation it stutters, everything goes really slow etc...

I figured out it's because the nvidia app goes into power saving mode.
So first, is there a way to disable it from changing it every time? and second, shouldn't this laptop be able to handle Win 7 (consider aero is on) even without the discreet card?

 

You'll have to be careful about this upgrade. When I made the upgrade to a SSD HD, I saw that there were only two wireless antennas. I think you'll need three in order to have the other intel wireless (5000-6000 series) models work. So make sure it's compatible.

 

My UL30VT-A1 came with an Antheros 9285 wifi card. If I am also not mistaken, it's a single antenna card. I believe I saw that when I upgraded my hdd to the 7200rpm one.

 

Two questions for owners..

Can someone confirm that the only differences between the A1 and X1 model are color and battery? If that's so, then can someone confirm that I can get an identical 5600mAh battery for the X1 and have it last just as long as the A1?

Also wondering about the wireless card in each.. Does everyone who has the A1 have the an Atheros wifi? AR5B95 or AR9285? Does everyone who has the X1 have an Intel?

 

On my ul30a-a2, I installed Haali Media Splitter to get mkv files to play in WMP. Installing DivX will work too, but unnecessary.

 

Color, battery, AND warranty: VT-A1 comes with ASUS 2 year, X1 1 year.

 

Have not kept with the posts... can someone tell me if I should wait for Amazon to restock this laptop or buy from another reseller? Who has this thing for a good price at the moment? Gentech?

 

Did anyone notice that your wifi card is missing an antenna? If you open the hdd compartment, you will readily see the half-height mini-pcie wifi card exposed. On mine, only one antenna is plugged in. There's no sight of the other antenna. I think I remember seeing an online video of someone else's ul30vt also with only one antenna installed.

Edit: My bad, this video I am referring to ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a6iRlT0_-k) shows that two of the antenna is attached. Did I get shortchanged?

Mine is the UL30VT-A1

 

I don't know if others have experienced trouble with the built-in microphone when using Skype (or other). I did a clean install of Windows 7, and based on what someone else said in this thread, I did not install the Realtek audio drivers after that. When trying to do the Skype test call or when trying to Skype with others, the microphone volume was very poor, even at the highest settings and with boost.

Then I installed the Realtek drivers, and the problem is fixed. I would guess that those who are not complaining after a clean install (and no subsequent Realtek driver install) must not be using the microphone. As far as the output from the speakers, I didn't do enough with them before or after the Realtek install to know if they have improved.

 

Re: missing antenna.

I just did some digging at the UL30 forum and they have the same thing. Only one antenna is attached. The UL30VT-A1 also came with the Atheros 9825 card. The X1 in the video I posted was the X1 version and it came with the Intel 5100 card.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5496643&highlight=antenna#post5496643

Take a look at the photo on the last post on the page (post #400)

 

For those who are interested on playing media with the lowest CPU usage based only on my experience you may want to try BS Player. I found it when i was trying to run a 720P xvid avi file on my Dell Laptop with a Pentium M CPU that's over 5 years old and uses a 32MB ATI Mobility GPU. Surprisingly it worked and as long as i wasn't doing anything else i could watch a good 20mins before my laptop freezes up. Nothing to do with the program just old laptop. I was amazed that i can even run it cuz no other program did.

I'm logically assuming a low CPU utilization equates to longer battery life and much lower temperature. So if anyone can try it out, we'll be able to verify. My own Dell laptop battery only lasts 30mins left idle cuz it's been 5 years now since i got the unit. I can verify that the CPU utilization was lower and so was the temperature based on my own testing but i can't vouch for battery on my old laptop.

BS Player worked better then Windows Media Player,CCCP codec,K Lite, VLC or anything else that's available when i tried it out.

http://www.bsplayer.org/

free version can be downloaded here
http://www.bsplayer.org/bsplayer-english/download.html

be aware that it uses it's own set of codecs and may conflict with your existing ones so you may need to uninstall those before testing this one out.

So if anyone can test it out on their laptop and verify CPU/Temperature and battery life we can then decide which one is best.

 

Thanks! As for WoW as you know it's a really hard program to benchmark as it's so dependent on the location and number of other players and even angle of view (top down performs much faster than landscape). But at the settings I was using I was getting mid-40 FPS in Dalaran with moderate street traffic; in comparison in the same situation my G51J gets high-20s at max. Hard to believe, I know, but at 1920 by 1080 the G51 has to push twice the number of pixels. Anyway I'll try to remember to check max settings on the UL30 next time I play WoW on it and report back.

DAVID, any word on the backlit keyboard mod?

 

Yeah, I have an extra ant from a bluetooth card so an intel 6300 will work fine. I find it odd that people have an Atheros, yet I have an intel 1000 ABG in mine stock. Mine has the bigger battery, fixed chassie and 500gb hd. Only thing it seems to be lacking is ram, I only have a single 2gb ddr3 sodimm, I plan on throwing 4gb of ddr3 to get dual channel from my G51J into it and getting 8gb for the G51J.

 

Regarding playing WoW, I would love to get some more statistics on that - especially some org/IF high pop fps.
Also, have you made any modifications to the system? A clean install? A new harddrive?
Thanks very much for your post
I'll get my vt-a1 on wednesday

 

I got my UL30Vt yesterday, and I'm loving it. However, 4 times now the hard drive has made a loud clanking/clinking/clicking sound, that goes on for about 20 seconds or so, freezing the computer. It has sometimes just corrected itself, but other times I had to restart the computer.

Does anybody know what could be causing this? Do I need to replace the hard drive? I was thinking about getting a 7200rpm one anyway...

 

A clicking hard drive can be a sign of the hard drive failing soon. I would definitely talk to asus. Sorry to bring the bad news.

 

What hard drives are coming with these things anyway? Seagate? WD? Hitachi?

 

500GB Seagate Momentus 5400RPM.

 

Just a question about warranty. I'm getting the A1 FedEx'ed to me from HK to Australia for $930AU shipped.

How exactly the the Asus Global Warranty work? Is it no matter where in the world I am I can take it to an Asus office to get it shipped off and repaired?

 

Anyone in the UK got there hands on the A1. Only place I can find it is amazon.com and I don't know if they'll ship it to uk or how that affects the warranty. Plus the possible customs charges.

 

After a little less than a week with my UL30Vt I must say that I'm impressed. Due to some earlier reported criticism, I was a little worried about the screen, but the quality is actually pretty good. Granted, I would prefer a matte over a glossy screen, and the viewing angles could be somewhat wider (it's not bad as it is already).

There one things I haven't figured out yet:

How do I get audio output over HDMI?

 

Yes - except if it arrives dead on arrival. In that case you have to ship it back to your place of purchase (in your case HK) for replacement.

If the model you get works fine at the beginning, then it breaks down later on, Asus Australia will help with the repair.

 

Mine switches as soon as I have the cable plugged in and switch to HDMI video output.

Try this: With the HDMI plugged in and displaying, right click on the volume icon and choose playback devices. I think an HDMI option should show up in the list along with speakers. See if you can choose it and set it as default. That might switch it.

 

An update regarding the backlit keyboard mod on the UL30VT series. It's not an easy swap. Although the size is a perfect match, the backlit keyboard has a second connector that must be fitted to a power supply on the motherboard (which the UL30VT doesn't have). The alternative is to use wire glue and to connect the connector to a USB port as seen here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=428960

This will be my next project as soon as I get back to the US.

 

Funny you should ask about the hard drive; I just replaced the stock Seagate with a 320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200 RPM (WD3200BJKTSP), and up popped the free-fall protection setting in the BIOS, set as "enabled". Nice. I do have a little bit of vibration and a tiny bit of noise from the drive but I'm hoping that will all settle down as it breaks in; performance-wise it makes for a noticeably faster boot up, apps open and close faster, etc.

Anyway that's been consuming my game time, but Dalaran is if anything more resource intensive than Ironforge, so I'd expect the FPS to be roughly equal with similar populations on screen. I think you'll be very pleased; I was.

No fresh install, no other mods but the new disk.

 

Thanks for the update. The videos you point to have been removed by the owner from YouTube, so I'm still in the dark (pun) about how complicated a process it might be. In any event I wouldn't want to dedicate a USB port to it, and wonder if there's any other way to rig it so you could switch the backlight on and off? Maybe use the GraphiX Boost switch since choosing the Intel or nVidia GPU is so easy to do via software?

 

Bummer. Thank you for being the guinea pig.

 

After having my latop for about a week, I am absolutely in love with it. It has performed great and the only gripe I have are the speakers. They are under the front of the laptop and only sound decent on a desk or table. If the laptop is on your LAP or your bed the sound is pretty bad.