Questions about the a8jm

Uh I've been looking at the a8jm and I read somewhere that the a8jm's or the mx's in the us don't have bluetooth if u get it from the us. Is that true? That the mx's in the us don't have bluetooth?

Also I wanted to know the durability of the build quality of the a8jm

 

The A8Jm doesn't have a blue tooth, that is correct. Many companies can provide it for an extra charge however. The build quality is great from what it looks, typical ASUS laptop. No one knows the durability as they've only been out for a few weeks.. So I can't comment on that. I know some people have been saying its one of the sturdiest laptops to date.

 

ok thanks for the quick reply, would you happen to know any companies that offer the bluetooth in the us, i'm thinking about buying it at portableone.com

 

you do have the option to get BT on the portableone's MX because they customize the laptop (based on A8jm) for you. If you're getting the A8JM, however, you can only get it as ASUS built it, and that means no BT (at least in the US).
If BT is that important, just get the MX for $1599 here w/ BT: http://laptopsinc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=MXA8JM&Category_Code=P1MX

 

Yea, I got my A8JM from portableone with the bluetooth option. I don't have the bluetooth card yet so I can't comment on it

 

as far as i know, portableone is the only reseller for the a8jm.

 

on the subject, a few questions:

If I get this notebook from portableone with BT, will it be internal or like a pcmcia card?

will this notebook be drop-in compatible with merom?

and the tough one, wculd I buy a WXGA+ lcd panel and manually install it? I'm no stranger to dissassembling and reassembling computers and electronics, i just want to know if it is possible. I like higher res screens, but the only 14" WXGA+ ive found is the D620, and I don't really want to go dell... If this idea is just plain stupid, tell me.

 

I think it's gonna be internal.. but then again, don't quote me on that

With merom.. there is a possibility that it will be, as it's pin compatible.

Not sure about lcd panel

 

If you can find the panel LG has a 14.1in laptop with a 1440 x 900 screen. Just find the model number. You can switch screens but you would need a different connecter or something. Ask justin at proportable.com or eddie at geared2play.com they have switched lots of panels. its possible but is it worth the cost. and remember the dell panel isnt really dell its another maker so its not like your buying a dell.

 

It's internal, the BT module is thumbnail sized, and located on the mobo, right at the furthest edge, so one has to disensemble and void the warranty to install the BT.

 

I wasn't refering to the panel, i was talking about the D620 itself.

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it.

And if anyone has an a8jm, how is the trackpad? specifically, the buttons. i dont see a separation between the two buttons on the mouse, and I need to emulate 3 buttons by using a left click + right click and just wanted to confrim that that would work

 

I have a A8Jm and can confirm for you that the emulation of the middle button works for me (at least in linux). It was harder to hit at first for me as i was use to seeing the line for two separate buttons.

 

in that case, how does it work in linux overall (i.e. what works and what doesn't) and how about the nvidia drivers? What distro btw?

 

so far so good.. using gentoo 2006.1 ( or 0 can't remember ) newest live CD.. install was a little tricker than usual. What I had to do was a GRP install vs my usual stage 3.. the reason I had to do this is the drivers for the network card are not built into the CD anywhere

Once my GRP install was finished I copied over the tarball with the realtek drivers using my USB stick and built them for the kernel. The ethernet card is a r1000 you can get the drivers on realtek's webpage.

The wireless card was not supported out of the box either ( as in the live CD ) however there is a package for the ipw3945 in portage and it seems to work awesome!

I'm still having some quirks with my mouse/touchpad however those are driver/gentoo related not the hardware or linux in general. basically when i tap using the touchpad it does a double click vs single click.. nothing serious can work around it by using the buttons.

The Nvidia drivers just worked currently using build 8762. GLX and everything are working no problem as well. I have the output to my 20" dell panel working as well using nvidia twinview.

the webcam is a no go currently I haven't played with it much but it looks like there are two modules that will support it soon.. i'm guessing the spca5xx module will support it soon, it's in portage as well.

for the sound to work i used the hda-intel driver, the only trick I had to do was to add options "snd-hda-intel model=laptop-eapd" to my /etc/modules.conf this seems to tell it which ports are what for output.

the MMC card reader does not work yet, I have read other places though that the drivers needed are built into the 2.6.17 kernel so i'm waiting to see on that one still

I've been using suspend2 and hibernate to ram, it works ok but sometimes acts a little flakey, i'd say i need to do some more debugging around it, sometimes the display doesn't come back.. just stays blank the computer is still operating though.. it doesn't do it all the time just sometimes..

I also started down the road of setting up the ACPI stuff for the buttons and such however I haven't gotten very far yet.. the asus_acpi module seems to work though, seems to generate too many events every now and then though so it's not perfect

there are some buttons that I would expect to be at the hardware level that are not.. biggest one I can think of is the LCD/CRT output button seems to be software controlled as well.. you cannot force the output to a external panel/internal panel with this button as I can on my dells/fujitsu's/sharps.

speedstep and everything work great, also the DVD burner works great.

I haven't had a chance to try the firewire yet but it looks as though it's loading properly.

overall however this machine has pretty good linux support outta the box, the major stuff all worked

battery life kinda blows compared to what other people are getting.. so i'm wondering if some tweaking has to happen to the graphics card to support the mobile features of it.. watching videos on the plan i was able to get through 1 movie before it kicked the bucket ( underworld evolution so however long it is.. i had like 5 minutes remaining when the movie ended ).

If you have any more questions let me know

Adam.

 

Zachtib -- I'd also be VERY interested in swapping out the screen on the A8Jm for a WXGA+ screen. The only real options (In North America) for a 14" notebook at that resolution are the D620 and T60. But they both have weaker GPUs, no web cam, and no S-Video/DVI out.

If you find out any information about this, could you please post it here? I've built computers before and am comfortable with swapping out components. But I have no idea where I'd be able to purchase the LCD and how it could be replaced. Thanks!

 

Here's what I heard from justin:

and atom, thanks for the reply, I'll almost definately be getting one now

 

I've a question on the A8jm as well. I posted it in the MX section but I probably shoulda posted it here too.

Anyone know what LCD it uses, or better, what the response time is on the lcd?

 

I didn't realize that the Z62j will be WXGA+. That's great news! Maybe I can just get the Z62j and live with the weaker GPU.

But if I did want to replace an A8jm screen with a Z62j screen, how hard would it be? Would I replace the entire lid, or is there a way to disassemble the lid and remove the LCD? I have no idea how these are constructed and couldn't find much info online.