~U3S Owners Lounge~

i don't find this update on asus website...

 

Can someone please post the recovery disks for the U3S.

My movers n packers guy misplaced a complete box of disks and lappie is kinda busted on my face...

Please PM me d link...

 

Did anyone ever get back to you galactin? I might have an ISO I made earlier (I back up all my disks to the HD).

 

Has anyone been able to get Vista to upgrade to SP1? Mine installs and then just flatly rollsback :/

 

Yeah I got mine to work. I went to the Micrsoft update page and downloaded the huge file, around 450 mb I believe. If you do it with Windows update its only 60 mb

 

I dropped the laptop on the carpet (twice) and it rebooted - is that just to protect the hdd or something ?

 

I'd rather suspect that the jolt cut off the power at some place, hence the reboot.

I don't know if the U3S HDD has shock protection. In any case, after such a drop while the computer was running, I strongly recommend a thorough hard drive check. Click on the Tips and Tricks link in my signature, then look for the procedure under heading "Has my HDD gone bad?".

 

Thanks man.

It's all good, tho

 

Well if there are bad sectors they won't show up by themselves... you need to explicitly check for them.

 

i did, and it's goooooood

 

I've been drooling over this Laptop for quite a while,Just ordered a U3 in Black tonight,can't wait for its arrival,it will be my 1st Asus.

 

Hi all!

Can someone tell me what is the battery life under XP and with a battery saving profile (ex: integrated gc, cpu "low", brightness low...).
Thanks for your answer!

Seb

 

I bought the U3S because it had specs that seemed like it could allow some gaming. I've owned the U3S for a few months now and just try to play some games.... Unplayable... grinding to a halt at maybe 2 frames per second, even at low settings. Games that actually play fine on my much older desktop. (Example: Company of Heroes, Age of Conan).

Can someone explain to me why? I upgraded to 2.5Gb ram, and tried some tweaking like turning off Vista Aero but it's still very slow. And I don't have unusual services running that take lots of memory. And I don't understand with such a video card (which is supposed to be not bad), why Windows Experience Index still says Desktop graphics at a 3.3!

And yes, the GeForce 8400M G is turned on.

Here are my specs:
U3S 1A3P

- Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00GHz
- 2.5GB RAM
- GeForce 8400M G
- Vista 32-bit Home service pack 1

Windows Experience Index
- Processor: 4.9
- RAM: 4.8
- Graphics: 3.3
- Gaming Graphics: 4.2
- Primary hard disk: 4.6

If you have constructive comments or suggestions, please send me an email through this board, or post here.

If you want to buy my laptop, I will sell it to you gladly. It's still like new, I even still have the plastic screen protector from when I first bought it tape on! Comes with a bag and nice suede-like pouch.

 

The 8400m GPU is an entry level card, therefore high demanding games such as Age of Conan, company of Heroes or Crysis won't play smoothly. I think you may have overestimated the performance on the 8400m. You can try playing games at the lowest resolutions and lowest details to help boost some fps or even overclock the GPU. But again, the 8400 CPU is not made for hardcore gaming.
If you are planning to sell your U3S, please post it on the Buy, Sell, Trade catagory with the BTS form.

 

Thank you thank you for those ideas.

Please, please, can you tell me how to use the Intel graphics card rather than the other one (not a tech head, I'm afraid). And how do I turn off graphics effects?

I have a VGA switch on my U3 (I suppose everyone does) that toggles between speed and "power saving". That seems to make a big difference in terms of battery life. Is that what you're talking about?

Thanks again.

 

Yes, you're guessing correctly - the PowerSaving toggle uses the integrated X3100 graphics, Speed uses the 8400M dedicated gpu. You have to reboot when you change the switch toggle to apply. Turning Aero off may not make a substantial difference with the X3100 for battery life, but you'll have to try it and see; with the 8400M it might somewhat, since the gpu won't be pulling all that constant power to make the effects work.

One of the few published reports I've found on U3S battery life suggests 40-50 min improvement for all activities using the Igpu with the MobileMark simulation; I'm pretty sure that was with Aero engaged.

 

I actually won my U3S through Microsoft, back in December. I love this laptop! I travel a lot with my job and I have used the GPS, I also used the GPS while on a trip to Colorado, the GPS is very accurate and i never have used the GPS antenna. My only complaint with the laptop is that it does not have a CD/DVD drive but after about one day i got used to not having one. Does anyone know of a upgrade/update for the GPS??

 

Can anyone explain how the Aero score for the Windows Experience Index is determined? Seems strange to me that the integrated graphics card has an Aero score of 3.5 (and a 3D score of 3.5), but the NVidia card has an Aero score of only 3.2 (and a 3D score of 4.1). Just seems a bit odd to me.

Also, I got the 3G version of the U3s. Can I still get the GPS functionality, and if so how?
Thanks in advance

 

No, it's ordered by the regional Asus group and installed by Asus at the factory. There's no way to get it installed aftermarket afaik.

North America only gets the GPS, where some would actually prefer the 3G.

 

WEI scores are very unreliable and poorly represent real-life performance. Don't bother with them.

 

I don't know if that's entirely true - there definitely seemed to be some for sale here in Australia (at least when I was searching for resellers on line) - but if that is right - then I didn't have a choice anyway - (or if I did, good thing I got the 3G one eh?)

Hey.. can you help me with this eSata thing? I have an old internal drive I'd love to get some info off - and couldn't be bothered opening my PC up, disconnecting the slave, putting the old drive in etc etc... so I thought great! I'll use the new eSata on my laptop! Now I understand it requires a different cable (Wiki told me that ) - but doesn't the drive need a power supply? Or am I totally wrong in thinking I can connect (temporarily obviously) my internal drive via eSata? I need one of those cases don't I? Urgh.

And lastly... when the laptop boots and the ASUS screen pops up - hitting Del doesn't get me to the bios... so what does?

 

F2 or F8 to get BIOS.

On the old drive, not really. If you don't want to pull it out of the old pc, then you have to network your notebook with the pc using ethernet to pull data.

Else, you need an external enclosure - but if it's an old IDE/EIDE/ATA hdd, I don't believe there any external enclosures for that format that have eSATA connections out (I could be wrong there, perhaps?). If it's an SATA drive, put it in an enclosure with eSATA out; and many external enclosures ship with SATA cables, else just buy one.

 

I am having a charging problem my Asus U3 - Vista. If I am running on battery and then plug in the charger, I get the animation for a few seconds and it stops.
So say I'm at 43%, if I scroll over it will say 43% and charging, but 10 mins later it says the same thing - so clearly it's NOT charging.
If I take the battery out and and put it back in, I get the animation again for a few seconds, 43% so it and charging, and if I check again in 10 mins, it might be 55% and charging.
So it obviously doesn't need the animation to charge, but sometimes the battery seems to need a "reset". Do you think this is a faulty battery?
Also, a restart doesn't fix the problem, nor does turning it off, unplugging, replugging etc. The only thing that seems to fix the "freeze" is to take the battery out.
Any ideas?

 

You can try a battery calibration (should be an option for that in BIOS), which takes a while, but not sure if that would address the problem.

If you're still under the 12 month battery warranty from original purchase date, talk to Asus about RMA replacement after you do the calibration if the problem persists. Once you get outside of the 12 month window, your only recourse will be to purchase a replacement battery on your own .

 

Well, definitely under the warranty.. only had it 2 months! Couldn't find a battery re-cal in bios, so I ran the 6-cell for a while, put the 3-cell back in and the problem seemed to go. It came back, and now it's intermittent. I rang tech support and they gave me a warrantee ticket to drive 5000miles (ok, slight exageration) to see the support centre. So I think I will follow it up, even though I can't MAKE the fault happen now ie) it's not constantly doing it, and I can't make it do it at will (which I could before).

Also, I plan to ask the support guys about sleep when closing the lid (on battery). It doesn't work. When I close the lid the computer -nearly- sleeps. That is: the hard drive (and light) stops, the bluetooth and wireless (and light) stops, but the "power saving" light and fan stays on. If I open the lid, even just a fraction, it 'finishes' falling asleep and all lights go off (other than standby pulsing blue light) and fan stops and computer sleeps correctly. Anyone else had this "bug"? It's frustrating because I can't just "close and go" I have to close, open close.

:confused2:

 

You shouldn't need to drive if you have the ASUS standard warranty? That's pickup and return, they should arrange for shipping...

As to:

I also have that bug on either 1 or 2 of my 3 computers. Seems to be a common ASUS ACPI bug. I usually standby (sleep) using Fn+F1, wait until the power light blinks, and then I close the lid. You could try updating the ATK (ACPI) drivers, maybe that fixes it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

 

Is it just me or does anybody else have problems playing back 1080p videos at a decent frame rate? Anything from the Apple trailers in 1080p plays back with skipped frames as well as some other 1080 content I have.

It seems to me that the machine should have the power to playback this content better than it does. Running Vista Ultimate with RAM maxed out at 2.5 GB.

 

Have you switched over to the dedicated GPU?

 

Yes. Do I need any special player other than something like MP Classic or VLC to take advantage of the GPU? I have had success with the CoreAVC codec along with CCCP but this seems messy to me.

 

I had the same problem after I bought mine after 3 months, I went back to the store and store guy tried to explain me that batteries are not covered but I showed him the other side of the world and then he agreed to sent it back to ASUS ,it took about 2 months coz they didn't had white u3s batteries in stock but end of the day ,I got a new battery and its working fine.

 

ASUS batteries are covered by a 1-year warranty.

 

Fun fact:
If you're in Norway, your laptop battery is coveded by a 2 1/2 year warranty no mather what.

http://nrk.no/programmer/tv/fbi/1.5081962

 

I have a question here: What advantages does using the external ASUS drive for this notebook have over any other external drive? The ASUS one is really expensive compared to other ones, so I would like to know from people who own this if it's worth getting the ASUS one.

 

Hey,

Just got this laptop. I'm wondering if any solution has been found to the noise problem --- I notice that the fan comes on when the notebook hits 43 degrees - which is MUCH too soon. Many dell laptops are configured to go on at 73 degrees.....

Basically the fan is way to loud and doesn't move any air... I'm considering just voiding my warranty and replacing it myself...

 

None, other than it has the connector that plugs both USB and power into the slot at the same time with the proprietary connector (if I recall correctly). I believe that Asus uses a rebadged LG drive.

Any external drive will work fine - some slim drives might work just off single usb power, while others require a secondary USB cable or external power source for full functionality. Be sure to carefully review the specs on the units you are considering.

Fan speed/temp thresholds are set in the BIOS, and no third party software I'm aware of will work in newer Asus models. Asus' engineers tend to be conservative with their fan settings, esp in the smaller chassis formfactor - my W3 first starts at 40-42C.

Dell isn't known for that, but I'm surprised to hear that the initial fan startup on dell, if correctly stated, is at 73C; that would make the plastic over the CPU etc very warm indeed (my daughter's HP kicks in at cpu 56C and the lower chassis is pretty hot by then).

 

I just popped open the bottom lid.. Looks like some sort of tiny 3 pin fan header. If I could get the female attachment to this header I could easily make an inline-resistor attachment ... choosing the proper amount would be key. Ideally I make it so that the startup voltage is increased so that the fan onlycomes on when the bios sends enough voltage to kick it on "medium-high".

I'm not concerned with overheating since these CPUs are rated for a max temp of 100C...

Also, I noticed the Hitachi 160GB HD has really loud seeks.... much louder than my seagate. Has anyone had luck with acoustic management or am I better off replacing the drive?

 

Ok, well, I received this notebook last Friday from ExcaliberPC, and I'm really pleased so far!

However, I tried updating the BIOS to the latest version (306) by using the WinFlash utility and using the instructions on the Asus website, but now my computer won't start! I'm really upset by this. Is there any solution to this so I won't have to send the laptop to Asus?

 

Please do not double post (although I understand that you are impatient for a solution, since your computer stopped working). I have answered on your other thread.

 

Any new bioses' out there? It's still noisy.

 

If there are, they should be on support.asus.com (unless they're in Beta stage).

 

I just ordered my Asus U3S A1B and should be getting it within a day or 2

I'm planning on replacing the RAM to 2.5 GB and possibly downgrading to XP

Questions-

1. What's the weight difference between a 6-cell and a 9-cell? If anyone has a 9-cell and could post pictures of it on the laptop that'd be really helpful

2. What are the pros and cons of running Vista compared to XP on the U3S? (From all angles- speed and performance, driver compatibility, screen resolution and other aesthetics, features, etc.)

- I had to use Vista this past summer and it drove me crazy. It was probably the computer, but I felt like Vista made it even slower.. not to mention it taking forever to boot.

Thanks!

 

1. I would guess around 100g? I don't really know...

A well-configured Vista will probably run acceptably. I am still using XP though, so I cannot say for certain. Give it a try before you remove it, though.

 

Vista with some tweeks aint that bad. :]

 

Hi all,

I've been wanting to downgrade my U3S for awhile now, and am finding it difficult to find all the drivers necessary. can anybody help me out?

I just wanna know what drivers are needed, and from where can I get them, as Asus havent released any XP drivers for U3S'. Ive heard that using W7S drivers are okay. is this true?

Thanks for your help guys, and sorry for my low level of understanding with laptops and whatnot.

 

Also, I've tried installing XP on my laptop, and all is well, until it hits the BSOD (blue screen) with an error, before i eveng get to the partitioning stage. I believe that some ppl say that the problem is to do with the SATA drive, so I changed it to IDE, and made the SATA compatible only. yet the screen still appears.

any clues?

thanks again!

 

Can someone tell me whether this laptop is worth buying now? for ~$1000 (US dollars)?

 

hi everyone,

i was finally able to downgrade to XP with most if not all drivers (except Mini card, and intel interface controller) to work. if anyone has any enquries, just drop a msg in this forum and ill try my best to help you out.

thanks for all your contributions!

 

That's half of what I payed... and i'm happy with it... go figure

 

Hey, I'm in the market for one of these, but I was wondering if there's anyway to procure a foreign version. If I'm not mistaken, they have LED-Backlighting, and include a 9 cell battery as well as the external optical drive, whereas the US version has none of that. If anyone has any info on how I can get my hands on one without too much hassle I'd really appreciate the heads up.

Thanks.

 

$1000 US for a notebook today that retailed when discontinued in 6/08 for $1250-1300? A bit steep, even if the build quality and materials were top notch; I'd say $700-800 is more reasonable.