Z96 Owners Lounge!

Hey guys,

Now that the Z96 has finally been released, I figure it is about time that it gets a lounge of its own here on NBR.

I just got mine two days ago, and so far am relatively happy with it. Runs a tad warmer than I would like, but much better than my old laptop and is definately useable. My battery life is not what it should be, since for some reason I cannot get Wifi and BT to turn off. Performance is pretty good, but gaming at WSXGA is pretty much impossible. Halo runs pretty well at WSXGA, and I would image HL2 would(haven't gotten a chance to run it) as well as Warcraft 3 TFT, but games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 have no chance of running at WSXGA. They do still look pretty nice when they are played in 1280x768(not 1280x800) scaled to fullscreen with all settings maxed out. Other than that, I love my Z96. I would say that overall I am definately happy with this lappy. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it atleast an 8, probably a 9. If I could manage more than 2:30 out of the battery I would give it a 10.

Hope everyone is enjoying theirs, if anyone else even has one yet.

I must give a great many thanks to Eddie from G2P for getting this system out to me ASAP. I will be returning to him for all my future notebook needs.

~JPZ

P.S. Review coming soon, hopefully this weekend. Probably tomorrow night.

 

I'm glad you like it! I'm almost ready to order one for myself! I just have a few questions, though, that maybe you could help me with:

How bright do you find the screen to be?
Also, does changing the brightness have an effect on the battery life?

What exactly do you mean by this? Do the games get stretched to fit the resolution of the monitor, or do you get black bars on the edges of the screen?

Thanks for any input. I can't wait to read your review!

Dan

 

the "problem" that jpz is talking about is because the x1600 just doesn't have the power for doom3 or quake 4 at the native res...in other words the fps will be low..this is a big reason many prefer the s96j..which is better if you prefer to game at a lower native res.

 

Screen seems to be fairly bright. It is the brightest screen in my house, however the three others I have are all horrible lcds. One is my Dad's dell 1100, second my hp 5730, and three, my Uniwill n258ka. Before this, my Uniwill was by far the brightest. I remember when I was looking at it, people thought the Uniwill was pretty bright. Considering that, I would say that this screen is very bright, but you must factor in that this is the only laptop in my house that has a glossy screen. I have not seen any other Asus models to compare it to.

Brightness will ALWAYS have an effect on the battery life. No matter what laptop. It can often be a major factor in how long your battery life is. Take my Uniwill. While programming, I might get 30 minutes battery life with screen at 100% brightness, but a little over two hours with brightness down as far as it could go, probably around 30%.

As for gaming on the WSXGA- the mX1600 just isn't powerful enough to handle it. There are approximately 1.7 times as many pixels to generate to draw a frame at WSXGA(1680x1050) as opposed to 1280x800. That means framerate will be cut about in half. So if the S96(WXGA) runs Doom 3 at WXGA at 50-60 frames per second, the Z96 will run it at native WSXGA at about 25-30 fps, which is the case.

Basically, any game that is as demanding as Doom 3 will not be playable at WSXGA. Games such as Halo or Half-Life 2 will run great at WSXGA. I played HL2 for about 20 minutes today at WSXGA, and the framerate rarely dipped below 50 fps.

As for stretching and scaling, it depends on how you configure it.

There are two basic options. The first is scaling. This will stretch everything to fit the entire lcd. No black bars. Thing is, when you display 1280x800 pixels on a 1680x1050 screen, each pixel of the 1280x800 image takes up about 1.5 physical pixels of you 1680x1050 screen. Since this is not possible, the computer must "scale" the image to fill in these pixels, which lowers the image quality. So if you play Doom 3 in WXGA on a WSXGA screen, there will be as many pixels as a WSXGA screen, but the image will look somewhat blurred. More pixels but less image quality.

The second is "centered timings". This will center the image being displayed on your screen, and use only the pixels it needs. Image playing a game in a WXGA window on a WSXGA screen. That is what it looks like. The extra pixels around the edges are blacked out. The only way to get bars is to use centered timings, while using a fullscreen resolution that shares the same heigh as your widescreen resolution. Then there will be black bars on the left and right.

Also, take a look at the thread on the S96J graininess issue. Everything there also stands true for the Z96. Working on trying to find a solution.

Speakers on this thing are not very good at all. Very quiet, and sound quality is pretty poor. However, there is an HD audio card integrated to the mainboard, which outputs high quality audio. This means that connecting headphones or speakers through the headphone port results in very crisp, clear audio. Sounds great.

Still trying to get an idea of battery life. I have a 6 cell and 9 cell battery.

The transition from a WXGA screen to WSXGA is great. I do a lot of programming for fun, and this will be very helpful. Also, if you play older games like WC3, HL2, Halo, etc, the games run and look great at WSXGA.

Heat is ok... Bottom of laptop gets hot around the exhaust; I think heat is transferring from the heatsink by the exhaust to the plastic bottom of the laptop in that area. Left palmrest gets warm but not bad during HEAVY hard drive activity. I do have a 7200 rpm hitachi drive in there though. Right palm rest gets warmer, and is pretty consistantly warm. It is bearable though, and not annoying and not too distracting. My Uniwill's left palmrest got incredibly hot, which always kept me from doing any programming or anything else because it annoyed me to death. This is MUCH better.

Construction is sold; It's an Asus. The only thing that seems to rattle is the keyboard when you tap on the case. Aside from the keyboard rattling, tapping produces a nice solid thud. LCD casing is SOLID. The DVD drive I have is somewhat loud, but that is a special drive that I got from G2P that you probably won't be getting from other resellers. Eddie from G2P bought his own drives instead of using the Asus ones.

Touchpad buttons are loud, and sound almost cheap; however they feel like they are pretty solid and will not break anytime soon.

Keyboard works just fine, I'm typing this to you right now on my Z96. Also worth noting, the keyboard has multimedia buttons that can be used through the FN key and the F# keys. This means you can play, pause, fast forward, and rewind movies and songs by holding FN and pressing a key.

For 3D mark 05, I got 3750 stock, 3850 with slightly lowering image quality, and about 4350 with some driver tweaking. Core clock is 450, Memory is 370.

Assembly is quick and easy; Asus's design is wonderful. Instead of having to remove 10-15 screws to open access panels and etc, this laptop uses 3 screws and a sliding mechanism to open the main access panel. Layout is neat and tidy.

Still need to spend more time with this before I can review it. Will be sure to include pictures, including comparisons.

For now, as whatever questions you need answered. For the money, this is a great buy. I would like to see a barebones for a laptop with an ATI x1600, with a WSXGA screen and 3-4 hours battery life with a Core Duo that weighs under 6 lbs for under $750. Then I would like you to find me one that has a better build quality than Asus. This thing is great. Looks great, turns heads, pretty comfortable to use, very responsive and quick, not too hot, relatively thin and extremely light. Mine weighs about 5 lbs. Oh, and did I mention, it is practically silent. Fan is quiet, but moves sufficient air THROUGHOUT THE CASE. Most laptop fans take in air from the bottom and push it through a heatsink. This results in the buildup of heat from other parts not cooled by a HSF. This fan is designed like a desktop case fan, with the cpu heatsink right in front of it. It draws in air from under the touchpad, pulls it across the motherboard and corresponding hardware, then past the CPU/GPU heatsink and out of the computer, thus cooling almost everything. Probably harder for dust to clog the heatsink this way. Might result in dust buildup on the mainboard though instead. Better than a clogged heatsink, but harder to clean. We'll see.

~JPZ

 

Mine is coming monday (it's stuck about a mile from my house at a UPS facility...too bad I can't pick it up.) I should be recieving it early monday, so review/pics/rants(none i hope) are to come

 

Congrats KenshinX!

I know the feeling... I had to RMA my Uniwill 5 times in a row, and just about every time it was stuck for the weekend at the Fedex Facility by my house. It's a long story, but I had a failing motherboard and my reseller failed to notice this or even listen to me. Finally got them to replace the motherboard and it is working OK, but I have no warranty on it now since it has been in RMA for the duration of the time I owned it, one year, and it could very well go at any moment. Thankfully it is working now, and I got to paint it since my warranty expired. You'll see it in some side-by-side comparison pics for my review.

I got most of the important points in the post above. Hopefully you will find that I have been pretty accurate.

~JPZ

P.S. This thing looks amazing in person. I know people say this with just about every laptop, but pictures do not even come close to giving it any justince. Eddie's video, however, does come closer than anything else.

EDIT: Nice specs. Yours are identical to mine, except I got mine from Eddie(G2P), I have a T2400, and a Hitachi 7200 rpm drive. I also put it together myself, and I got 3 year warranty as well.

 

Hey JPZ, can you give me the recommendations on which drivers to install first? Like the order to install them in that you did? And also what GPU drivers are you running and how stable are they?

 

Most people say install all the drivers from the driver CD from the top to the bottom. This works fine.

I am using the VGA drivers from the CD, which work fine. Currently downloading ATI's Cat 6.6 to try those out. Asus drivers are perfectly stable.

 

The Mobility drivers off the Intel website are a little better that the Catalyst ones(there just as good as Omegas, but a bit safer.)

 

Funny, I found the ATI drivers to be just a tad better than the Intel ones. For now, either are fine. I imagine that in the future ATI's will be better because they will be updated more often than the Intel ones.

 

Hi guys, I ordered it recently and I'm waiting for it to be sent sometime next week I hope Will post my views once I get it. From what I have been reading here looks promising

 

I'm still waiting for mine to be shipped from PowerNotebooks. From what I've been hearing before and recently about these notebooks, I just dont know what to expect anymore. Complaints about graininess, keys falling off the keyboard, etc. Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see since I haven't physically seen it myself.

 

I have just complete a mini review on the Z96j, and some of the thngs you can expect, is a GREAT screen, amazing viewing angles, practically no noise and a decent cooling solution.

The laptop dissipates heat well, the right palm rest gets warm under all tasks, the touchpad gets a littler warmer, and the left palm rest stay cool untill you use it over a long period of time.

It doesn't get too warm, so I felt no discomfort.

 

I agree with the above by MilestonePC.

I measured the palmrest while idling yesterday and running down the battery. After three hours it reached a temperature of 90 degrees F with approximately 75F ambient.

Battery life is surprisingly low. Max I can get is 2:45 and that is while doing nothing with the screen backlight off and HD off and almost everything else off. Not comparable to the S96 which can get 4 hours with brightness a few notches above 0, same everything else. Eddie from G2P and I are looking for a solution- We think it may have something to do with the BT and Wifi not being powered off.

I can play Doom 3 in 1280x1024 on this and it looks pretty good. Plays perfectly smooth for me(not perfect, but it is QUITE playable- I am a person who plays it in 1600x1200 at a SOLID 60FPS on my desktop with a CRT) and looks pretty decent. Not too much visible quality loss over 1680x1050.

My review has been put on hold.... busy with school, final exams, still getting my impressions on this. Trying to work out the battery life.

Still happy with it, as MilestonePC said the screen is wonderful, not too hot, palmrest gets a tad warm but not uncomfortable(I've had laptops before that were miserable to use because of palmrest heat), battery life is not perfect but acceptable, build quality is perfect and looks are pretty good, and this thing is very light for a 15.4inch gaming notebook- or even a 15.4 inch notebook.

 

laptop arrived today about 3 hours ago. VERY NICE. THANK GENTECH!!!
So far I am very satisfied with the z96j. at the moment i'm installing oblivion and after that i'll install some other intensive games and give it a go
(using omega drivers not cd)

 

Congrats!

Finally someone else has gotten their hands on this thing.

Do some tests with the battery life when you get a chance; Eddie and I from G2P are having some slight issues.

Here's a tip: If games run too slow at native WSXGA, 1280x1024 doesn't look too bad scaled to fullscreen, and runs pretty well. About equal with 1280x768(1280x800 not supported for fullscreen) but it looks much better.

I find that Doom 3 and Quake 4 run pretty well (40-60 fps on average) at 1280x1024, while Halo and Half-Life 2, as well as Wc3 run great (60 fps) at native.

 

I got mine in today, but cannot use it due to no os. I was planning on getting a free os when school started, but I'm tempted to just go out and buy one. Are there any free alternatives that I can use for a while?

 

JPZ: i ran oblivion at 1024x768 (defaulted to taht) and it looked ace. i will be battery tests tommorow at work (i can't find where i put my wifi router so i can;'t plug it in to see if wireless goes on/off)

msg me on aim sometime (k3nsh1nr) and we can talk.
I should be on most of the day tommorow

 

using 3dmark06 pro i got a score of 2215
using 3dmark05 pro i got a score of 3478

using resolution 1280x800

going to do a bit of tweaking later and redo the tests

 

Linux!
I personally use Slackware ( www.slackware.com). I've been using it for at least four years and it is easier now than ever to get running, although Fedora Core 4 is supposed to be much more user friendly to set up...

Or, you could try ReactOS ( http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/about.html). "ReactOS is an effort to create a Free Software replacement for Microsoft Windows(TM) that is compatible with existing hardware and software!"
Pretty cool! I actually haven't tried the latest version (the old version I tried six months ago was still a bit buggy), but it might be worth a shot.

Or you could try the windows vista beta...? I've never personally tried this though.

I was also thinking of getting a free copy of WinXP when I got back to school, too, but I decided just to buy myself a copy so that I would have time to configure it to my liking. Also, by buying a copy myself, I get to keep the disks so I can always rebuild it.

Hope this helps.
Dan

 

i love slackware, and it's currently on my system

another benchmark:

at native resolution 1680x1050 halflife2: lost coast video street test averaged 45.7FPS!

 

Cool
I'm going to dual boot mine (Slackware/WinXP) when I get it.
So I take it that you could get it to detect everything okay (wireless card, sound)?

Dan

 

i've only installed the slack system, not had any time to check if everythign works (too busy playing oblivion at this laptop's native res which runs nice and looks absolutely lush)

will do a check tommorow when im sitting in my cube at work to make sure allt he hardware works

 

I've done multiple battery rundown tests but no conclusive results yet-

I got 2:45 with the 6 cell by idling and screen brightness down. Did it again and got 3:10, and now I am getting estimates for about 3:30(which I think I can pull off). Battery life seems to be kind of.... jumpy. The lappy just can't make up its mind on how long it will live on the battery.

With the 9 cell I got an estimate for 5:11 which isn't too bad, while programming with screen brightness down, configured for max battery like the other tests.

Watched a DVD (LOTR Felloship of the Ring) with the 9 cell, with screen brightness all the way up, using a pair of headphones. Battery lasted just under 3 hours. I imagine I could get around 4:30 with screen brightness down.

Still trying to get stable battery test results. Will be doing gaming tests and undervolted gaming tests soon.

 

Going to get mine hopefully on Sunday, anyone know how I can get my hands on a 9 cell battery? Mine will come with a 6 cell

 

jpz, did u run the battery calibration test in bios?

 

Eddie from G2P will help you out.

Now why the **** would I do that? It's a brand new battery- if anything it would probably make the battery worse by "deep discharging" it and increasing wear. My batteries are hold what they are supposed to(actually a little more in the case of my 9 cell); I am also not the only one to get these results with battery life. Eddie from G2P has gotten the same, as well as the person who reviewed the Z96 with the mini-review. I think that was MilstonePC.

What are you guys getting from your battery?

 

i was just wondering how you were running the test..
also, does your AC adapter get REALLY hot?
i've been playing oblivion for 2 hours and my AC adapter is almost untouchable

 

If by "REALLY hot" you mean INCREDIBLY FREAKING LIGHT-YOUR-CARPET-ON-FIRE RIDICULOUSLY UNBELIEVABLY HOT, then yes. YES. It gets HOT.

Umm... tests... for the longer battery life, screen was 3 notches above off, max powersavings in effect, cpu limited to min multi and vid, powerplay set to max battery life(no 3d performance). For DVD, brightness was on full, powerplay off as the other one, DVD settings from P4G in effect, wifi off for all tests.

Just played Doom 3 to run down the battery- got around 1 hour. This is with screen brightness at max, system setup for all-out performance. Battery gaming performance == AC gaming performance

It looks like I would get around 1.5 hours if screen brightness was at mid-low.
This is with the 6 cell. With 9 cell I estimate 1:30 to 2:15 depending on screen brightness. For me, since I have both, that gives me 2:30-3:45 as a total gaming on battery, swapping the 9 cell in when the 6 cell dies. Not too bad. I could probably pull off 9 hours of programming with max powersavings in effect with the 6 and 9 cells combined. 3:30 for the 6 cell, 5:20 for the 9 cell. Estimated.

 

Wow that bad? Probably need to order myself a cool pad or something when it comes my floor is capret

 

i thought the Ac adapter might be bad and hence it was raditating off heat like a sun. Good to know i'm not the only one with that problem

i agree with JPZ on battery game == ac game..
i play oblivion on the train in the morning (long ride, nothing else to do)
same fps, same everythihng. also i get about 1:15-1:20 when im playing games

 

OK. To clear things up. AC adapter gets pretty hot, but I doubt it is going to light anything on fire. You can still touch it, although if you hold onto it long enough there is a good chance you could get some very minor burns.

By battery gaming == AC gaming I meant that I had the system set up to run everything as fast as it would on AC, meaning less battery life. You could cut the performance in a bit and save some battery life and get longer than what I do.

 

It's good to have the option of running it on full when on battery mode if you want to. I remember there were some posts several weeks ago about the a8jm throttling down when on battery mode, which is unacceptable for gaming!

Dan

 

i dont know what i'm doing wrong, but the max i can get out of the battery is 2:10 or so this is with power4gear set at max battery (but screen turned to halfway brightness)
if it can't get more life out of the 6cell ill need to purchase a 9cell somehwere as my classes are pretty much block in the morning

 

I just ordered my z96 from powernotebooks yesterday but now I'm having second thoughts about it. The more I read the less it sounds like this is the best solution for a midrange gaming lappy. The s96 and the HEL80 seem like better ideas for me. Any other input from you guys that might either make me feel more confident with my purchase or point me in the right direction would be great!

Asus Z96J 15.4 Inch WSXGA w/ ATi x1600 256MB
Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
Corsair 1GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (1X1024)
Artic Silver 5
Hatachi 60GB 5400rpm S-ATA
Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945
3 Years Warranty
8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi

 

if you're going to play games, why don't you max out the RAM?

 

its a great gaming laptop, just not when ur trying to game on battery (althought thats most laptops) because the battery life suffers. the 1680x1050 resolution is WONDERFUL and its a solid, so dont feel you made a bad choice

also i havent seen any of the grainess issue alot of s96j owners seem to be complaining about

 

jpz where did u get ur 9 cell? i want to purchase one asap so i can have a solid couple hours while in classes incase theres no AC i can tap into (some of our desks have it builtin specifially for lappies, but not all)

 

I was thinking of getting he HEL80 before deciding on the Z96J, the HEL80 is rich in features the built in fingerprint reader for one, the dual format card reader and so on. However, what sold me on the Asus is the graphics card the radeon stock out the box benchmarks higher numbers than the Nvidia 7600 while most ppl will tell you the difference is minimal now but we are talking 500+ differences in some 3dmark05 tests that I have seen here in the graphics section of the forums. I decided to sacrifice the features for the "future proofing" aspect of the Z96J, and the screen from what I heard is amazing (I'm getting mine tomorrow I hope)

 

OK. Lot to answer, been gone all weekend.

Buy a 9 Cell from Eddie, www.geared2play.com

Games run perfectly with 1GB ram. I have 1Gb in ALL of my gaming computers. Never needed or even considered upgrading. I also built all of them except one, my first gaming lappy. Also, the corsair memory kicks ass. ALL of my gaming computers use Corsair. My Z96 is no exception.

You should be able to get atleast 3 hours. Turn screen brightness all the way down, then up until you see the backlight on, then one more past that. Should be able to use it fine. For every notch up you put it after that, battery life will drop about 10 minutes. Approximately. Some notches have greater impact than others. Some might cost 5 minutes, others may cost 20.
Also, turn off Wifi and BT(blue tooth) unless you need it.

KEEP THE ORDER. This thing is much lighter than any other gaming laptop. Battery life is also MUCH better than any other gaming laptop. The WSXGA resolution kicks ass. Gaming is usually possible at 1280x1024 if not at native, and it looks just as good. Still looks great when at non-native.

ALSO: I would avoid getting a VBi notebook. The VBi program is a disaster. One of the things I love about the Z96 is that it has all the benefits of the VBi program without any of its pitfalls. All the VBi hardware is still compatible with it, but you get everything warranted through your reseller, and through Asus. intel's warranty policies for their VBi notebooks SUCK.

While there might be a few things I am not too fond of with this laptop(things that could be a bit better) I still have not regretted buying this. I also have not even seen a laptop yet which I would take over the Z96. GET IT, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, RETURN IT.

No, not at all. This thing OWNS for battery gaming. I can get 1.5 hours of battery, plus another 2:15 with the 9 cell, adding up to almost 4 hours. Most GAMING laptops get 30 minutes to an hour MAX on battery. And most underclock and gaming performance sucks on battery, unlike with this. This thing is one of the best you can get for gaming on battery.

To see graininess, load up www.comcast.net and look at the blue background on the right. If you can't see it, maybe you are slightly color blind. Haha. Just kidding.

 

i wasnt trying to say gaming on battery is bad...i do it daily on the train now ;-) i'm just saying with the cpu and graphics sucking up all that juice i get a bit over an hour for games. also, apprently i didnt disable BT and thats why my battery suffered quite a bit...atm getting 2:45 or so. ill order the 9cell from eddie anyways unless ken from gentech replies to my email before i get to that ;-)

for comcast.net i can see the graininess, but it's not annoying in the slightest bit. i havent really noticed it in any games though so thats a good thing

 

Yeah, like I said before, the "graininess" is note noticeable at all while gaming except in a few segments of a few games. What is bothering about it is when you are looking at a moving object rather than a static image; it makes it look like the screen is covered in dust.

Ken better reply soon if he wants business, Eddie is pretty fast.

Glad to see you are getting better with BT disabled, that is about what Eddie and I get. Eddie mentioned something quickly to me while I was away over the weekend, which will be addressed as soon as we get back in touch- something about the integrated camera causing battery life to be less than expected.

For gaming I can usually get around 1.5.. be sure to turn off BT and Wifi when you are on the train. Put screen brightness down as low as you can go comfortably without having a negative impact on your gaming experience.

For the 9 Cell, it wasn't designed specifically for this laptop. It is still compatible, but takes a little "extra force" to get it in. Under the laptop, you know that there is a lock on both sides of the battery? One appears to be spring loaded, and will lock automatically. Push the battery in on that side until it locks. Then, firmly press the other side of the battery into the computer while trying to lock the other manual lock until it goes into place. It isn't really that hard, but it doesn't go in nearly as easily as the standard 6 cell. Don't worry about it. It works fine; I haven't had a single problem with it yet.

 

Thanks alot guys, I'm sure I will be happy with my purchase here just got a little worried I may of gone the wrong way. I will let you know how it works out for me and thanks for all the tips to get the best experince possible out of my z96!

 

I will be posting a review soon. Will be on www.asusforum.com first. Have to make finishing touches and upload and setup my five hundred pictures. More like about 50. I have a video too.

 

JPZ, very detailed tips...thanks!

 

Looks like I'm part of this group now. Just got my Z96J yesterday. Bought it from Eddie at geared2play.com. Awesome service! Here's my specs:

Asus Z96J 15.4" WSXGA
Intel T2400 1.83
2 GB DDR2 Ram
X1600 ATI Radeon
100 GB 5400 RPM HD
DVD/RW x8 Dual-Layer Supermulti burner

Installed windows on my own and got everything to work pretty easily. Thanks Eddie.

 

Congrats on the purchase! Eddie's the man....

 

Hi guys,
Finally got the laptop last Monday, what can I say the laptop is amazing. How I have longed for playing games with the auto-detect telling me "Very High Settings" settings has been detected!
The build quality is great, I had the anticipation that the build would feel cheap, but I was pleasantly surprised in that department. Main complaints so far is lack of support for the express card slot so far. My mobile operator has the old EDGE wireless internet card and they have no idea/plans when they will offer it in express format. I did a little research on the net and found a USB to PCMCIA adapter so I'm going to order that. Another complaint is that the keyboard is functional and gets the job done, but the feel is a little loose where you actually feel the whole keyboard push in when you type. Other than that I am very satisfied with my purchase

Now for the 3dmark numbers, with the standard drivers gave me the following:
3868 3dmark05
1731 3dmark06

I'm going to install the omega drivers later today and see if the numbers change at all. Games that I currently play City of Villains, COV is now on very high settings and resolution has been changed to the desktop resolution and is working fine. Battlefield 2, I am drooling at the high graphics on my last laptop I had the setting all on low, now with the high settings having a ton of fun.

Can anyone tell me what's the highest resolution they have set on the Z96J for BF2? I currently have it on 1024x720 (I'm not on my laptop right now so I'm not sure the exact settings). Anyone have it on anything higher?

 

Yeah, it's a pretty solid notebook. Asus build quality owns!

Sorry to hear that. I though it was a PCMCIA slot myself... I just assumed it was. I don't really care, because I never use any of those things, but thanks for the heads-up.

I really like the keyboard. Perfectly comfortable for me. And I have been(and will be) using it a lot. I do think the keyboard does seem kind of loose in the little tray, and admit there is a bit of flex, but I don't notice any of this while typing. And I type quickly, and not necessarily quietly. =)

Those numbers seem about right. They haven't changed for me no matter what drivers I've used(and I tried 4) although I'm surprised you're not getting a tad higher. I get the exact same scores, but I have a T2400 procesor, 1GB Corsair 666 ram, and not that it matters for this, a 60 gb 7200 rpm hdd. And I bought a barebones from G2P, and put it together myself. Of course, Eddie had to install the T2400; store policy if you want extended warranty.

I do not own BF2. I haven't even played BF2. But you could probably get it to run smooth at 1280x1024. Try sticking to standard resolutions from when these games were released. Take this for example:

My Z96 runs Quake4 at WXGA(1280x800) at about 30 fps. It runs it at SXGA(1280x1024) at around 45 fps. The SXGA resolution has about 20% more pixels on the screen to fill, yet there is a vast difference in performance. On a pretty general basis, games do not like to be run at custom resolutions. And Quake 4 even has widescreen support. I don't really care, I feel that 1280x1024 looks much better than WXGA, even though it's not even widescreen. Very playable, and it looks great too. =)

 

JPZ: Verizon has an express card and all the other carriers are right behind

Quick question

My internal Intel 3945 card will not stay connected and sometimes not connect at all. I've seen various posts on the problems with the card but Can't find an answer to the question of how you fix it. I really love the laptop but if I can't get the card to stay connected I don't think I will keep it