~VX2S Owners' Lounge~

@viking : I agree with the other dudes, this is not the place for a rant. VX2S is far from being perfect, but as an HP reseller I can assure you that it's a bang for the buck. You can't get a 100% identical HP 8510 config (including everything I got with the VX2S, BD, docink, accesoiries, etc. for the same price, period. And the build quality of the 8510 is good but not superior IMHO. Maybe the speakers are better, surely, but apart from you I guess that most people do not really care. And regarding the HDX, this is not a laptop for most readers, but a DTR.

We should stop this kind of discussions here, because it's a matter or opinions, and this thread is not a lappy comparison thread, there are specialized sections in this forum if you want to compare things.

 

I guess that might be the case.
@Kador: If you change the sound level of the HDMI output, does it change the SPDIF sound level?

 

HYNIX HYMP325S64AMP8-Y5 04G001618610 DDRII667 SO-D HYNIX 2G 200P is compatible with VX2S. Unfortunately, this kind of RAM is not popular in Vietnam, even in the biggest city likes Ho Chi Minh. Thus, I found hardly to buy this kind of ram. There is only one kind of 2GH RAM, which is CONSAIR (Bus 667Mhz PC5300). I want to ask for whether CONSAIR is compatible with VX2S as good as HYNIX. If yes, I will purchase it to upgrade my laptop to 3GH in order to support better performance. Does anybody test it?

 

me did not try, I'm not sure the level can be changed at all on an spdif (and, as of me, I don't care, because this is the matter of the amplifier !) I'll try if I can.

 

CONSAIR or CoRsair ??? I'm using OCZ 2Gb sticks, and it works like a charm, if it can help.

 

Corsair, Sorry for spelling mistake...

 

Hi guys. After fighting for over 7 months i'm finally getting my Asus R1F refunded in full. And like an idiot i'm still looking at the VX2S as its replacement. Does anyone here know if the VX2S is better built than the R1f. I cant go into a shop here in Ireland to get to play with the VX2S before I make a decision to purchase as Asus dont have any retail sellers that I know of (please correct me if i'm wrong).

1) Does it creak or flex anywhere on the chasis (my R1f felt like it was going to fall apart).

2) Is the build up there with something like a Vaio AR series or a MBP (I know its different materials and some of you guys hate comparisons with other laptops but I need a reference point to compare the VX2S with).

3) Has anyone come any closer to finding out how we are to tell before purchasing which models use the Chi-Mei lcd panel. For €2500 I need to know i'm not getting screwed by Asus again.

4) Having lived with your VX2S would you buy one again.

Sorry if I sound like a questionaire.

 

@Jurissprudence:
1.) The built quality is very solid. The only thing that flexes slightly is the top of the lid when you grab the laptop with one hand to carry it around. But this is only very little. The keyboard does not flex at all and so do all the other parts.

2.) I cannot compare it to the stated models since I never saw these in real life. I have the carbon black version of the VX2S. So far, I am very happy with the built quality. Although the left and right speaker cover is plastic rather than something metallic (what I expected before), I like the overall quality. Especially the leather finish for the palm rest. This only helps little - I know.

3.) I have been following this thread for a long time, exchanged my own lcd panel and talked to some owners via PMs. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell which laptop is shipped with a Chi Mei or a Samsung lcd panel. You might want to ask your distributor to check but this might not help at all. Where else would you then look for getting a VX2s with the Chi Mei lcd panel... Honestly, that is something where Asus really messed up with this model...

4.) I would. I own the laptop for two month now. My opinion/experience: I had to replace the Samsung lcd panel with a Chi Mei one to be completely satisfied...
The built quality and the design is great. For what you get, the laptop is overprized since the actual hardware can be found in much cheaper notebooks... on the other hand, you get a product that shows a complete design. Not only the laptop itself but what comes with it (bag, case etc.).
If this adds a certain value to it (and for me it does), this laptop will make you happy and it is worth the prize.
Anything else I would complain about? Asus could have used DDR3 RAM for the video card and made sure that SPDIF out actually appears as a separate sound output device instead of linking it to the HDMI output. But then again, this is not a 100% gamers laptop... it simply is very complete...

Another critic mentioned are the bad speakers: I have owned more 4 laptops before I got this one and saw and "played" with quite a few others. The speakers are not great but that is the case with almost every laptop. The only speakers that were different were Harman/Kardon speakers built in a Toshiba laptop I one owned...

Final words: If you are looking for a laptop which scores in style, performance and overall usability, the VX2s is definitely a very good choice. If style does not matter and price might be another concern, for instance the V1S comes with almost the same features but much lower price... but then again... the V1S is just another ordinary laptop

 

@ VX2s owners:
Does your fan ever stop (running Vista) when in quite office mode?

 

rapid question: I use my laptop about 10 days, much of the time with bluetooth mouse. is it normal that my touchpad has wear yet! I've used it only a couple of days!

another question: I've installed a new version of VISTA ult. the ASUS' preinstalled sucks! but the new version doesn't accept my licence of vista. any solution?

thanks for your help

 

@WLF46WLF:
1.) What do you exacly mean by "my touchpad as wear yet".

2.) The preinstall sucks indeed. What version did you install/Do you use the recovery disk? As far as I know this is the only way to use the Vista OEM version that ships with the notebook.

 

Sorry, often I can't explain what I would like to say!

example: I had an acer notebook, after 1 year the touchpad figured still as new! in this case (vx2s) after 10 days the touchpad is consumed, particularly where I pass my finger! in my opinion it's impossible that it has a wear like that! I used the touchpad only a couple of times. generally I use the bluetooth mouse!

I installed vista ultimate. I tried to install a clean OEM version of Vista, but didn't work. my recovery DVDs didn't work too! the only way was to install a normal version, the same version as mine (ultimate). if I purchase a license attached to my notebook, my code must work with it! obviously it must not work attached in other PCs. isn't this the meaning ?

with Vista the fan never stops
why?? you can stop them under xp?
how do you control the freq of your processor? in my old laptop I used CPUClock, but doesn't seem to work properly
what about the battery life? I think that with some good utility we can increase it!

finally, on battery the laptop often doesn't shut down! do you have the same problem? (VISTA obviously). and it doesn't save my settings of the bluetooth mouse (left handed; it loses the setting every shut down)

 

Hi All,

Just finished reading this entire thread. I only saw one reference to battery life: 2.5hrs with office type use. Anyone else have battery life experiences to share. I'm mostly interested in best case scenarios without dimming the screen too much.

Also temps and fan noise. I've got an Asus M6BNe currently and it typically runs at ~45-50c (Win XP and 1.7 Centrino). Fans typically don't come on past the very low base level unless I run something processor intensive.

Thanks........

 

@ Jorlin - My fan never stops in "Quiet Office" mode either, it isn't going very fast, but it is audible.

@ WLF46WLF - You can do a "clean" install of Vista, without the Asus bloatware. Insert recovery DVD, press "Esc" to boot from the DVD, install Vista BUT... when it asks you to insert the driver CD, don't do it, just shut the notebook down. Then when you restart it, it will boot into Windows and use standard Vista drivers. You can then insert the driver CD and it gives you a nice menu where you can choose to install whichever drivers you want, but you don't have to install all of the Asus bloatware. This almost halves the number of background processes that are running under the standard Asus build.

 

thanks for the advice! I didn't know that! but my recovery DVD doesn't work! at the end of installation it turns out that it can't complete installation!
Now I've installed VISTA ultimate and scared that the autorun would have installed all, I installed drivers one by one manually.
only some little problem now:
1) Vista can't save my left-handed set of the mouse! every boot I have to re-set it
2)with the profile power saver many times the notebook does not shut down properly: just exit VISTA, shut the LCD but the power light on! and I have to force the shut down.
3) on battery sometimes it varies lcd luminosity (example I set it to 20%, it sets to 60% or 100% without any reason!)

it's positive that media center works very much better! even on battery saver
tomorrow I'll call microsoft ti try to register my SO. It must be some ASUS file that I don't have now! that recognise the laptop, in fact one of the ASUS utility (I don't remember what) doesn't work because it doesn't recognise that the notebook is ASUS

now I'm on battery from 1h45 and I still got 40% of battery life (I watched an avi).

what about the touchpad? anyones have the same wear problem as me?

 

@WLF:
3.) Check out this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2435394#post2435394
It will solve the problem.

2.) Have you installed all the latest drivers? Sometimes some devices make trouble and do not allow to turn the laptop off.

My touchpad looks fine so far. But I rarely use it.

 

@ WLF46WLF - I use my touchpad quite a lot and have no wear issues at all. Sounds like you had some bad luck and got a manufacturing defect - I'd get Asus to RMA it.

As for the recovery DVD not working - mine had the exact same failure when I first did the install by inserting the driver CD when prompted... it got right to the end then failed. However, if you use the recovery DVD until it prompts for the driver CD and then shut down like I said, it does work and it does complete the windows installation - just don't insert that driver CD and it works fine. Hope you have some better luck!

 

thank you jorlin & yobbo.

for the touchpad: I hhave the notebook about 10 days, and I used the touchpad a couple of times on battery, on train, where I can't use the mouse.

for DVD recovery... wow, so you tell me that without the driver cd I can have a licensed version of vista clean! by now, I've just reinstalled all succesfully.. I think I'll try to phone microsoft and try to solve with this version that works fine.

next time I will try to install only from rec DVD. thank you.

@jorlin: I have all ASUS drivers but GPU drivers (forceware 169.04). what kind of drivers can I update?

 

damn! I would have imagine that was the smartdimmer!! but I didn't know how to set it!
hope this work! thanks again

only another thing: at boot, after the lambo bios screen disappear, you can press ctrl+p to access intel ME setup. can you set it? it asks me a fantomatic password from the first boot! I didn't set any password!
I think ASUS will have to fix this and the touchpad!

Finally: I don't have powermizer (I remember that old nvidia GPU had a better panel than now!). where can I verify that on battery I have effectively underclocked freq?

 

just activated VISTA ultimate by phone procedure. very good.

finish this morning the battery life: 2h45min starting from 90%, watching movie & quite office, but quite office very low brightness, not minimum, but very low because I was in a dark room.

at the end same problem with shut down yesterday night instead shut down correctly. what can I do??

finally, can you try to set the btooth mouse to left.handed, then re-boot, and verify that it saves your setting? tnx

 

@WLF46WLF:
Regarding the wearing off of the touchpad: If you mean that it is more shiny and smooth where your finger was sliding all the time and the remaining surface has a slight roughness... I have that, too.

 

Hi,

I have my Asus vx2s for about 2 months now, and i could't be more happy. A few days ago i was looking in disk manager. and apart of the main HDD there is a disk1 named NVCACHE with 513MB of space. I think that this is Flash drive to use with readyboost. My problem is that i formated this drive now i don't think that my Vista is doing readyboost. Does the flash memory is not suppose tp be 1gb? Any help would be appreciated.

 

yes, just like that! but I've the notebook about 10 days! and used just a couple the touchpad (once on train to watch a film and once at university, total 1h of utilization I think!!). I don't think it's normal.

just sent you a PM

 

if someone could try to set in pointing devices-->other pointing devices-->left handed, and then reboot (this setting regarded the mouse) and verify if it saves the setting.

another thing: have you ever had any problem with shut down (or restart) with the profile power saver set?

 

Just installed NBMEM 2GX2 MUSHKIN DII800 memory from Newegg. Vista 32 bit system reports 3 GB visible and performance seems slightly improved. The hard disk led does not run as much, but I also installed 2gb flashcard and run ready boost...hopefully battery life will improve as a result. I realize the DDR2 800 does not perform at 800 but thought it might run cooler. Does anyone know if Microsoft has any plans to patch Vista 32 to allow access to 4 GB of ram? I don't have time to reinstall Vista 64 and will probably just live with the 3GB that I have now.

 

is it possible to patch VISTA to read 4GB ram? since 2^32 = 4GB and the RAM is the last to be allocated.. I don't think it could be possible

BTW, can you check your ram latencies @667 by CPU-Z? what about VISTA Window experience? originally RAM has a base score of 4,8. any improvement?

 

It is one GB but it is made of 2 512mb chips which (ask Intel why) cannot be combined as such.
If you use the Intel Turbo Memory Console (should be installed), you can turn ReadyDrive and RedayBoost on or off (although Intel states that this is not 100% reliable).
I only use ReadyDrive and use a SD 2GB card for ReadyBoost.

 

No plans, it is limited by the OS itself. Read about it in multiple newsgroups and/or forums...

Vista 32-bit and 4GB RAM = 3GB RAM .... that's the way it is...

e.g. http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

 

The score was 4.6 before and after.
Here is the CPU-Z readings with the Mushkin dd2/800:
Frequency 330 mhz
FSB RAM 3:5
Latency-cycle time 5/5/5/15
SPD at 266mhz 4/4/4/12/16
SPD at 400mhz 5/5/5/18/23

Hope this is what you were looking for. I did not record the numbers before changing the ram.

 

Finally changed the LCD display to the Chi Mei N154Z1-L02 with the help of Jorlin's instruction. Was not difficult and finished in about 1 hour.
Asus previously replaced my original Samsung display with the Chi Mei N154C1, a lower resolution display, which was better than the Samsung, but not nearly as easy on the eyes as the N154Z1-L02. Very happy with this display, although just my luck to receive one with noticeable light leaking along the right edge...confined to a small strip less than 1/8 inch wide and only noticeable with dark backgrounds. Too bad Asus did not choose this one from the beginning...will definitely help with eye fatigue.

 

@Bradford:
Congrats to the new display. My Chi Mei has some light leakage on the left side but also only noticeable when the screen is black. And not very strong. Oddly enough, it is much less disturbing than light leakage from the bottom. And well, the display is so much better... I am quite happy with the Chi Mei

 

Thank you for the explanation...Its all working now.
Jorlin do you see any improvement in performance/battery life by using a 2Gb SD card?

thank you once again.

 

Hi guys, I've just bought a new VX2S & am loving it.....but now I and want to perform a clean install. I've been going through Stallen's clean install guide for Lenovo ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783).
My question, can I burn my own recovery dvds - does Asus have a recovery burning tool of some sort? I know Asus provides a recovery dvd, but I read somewhere that the disc hasn't work for some and hence I just wanted to know whether I can burn my own dvd (as advised by Orev in his clean install guide - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228/)

Thanks in advance.
cheers

 

High guys

I tried some VGA OC, I'm running 625/510 fine. How far did you get ?

I'm using ATITool (don't like rivatuner it's a mess)

 

Normally the chipset should support running at 800, why does'nt it ?

 

Because it uses this chipset...

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/pm965/index.htm



Does anyone read about the specifications...

 

Sorry, I mixed up with the FSB figure

 

What driver ????

 

@a quick question to all of you who has replaced the LCD with Chi-Mei Optoelectronics....

Can you please check if your LCD bezel is not little loose at the bottom of the LCD lid ? As far as I remember, with original Samsung LCD, my bezel sat tight on the lid.

After I replaced the LCD, the bottom part of the bezel is little bit loose (there is 0.5-1mm gap between the bezel and the LCD itself. The left, right and top part of bezel sits tight. Only the bottom part.. It's no big deal though, just wanted to know if any of you has experienced this ?

Let me know.

 

@Sasovics: It is slightly loose here,too.

 

I think I have the same gap with the samsung

 

Thanks Jorlin ...as I said, no big deal.

just wondering if anyone else's experiencing the same issue... maybe there was that gap even with Samsung ... I can't recall now exactly. Can anyone confirm who has not touch his display ? Just curious ....

 

as I said a few minutes ago maybe it's your impression. I think I have the same gap (beetwen 0.5 & 1mm) with the samsung. even in right & left side. the upper side seems to have less gap. nothing wrong in my opinion

 

good then! I'm glad I did not screw my LCD bezel then

 

Has anyone had any problems burning CDs with the B2B's Toshiba TS-L802A? I just tried to burn a CD for the first time and ruined the blank CD with every attempt. Used Nero Express and Windows Media player with the same results. Tried slowing the write speed with no luck. Shut down all non-essential programs with Task manager and no luck. Finally tried a DVD+RW with success. Any ideas why it won't burn a CD?

 

@Bradford,

Got the same drive Toshiba TS-L802A and no problem with burning CDs/DVDs so far. Maybe the media you're using are not compatible ???

I remember I had kind of issue with my old notebook couple of years back. It was Acer TravelMate 8104WLMi. It was burning everything fine except Maxell media. It "ruined" every single CD I inserted

perhaps you should try a different media, ..and if the problem still persist, call ASUS customer support and ask them to send you a DVD drive for exchange.

 

Hi guys,
I have just download nVidia Driver 169.09 from laptop2video and installed it. Then, I updated VX2S's scores in Windows Experience Index; and the graphics scored 4.7 points. The graphic has been increased by 1 point. I think that the driver has improved the power of GPU a little bit .

 

good! mine was 4.6 with 169.04. but seeing your score I notice that mine was 5.4 for the hd. with sasovics' freq the score increas up to 4.9

 

Hi,

I would like to know if anyone knows the keyboard model for the VX2S. I bought my laptop in portugal and the keyboard layout is in portuguese. does this keyboard is used in more models of Asus laptops?

 

Hi guys,

Sorry for yet another god damn question but just lookin to get everyones opinion on something.

I have an MBP arriving in a couple of days. A Sony TZ should be coming soon (all for work) but im still lusting after a VX2S on top of these (finally have the money to get the laptops I really want after a year of saving) which will be just for me and taking a break from all the workload.

But, and its that old but, should I wait. With the announcement of the 45nm Penryn due January and the big one, the Nvidia 8800 which looks like its started to ship to manufacturers can we expect Asus to upgrade the VX2S flagship to a newer version, possibly new design or just components. Just wondering as the timeframe of replacements i.e.VX1 to VX2 etc it seems like a refresh may be due. Any opinions?