S96J Owners Lounge!!!

Aye. Slot-loading drives are not fun when your CD's don't come out. You usually end up with a broken CD, or a ruined optical drive. The best is when you get a rented DVD stuck in the slot-loader so you can't return it. Replacement drive charges AND late fees! Haha!

I wonder how common broken drive trays are... and how hard it is to break one. I've got an old CD drive from an HP laptop I pulled apart a while ago. I was planning on selling the parts on eBay but haven't gotten around to it. The drive isn't worth much anyway... HMMM. Hehe.

 

a quick question about the latest bios update on the intel website

what things are changed in this bios update ,apart of the meron thing,and how do i install it?

 

If you don't know how to update a BIOS, I would highly suggest not doing so unless you have a valid reason for needing to update a BIOS. It is a risky process, and if you screw up, you will be left with a useless pile of silicon that won't do anything and is basically unrepairable. Unless you know someone who has an EEPROM flash programmer or whatever that piece of machinery is called, you'll have to send in the notebook and wait for them to replace the motherboard.

 

Go to Notebookforums.com and Ken (Gentech PC) has made a bootable image of the newest bios.
-Ham

 

Now THAT is some excellent advice.

You are also risking voiding your warranty and support. People who update their BIOS without going to the OEM or reseller first to make sure it is certied, AND that it addresses an issue they are having with your laptop, are doing so at their own risk. It is purely foolish to update to a new BIOS just because it is there.

 

Yup Yup, I used that and followed his instructions, went without a hitch and now my S96J is meron compatible.

 

LMAO!!!! "Uninstall a BIOS". HAHAHAHA. I can't believe I typed that.

I've never heard of a reseller voiding someone's warranty because they updated their BIOS- and how can you even tell? If they don't mess up, that is?

 

A side note to all those who are planning on purchasing a barebones computer and installing a merom:

IN ORDER TO SUPPORT THE MEROM, YOU NEED A BIOS UPDATE. TO UPDATE THE BIOS, YOU NEED A CPU THAT IS ALREADY SUPPORTED BY YOUR BIOS.

I would imagine that in a short while all the the S96's and Z96's will be shipping with the updated BIOS so it won't be an issue. It appears that there is minimal support for the Merom in this case with the S and Z96's, and you very well might be able to update the bios without purchasing a Yonah. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that there is a chance you **might** need a yonah first before you can use your merom.

 

Ok this is kinda changing the subject but I got a s96j and it should arrive on the 16th :asus:

Oh when you put the computer together can you put Arctic silver 5 on the gpu too or would that be bad?

 

Arctic Silver 5 on the GPU is just fine as long as you do it correctly.

Instructions are on the Arctic Silver 5 website.

 

I do not quite remember, but doesn't the S96J use thermal pads on the memory? If so, you should only use As5 on the GPU core and not on the memory. Basically, replace paste with paste and leave pads as they are.

 

congrat !

... see you later in the

S96J Graininess Issue Thread

 

lol yeah i'm worried about the whole graininess issue and I got it a Mwave where
I think the first siting appeared.
Does anyone have a T2300 in thier s96j because thats what I bought off ebay for only $100 because i'll be upgrading to core duo 2 in like 6 months.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about that grainyness. I don't notice it still and am afraid to look for it incase i might be extremely annoyed. However, I do love the laptop, my only problem is that the 2-2.5hour of battery life that i am getting i thought would be sufficient, but now it's really starting to annoy me.

I remember reading about it but search doesnt' seem to find it anymore so.....

Does anyone know where i can get the 9-cell battery for the s96j?

Does anyone have a picture or know just how far it sticks out? Is it in the back or the bottom?

Does anyone know if i can trade in my 6-cell battery for the 9 so it'll b cheaper than just buying a new battery and having the 6-cell that i wouldn't use?

 

There was no "first siting". The S96J is by no means a UFO.

This issue has been around for months in ALL of the X1600 laptops. Don't worry about where you get it from- it won't make a difference.

If you have an S96J, you should be able to pull off 4 hours with that thing. The Z96J however only gets around 3 hours for some odd reason.

www.btotech.com formerly known as www.geared2play.com. Eddie recently decided to change their name.

Highly improbable.

I have literally about 20 of them posted on this forum. Look in the threads I have started, and read the one with the review and pictures. It sticks out rouchly 3/4", is 1" high, and sticks out the back. To get a better idea, look at the pictures in my review. I've got it from just about every angle, and with measuring tape up against it.

 

I got my 9 cell at buy.com. It was really for a Z62f but it works fine on S96j:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=202476857&loc=101&sp=1
They are sold out now. Do a froogle search for "NG51B2000"

I have pictures of it here (about half way down):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=57674&page=3
It sticks out about 3/4" from back and only adds .3 lbs.

I have been doing more testing with extended battery (hope to post full results soon) and I'm amazed with it. I got 3:45 at 100% brightness in reading mode with battery eater. With regular battery I only got 2:00.

 

Sell your battery on ebay or on this fourm. I want to get a 9 cell some day but will probably be too lazy.

Do u guys think I got a good deal here:

S96J
Intel Core Duo T2300 1.66ghz
OCZ 1GB PC2-5400
Hitachi Travelstar 80GB SATA 7200RPM
ARCTIC SILVER 5
INTEL VBI DVDRW DRIVE(Should have the brackets)
Total:$954.84

 

How did you get 4 hours from your s96j with a 6-cell?

Thank you for all the posts adn the pictures, to the people who have the 9-cell, does that sticking out the back bother u guys in anyways?

 

The only way it bothers me is that the laptop will not fit properly in a slip cover with the 9 cell. I use the 6 cell when I put it in the slip cover, and if I need extra battery life, I'll carry the 9 cell as a spare

In order to get 4 hours from an S96J:

Enable Powerplay and have it set to max battery
Use power savings profile in power4gear.
Leave brightness all the way down(what power4gear sets it to)
Turn off wifi.
unplug all external devices.
Enable hard disk spin-down
disable as many programs from running in the background as possible
remain relatively idle- nothing more than coding in a basic IDE or doing word processing with small files.

With this you should be able to get close to, if not more than 4 hours from the 6 cell battery. There is a reason that the official battery life for the S96J is 4 hours.

 

wheres a good place to buy a slip cover? Does anyone know how big the area on top is because i want to buy a skin for it and dont want to cut it.

 

What keyboard lay-out uses the S96J? I've set it on UK, but some buttons like the button left to "z" doesn't work.

 

Did you download the keyoard update from the Intel site?

 

Wow, thanks
I downloaded Freedos and used the keyboard utility to set it to UK. It took me 4 hours to solve this.

 

Does anyone know where i can buy a INTEL PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network 802.11a/b/g Mini PCI for my s96j because it seems sold out everywhere.

 

Sold out? Was backorder about a week ago but certainly not sold out. In stock mostly everywhere

 

ok, yeah yesterday when i checked i couldn't find one store with it in stock but today about every store has it.

 

I just burned a DVD with my S96J, no problems, CPU usage never went above 20% unlike my old Athalon XP which litterally crashed while burning CD's.

 

Here was the cheapest place as of a few weeks ago:

http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?206494

 

do you have to use the 3945abg? Can I use a Broadcom adapter instead?

 

From what I've been told(including by resellers) you need to use the 3945. The reason being, this notebook takes an express pci module whatever, and the only internal pci express(whatever kind of slot it is) wireless card is the 3945. It looks like about the size of a lighter. maybe 3/4" by 2".

 

well the broadcom that comes in dells is a mini pci-e. it's called the truemobile 1490 and has a/b/g.

 

As long as you can find a mini-PCI wireless adapter that will fit you can use it. Intel would love to have a lock on this part of the market, but alas, they do not.

 

Yeah, I'm starting to get my s96j parts. Got the Dvd bunner today and might get my 1gb of ocz ram later today.

Can you tell if the brackets are installed on this drive it seem like they are to me.

 

Yes, it is in the bracket. Just slide it in and secure it with the single screw.

 

I recieved a great suprise today as everything i need to build my s96j has arrive except the barebones.

This might be an extremly stupid question but on the 3.5gram arctic silver is there a cap covering the top. Right now i'm afraid to appy to much pressure to the black looking cap because i'm worried it might break snd spill.

 

What was that about the cap? Cap goes on and off. Not hard at all. Remove cap, apply AS5, put cap back on. All you have to do.

 

posting from my newly built S96J!!!

Will post specs and 3Dmarks later

 

Where did you get that drive with bracket from? I dunno what specs the original dvd burner has so I was thinking of buying one separately but people have been telling me that there is no bracket unless i buy at least the barebone with a drive.

 

I heard from Eddie(G2P) that the last shipment of Z96J's was coming occasionally with optical drive brackets. Perhaps the S96J is too, now.

 

I bought it from here its a little more expensive than when i bought it.

 

Here are my specs, not quite the norm, but not much of a hit in 3DMarks05 and for under 1k for everything shipped (including windows xp pro), not too bad i think

Barebones with Matshita CDRW/DVDROM drive
PRO WIRELESS 3945AGM 802.11 A/B/G MPCI
2 gb Patriot PC5300
100gb Hitachi HD
CPU T1200 @ 1.50GHz 667mhz FSB

3DMark05 (plugged in, but after everything was installed:
3628

 

I didn't even know they made a 1.5 duo core but here's my specs:

S96J
Intel Core Duo T2300 1.66ghz
OCZ 1GB PC2-5400
Hitachi Travelstar 80GB SATA 7200RPM
ARCTIC SILVER 5
INTEL VBI DVDRW DRIVE(Has brackets)
Total:$954.84

+$40.76 For PRO WIRELESS 3945AGM 802.11 A/B/G MPCI

The barebones arrive on the 16th cant wait!!

 

This is not a dual core, it is a Core Solo. But if your goin on towards Merom, good choice.

 

I'm having a few wierd problems with my s96j. The first is that when I'm typing in trillian or word, the computer seems to freeze for about 10-15 seconds, then all of a sudden all the text appears that I have typed while it was frozen. I haven't tried playing any games since this problem showed up, so I'm going to have to do some more testing.

The other problem is that if I've left my laptop on for a while, like a day or so (I leave it plugged in next to my desktop when I don't have to bring it in to work) Windows will freeze while loading if I attempt to reboot. I'm assuming this is just because the system is hot because it's been on for so long, if I leave it off for about 5 minutes it loads up just fine.

 

Sounds like you've got some serious software issues. Unless your reseller forgot to plug in your fan.

Perhaps what is happening is that since your fan is not plugged in, the cpu is throttling down for thermal reasons. Then, for some reason the BIOS lock ups on reboot because of the heat?

Does any part of your laptop other than the palmrests get hot?

 

hmmm... i've heard another person that had the freezing issue. In games, while chatting, anything.

oh and about the drive, that's the one that comes with the computer if you configure it on mwave's website. probably why it has the bracket on it.

 

My 2nd and 3rd S96J's both came with the brackets. My first one did not. It was not loose though even without the brackets. I also have an extra set if anyone needs them. If I were to do it again, I would get the slot-load. That is just sexy.

 

No, and the computer doesn't even seem to get that hot. The cpu gets to be about 60c under a full load. The fans sound like they are plugged in, and I'm a bit weary of running the laptop with the case open. My copy of windows xp pro isn't exactly what you'd call "legal" so I think that might be the problem. Luckily I'm getting a real copy next week, as I'm visiting my friends who work at microsoft, and get massive discounts at their company store.

 

Well, I figured I'd add my two cents here since I'm the owner of an ASUS S96J now as well. I ordered my notebook from powernotebooks on August 4th. The laptop was built and shipped out on the 8th. I received the notebook via FedEx on August 8th, at around 1:00 PM EST, which was 6 hours ahead of the scheduled arrival time. All in all, I think I got my notebook pretty freakin' quick compared to the time you wait for the "major companies" to build and ship it out to you. Powernotebooks also threw in and applied Arctic Silver 5, and upgraded the shipping to "2nd Day Air", which I thought was neat.

Anyway, on to the actual notebook itself. When I first took it out of the box, I was immediately impressed by the build and the quality of the notebook. It was pretty light, but was also very sturdy, from what I could tell. I took everything else out of the box, but I was dissapointed there was no user manual or anything like that. It wasn't a huge deal to someone like myself who didn't really need it, but I think the more casual buyers would like to receive something like that.

I powered it up and was ready to use my notebook in pretty much no time at all. There was basically no bloatware on this thing; the prepackaged software of Nero, and AsusDVD are actually very powerful and I find to be very useful, so I'm glad the computer came with them. I made a few configuration changes to the software and I was ready to go. The notebook itself is extremely quiet, and does not really get hot at all. Next to the touchpads, it gets a little warm, but nothing uncomfortable. I did notice the CD/DVD drive became really loud when I had the Windows XP Home CD in there, but when burning a CD or DVD, or when I have a CD in there, it didn't make nearly as much noise as it did then.

Anywho, the keyboard is great. There is no flex at all and everything is very comfortable. The only thing is that the arrow keys are kind of small, but I'd expect that to be the case with any notebook. The glossy screen is absolutely fantastic and I haven't had much problems with the glare. I can easily ignore it if the sun or a light is shining right on it. It definitely looks better when the light isn't the brightest, but it isn't unbearable in bright conditions.

This notebook is lightning fast compared to my previous PC that I used for a number of years. I decided to splurge and get the T2600 2.16GHZ Intel Core Duo, Corsair 2.0GB of Ram, with an 80GB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive. THe ATI X1600 video card is pretty powerful, and I haven't experienced any sort of grainy issues that other people have complained about or were concerned over. I spent under $1,750 on this notebook, and I believe that was a very good deal for the amount of power in this thing. This is exactly what I wanted: a combination of style, power, and a bit of portability. The battery isn't all that great, but that's because I have the 6-Cell. I get around 2-2.5 hours running at the highest performance for the battery, but you can get more when running in a mode that requires less power. I would definitely recommend this notebook to anybody, and I'd recommend ordering from PowerNotebooks.com.

 

Mind picking me up a few copies? Hahaha!

OK then. Could be that you installed some rather.... **cough cough** bad **cough** software on your computer. Or it very well could be your OS.

For the time being, I suggest you get a blank CD or DVD, and make a live CD. Run something like Linux from a live CD and see if the issue occurs there. If it doesn't, then your OS is screwed up either because it came that way, or because you installed some shady software on it.