~ Asus U6 Owners' Lounge ~

i know this is vague and doesn't necessarily belong in this forum, but is there anything i can use to make my laptop make a noise when it's fully charged (while i'm using it)

and how about the startup noise from pressing the power button? hehe

 

1. I don't know. Google? Or maybe use the Vista Task Scheduler, it's a quite extensive program. Maybe you can play a WAV or something triggered by the batt state.

2. F2 to enter BIOS, disable Play POST Sound.

 

anyone have success with 100% drivers working in 64bit vista?

when i use the keyboard to shortcut for MUTE, the taskbar will show mute, but it won't actually go mute..

edit: i think that was the only problem with x64, realtek has 64bit drivers from their site.. i think it's 100% now

 

So there are no issues with 64-bit Vista? I'm not really sure I would invest money in a 64-bit copy of Vista, but it sounds like it would be fun to play with. Any major differences in speed or anything?

 

I'm thinking of buying a U6 but have a few questions for all of you owners.

1. Does the HDD make any clicking/clunking noises (due to head parking) when idling? I've had this problem on other notebooks running vista (it's also a fairly common problem on Macbooks running leopard - sound bite here) and it drives me crazy

2. How sparkly is the cover. It looks a bit over the top on some of the photos I've seen, but there's no way I'll be able to see one in real life before buying. A close-up well-lit photo would be fantastic, but otherwise it'd be good to hear views.

3. Can anyone give me some rough dimensions & weight on the power supply. Sounds like it's pretty massive.

Thanks

 

I do not hear any noise from the Hard Drive on my U6.

The cover is a glossy coffee color, not too sparkly.
Hard to describe. Maybe like metallic car paint, looks
like coffee color from far, up close you see the tiny flakes.

The a\c adapter is about 4.75" by 2.25" by 1.3". Weight,
about the same as a can of soda.

It is a very good looking notebook. So far, everyone
who has seen my U6 wants one.

 

Great, thanks for that. Good to know.

 

iTunes won't run, but that can be viewed as a good thing?

nah, i need to restart after installing and see if it'll run then

 

yes, there is some HDD noise, but not that loud.. unless you are very close and trying to listen for it, you won't hear it really

its not that sparkly but there are ocassions where you will notice "hey! a blue spark"

not really

 

I've seen one in a store and didn't have any issues with sparkliness... but FINGERPRINT GALORE

I never could understand why one would want to make a laptop (or anything that needs to be touched with hands) with shiny surfaces... They make nice decorative objects on a shelf or on top of the TV or whatever, but as soon as you start using them... fingerprint galore.

 

Anyone had problems with the 3-cell battery and general/CPU performance? If I'm using the 3-cell battery on battery power, my U6Sg is extremely slow and sluggish: CPU usage just idling is ~20 %, playing mp3's up to 60%. The second I plug the power cord in CPU usage drops to normal (<5% playing mp3's). You might dismiss this as CPU throttling, but the strange thing is that it works perfect with the 6-cell battery!

I also ran the PCMark05 benchmark with both the 3- and 6-cell batteries, on battery power and plugged in. The results were quite strange:

3-cell on battery power: ~1200
3-cell plugged in: ~4500
6-cell on battery power: ~4600
6-cell plugged in: ~4700

This reflects quite well the kind of slowdown I'm experiencing. On all cases the Power4Gear is set to High Performance.

I've been in contact with Asus support, but they had no clue. They did suggest reinstalling Power4Gear, and if that wouldn't work, reinstalling Windows. Unfortunaly, I've done both, and neither helped one bit.

The performance with the 3-cell battery is dismal to the extent of being useless. Anyone have any ideas what might be the cause of this?

Also, I think someone mentioned using 9-cell battery with the U6Sg - Asus support told me the 9-cell battery is unavailable for the Sg... Where have you got your 9-cell batteries, and do you know if it's the same as the 9-cell in the older U6S?

Thanks!

 

Asus support you spoke with is incorrect on both counts. The U6 9-cell battery should work fine on the Sg, which is identical in the chassis and just has a few internal updates.

These are available at BTOTech, Excaliberpc, and Gentech - all resellers here on the forum, although they are US retailers. Not sure where you might go in Europe, but you can also contact the resellers above to ask about possible international purchasing.

 

ironically, i did see a thread about the 3cell performance on the official asus forums, there are a few people with this problem

i have yet to use the 3 and 6 cells

i've been using my 9cell from excaliberpc, lasts well over 5hrs so i've yet to need the other two

 

by the way, i mentioned before that i got vista x64 to work 100% with drivers..

false. i forgot that the synaptics driver does not work with x64.

on a side note, i am going back to x86 because i fear that some programs won't work, and by then, i will have much more software that it will be quite a hassle to reformat at a future date

 

Ok, thanks for the info. Do you have any idea, whether the 9-cell battery is the same as in the U6S? A local PC-store is selling the U6S 9-cell (though they don't have it in store), and I'm interested but a bit worried that Asus might have changed the battery specs, so it won't work on my U6Sg.

Could you post a picture showing how much the 9-cell protrudes from the back? I'd really appreciate it. Also, if you have the chance to weight the 9-cell and compare its weight to the 6-cell, that would be great...

Thanks again.

 

Hey Everyone!

I have Vista and XP, and I changed my BIOS setting for my hard drive from enhanced mode to compatability to facilitate the XP install.

Now that XP is working fine, could I return the BIOS setting to enhanced or do i have to leave it at compatability?

Thanks!

 

I am going to America in July and i probably will get this notebook as my next notebook. The price of this notebook will probably drop a bit in the next few months as well. I am happy with my current notebook but i might as well take advantage of the strong £ when i am in the US. The only thing that could keep me from buying this notebook is the battery life. I haven't seen any reviews of the Penryn revision of this notebook.

Does the 6 cell battery stick out? Also i wonder what battery life is like with the 6 cell battery on power saver mode with bluetooth of and wifi on doing web surfing with 25% brightness?

 

I would expect the battery life of the Penryn to be nearly the same as with the older CPU.

sand-spider, perhaps it's easiest to leave it in compatibility mode. Supposedly, there's not much of a performance drop (I don't have any SATA drives myself so I can only quote what other people say).

You could try first installing the SATA driver, and then rebooting and enabling. If that doesn't work, you can always put it back in compatibility mode...

 

i don't have a method to really weigh the 9 and 6 cells, but the difference is so small; it's not like the 9cell will truly weigh anyone down vs carrying the 6cell

granted, the only battery that sits flush is the 3cell, and this could be a problem if you want the bundled sleeve to close the way it's supposed to close, otherwise the sleeve will just close as much as it can (ie, say you have a 9cell attached to the laptop, the sleeve will fold over the extra curve of the battery)

i can provide pics tmrw

 

I have found a list of reviews here.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-U6S.7924.0.html
I will read through what they have to say about battery life.
This review looks to be good you can translate it to read it. It seems that they found a bit of an improvement with the Penryn processor.
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Asus-U6S-Subnotebook.8412.0.html

 

Yes, the 6-cell does stick out, about 1.5 cm, I'd say. I don't think it's a big deal though. Ideally it wouldn't protrude, but I for one don't mind it. And it makes for a nice handle to grab the notebook without leaving any fingerprints on the pretty lid.

I'd say you could perhaps squeeze around 3 hours off the 6-cell with power saver mode, but don't excpect any more than that. The 3 hours might even be a bit optimistic. This is based on the T8100 (2.1 GHz) version, but I don't think a faster processor would drain much more in light use...

 

Is it a good idea to grab the notebook by the battery? Those battery hooks are quite sturdy, but perhaps in the long term they will break if repeatedly used to pick up the whole notebook weight.

 

Good point. Hadn't thought about that. It's probably not a good idea to wave it around too enthusiastically, but as you said the hooks look and feel quite sturdy so I think they'll hold if I'm gentle.

On second thought, maybe it's not worth a possible breakage, I guess I better find another handle.

 

Well it's up to you. I was just putting in a word of caution.

 

i can manage to squeeze 5hours out of the 9 cell

as for the 9 cell as a handle, yeah it does feel pretty firm, but i'll only touch it with my second hand, i wouldn't primarily carry it by the battery

 

I love my 9 cell, sold my 3 cell to someone on this forum... miss it a lot... but i just carry my laptop from right at the back of the laptop so... it doesnt really bother me, and i grip the laptop not the battery...

 

How long does your U6Sg take between pressing the shutdown button and actually logging off and shutting down? When I press the shutdown button it closes some applications, then does nothing for over 1 minute (not even HDD activity) before finally logging off and shutting down. Is this normal? Windows tools report KBfiltr.exe as slowing down the shutdown process, but I cannot close that process manually, and reinstalling the KBfiltr-driver from Asus didn't help.

Also, is anyone having problems with the built-in HD audio? Mine doesn't work after I start the notebook. Device manager just doesn't find any audio devices (also there's no unknown devices). Usually I have to go to sleep mode and wake from sleep, and after this the device manager finds the Realtek soundcard, but I have to manually start the Realtek HD Audio Manager from the control panel. This has been a problem from the start, but I feel it's even worse after I updated the drivers from Realtek's website to latest version R1.90. Any ideas? Anyone else experiencing this?

 

about the KBfiltr.exe issue, looks like its a common problem...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235195

 

Oh great. I've just about had it with these crappy Asus software. I think the hardware in my U6Sg is fantastic, but the badly written sofware and endless problems just kills it for me.

Anyways, thanks for the link, zlapper.

 

The solution is to uninstall ALL the ASUS software that you don't absolutely need. That way, you'll make use of the great hardware without the hassle of the software.

 

You're right, but I do like the password autofill (w/ fingerprint check) feature with Asus Security Protect Manager, I've uninstalled most other Asus software, or at least disabled them from running in the background, but still...

-BSODs during(!) hibernation - suddenly the computer wakes from hibernation and starts booting Vista only to get a BSOD and shuts down.
- Soundcard not initialized/found after a cold boot, I have to put the machine to sleep and wake it to get audio
- The f'ing 3-cell battery with abysmal performance on battery power
- Takes ages to shut down
- Sometimes after a reboot the Asus secur. protect manager reports that TPM is unavailable (I blame the secur.prot. manager).
- Adobe Acrobat is closed by Data Execution Prevention every time I try to comment a pdf-document. And the best part is this: an Adobe service ticket costs(!) ~40 $ each. Perhaps not an Asus problem, but I have no problems with my desktop comp.

 

BTW. are any of you using the Asus Power4Gear utility? Does it offer any advantage over the standard Vista battery management?

 

There's an updated BIOS version 302 available now at the Asus support website! It has solved at least my no-audio-on-first-boot-problem. Slow shutdown is NOT fixed, however Other problems I haven't had the time to verify yet.

 

isn't there some equivalent software out there, without the bugs?

Weird. You mean it wakes up on its own? This might be potentially very dangerous if it is in a bag (can overheat). Check this thread, maybe it helps: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=183193
Battery drain in Vista hiberation

Specifically make sure the Task Manager doesn't have a task on which it wakes up the computer (such as automatic updates of various software).

Seems this has been solved, from your newer post.

Nothing to do here, unfortunately... Except making sure you use lower-power modes for CPU and GPU on battery.

Don't know...

Yeah, probably bugs.

I don't know about this since I've never used AAcrobat. What if you try to run it with admin rights? Does it still die?

I'm not using it. I find it very vague in its settings, and the profiles are not very intuitive. Besides the power profiles of vista which should do the job (but they are still vague with their percent measurement of the CPU speed), I can recommend RMClock for CPU frequency control.

 

I checked Task Manager, some updates were scheduled, but they were not set to wake up the computer. I'll have to check whether the battery is drained in hibernation.

Well... almost. It does find the HD Audio on boot, but now it loses audio on hibernation... I guess you just can't have everything.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear on that. By the performance issues I meant that the computer is veeeeryyy slooowww (actually, the CPU usage just goes up for no reson) when using the 3-cell battery.

Thank you, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! You know what: it doesn't die when run with admin rights! E.B.E - You're my new hero. Oh boy, I can't tell you how happy I am - I have to use Acrobat in my work every day, and up until now, everytime I've opened a PDF-document, I've had to wait more than 5 minutes for the Not Responding state to pass. But now, it works perfectly! Thank you so much!

 

Quite welcome. Just a lucky shot.

 

haha, i'm thinking about selling the 3 and 6 cell batteries, since i only use the 9 cell, but the 3 cell looks good

also want to sell the BT mouse, will probably get around to making a thread later..

 

In the meantime, make sure you store them at about 45% charge

 

Hi im waiting on my U6SG-2PO13E and am wondering if anybody can post the Vista experiance of this model with the 9300m graphics card. Also what is the noise like when playing a dvd. Many thanks.

 

Here's my ratings (U6Sg-2P013E):

CPU 5,1
Mem 4,9
Graphics (desktop & aero) 3,5
Gaming Graphics: 4,5
Harddisk: 5,2

This is with the supplied video drivers (169.something) as newer drivers from laptopvideo2go.com don't seem to play well with Live for Speed, which is the only 3D game I have installed at the moment.

I've yet to play any DVDs longer than a few minutes just to see that it works, so I can't really comment on that.

 

Frankly unless you like vista... Install an XP back straight, the drivers all work fine under xp. Vista worked well with the u6sg though, but god that this os is awful. Otherwise, the fan is not too bad though clearly audible. While playing a dvd or any video here, it's just running around mid speed which is really acceptable. The built in speaker is horrible though, so I'd really recommend external speakers or even better, headphones.



I've been using an U6sg with the 9300m card for almost 2 weeks now.
The build of the whole computer is fairly good, well finished and all. The CPU rocks, and 250GB of disk is awesome.

On the not so awesome side:
1.The screen... is pretty disappointing for a LED screen. The blacks are extremely luminous, the whites are good, but the midtones are very undersaturated, and this is not something calibration can do something about.(I've used my dtp94 to hardware calibrate the screen, and while it did help quite a bit getting better colors, there's a real problem in particular with reds on that screen, but mind that I'm very picky about screens). Another thing is that this screen has really ****ty viewing angles. If you start going just 5degree off from the ideal viewing point, the black already get distorted. Asus really needs to learn from sony or fujitsu or apple on the screen issue.
With an average 0.8 deltaE after calibration it's not a bad screen at all, it's just not very pleasant, especially when watching video. Oh and the software/profile solution called asus splendid is trash, avoid it.

2.The keyboard is fairly disturbing, especially at first, with its supplementary row on the right for page up/page down/etc. This was my first time seeing a laptop with that design, and for those used to type fast, it'll take a bit of time getting used to the small shift, and non-border enter keys. Nothing major there, as one eventually gets used to it.

3.The builtin webcam is low resolution, though usable. Minor annoyance there.

4.No firewire port... While there are 4USB2 ports, and even an hdmi port... No firewire... A bit lacking.

5.Something that almost every single company around doing laptops fails to do well, cooling. This laptop makes no exeption, and while it keeps relatively cool, the cooling system could be way better(but then the 9300m produces a bit more heat than a builtin gma3100 would)

6.The intel 4965agn tends to have some slight drop troubles here, which can be annoying at times. Could be a faulty card, but I'm more thinking it's a driver problem from intel.

7.The NVIDIA card comes with powermizer, which is nothing but some gpu speed demotion to help make battery life longer. The problem? NVidia failed at making that driver non-blocking, which means that with powermizer on you'll experience huge dpc spikes, which can create audio drops during playback.

8.The battery life... is a bit short, especially for the 6cell battery which bulges out a lot from the back of the computer, I'd expect a bit more than 2.5hours. Obviously the cpu&gpu are being hogs here, even with speed demotion.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my u6sg, especially since it came rather cheap(imho) for what it is.(a powerful 12.1" with a real video card)

If anything I'd give it a 7.5/10.

 

Hi I'm looking to purchase an Asus U6sg-A1 off newegg and just had 1 quick question.

The u6sg sold on newegg comes with the t8100 (2.1 3mb cache chip) while i've noticed that some people have purchased their u6sg's with the t9300 chip which is 2.5 and 6mb.

I was just wondering if it was possible to buy the u6sg with the t9300 in the united states and if someone could direct me to a good site.

If not...

would anyone know if i would have more luck buying the u6sg in china (beijing, hk, possibly taiwan) with the t9300?

i'm guessing the benefits of the two different chips are probably negligable, but i figure if i'm gonna spend 1600+ on a laptop i might as well spend a bit more and get the better chip?

any advice is really appreciated.

i'm also thinking it might be cheaper in asia, but i'm not totally sure... again any insight would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

 

BtoTech in New York state can do it :

http://btotech.com/config.asp?config_id=u6sg-a1-custom

They can customize it for you with the t9300, look on reseller ratings for this store, it's impressive, so this looks like a good online store.

 

Not sure about China, but I've checked out laptops in Wanchai computer center and shum shui po in HK, all are more expensive than the US.
Taiwan on the other hand has the best prices (at NOVA in Taipei).

Asus doesn't offer the T9300 CPU in the states, but defiantly in other countries and for sure Taiwan. Check link here.

If you replace the CPU, it will void your manufacturer warranty. However, I believe BtoTech will give out their own warranty if you have them upgrade your CPU. You'll need to confirm this with Eddie

 

I'll be picking up a U6Ep tomorrow at NOVA in Taipei. Prices are definitely cheaper than in the states, not to mention the spec is higher.

T8300 (2.4Ghz), 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD for around $1400. Although you get Vista premium instead of Vista business.

Looks like I might be the first to get the U6Ep, so let me know if you guys want any testing done ;-)

 

what's the deal with the enormous power brick? Is any vendor selling a smaller one?

 

I've been trying to get an answer on what are the differences between U6SP and U6EP.

I know that one has a slightly better cpu but the other has a graphic card. I'm generally using the laptop for Adobe Creative Suit 3's softwares.

I prefer the U6EP's color than the SG...but Sg has better performance...

Also, what are the difference between the older U6S and U6E models vs SG and EP models?

Thanks

 

The U6S was the U6 with Santa Rosa platform. The U6Sg is an upgrade to the U6S, including a faster CPU (Peryn Core 2 Duo T8100 as opposed to the U6S's Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo T7500), another gig of memory (U6S had 2GB), newer GPU (GeForce 9300 w/ 256MB as opposed to the U6S's 8400 w/ 128MB), bigger hard drive (250GB), and probably a couple other small differences I forgot. I'm not sure about the U6SP and/or U6EP, but the older U6E I believe is the same as the U6S, but with an intel X3100 as opposed to the discrete GeForce 8400.

 

Hmm... search is disabled, so I'll have to ask,
How can I find out the bluetooth code for the mouse if I don't have any of the documentation?

 

Bluetooth codes/addresses are usually listed on the bottom of the device, or inside of the battery compartment.