Asus W3J laptop for me? Advice needed.

1) What is your budget?
$1,500 or less

2) What size notebook would you prefer?
d. Desktop Replacement in compact size; 14'' or less

3) What tasks will you be performing with the notebook?
A) Recording and editing 8-10 tracks of 24bit/88.2khz (sometimes 176khz) live audio simultaneously, then editing & mixing 12-16 tracks in realtime. Notebook must be QUIET and as SILENT as possible
--> I'll be using a RME Multiface & FireFace ( www.rme-audio.com), but from my understanding:
too many devices on the same IRQ means the firewire wont work right. The firewire MUST be on its own IRQ to monitor 2 channels with no crackle/pop.
I also need a seperate hard drive (internal or external) dedicated only for audio.
B) Mediocre Gaming..Geforce 7900gs sufficient?
C) MINOR web coding, CAD, & video editing

I was hoping the radeon x1600 paired with the lower resolution of the ASUS W3J would handle my gaming, CAD, and video tasks much better than my old Desktop Geforce 4 Ti4200 (128mb)

4) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places or leaving it on your desk?
Yes, it will accompany me on trips.


5) Will you be playing games on it; if so, which games?
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Need For Speed (the newer series) & other good driving games
Half Life 1 & 2
Counterstrike
Any good combat flight sims


6) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
not really, i'm looking for best Bang/Buck for my needs. But the Asus W3J seems like the perfect power/portable balance.

7) How many hours of battery life do you need?
1 hour? It will be plugged into power outlet 99.9% of the time.

8) Do you mind buying online without seeing the notebook in person?
No, that is fine.

9) What country are you buying this in?
U.S.A

Screen Specifics

10) Would you prefer standard or widescreen?
either one is fine.

11) From the choices below, what screen resolutions would you prefer?
Makes no difference as long as Text is rajor shop (i do long reading sessions daily), no backlight leakage, and no smearing or ghosting during games & dvd playback

12) Do you want a glossy/reflective screen or a matte/non-glossy screen?
Glossy with as minimal reflectiveness as possible

Build Quality and Design

13) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
NO

14) How long do you want this laptop to last?
5+ years

Notebook Components

15) How much hard drive space do you want; 40GB to 120GB?
As long as I can use external hard drives to their full 7200rpm potential transfer rates, internal hard drive size or speed doesn't matter...i was thinking an eSATA Express Card to use with Raid 0 hard drives during video editing

16) Do you need an optical drive? If yes, a DVD-ROM, DVD-CD/RW or DVD-RW drive?
I prefer a DVD-RW drive, yes..but if there is a better notebook deal without one, I can just use an external drive.

 

simply, YES! the W3J is amazing. (warning, plug inc!) I got mine from Milestone PC and they did an AMAZING job. I got mine customized with a extra gig of ram, a 100gb 7200 RPM HD (they even get the specific model i wanted) and a full Arctic Silver 5 job.

The machine itself rocks. i play HL2 - Episode one, Prey, and Oblivion all on max or close to at 1280x768 and they run fine (oblivion is finicky but thats oblivion). basically i can run all the current FPS's out at max without a hickup.

as for asthetics, its the sexiest machine ive seen to date, its small and portable (and light for whats in it) and its got great features (the buttons etc)

batterie life is upwords of 3 hours on batterie saving mode and when its plugged in its just a power house.

ok ... as for the bads ...

the built in speakers suck and it dosnt get that loud without external amplification (even on headphones) but quality is not a issue.

Also, the machine does get "warm" when gaming or doing intensive apps so, expect to give it some breathing room.

other then that tho its a great machine and i HIGHLY recomend it.

Again mate, i highly recomend MilestonePC. good luck! if u have any specifics questions feel free to ask.

 

other than the price being 300 bucks over your budget, it seems like a good match.

 

the a8jm is probably a better fit since for one it fits his budget..it gets similar battery life and performance is very similar..and from his response to number 13..the brushed aluminum lid on the w3j will not be of much use for him

 

Agreed.. the W3J doesn't fit your budget The A8Jm probably a better bet if $1500 is max

 

Well,
I work for a computer company since I'm a tech, so I'm sure I can get the W3J at employee pricing since we're an authorized Asus reseller and system builder . Thanks for the input everyone . How much better is the ATI x1600 compared to the Geforce 7600 in the A8JM?

 

Not much difference. The 3dmark scores varies between the 05 vs 06. Both are considered equal, unless you are going to be using linux, which I read nividia is better for.

 

The ATI x1600 is roughly on par with the nvidia geforce 7600. Some people will say the x1600 is a slightly better performer, but from what most people report, the difference is negligible.

 

Well, comparing 3dMarks06, A8Jm at stock = about 2350, OC'd = about 2600. W3J at stock = about 2250, OC'd about 2450. So I would say the Go7600 is the slightly better performer.

Of course in 3dMark05, somehow the x1600 is ahead slightly.

I would say in real world performance, you won't be able to tell the difference at all, they're at the same class.

 

Ya, real life you wouldnt be able to tell the difference.

I know you dont care about asthetics but i really do recomend the W3J, if not for asthetics, its going to be more durable and if u get the discount anyways, why not? (im just bias and like the W3J lol)

Great Machine!

 

Can't disagree with that type of logic. Go for it man!

 

If the W3J is definitely sturdier and more robust, I will choose it instead . But, which has louder fan noise; a8jm or w3j? In the meantime, I'm balancing my check book .

 

The W3J would be good for you for the following two reasons

1. Audio: the W3J has the intel high definition Azalia audio chip which is high quality. and better than systems taht use older AC97.
See this post.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1475595#post1475595

2. HDDS: with the optical bay HDD kit you can house a second HDD, this will run at full speed (will not be limited to USB or Firewire bus speeds)
Currently I run with a main HDD 160gb Seagate 5400.3 and I am also running a 100GB Seagate 5400.2 in the optical bay.

if you wanted you could run 2x7200 rpm drives (although you wouldn't be able to set them up in a raid config) but having a second internal drive makes it very good for high speed work on the move! although having 2x7200 rpm would consume more battery time.

Hope that helps

ps the fan runs, but i find it is very effective and quiet (although if you push it hard in a warm environment it does get faster and therefore louder, but generally I consider this system to run nice and quietly.

 

I think both are very silent running, you won't hear loud fan noise from either of them. The W3J runs a bit warmer, but shouldn't make a difference in fan noise..

 

About the X1600 and 7600 Darrick... Can the 7600 hit 5200 in 3dmark05? Because I have seen the X1600 hit that high. I really don't think you can say that the 7600 is more powerful. It really depends on what you’re using it for. Some games that were designed more for ATI, the x1600 will be the better performer and vise versa.

The W3j though looks like the best option though! Go for it!

 

Jason, I agree... it depends on what you're using it for and I said as much in the post above ... I'm just responding to the post above which said the x1600 is slightly better performer than the Go7600, which is debatable as are benchmarks...

ps. no.. haven't seen Go7600 hit 5200 in 3dMark05, but I also haven't seen an x1600 hit 2600+ in 3dMark06...

 

Was the X1600 in a W3J? The quotes I heard were all in Acer 8204s. The debate's been raging on in the forums for a while now. I doubt the difference when overclocked is noticeable in person, and OCing to 5200 is definitely not guaranteed. From my perspective though the 7600 is plenty fast.

Also in response to an above post, it sounds like he's using his machine for professional audio. Integrated sound, no matter how good, will be useless to him. Even my Audigy LS gives the "Intel HD" chip in my A8Jm a thorough spanking. The firewire port will be much more useful to him. On that note, if anyone can recommend a sub-$100 external or Expresscard sound card to me (must support 4.1 audio), please drop me a pm!

 

You are asking for a lot from a laptop, espcially a 14'', and you might be disapointed to discover that the w3j will get hot when used the way that you intend to. If you want something that's going to be silent while you edit music and game then you might want to look into a bigger laptop or at least be prepared for the w3j's fan to be on high a lot. I'm not saying the w3j can't handle what you want to do with it and even when its fan is on high its still quieter than some other laptops with their fans on medium, but its a lot to expect a 14'' laptop to stay cool and silent under such a load.

Also, i think the x1600's in the w3j are mildly underclocked so they won't be getting 5200 in 3dmark05; I think they usually get around ~4000.

 

if undervolted..the fan will stay on low even on max load for cpu..its only when gaming that the fan will go to medium or high..but yes the w3j is hot both in looks and literally speaking haha

the spdif port didn't work with my fps2000s which was a bit disappointing..i did note that there is strange static when my wireless mouse is connected while using my UE5pros..however when i disconnected the wireless mouse it was still there..i didnt notice these with my cheaper koss ksc75s though..so i believe hifi-ers may be disappointed looking for a perfected clean signal

 

The X1600 in the W3j can usually hit around 4700 in 3dmark05. The 5200 was in an acer, but hey its the same card. Now, I'm sure that overclocked X1600 in that acer could get 2600+ in '06 though. Although all of the X1600 benchmarks in the acer 8204's I have only seen 05 scores.... strange.

 

I'm not going to be doing the profesisonal audio recording ane editing everyday, just ~ 10 hours a week on weekends. So, for everyday use I want it to be my portable convenient laptop, but have the capability to be a weekend warrior .

 

Interesting, I am away from home so haven't had the opportunity to hook it up to a component system yet to test, but in the past I used to edit music in Cooledit Pro and used a quality pair of sennheiser cans (they were the highest quality I could buy that didn't need an amplifier), pluged into the W3J clarity on full volume is clear, no static hiss or noise.

But as I mentioned I havent been able to either hook up a quality line in to check signal to noise ratio, or hook up to a high quality audio system.

you are probably right, it may not compete with a high quality external card, but I wouldn't exatly call the ouptput quality useless either

 

I am planning on getting one of these...

Can i just ask a few of questions. Any answers will be great.

1: Does this have a built in microphone (where is it?)
2: Is the Hard Drive a decent quality - it gets bad benchamrk scores agaisnt the sony SZ on a review i read ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/articl...ge=7143&head=0)
3:My old Laptop is a Sony S1xp (British version of the s200). It was amazing for games - it had a 9700 ati card (4x agp) and 64 mb on board ram. It doesnt sound so good but it could run Far Cry on high settings at 1280 x 800. When it came to the next gen games like battlefield 2 and fear - then obviously it was dreadful. My question is - is this laptop going to get me through the current gen games like my old card did the last gen. Is it really any good at Oblivion or F.e.a.r. etc?
4: Does anyone have the 2.5 battery pack or the 2.5 inch hard drive bay? Are they worth getting?
5: I heard that it uses a socket mounted CPU - not a soldered version - so the Yonah core duo can be replaced by a merom core 2 duo CPU. Has anyone confirmed that?
6: I know it gets hot out of the vent - my old laptop did too, but does it get hot on the bottom like the macbook pro - because that isnt so cool when it singes your legs.
7: Has anyone managed to overclock the GPU?

Thanks for the help

 

Where can I get the best deal on an Asus W3J if I have a $1,000 budget? I've been eyeballing the Dell E1505 with the ATI x1400 since i can get it under $1,000 with a backpack and extra LCD panel.. how much worse is the x1400 than the x1600? Your opinions would all be much welcome!

 

you cannot go from wanting an asus to going back to a dell..trust me you will regret it IF your only deciding this to save money..if you can afford more go for it..im shivering in horror thinking what if i listened to my mom and bought the e1405 instead just because it was cheap

 

Remmember, the 7600 on the A8jm has 512mb of dedicated memory, the X1600 on the W3j has 256mb of dedicated and another 256mb shared. That is the likely difference in performance. The 7600 would do well when there are a lot of high res textures.

 

You can wait about 2 years, then pick up a used W3J for $1,000. Welcome to the world of non-Dell laptop pricing.

 

Two years? Don't know that I've ever seen a computer hold its value that well.

In two years I'd expect most any laptop being sold today to sell used for well under 1K.

 

It won't be under a $1000 but the best deal you'll get on this notebook would be to buy it through the group buy!