Just picked up my A8Jm!!! WOOT!

Finally, after all the waiting, i finally got my hands on my A8Jm. It is just what I expected it to be.

Some initial thoughts:
1) the screen resolution is perfect for a 14" laptop. I wouldn't have wanted WXGA+.
2) it can weigh a little lighter. But it's not too bad.
3) the size is decent. Not too big and not too small.
4) It is fast. Starts up windows in less than 20 seconds.
5) There is almost no heat on the bottom of the laptop. Just a tad warm.
6) It is relatively quiet. Only can hear the fan sometimes and the hard disk. But nothing compared to my desktop
7). I wished it was a bit thinner but I guess you can't have everything

My only one concern at the moment is:
1) The right side of the touchpad where the scroll bar is gets quite warm--even a bit uncomfortable warm. I haven't done anything with the laptop yet other than leaving it on for about 30 min so far. The area of the Asus spec sticker and the Splendid sticker only gets a tad warm. Have other owners of the A8Jm also have this problem with the touchpad?

EDIT: Problem solved. It was never a problem actually. The heat only appears when the battery is charging.

EDIT: another thing i found odd:
If you go to "Control Panel --> Mouse --> Device setting --> Settings" I get an error:
An exception occurred while trying to run: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL "C:\WINDOWS\system32\main.cpl",Mouse"
Anyone else encountered this?

EDIT: Ok, problem solved. Uninstall the Synaptics driver that came from ASUS and go download version 8.1 directly from synaptics at www.synaptics.com

 

Can an A8Jm owner please comment regarding the 2 concerns above? Thanks.

 

I just picked mine up a few hours ago from CanadaSys as well. They still threw in the case and USB key even though I technically didn't pre-order it. Yay!

I turned it on briefly in store and once I got home, but now I've shut it off and I'm just letting it charge. Should I not use it and let it charge for X hours first, like you have to on some electronics? Or can I just dive right in and use it?

Anyway, I'll try that control panel thing and see if I get a similar issue.

 

I don't know about the charging. I just dived right in because I couldn't wait. I really don't know how much of an impact that will really make. The battery was already 45% charged when I got mine.

 

yeah my battery was at same level and i used it, doesnt harm it. and no i didnt get that error tallshorty, i guess u have to reinstall ur synaptics drivers

 

That's odd because it gave me that error right from the start before I did anything to the laptop.

What about the touchpad heating up on the left side?

 

I haven't noticed really bad heat coming from that part of the computer. I've had it running for several hours straight and didn't really notice that.

I did get that same error message though. I'll probably just uninstall and reinstall the synaptics driver though.

 

I just checked mine, I didn't get any errors either. I guess it's just hit and miss?

I did get a Windows error though when I was connecting to a wireless network. Hmmm, oh well.

 

After I turned it off for a while and now on again, the heat doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. That is really strange. The area that was so hot before is now barely warm.

 

i never had any heat issues on teh left side. Only while charging the battery the area just under the vertical scrolling of the touch pad gets hot. Once charged teh entire laptop is extremely cool.

Something I did notice was that there is a huge difference in gaming with and without ac power. In HL2 im getting 120fps with AC and SUPER/HIGH/GAME selected with pwr4gear but on battery its 30fps even if the cpu is clocked at full speed.

Im guessing its the way the vid card is clocking itself based on dc or ac power, even tho i select 'max performance' for both. Anyone else notice this?

 

i also am getting the error mentioned in the original thread. Im going to try to reinstall drivers and see what i get. Though technically if i didn't have the drivers, i shouldn't be really able to use the touchpad, especially the scroll function.

 

Hey thanks. That explains it then. My touchpad was hot on the left side during the charging of the battery. And that makes sense since the left side of the touchpad is directly over the battery socket.

 

I tried reinstalling the touchpad driver. Didn't work for me. Maybe i'm doing it wrong. I first tried uninstalling the driver but it didn't uninstall after a restart. So i just installed it again from the CD. After restart, still had same error.

 

I get the same thing in Oblivion. Can barely play it unless its plugged in.
Although I'm not sure why. I also had P4G set on high performance.

For that matter I'm not entirely sure what the difference between High Performance, super high performance, and game really is. In the P4G profile they look the same.

 

video cards underclock more when not plugged it to save battery life.

 

yup thats the only conclusion i can draw. Now to find a program that will stop the 7600 from underclocking so severly pwer4gear is doing fine for the proc

 

I haven't had any errors on mine.. although I reformatted and re-installed everything from scratch.

 

About mouse drivers, I have V6J and included Synaptics drivers are newer (8.2.0.0) than latest original Synaptics drivers (8.1.2.0). But Asus drivers is not settable, i can't set tapping zones and more other settings (error to loading settings dialog).
I uninstall old included Asus drivers ans install latest drivers from synaptics and all is ok, fully functionally settings.

PS: sorry of my english

 

jah new drivers! my asus a8jm was preloaded with synaptics drivers 6.2, but the asus webpage drivers download for the a8jm already has 8.2.0. Im going to try getting it to solve my problems.

 

My synaptic driver is already v8.2.0 but still have the error problem and cannot adjust the settings for the touchpad.

In fact, all of my drivers are currently up to date. It must have been the Asus Liveupdate because it was updating a lot of stuff during my first shut down.

 

As I wroted, uninstall Asus drivers 8.2 and install older, but original 8.1 from Synaptics page.
In my opinion, Asus are bad numbering in drivers, because Synaptics have 8.1.
Asus can't have newer drivers than Synaptics.

 

yes they can. if u check ur nvidia forceware drivers, its the 84.46 or something and its not yet available on teh nvidia website, as of 2 days ago. However it is a valid whql certified driver.

 

I have a question over your impressions of the screen. I'm about to pull the trigger and order this bad boys but the only thing that causes hesitation is the screen. Is the res alright, viewing angles and such...

-Thanks-

 

The res is perfect for a 14". Don't worry about that. It is plenty bright enough at max brightness. In terms of viewing angles, i'm satisified with it. I have nothing to compare with so i can't say if it is good or bad. But you do notice shade changes if you move your head up and down or side to side even slightly. I can only find one position for the screen where all the shades and brightness are uniform.

 

touche, it solved my problems.

 

What problems did u face? could you clarify. Btw today i got the pink screen while playing avi files, a restart fixed it, so i am going to wait to see if it happens again, but since both me and you have faced the same issue, we should also see if there are more cases and then we could contact Asus.

 

i haven't gotten the pink since the first time, so im going to call it an isolated incident. 8.1 synaptics drivers from synaptics drivers also works the best.

 

havent had any problems with 8.2 yet so im gonna leave it at that

 

guess what? i got the pink videos again. and its not restricted to avi files now. all videos will did it. Anyone have imput?

 

just when you said it was an isolated incident. Lets see responses from others and then report to asus i guess :S

 

hmm? I haven't had any problems.. but then again I haven't played many videos. Can you guys let me know what u were playing ? VCD/DVD ? WMP / Asus DVD to play? I'll try to duplicate the situation and see what happens on mine.

 

playing movies are tough, avi, mpegs, wmv...all that stuff.

I personaly use VLC, i also use Nemo audio/video packs.

If for some reason my Windows Media Player cannot play my movie, quickly switch and use VLC, now if that can't play it, then i use Window Media Player Classic.

The pink screen, is a result of a lack of audio and video codecs.

As for DVDs, im not 100% sure, WinDVD, ASUS DVD, i personally don't have a DVD rom, nor do i need one, also all my movies are Xvid and DivX and high quality, in which i can use my media players to play it, including winamp .

So you really should get VLC and windows media classics, and try to find some pack of video/audio codecs to play movies correctly in general.

Hope this helps,

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I have all necessary codec and use media player classic and vlc. If i was missing a codec i wouldnt be able to see the video would i? I can see the video, its sharp, clear everything but its as if its going through a filter and its all pink. Audio works fine.

 

COuld it be the Splendid software? I notice that with Gamma correction on, the video looks horrible