S96J Owners Lounge!!!

is there any program or mayby an other way that i can make the vent run all the time?

 

Iam planning to buy an s96j too,can anyone here recommend me where I can get the best price ?

 

I asked the same thing, see te page before this^^
the best options that I have seen are powernotebooks.com or gentechpc.com

saludos^^

 

thanks suteki.. what is actually the difference between the s96j and z96j?

 

Z96 has higher resolution screen and built-in bluetooth. Warranty is through Asus rather than intel. The Z96 is not officially part of the VBi program, but it gets the benefits of it. The S96 is part of the VBi program, and therefore the warranty is through intel. inte'ls warranty policies are utter crap, so I would definately go with the Z96. Infact, I am writing this to you from my Z96 which I've had for a little more than a week. Oh, and the Z96 costs $150 more than the S96.

I highly recommend Geared2Play for buying Asus notebooks, if you live on the East coast that is. They are still a good choice even if you live on the West coast, but normally I would look for someplace that is close to home incase anything ever happens. This is a result of the bad experience I had with Ibuypower, located in California, while I live on the East coast.

I am finishing up my Z96 review, you should be able to see it soon.

 

Thank's JPZ for your brief explanaton. Maybe I'll go and get the Z96.

 

Good choice. =)

You may want to wait to read my review. Will post a link here on NBR soon. Posting review on www.asusforum.com right now, but it still needs a lot of finishing touches. Might not get done tonight.

 

is there anyway to save the brightness setting on power4gear?

everytime i change the brightness through fn+f5 it resets when i reboot the computer. this becomes quite annoying as id like to keep the brightness on max when plugged into ac.

 

As JPZ stated.

s96j is a Verified By Intel model, warranted strictly by Intel. z96j is BuiltOn Asus model, warranted by your reseller. For further details on the (potential vs. real) downsides to the VBI program going forward, look through Paladin44's posts from a few weeks ago when Donald and Eddie were discussing this.

Some people really don't like the higher res screens due to changes it causes in icons and text size (which can somewhat be compensated with display settings) - you should try to see the difference in person before you commit.

 

ZippoKC:

In the system tray, right click the P4G icon. Click "configuration". You can change the brightness there.

ClearSkies:
Agree with you there. Guess it was Donald from powernotebooks.com instead of Justin from proPortable that was discussing it with Eddie. Like I've said(possibly in other threads) some people have trouble reading the smaller text and such. You can change all this, but I find the WSXGA to be more comfortable than WXGA. Anyone who cannot decide should check out some different resolution screens in person like ClearSkies said.

 

hmmm...

still don't see any brightness configuration option.

 

Ok so if this reply appears like a very nasty "i told you so" that was exactly my intention. Alot of experts here like to undermine my exprtise and it didnt bother me at first but after a while when all you guys chip away at everything i said it got to me so here is what i did. Had the z96j screen taken off and put on the z70va and the z70va screen put on the z96j. The z96j with the z70va screen still displayed the same identical anomaly everyone was talking about while the z70va looked exactly like you expect. Perfect without the anomaly. Anyone else care to challenge what i laid claim to from the get go? I hope not. As for the cause. That would be the ati driver. Thanks and good luck hope this end this stupid "my notebook is grainy i hate it" topic once and for all.

 

Notebook Hardware Control Works Well rather than Power4Gear, v2 of NHC is coming out soon.

I only use NHC when im mobile otherwise I have it off.

If you want to save battery turn your wifi off and underclock you GPU. You should then be able to get about 2:45+ on battery.

 

That's what Iam also considering now, the screen resolution. I have tried to adjust my PC with a 1680 x 840 but it seems too small for me, so I adjust it back again to 1280 x 780. Iam 65% chance on buying a s96j rather than the z96j because of the price and the resolution benefit.

 

That also makes sense given that it's pretty much every Asus notebook with an X1600 that suffers from this. This is still a very new GPU in notebooks.

 

Yeah, the only question is, what the beep is the problem? It's not the screen, as proven by Eddie, but the anomolies do not show up in screen shots or on an external monitor, proving that the output is not faulty. It seems like it is something between the X1600 and the LCD, that is not between the X1600 and VGA out. Doesn't make sense, but then again this issue really doesn't make sense.

I'm going to try and boot up Linux(live CD) and see if the graininess exists there.

 

It does indeed appear under knoppix. Oh, and Eddie. Not the driver. Unless someone took my live cd out of my pocket, and slipped ATI drivers on it, and managed to get it back in my pocket without me noticing.

Perhaps it is a video BIOS anomoly?

 

Just received my S96J from powernotebooks yesterday - So far I'm very happy with it and the service I've gotten from powernotebooks, no problems or concerns - however, I am a little curious about bluetooth. As far as I remember the S96J's didn't have an option for bluetooth, although my laptop is trying to tell me that I do...bluetooth icon on the tray, bluetooth program and options, although I don't have any bluetooth items so I can't really test whether or not it's for real. Also, in my system information it lists my model as a Z96J, although I know that isn't correct, as I have the lower resolution among everything else. Could anyone clear this up for me?

 

Yeah even the S96J's are listed as being Z96J's on the sticker.

 

Wow Eddie, thats a lot of effort you put into trying to solve this problem that only a few were complaining about. Thanks a ton. It was never a huge issue for me, but I'm glad to know that it's a driver/bios issue that can be fixed at some point.

 

I'm still waiting for my S96J...

 

We are so glad you are pleased!

I can virtually guarantee you that you do not have Bluetooth installed.

Since the Z and S models are so similar, and use the same motherboard, the false signals are understandable because Windows will detect that the motherboard supports Bluetooth, but we have never installed a Bluetooth module in a PowerPro A 2:24 ULTRA (S96J).

 

Ken ship your order yet? He's going to ship mine out on Monday.

 

I heard that some of the s96j are available to some reselleres today. So I think you would probably get your's soon.

 

Wow, this is killing me. Today is one month since I ordered my S96J from Gentech. So if your is to be shipped on Monday, it means mine will too... unless they do it tomorrow (assuming they have it in stock), coz you see, Ken told me I'm the first one... topping, the "waiting list", so mine will be shipped first. I've really no desire to give 'em a call or something coz they always keep saying "next week".

Open letter:
I'm sorry, Ken, but I'm taking this really personally knowing that I freaking busted my ass working to get this laptop... and all I do is work 7 days a week and if I had this baby in my hands earlier, life would've been far more pleasent the last month. Stop breaking my heart for once :'(.

I can hardly wait to boot my Kubuntu.... skin is falling, theeth are comming out ....

 

Their shipment comes tomorrow and Ken said Monday-Tuesday for shipout.

 

I'm leaving really soon(Going up to Stanford) and Ken was really nice and said that he would try to get mine shipped tommorrow.
-Ham

 

Hi Sundown,
Sorry to keep you waiting this long, S96J has become one of the best selling Asus notebook ever, the demand is very high and it got sold out almost everywhere a month ago, also the shortage does not only apply to S96J, there is W3J for the fourth time if I remember correctly, there is always one or the other model will be shortage since Asus release the Core Duo notebooks, their notebooks are just so popular.

Finally the shipment is arriving tomorrw and we will have enough to fulfull all pre-orders and new orders. Thank you for your patience.

 

so i finally got mine (sorry if i'm rubbing it in everyone else's face..) and originally i was stoked. STOKED. anyways, through what i expect was my own fault, i'm having a freezing problem. i downloaded/deleted some things i thought wouldn't matter..MSN iTunes NHC & .NET framework 2.0. however i got rid of Framework 1.1 and the PROset wireless stuff, was that bad? that seems to be the last thing i did before the problem happeend..i REALLY don't wanna re-install windows, however its unuseable how it is. any ideas or am i just an idiot? thanx..

 

Get rid of msn and itunes. Some people will tell you to get rid of NHC. I've heard some people have freezing issues with NHC on a core duo system.

 

hmm ok awesome for the quick reply. so no NHC? will power4gear still work? thanx..

 

P4G works fine. I can run NHC on my Z96 fine, but I really don't find it useful or like it very much. Try just uninstalling NHC.

A better option would be to disable programs from startup one by one to find which is the source of the problem.

To do this, open the start menu, click run, and type "msconfig". Run it. Then go to the rightmost tab, and uncheck the process nhc. Apply this, reboot, and if the issue still exists, try disabling msn, and your i(apple) software from startup one by one.

Note, this will not disable you from being able to run any of your programs. I will just keep them from running automatically when you power up your computer.

If you try disabling everything, I would try and run a virus/spyware scan, and if you still don't find anything, I would just do a backup and reformat the computer and do a clean OS install.

EDIT: You might want to reinstall .net 1.1. I don't know much about .net, but you very well might need it even if you have .net 2.

Uninstalling the pro-set wireless is fine, as long as you did not uninstall the wireless drivers along with it. You might want to keep it on there though, because I think you need it to be able to disable your wireless(I think you need pro-set to disable wireless, but it might just be the wireless console).

 

Mine got shipped last night thanks to Ken.

T2500 2.0GHz 2M 667
Corsair 2GB (2X1024)
Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm
8 x DVDRW Dual Layer Slot-Load

 

Congrats to all you new owners and soon to be owners.

 

So I'm looking to buy the S96J but I really want to make sure I get the best deal out of it. I live in Oregon which is right above California-- so where would be best for me to buy the S96J? And also, I'm attending OSU this fall term as a freshman so are there any discounts available to me?

 

There will be discounts, but not on this kind of laptop (i.e. with an x1600). Gentech and powernotebooks.com are the best places.

 

What do you mean? I got a student discount on my Z96J from G2P. G2P is a great reseller, but you might want to look for something a little more local. G2P is in NYC. Not that you can't order from them, but it just might be easier to buy from something in say, California.

 

Definitely go with Gentech then since they're based in CA and their shipping would probably take a couple days to get up to Oregon.

 

I PM'd Ken Lee of GenTech yesterday morning, e-mailed him AND the GenTech PC website e-mail. So right now I'm waiting for a reply

 

Slot load? I *love* slot-load drives almost as much as I hate those with the tray, but they seem so rare. Where did you order from? Or do you plan to buy one aftermarket and install it?

C.

 

If you buy a barebones, you can install a slot load drive yourself. I still prefer a tray-drive myself. You'll have to get a drive with your S96J from the reseller you buy it from, otherwise you will not have the necessary mounting bracket. Supposedly, there have been claims made that some of the Z96 units came with a mountin bracket, unlike the S96's. Eddie from G2P told me that some, but not all of, the Z96's he received had a mounting bracket included. The drive will work without a mounting bracket, but without a bracket there is the possibility of the drive just falling or sliding out of the laptop.

 

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the educated reply.

C.

 

ok thanx for the help so far. however one more, whenever the DVD drive is in use, music skips almost incessantly. this happens both when the music is coming from the drive (watchin DVD) and having media player run while something is installing. any ideas?

 

Hmmm... keep an eye on your CPU useage during skipping. Get back to us on that.

Also watch your hard disk access. Do things skip running from the hard disk? Perhaps you have spin-down enabled or something. Also, does this happen only with movies? Perhaps it is powerplay. Also, try using different DVD software.

 

ok i came on here so soon cause I thought i fixed it, however i realize now i am mistaken. ya i tried some freeware DVD players (cliprex, AVS, then finally theatertek) because, and hopefully its not just me, Media Player can't play DVD's. at least ive never witnessed it. the message saying "we can't play this, change ur video setting or go thru the troublemaker to see whats wrong" comes up. however after TheaterTek installed, each program worked to play the disc, albeit poorly. heres the tihng tho, theatretek wants DMA turned on, but device manager says it is, however it appears as tho it isn't because when 'new' video is played (anything more than the opening 10 seconds i watched the previous trial) i'm using 30% of one core. which brings me back to the start, i had moments of tribulation when the opening scene played smoothly (with 1-2% usage) until i got to a point i hadn't made it before. i hope that makes sense..lol and thanx again. oh by the way i can play video files from my hard drive thru media player with no problems..now i'll proofread..

 

ok i got whats wrong now. theres no real mpeg-2/DVD decoder on here. the only reason theatertek would make it work is because its packaged with an nVidia codec. so i'll try re-installing, something, and see what happens..

 

OK. I use an ATI DVD decoder which came packaged with my desktop X800xl. It was the special DVD edition, that came with some ATI demos on a DVD and gave you a free copy of ATI's DVD decoder so you could watch the DVD. Best part was, the DVD edition was cheaper at the time than the normal X800xl. That decoder seems to work very well on this notebook.

Make sure DMA is enabled in the BIOS. I don't know if you have DMA options with your S96 BIOS, but you probably should.

 

From GenTechPC. A friend of mine used to tell me how he kept breaking the ones with trays so I decided to give it a try after experiencing some of the stuff on his Mac.

 

Funny. I've never seen a broken drive tray. Never even heard of one breaking. But I have heard of slot loaders getting screwed up.

Maybe you should tell you friend to stop using the drive tray as a cup holder for 48oz sodas. Just kidding. =)

Only once have I ever seen a broken optical drive. A few months ago, a CD shattered(Yes- My live CD was spinning so fast it literally shattered) in my secondary optical drive for my desktop which I built a few months ago. But that could have happened with just about any CD drive.

I've honestly never seen or heard of a broken laptop tray drive. And I've seen some pretty mis-handled laptops, damaged by some pretty careless people. I also have 4 laptops in my house- and I've never had a problem with any of those. All 4 laptops are different makes and brands. None of them ever seemed like there was a chance the tray would break.

Not that I am opposed to a slot-loading drive... I just find it funny that someone has broken not one but multiple laptop tray drives.

Hope everyone who wants a slot-loading drive is able to get one in their laptop. Enjoy your S96J's! Or in my case, Z96J. =)

 

I have heard of people breaking the cd tray's on laptops, but I've also heard a lot more of people breaking cd's in slot loading drives. The trays are a lot stronger than a cd, so it's much easier to snap the cd if you get it stuck on something or puch down to hard on it.