~V2S Owner's Lounge~

Dude this the v2s owners lounge not the v1s

 

ok? im not blind but i can see same probs as with V1S u as so im trying to say that it might be more serious with all other similar santa rossas from asus! now do you get me why i done it?

this is more important then v2 or v1 .. same thing its santa rossa and its ASUS and ITS t7500 and t7700 ..

thanks for playing a gurdian role we need more men like you

 

Hahaha ok However I don't have any problems with my laptop. Sometimes the laptop gets warm, theres flex in the middle of the laptop cover. But other then that I'm happy with the v2s. Its the coolest laptop around my campus Whenever someone sees my laptop their like wow thats an awesome laptop.
Heres a screenshot of the wPrime time.


Edit: Sorry to small heres another image.

 

It also bothers me that it includes that Lightscribe guide etc without there acutally being a Lightscribe drive in the machine! lol

 

again | il say something

you are Suspiciously happy man! and i envy you Because i have bought a wack.

 

I am sorry, but I have to say something now. I have been reading this thread for a while now and have been thinking about buying the V2S for a little while now and the only things stopping me are money and I have not seen a full review on it yet.

Anyways in my opinion your V1S is just one of those one in a million notebooks where everything is going wrong. It is not your fault and it is not ASUS's fault it is just one of those that don't work well right out of the box. It happens with everything from USB Cables to Plasma screen TVs. If your problems are consistent with all of ASUS's Santa Rossa's then we do have a real problem but until we get good reviews from all those Notebooks t is nothing but speculation. Yea I can understand why you posted in here but now I can barely understand what you are trying to say. I think you are trying to claim the Jetnis is being paid to to say his V2S is great or that he is just to prideful to say that anything is wrong with his V2S. I could be completely off but I Just hope you can clean up your grammar enough so hopefully some of us can understand what you are saying. I failed my University English class because of my own grammar problems but that doesn't mean I am illiterate and you have shown us that you are able to make perfect sense when you type something, so please for the future of literacy can you please use proper English.

I am sorry that I blow up on you but my biggest pet peeve is people who can speak/type normally one time around and then are completely illiterate the next.

Again with your concern about the Santa Rossa's I think that once a few reviews are up the issue will shine some light on itself.

Sorry about this rant but I hope this stops at least some arguing before it really begins. I also think I am just getting a little on edge waiting for a nice full review for this Notebook. I am not blaming anyone who already has one and hasn't made a review. I am just wondering if I should get this Notebook now or wait until I do my taxes next year. I am in no rush for a new laptop just my old one is barely making it by with my Video editing stuff.

 

ok i agree on what you just said about my English ,and il clean up by removing the post ,but i promise you guys that if this laptop comes back from repairs by CRC! in worst condition than it was b4 i sent it!!!!! watch out il use my sh**ty English again!
and man i advise you buy dell IBM or sharp or Panasonic all these i had in my possession all work horses! trust me they are better they just don’t have issues. and if you plan on using pc for business then choose from that whatever has (made in japan) will work

its like cars there is: German cars Japanese cars ,,,,and American .. rest is almost cars


and i have never had ASUS b4 that’s why looking at paying 2000$ for problems ?????makes me think twice .
but il look on the outcome of the repairs ,and il give them chance to exchange it for me if the repairs will fail to be successful.
Then if this isn’t gna help il sell it to some person who is satisfied with it as it is and buy IBM PANASONIC ,SHARP, SONY, DELL rest is lame (hp including) but accept business \corporate models those seem to be on the level . in my opinion its something like inspiron VS latitude in dell where is latitude made to last.

Small thing to add I have had GDDR3 VRAM on my V1s-B1!! And every1 else moaning about having GDDR2

 

My v2s is working fine and I'm assuming that it runs pretty fast by looking at the wprime score it received which was a 37.917 secs...I don't have time to download and test the 3d marks but I didn't buy this laptop to game. The only pet peeve I have with it is the battery life. The most I have gotten is 2.5 hours on a 6 cell. Also...the screen some times switches resolution unexpectedly but it only happens once a startup. Then, it automatically switches back in about 10 secs to my regular resolution. I think it is pretty well built but if there was a pc laptop with secs/ leds like the mbp I would've purchased it instead. Also, I don't think theres any metal on my laptop which is pretty disappointing. I had a friend who has the new sony sz and it has magnesium. Does any one know what the v2s is made of?

 

its plastic... can i ask you a question? how many laptops you had in your life?

 

Can I ask you a question? Did you ever read my past posts? Especially the one about me owning a laptop for the 1st time. I thought I read somewhere that some parts have carbon fiber in it......

 

Gah I have also noticed that switching resolution thing and I am not sure why its happening, its not really that big a deal to me but I can see why some people would be really annoyed!

 

i think its some bloatware that does it (hopfully) if not then id say hek with all asuses im going for trusted brands next time.

dont have v2s but v1s had same super annoying res switching


2000$ i never paid that much for so many problems

i wanna see the face of a asus maker!!!!

P.S. im waiting for my laptop to be back from repairs if it will come back with same problems and swapped GeForce gddr3 for gddr2 ... il write review that asus will have problem to forget!

 

sorry mate havnt read it my bad

 

Asus uses carbon fiber embedded in the plastic of the V series - improves strength while cutting the weight as they can use thinner sheets. Not quite as protective as a magnesium alloy shelll, but better protection than simple high-impact plastic in the F/A series.

 

yea i noticed that resolution switching as well....kind of annoying but supposedly its vista.

One thing I am curious about is how to program the buttons on the bluetooth mouse that came with the computer. I would like to change the scroll wheel button from scroll to a back button and i cant figure out how to do this....any help would be appreciated

 

I have had mine for about two weeks and these are my observations:

After clearing off bloatware, removing programs and services that don't need to automatically start, stifling aero functionality, and generally tweaking the computer to run as fast as possible...I am disappointed. I am not a gamer, so all I need is a computer that can multi-task without considerable lag, and this is not that computer. My last laptop had nowhere near the horsepower under the hood that this thing does, but I never had these kinds of lag issues while running XP.

I am not a computer whiz by any means, so apologies if these questions are naive and don't contribute to our understanding of these issues:

In your opinion, is this is a Vista issue? GPU issue? Or RAM amount/quality issue?

- If it's Vista, I could figure out how to dual boot XP, though that would really piss me off after spending almost $2K.

- If it's the GPU, is there any hope that a firmware update or a new driver could improve the situation?

- If it's the RAM amount, would adding more make a difference? Would replacing the DDR2 with GDDR3 make a difference?

I really like the look and feel of this laptop, but if I can't use it the way I need to use it for general business, then it needs to go back.

Anyone else having these issues?

 

I've sent my V2S back under RMA because I ended up with a blue screen which was unresolvable via phone support by the reseller. I'm awaiting a replacement. I too am not a gamer and need the computer for general business and some media purposes. I'm no computer whiz either. I don't think I did anything wrong--and still the blue screen. My understanding is that the reseller would not refund or accept returns. So I am wondering if I have a similar experience to yours, Jeff, what recourse I'd have. I'm worried.

 

well, any software problem is essentially the user's problem - laptops don't do it by themselves, honestly

2jeftzuck

I'd say that normally the responsiveness is closely connected with RAM, but on any laptop with Core2duo cpu and non-integrated gpu you should get perfect non-gaming performance(at least in the beginning)

and ddr2/gddr3 is for video ram - you can't replace it
The normal ram in laptops now is standard DDR2-667

 

So if the operating system craps out, and it is factory installed and included under the manufacturer's warranty, is that a software issue or a hardware issue?

 

Just wanted to give a heads up that I received my V2S-B1 today. I'll be writing a review for it this weekend, so if anyone wants any specific info or tests, please post them here.

 

There may be a specific format to follow, considering that most of the reviews on the forum seem to follow a set format. There seems to be a good deal of interest in speed/power in general, graphics performance specifically, and of course, battery life, with both 6 and 9 cell batteries if you have them. It would be nice to see what you get for battery life with different power modes and with a variety of uses (i.e. general internet/productivity vs. gaming vs. media, etc). Thanks for reviewing.

 

If you haven't yet, contact Andrew, I'm sure they'd love to have you do an "official" NBR style review for them.

 

V2S graphics card problem.\

Hi I just got my V2S - but I can't seem to update the graphics card driver. The driver is 7.15.11.138 - Forceware version is 101.38

Video BIOS version: 60.84.49.00.24

date 6.6.07

ASUS doctor is no help either- its complaining that I have NO graphics card installed.

I tried loading the graphics card driver from Asus. Nvidia. and laptop2go. But all no help. Either it can't find the appropriate driver or it says my setup has the latest driver.

Faults noted - I can't run Company of Heroes 2.1... and my screen resolution changes from time to time.

 

Uninstall your driver first, then install the one from Laptop2go

 

Yeah, how do I keep my screen resolution from changing every single time I start up the laptop?

 

Software issue - unless you can really prove that it's smth wrong with the hardware.

First of all, reinstall windows - it helps quite often.

The other possible reason could be faulty RAM though, but it's not highly probable.

 

Does anyone know if the Asus V2S-B1 has a crippled graphics card like the Asus B2S-A1?

 

There is no reason to think that it won't. I am pretty sure the only upgrade is the processor. I would expect everything else to be the same, including the crappy graphics card.

Its a shame really, 2 years ago Asus was making some incredible notebooks (V6V, W3j, etc) but now its just mediocre notebook after mediocre notebook.

 

agree got my medicore for 2000$ and had to send it back for RMA!

dudes told me that we will replace your foulty HDD,BOARD,SCREEN,& power unit.

we will replace your everything but the freaking webcam!

 

Hi,

I bought the Asus V2s and I am somewhat disappointed in the performance of the video card. The 8600 gs is not what I expected it to be, even so I would like to make the best out of the computer since it meets my needs in every other way, except perhaps in battery time (less than 2 hours with aero turned off and all bloatware removed).

Therefore I am wondering if anyone knows what drivers to download from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ so perhaps I could get a little more boost for my video card? It also has some problems running games, sometimes quitting the game and going back to windows with the message: "The video driver stopped working" (?) If anyone could give a link to a good driver to download I would appreciate it very much.


Also, if anyone is interested, here’s a Norwegian test of the V2s : http://www.idg.no/tester/tester_maskinvare/article66036.ece

I translated the conclusion:

Conclusion

The conclusion for the Asus V2s is simple. If the laptop had more battery time, it would have gotten a higher grade, probably 5/6. However the battery time is so short, that this is not a computer we could recommend to those who require long battery time without asking them to upgrade the battery to a 9-cell battery. This would in theory give the computer a 60% increase in battery power, which would have been an acceptable result. It would also raise the price with 1000 NOK.

Otherwise the computer gives a good impression over all. Functionality is good, the screen is good ( as long as you do not dislike glossy screens) and the performance is good. The 3-D performance is good enough for games, without it making the computer a gaming computer

 

Assuming your running Vista 32-bit, I recommend you use these:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15369

Make sure you follow the instructions on LV2G, with regards to the Modded INF.

 

I saw most people say that asus v2s has better build quality than f8s series. What do u refer to by build quality? Is it good chassis, durability, stability?

 

I have wondered what they mean by this also. Someone said they would be doing a V2S review but I haven't seen it yet. I have a V2S-B1 and I think it's great. I have had some problems, but they appear to be more Vista-related than hardware related. Even though I now have my computer I'd still like to see an official review.

 

Build quality =
-- good materials in the outer chassis leading to scratches- fingerprints- and wear- resistance
-- good internal skeleton of the notebook, leading to little to no flex when notebook is under mechanical stress
-- aesthetics

Both of these immediately translate into better durability of the notebook, leading to a longer lifetime.

 

I just received a v2s-B1. After upgrading the HD to a 200gb 7200rpm hitachi, I used the included restore dvd to add the OS etc. The process went very smoothly once I figured out that the vista "restart now" windows that kept popping up during the install were not supposed to be clicked and acted upon! The restore took about 1 hour. The system is performing very well. I removed Norton and acrobat reader (have the full version) and changed the background so that Aero is not running.

Initial impressions: first the laptop:
Build quality: excellent Fit and finish of everything is quite good.

Keyboard: some flex in the middle but tolerable, easy to type on.

Screen: very sharp very clear, no dead or stuck pixels, I have not checked for light leakage yet, I suspect a little at the bottom is present

DVD Playback: excellent no stuttering, the included software from
Asus (rebadged brand) works fine.

Fan noise: noticeable at high speed but only on breifly . I really like the placement of the vent on the left side!

Heat: The palmrests are not warm at all, the keyboard is where the heat comes up, not bad but noticeable

Wifi: connected fine and had no issues, I did change a property in the wifi adapter, I unchecked the let windows turn off power to this device.

I like the touchpad and the fingerprint scanner is working fine as is the video cam.

Benchmarks:
I downloaded wprime v 1.54 from their site and it will not run on the machine, I have never encountered this issue, and I can not seem to find any reason yet. Clicking the wprime executable it get a red x wih an error has occured and the program does not load. Any suggestions here would be very helpful.

More benchmarks to come when I have time.


OS: The Vista 32 business is something I have to get used to. This is my first venture into vista, I find some things pretty nice, and some things poorly implemented. My laptop connects to a domain so at post the first screen I get in vista is a very crude white text message across the screen stating to press Ctrl, Alt, Del to logon. Not a very professional looking screen.

Startup time is slow, I need to tweak the load applications, but I want to proceed slowly here.

There are numerous icons in the taskbar that are from asus and intel? that I would like to remove with regards to security implementation. Shut down time is very slow. I need to figure out what is holding things up. Given the hardware in this laptop, I do not beleive that the slow opening and closing of the OS is hardware based but some poor implementation in the os. Moving within the OS opening files and executing programs is quite fast, so there is nothing hogging a resource during normal use that I can see in task manager or just tell by perceiving a lag. There really is none.


My vista experience rating is 3.4, the video card gets a 3.4 whereas every other test is around 5.7-5.9. Looks like the card is really crippled. Not sure if anything can be done here. I did test the latest laptop video to go driver and it did not improve the video card rating, the driver did make the screen look washed out so I uninstalled and loaded the asus provided nvidia driver.

I have not formed an opinion on this laptop yet as to whether it is a keeper, I really am on the fence. I like the 14 inch form factor, weight, build quality, placement of the cooling vent etc. I also like that the v2s has a 9cell battery option. The F8sv does not have a 9 cell opiton in the US. I do not like that wprime did not run, nor do I like the issues with vista. Asus does not offer winxp drivers for this laptop (according to asus tech support). I was pleasantly surprised by the short wait time and knowledgeable person I spoke to at Asus when I called regarding the hard drive change. The tech was helpful and did not have any issues with a hard drive upgrade. That is a plus for me. I hope to have pics and more as I get time.

 

Thanks for the detailed impressions!

Some comments:
To decrease Vista shutdown time and for general performance tweaks, check out Flamenko's Top Vista Tweaks thread in the Windows section.
I would stick with the latest driver, likely the screen looks washed out simply because the default brightness and contrast settings were different, try adjusting those.

 

Is the battery life (6cell) of this laptop really that bad? Less than 2 hours for a business notebook :-(

 

Will check battery life. My only issues have been vista related too, but so far I can say that vista is not that bad. The tweaks in the windows os section have helped. Have tested the external monitor feature using a projector, my powerpoint presentations are fine. The hitachi 200gb 7200 rpm drive is very fast. Wil have to run HD tune. I also got wprime to work, its failure to run had something to do with the user account monitoring, turning that off in visa allowed it to run, 34 seconds and change is not bad for a sub 5 pound laptop.

 

Quote 34 seconds and change is not bad for a sub 5 pound laptop)

I did not get you.

 

@honguy this comment was the wprime benchmark score. My v2s-b1 took 34.462 seconds in its calcuation of pi to 32 million decimal places. If you look at reviews of notebooks you will see that many are in the 35-45 second range for this benchmark.


Battery life checked: with no wifi or bluetooth. Battery saving mode: 2hr 34 min. Pretty much what other Asus users are getting.

 

Thanks for the test hox.
Just wondering how did you test the battery? is it just light app usage or did u run a DVD?

 

Light App usage

 

hox,

Do you happen to know who is the manufacturer for the V2s screen. I think there is a program that can tell you this (I think its called Everest)

 

@sum1

This is what I found in device manager's instances
cmo1431\5&2AF857D6&0&UID272

The Chi Mei web site does not list a 14.1 lcd with this model number, nor do they list one with a 1440 x 900 resoultion;
so your guess is as good a mine as to who makes the lcd.

 

Sorry to bother you again hox but is the weight of the V2s really is 2.3 Kg? My current hp laptop states 2.5 kg on their site but in actual life its more like 2.8-2.9 Kg which i found pretty misleading.

Also did u get to check on light leakages on the screen? and did you also notice some resolution switching when you boot up the computer like the one mentioned in this thread and the V1s thread?

Thanks for all your help mate.

N.B I just noticed the screenshot for the windows experience index for the V2s. Edit: Oh i just found out the windows experience index is not a good benchmark app. Based on 3dmark06 it seem like V2s GPU is still better than M1330 but its only slighly better but at least its not as disappointing as the windows experience index score.

 

@sum 2.3 kg is accurate with the 6 cell battery. Light lekage is not bad.

I have encountered no resolution switching problems. The screen stays at 1440x 900. I used it for a lecture yesterday, it worked very well, the fn +f8 key toggled the laptop to crt + laptop and the resolution swithed to 1024 x 768 which is what the projector could handle. Unplugging the vga link to the projector it shut it down and restarting it later that day the machine was back to 1440x 900. No problems. Have not noticed light leakage beyond a small bit on the bottom, definately not a problem.

I upgraded the ram in the machine yesteday using kingston value ram 2gb modules: KVR667D2S0/2GR. I put in 2 although vista 32 only sees 3gb, I wanted to keep the ram in dual channel mode. No problems. Everything has run as predicted.

Hope that helps.

 

Hey I've currently had my V2S-A1 for about two months and within the two months, I've already had to send the unit back in after receiving an error seen below in the picture. According to Asus, I had a "corrupted OS" and a "corrupted HDD." After receiving my unit back I noticed that they installed Vista Home Premium (among 1 of many other problems).
Also, I receive blue screens quite often. I have already ran the recovery disc about 8 times now. I have called Asus Tech Support numerous times and they keep suggesting things that I've already tried.
Just last week, my laptop randomly restarted and I had to go through the start up process of setting up the time, region, computer name, etc. Basically, everything got wiped off my C drive.
Also, the unit seems a bit sluggish. In the time it took to write this, Firefox has given me the "Not Responding" status twice even though I have minimal programs installed and running.


anyone ever seen THAT screen before? yeah neither have i

 

What the.................are you serious.......I haven't seen this screen yet. My v2s a1 is working fine the only problem is that I have to install the wireless drive again because it doesn't work properly.

 

I haven't had any major prblems with my laptop so far and i think it's running fairly smoothly..

my biggest grudge is that the keyboard sucks, and i'm not sure whether it's just susceptible to heat fluctuations or what, but some keys will sometimes get stuck; as in the travel doesn't work properly and i have to press on it extra hard as there is resistance... this is completely random, and has happened to my "t" and "home" key so far... it gets pretty annoying....

 

Ok, so I wanted a powerful laptop with a great wireless setup, an HDMI output, a lightweight body and a decent video card. I am able to get one of these for $1750.00 CAD at www.ncix.com tomorrow... thinking of going for it unless I can get a similar price on an XPS M1330. Does anyone want to convince me that I shouldn't purchase this... ? It seems to have had mixed reviews thus far...

one specific question... how is the sound card?

Is it worth waiting for this Asus F8SV-A1 or B1? Will it be a better laptop?