W7J Owners' Lounge

I checked my local Radio Shack and was told the Tucano cases are internet items only. It also states that on Radio Shack's website. I have yet to find a B&M place that sells it.

 

Hox:


You stated you opened up your W7J (brave man) and located the 3945 card. Is it accessible from the bottom panels or is it situated underneath the keyboard? Thanks.

 

@naszero it is under the keyboard and an additional metal plate

 

Does anyone know how to get out the keyboard?

 

will we see merom in w7j's soon esembled by ASUS or will we see a whole new line of products?

 

above insert kery theres a notch to pop up the keyboard.

edit: ok dont do that, its still scrweed in from the bottom.

 

I figured those tabs are something but also figured there were screws on the bottom. I want to figure out how to open up the laptop to get access to the wireless card. Comparing to my two friend's laptops with atheros cards, you can defintely tell it is inferior. Receive sensitivty is very bad. Transmit power is OK but still on the low side.

 

ive been trying to get the spdif to work with my speakers but it isnt. anyone test it out yet?

 

Does anyone know how to configure an external monitor to work with the W7J? Right now, I have a Samsung LCD TV that can be used as a PC monitor via the VGA port. I've managed to get dual screens (by that I mean one screen on the left and the second screen "connected" on the right. I think I'm in dual monitor mode right now, right?) How would I configure it so that the samsung screen would look exactly like my W7J screen?

Heh, I hope that made sense. I'm new to all this external monitor stuff.

 

NVM. I found out a way to turn off the laptop monitor and use my Samsung as the default monitor. It looks amazing using a VGA cord! I'm using it right now! I'm no graphics designer so I'm not that nit picky but at the Samsung's natural resolution of 1360x768, I get amazing clarity.

 

does anyone regret getting the w7j? if yes, why??

 

Hello I'm thinking about buying the W7J but I still have some questions.

1.) can the webcam swivel 180 degree?

2.) do you think the W7J gets easly damage?

3.) did anyone try to run Oblivion on it? if so how did it run (high and low) I just wonder if its possible. I gives a good indication what the power of the laptop is.

thats about it. thanks

 

Webcam doesn't turn.

It depends on the carefulness of the user, I mean all laptops can be just as easily damaged. But one thing I noticed with my black W7J is that, dirt/dust is more visible.

Didn't try Oblivion yet.

The other thing I kinda dislike about it is the placement of airvent. It is located at the right side of laptop, so for those right-handed mouse user (like me), you pretty much get constant warm/hot air blown onto your hand, depending on how far you place your hand. And of course, its hotter during game time.

 

To bad the webcam doesnt turn. It would have been handy im my classes

thanks for the help

 

Of course dust is visible on it. Dust is white, the laptop is black. White on black is visible..

Oblivion won't run on a 7400, not enjoyable anyways. It wont even run on 7600/X1600 that great either (15fps or less on high settings)... So dont expect to play Oblivion on a 14-15" laptop.

 

Recording classes is a huge waste of time.. You'll never make time to watch them anyways.

EDIT: What's really stoppin me from buying this particular model is the 512megs of integrated ram on the motherboard.. If it came with 1gig stick and had one space free.. I woulda been so much happier. I am stuck with 1Gig ram on my desktop and i hate it.. I'd LOVE to have the ability to use a 2gig stick and thats why Im going probabily with S96J.

 

yes its to bad that the W7J can only have a maximum 1,5gig and the battery isn't all that great ether

The S95J is an 15,4 inch. to large for me. I'm looking at the Asus W5F and the Dell M1210 right now. both 12 inch. But I don't want to spam this tread up by talking about other laptops.

 

hey guys, anyway to disable the asus startup sound? it would be nice not to have it bleeping and blooping if i start it up in class. also, it does a system beep when its done loading up the software etc, but i cant figure out what its beeping for. also i just shut it down after watching some good old futurama and it beep twice. any ideas?

 

Yeah, I went into bios and did it.

 

alright i got the BIOS one off, and i've narrowed down the other sound to the intel wireless program, but i can't figure out how to turn the sound off. i've messed with settings and .ini files but i cant seem to shut it off

 

uninstall intel wireless program . use the CD to custom install driver only, and just use XP to connect. uses less memory ne way.

although even before i did that, i dont remember intel wireless making any sound.

 

Ok when I check system processes, there are like 36 of them. Now, I don't really want to reinstall Windows since I have data in as well as all my programs installed and set up.

Can anyone tell me which ones are useless? How do disable them from turning on?

Thanks

 

36 processes isnt that many... windows does use quite a few

 

Go into Bios (F2) and "Advanced" then look at bottom, you'll see " Play Post Sound" go down and select "No".

 

hey guys. i finally ordered the w7j. after months of researching and debating, i finally made my decision. Thanks for all your help. i should receive it sometime next week. Thanks for your help guys. by the way, i ordered it through MilestonePC.com, through Danny. he was very resourceful, if any one was wondering. Thanks again, i will let you guys know how the laptop is.

-sunjin

oh.. and is the network card that big of a problem? everyone seems to be wanting to change it. is it that bad? I'm looking to carry it around campus and use the school's wireless connection.

 

I haven't heard anything negative regarding the network card and mine is excellent.

 

The network card is not BAD when working in ideal conditions but it lags behind atheros based cards when working in very low and marginal signal areas.

 

Has atheros released a pci-express type wifi card? As far as i know their last product was mini pci not express.

 

G2P,

Yes, check the BST forums. There is a group buy for a mini-pcie card. Let me get you the link if I can.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64760

 

Why do you need to convert to 4 clusters?

 

This is why: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=63639&highlight=4+clusters

But I was too lazy and I didn't have some of the prereqs to allow a change to four clusters so I just used the utility that was provided. Sure, it turned out I have 512 byte clusters now but I don't see much of a performance hit. Whatever...

 

ya i just used the provided program. anyways to convert it to 4k clusters?

 

Yea. According to this site, Paragon Partition Manager or Norton Partition Magic 8.0 can change it to 4k. I'm too cheap to spend $30 but if anyone would "lend" me a copy, I would be very happy

Also, is anyone undervolting their W7J with NHC? I have no clue what I am doing and a screenshot or two of your values and whatnot would be extremely helpful.

 

ok so norton partition magic 8.0 can convert to 4k cluster without having to format the drive? Hmmm. I guess i'll back up my partition and try that.

NHC dynamic switch puts my cpu at .95 volts when im just browsing etc., and 1.2625V when its fully loading.

 

i just did a clean install instead. there are driver updates for the webcam and audio.

 

partition magic didn't work. it gave me some kinda error when it reboot to try resize cluster. but since i already backed up the entire system, and i had a winXP pro CD (college licensing, only costed 15 bucks ) so i just used that to format to ntfs + reinstall windows, and then loaded the backup file. Worked perfectly fine, now with 4k clusters. I can't really say I saw much performance increase though. Maybe I could run PCMark again to see if the HD benches higher

 

comparing the W7J to the Sony SZ. which is better, in terms of build quality, Reliabelity and stabelity, value.

 

In terms of value, the W7J will be around $500 less compared to the SZ and will be about the same performance. I checked out the SZ and really liked the build quality but don't like all the 'sony specific' hardware that they put on. I mean come on...how many of us really want to go out and buy Sony's memory duo or whatever it's called. I'm sure most people have CF and SD for their cameras and other portable devices.

Only thing that the SZ has is a better battery life, but with the 9cell coming out for the W7J it might be able to squeze a couple more hours.

 

Sony and LG are very horrible brands, and for some reason which is unknown to me.. they are also priced very expensive.

Both of them use low quality plastic which cracks extremely easily. The ASUS will totally own the Sony.

 

I got my W7J last week, and am generally very happy with my purchase. One thing is bugging me though--the unevenness of the LCD backlighting is quite noticeable. In particular, the right side of the screen is brighter than the left side. This is most obvious when I turn brightness down to the lowest setting, but still significant when I have it on higher settings. On the lowest setting, I can easily make out text and graphics on the right, but can barely make things out on the left. On higher settings, the brightness difference between right and left is subjectively still about 10% regardless of how I tilt the screen or position my head.

Is this on par with everyone else's experience? Dealer input is also welcome.

 

its not that noticeable at any brightness above 0

 

Hey, a little more help regarding NHC. If I'm getting this right, NHC will not set the voltage lower than .9500v. So accordingly, I set my NHC as:

6 .9500
7 .9625
8 .9750
9. .9875
10 1.000
11 1.0125
11 1.0250
11 1.0375

However, I'm still getting somewhere in the 3 hour range. Are those values right? Can I set NHC lower than .9500? Oh, and do I have to have NHC on in order to have the computer undervolted?

 

I was under the impression the wifi is mini pci, not mini pci-e

 

got a few problems with my W7J, the Tab, capsLock and Shift make a louder noise while pressing compared to the other keys.
My wear level acording to NHC is 5 and the VGA output seems to be of rather inferior quality because it shows the picture blurry when connected to my LG 19". I did not use to have this problem while using my m6n on the same external screen. The resolution I use is 1280 x 1024.
Anyone with same problems?

Besides: what BIOS version are you using? I currently have 204 which dates from the 07/17/2006. Oddly enough, I downloaded this version from the asus website 1 week ago and now 204 was taken out and 203 is the latest version you can find on the website. What happened here? does 204 contain bugs? should i uninstall it?

 

my keys are fine. have had my notebook for about a month now, wear level is 0. using 204 as my bios, its still on there. can't help much on the vga out as i've only used it with my 17" crt. have yet to use it on my 20" lcd i have no cable to try it with.

 

This is normal for the type of technology the screen uses. Mine is somewhat darker on both sides of the screen. I rarely notice it anymore.

Tradeoff for a lighter, thinner panel.

 

As far as I know, the Intel 3945abg is a mini-pciE card only. Cheers!

 

how about the wear level, what wear level do you guys get? with 5-7 should i complain?

 

did you do a calibration before it jumped to 5%? I got mine new and without doing a calibration, i get 1.1%

 

Intel locked the CoreDuo's with a min voltage that NHC can't go below (unlike it's capabilities in P-M chips). There isn't much difference between your min & max multiplier voltages (0.06-0.08; my P-M voltages vary 0.384), so you're burning about the same power all the time and you probably won't see the big improvement that undervolting gives for P-M's. The only other thing you can try with NHC is changing from dynamic switching to battery optimized/max battery mode to lock your multiplier at the lowest setting, or check the box for only using min/max multipliers; the latter will stay at min and only shift to the high voltage setting when the system actually needs to go that high, and not burn the added power for the in-between multipliers so you might get a minor improvement there. RMClock may work differently than NHC with the CDuo's, but others who are using that will have to comment since I exclusively use NHC on my P-M. For additional power saving measures to use, just the obvious: LCD level, wireless, and (in the W7) disable the webcam-- some people have reported that this is a decent power drain.

Yes, if NHC isn't running then you aren't undervolting.