Symetrikal's S96J Journal

In appreciation for what these forums have done for my "laptop education", I want to document my experience with my s96j for your reference. If it wasn't for this forum I would have probably ended up with a Dell.

May 11, 2006
I received my s96j today after ordering on monday May 8, 2006 from GentechPC. SUPER FAST turnaround and delivery from Ken Lee at Gentech. PROPS!
Prelude-Why I chose s96j...
I was a hardcore asus fan since before the pentium M... (2 years ago?). With each passing hype (Z71V, Z70VA, W3J), I watched and wondered if the laptops were for me. With the W3J I realized this is the perfect laptop for any student/gamer. Power packed in a light, sleek, sexy package. My heart was set on it, then I read a review by hyperluminous that shattered my world. He reviewed the s96j, a model I had not payed much attention to. All i cared about was W3J BABY!! He gave specs and quoted that a well built system would cost about $1400. This sparked my interest. The next day I called Ken Lee at GentechPC and talked for about 45 minutes-1 hour, at the end of the discussion I decided I couldn't let this great bargain pass me by. I ended up paying $1651 for a powerful notebook manufactured from an extremely reputable company: ASUS.
The Specs
CPU: Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (2X1024)
HD: Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Internal Wireless Card: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 Tri-mode
Display: 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 Color Shine (Glare)
VGA: ATI Mobility X1600 256MB PCI Express
Optical Drive: 8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi
Camera: Built-in Camera
3 year warranty
Free Hardware Install
No OS

Anybody can see this is a great deal for an Asus, I can't believe I thought twice about it. I guess W3J had me on a chain.
Initial Reactions
LCD: The past couple days I worried about if I would be so excited to be installing windows and after the install a dead pixel would stab me in the eye. Thankfully, that daydream never happened. HALLELUJAH! Zero dead pixels on a BEAUTIFUL screen. I was very impressed with the even lighting and the vibrant, sharp colors. Asus splendid is as great as I hyped it up in my head to be. It's better than my Sony LCD desktop monitor.

Keyboard: I love it! Very responsive, and sturdy. I've never typed on the laptop keyboard before and the transition was instant.

Heat: From the moment I booted it up to install windows the fans were running very quietly, and they've stayed that way all day. While surfing the web and installing various programs the CPU stayed a steady 55 degrees C, and the HD was around 47 degrees C. Considerably this is good because the dvd drive was running almost nonstop. As I'm typing this the CPU is 51 degrees C and the HD is 45 degrees C. The palmrest got warm after about 2-3 hours, but nothing to be worried about. The notebook is elevated 1-2 cm so the air intake on the bottom goes to good use.

Batterylife: With the LCD at it's brightest setting, and speedstep enabled the notebook clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes before it went into standby mode. For the 2 hours and 30 minutes I was surfing the internet and installing programs via the DVD drive.

Looks: one of my main concerns as is expected when I was a few weeks from owning the most beautiful laptop: W3J. Surprisingly, the s96j is not ugly, not beautiful, just nice. I'll post pics soon. It looks nothing like the pics given from Asus or Intel. While it's no W3J, i love my baby for who she is, including her looks.

Speakers: Honestly, they are pretty worthless. Music sounds like a garbled mess, and the highest volume is not so great. I will probably be getting headphones anyway. Does anybody know a way to improve sound? I have just the standard drivers that came with the laptop. There is a equilizer in the Realtek HD audio manager, maybe i'll try messing with those later. I'll let you know how it goes.

Overall, I am very happy with this laptop. If there's any aspects I missed that you would like to know about, let me know.
Program Install
Installing programs took all day. Maybe its because Im not accustomed to using the touchpad. The touchpad works well, and I like the feature where you can just tap the pad and it works like the click of a mouse, instead of pushing the "mouse buttons" underneath the touchpad. The buttons make a fairly loud click if you don't hit them in the "sweet spot". I miss about 80% of the time, which means this "spot" is small. No big deal though. Life could have been easier if buy.com was more reliable. To give you an idea of how fast GentechPC was in sending my laptop; I ordered the laptop and a logitech v400 mouse from buy.com at the same time. By the time I received the laptop, buy.com finally shipped my mouse. Its already 2 days late.
Anyway, I used this guide that I found linked from ProPortable's website. Thanks guys at ProPortable! http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=33
It provided usefull freeware/shareware to keep your system performing well. I also installed AVG free, spybot, and adaware.
After all this installing I was curious what my favorite anime, Bleach would be like on my new baby, so i transfered a few of my favorite episodes from my desktop, and enjoyed the wonder of splendid technology. At times I felt like I was watching T.V. It was GREAT!
I also installed Windowsblinds and Object Dock. Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like so far...

Question: Does anybody know of a good system monitoring tool that will display on the desktop? I want readouts for CPU and RAM usage, batterylife, temperatures and possibly fan speed. I tried Samurize but didn't like it
Updated to come shortly: GAMES! Need for Speed Underground: Most Wanted, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Tomb Raider: Legend, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and even Ragnarok Online. Also pics and integrated camera performance.

May 12, 2006
Today I couldn't be with my sweet baby at all. Finally, i'm home and I get the chance to play around with her.. lol. I was experiencing separation anxiety all day. Anyway, the second day of owning this notebook is kind of scaring me. Within 10 minutes of booting the computer up, the palmrest and touchpad are warm. At this point (while I'm typing this), the heat from the palmrest and touchpad are making my hands clammy. Maybe this is normal. After all, I'm living in a desert right now (vegas). The tip of my index finger is sweating. I never even knew the tips of your finger could sweat. This seems abnormal.
My goals for today were to play a few games (which never happened), take a few pics of the laptop, and check out the integrated camera. I only accomplished one of them. Taking pics. Sorry, but these pics are bordering on worthless. I have a panasonic D-Snap, and the picture quality is terrible. Maybe my next investment will be a new digital camera. Regardless, here's the terrible pics.





Despite what you see, the laptop is actually all silver and black.
I'm having alot of trouble with the integrated camera. The users manual says nothing about it, and the drivers CD provided didn't even have the drivers for it. I got the drivers and software off ASUS's website, but that didn't fix anything. Every picture I take is Grey. No image, just greyness. Anybody have ideas how to solve this?
Strange but true fact: Did you know ASUS is actually pronounced Ahh-Sooos? with the accent on the Sooos. Sounds like a cough to me... I always pronounced it A-sys. With the accent on the A. I just found this out recently, but I still call it A-sys.
Updates still to come: GAMING PERFORMANCE- the juicy stuff!

May 15, 2006
I noticed theres not much WXGA (1280x800) resolution "support" out there. Meaning that people don't make many wallpapers in this size, and besides newer games, not many games support this resolution. Some new games don't even support it, but there's always a way to "force" the resolution into the game. This is a bit of an issue because as you all know, LCD screens should always be set to the native resolution.

Finally my logitech V400 mouse came in today. I got the storm grey version with the "tuned sticker". Contrary to most of the reviews I read, this mouse is very responsive, and I can't even notice a "wake-up time". It tracks on any surface I put it on, even my leg. It's a dual laser 5 button mouse, and there's a huge thread on it in the accessories section. If you want a cordless mouse for your laptop, I highly recommend the V400. One weird thing though: the left mouse click is kinda loud, and the right one sounds muted. I wish it was swapped, but I have a feeling this is only an issue with my particular mouse. Not really a big deal. Because the mouse works on radio frequencies, the mouse and dongie don't have to be in visual contact with each other, so I plug it into the back where I can't see it, and pretend I have a sweet dual laser bluetooth mouse... j/k.

Gaming Performace
Finally, I had the chance to judge the s96j's gaming capabilities.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion- I heard this is the most graphically intensive game out on the market, so naturally I was a little nervous to install and start playing. What if my baby didn't perform the way she should? BUT, it handled the game without a problem. I played for a continuous 5 hours, and it used an average of 40% of the CPU load (T2400). The game could not auto-detect the X1600, too new I guess, so I had to manually adjust the visual settings. Oblivion supports 1280x800 resolution (Thank God), so anti-aliasing is not necessary. I set all the settings to Med/High, besides shadows, those I set to Med/Low. The X1600 also supports HDR (High Dynamic Range), a more realistic lighting effect that is performance intensive. HDR is only available on newer video cards. The game played smoothly, until I got into Oblivion (the place, not the game title). I felt a slight decrease in FPS in some locations where there were fires blazing and roaring all around me, but it didn't drop enough to make me stop enjoying the game. The palmrest remained cool (one of my biggest concerns) for the majority of the game even though my CPU temps were pushing into the high sixties (C). After about 2 hours, the fan started kicking into high gear, the first time it started whirring I noticed it, but after that it was barely noticable. It would spin at the highest setting for about 5 out of every 20 minutes. While I was in oblivion I think it was spinning at high the whole time. As for the game itself, it definately deserves the good reviews. I'm not too into "dungeon crawling" games, although I do like RPG's and MMORPG's, and I still like it. It's a single player RPG that emulates a online RPG, kinda like Guildwars. Diablo II fans should LOVE this game. RPG fans will like it. I'm not too far into the game, so I'll comment more later. Most of the time I was spanking goblins to steal their fruits and vegetables, and rat meat (nasty..)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted - On the highest settings at 1280x800 resolution this game is smooth. Sometimes the shadows look cr*ppy, even though it is at maxed setting. Not sure if this is a game problem or a problem with the x1600. The game itself is beautiful, but it gives me a headache and blurry vision, probably because I catch myself not blinking throughout one whole race. I liked Need for Speed: Underground 2 better because the nighttime driving is better scenery, and also the various race modes. ie Drag and drift races. In NFS:MW you just run from the cops the whole time while listening to "cop-hater" music.

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne- Yes, this game is as old as the last time you were bumping Justin Timberflake, but back then this game was too graphically intense for the hardware out in my opinion. To be honest, this is the first computer I've played WC3 on, where the game had zero lag due to an insufficient graphics card. I've played on some decent computers before too. It's probably because I mostly play Tower Defense games where you are building 100's of towers and killing numerous creeps. All the tower animations with everything else going on in the game is demanding. With all the setting on max at 1024x768 resolution (WC3 doesn't support 1280x800 either), the game ran without a single second of lag. I even noticed little effects I've never seen before in the game.

On a side note, I finally got the integrated camera working, thanks to FlipTwister.
The quality is good, about similar to my digital camera, which is pathetic. Here's a couple samples of the quality, not bad, definately not good.

First time I saw the W3J i'm saying, "oh Really???". Love at First Sight.

Pondering if I should sacrifice my rook for a chance at victory. j/k

I love my s96j, and so far it has proved itself as graphically capable to handle the latest, greatest games, but was there ever a question? Oblivion was a walk in the park for this notebook.

May 23, 2006

I've had the s96j for about 2 weeks now and I thought I'd update my journal to let you know how everything is after a little time has passed.
I'm still in love with it, although I try to avoid the forums lately because the W3J is shipping...
I was probably being too critical about the palmrest heat. The first week I had the laptop the temperatures where I live were in the 100's, so I think that contributed to the laptop feeling hot. Lately it's cool and the most important thing to remember is that heat is subjective. What may be hot to me, may not be hot to you. If the front of the laptop is running too hot I would suggest these 2 coolers. I have not used either one, but I have done alot of research into a cooler for this laptop. Because the laptop has air intakes on the bottom, I figure it would be best to have air blow into those intakes. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834999336
that one seems to have some problems including scratching your desk and your laptop...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834999362
Overall, I love this laptop.

Important Note:- I never found this to be much of a problem, but I realized through other posts that my CD-drive is not secured in the bay. I emailed Ken at gentechpc about this issue, and in less than a minute after i clicked the send button, he was calling me. He told me that in the first shipment of s96j's, ASUS forgot to include the screws to hold the CD-drive in the bay. They are receiving the screws tomorrow and shipping them out immediately. To see if this applies to you, try to pull the drive out of the bay and if it is coming out, contact your reseller to get the screws. Installing it yourself should be easy.

 

cool stuff. I'm anxiously waiting for my S96J myself. I have similiar specs except for a 5400 RPM drive and a T2600 instead of a T2400.

I'm in the same boat as you.. I was on the verge of getting a dell (e1505) before I stumbled on to this forum (and NBF).

 

NBR and NBF saved us and now we're born again consumers. If you've seen a Dell screen before, wait until you see the ASUS screen and you'll know we were saved from oblivious disaster.

 

thanks for your review! hope you enjoy your S96! I gotta admit, it's one helluva deal.. especially compared to the Z71v back last May

 

Thanks for posting this, as I'm planning on purchasing one myself I'm very interested in your experiences with it.

 

Thanks for the great post!

I'm actually thinking of getting one of these soon as well. I was also considering getting a dell for quite some time, and I almost bought one, however now I think this will be a much better machine. The only problem is getting one to Canada might be a problem.

 

Get one from CanadaSys...

 

I emailed a sales person from milstonpc.com (CanadaSys's site) and they said that it wasn't available in Canada yet.

 

Hey, Danny from CanadaSys mentioned that the S96J is already available. Try PM him here (CanadaSYS) or go to notebookforums.CA and post there. He specifically said that it's available now. The Z96J won't be available for awhile though..

 

Maybe they're only getting the Z96J..

 

I don't think so.. check out this thread.. he says that S96 is available now in one of the posts in page 1 or 2:

http://www.notebookforum.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1177

 

It's avaliable, but he doesn't have the Optical Drives from ASUS yet, he only has the barebone sans the OD, if I recall correctly. He can sell it, but kinda pointless w/o the OD as of yet.

 

Pick up Everest to monitor your lappy dude. Its a great free program.

 

Yes, use Everest. I'm using Everest Home 2.2 and it does not have a whole lot of info on this notebook relalting to sensors and fan speed. In sensors it only has CPU and HD. GPU temp, fan speed, etc. are not there.

I'm blown away by the cooling in this notebook. While idle the CPU is only running at 29C (84F). The fan is not running at all while idle and only kicks while doing more intesive stuff (and then it is nearly silent.

 

I believe Everest is no longer free.

 

Nope, but some people still have the free version installer

 

home 2.2 still available here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

 

Sounds nifty. Can't wait to hear more since I'm strongly considering ordering one of these myself^^

 

Sym im gonna send you a PM on what you can use for monitoring everything.

Check your Private Messages.


Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Could you please send me a PM as well with the info?

Thanks!

 

2 hours and 30 minutes with a 6 cell battery? That's really good.

If the A8Jm doesn't come in whitebox, I really might consider this thing. Thanks for this little update.

 

id like to point out that the screen manufacturer is the same as the dell, which is lg

i could be wrong im going by forum posts. that its better is quite possible. lg is dells better screen manufacturer as well, and beyond that dell can order the ****pier and older ones as well.

but as far as I know dell e1505 and asus s96f are both using lg screens.

 

Thread updated with pics, but uhh... don't get your hopes up.

Thanks for all your suggestions on a notebook monitoring utility that displays on the desktop. I'm currently researching CoolMon2. Thanks MG!

 

Mmm, I was wondering, how is it weight-wise?

 

stamar, yah you could be right, we know LG and Samsung are the 2 major manufacturers of screens. Both of them are good.

If there is a way to tell what screen you have, like in hardware controls or something, someone could check. Im sure the model number is on the screen, but it would require disassembling the laptop to get at it =\. hehe

Fliptwister, ideally most people use this:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2933

Thanks,
MysticGolem

 

Well, I took it out on a little trip today, and it didn't really bother my shoulder, but then again I'm used to carrying huge text books. i'm not sure but I would guess ~7 pounds.

 

The screen is a AOU B154EW01 V9:
http://www.auo.com/auoDEV/products.php?sec=notebook&func=info&product_id=89&items_id=2

Pixel Pitch: 0.259
Response Time: 16ms
Contrast: 300:1
Brightness: 180

I think it is a very nice LCD. It is better than the Dells that I have seen lately (e1505 and D820). Very nice saturated colors and bright. Viewing angle is also very good.

 

Wow. These VBI models are looking interesting. Too bad the S62J only has the WXGA LCD and not the WXGA+ LCD on the Z62J, other wise I owuld be all over it since its going to be cheaper.

 

FlipTwister, do you press FN+C for Splendid Technology on your display? I was reading through the users guide and that's what it said, but when I press it, nothing happens.

 

lol im really sure you don't havta press anything to get splendid to work, it is already working. hehe

BTW sym, does the S96 have a DVI port?

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

No DVI

As for the screen, mine had a sticker indicating AUO. You can check the Intel Matrix for all compatible screen models.
http://www.intel.com/reseller/mobile/vbi/matrix.htm

 

very kool link, thanks hyper, ohwell no dvi for the S96j =\

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Does not work for me either. I wonder if it is only feature for Z96. I could find nothing about it on AOU or Asus site.

 

Just though i should comment that the notebook does hit the 4 hour mark on brightness below 20% and p4g set to max battery. 2.5hours is what i got out of it watching dvd. Now this was a fresh load. There were no monitoring utils no antivirus none of the things that drain your battery in the background which is exactly how i have my m5n set up. So the battery life will vary from user to user but i think symetrikal is getting the low spectrum of it. Again it varies from user to user to user. Being very conservative you will see 4 hours out of it. Thou this is a 6 cell the mah rating is actually higher then previous 8 cell

 

I have been playing F.E.A.R. a bit today and I must say that I'm very impressed with this notebooks gaming capability. I'm running at native res (1280x800) and it is butter smooth. Most settings are at maximum with a few at medium. No FSAA and 4X anisotropic filtering. It looks great with this glossy screen as well.

 

Wow, that is awsome. I can't wait to see what the 9 cell battery gets...

 

Wow. It seems like this is the first Core Duo notebook with an ATi card that gets impressive battery life! almost all the others (Asus, IBM, Acer, etc) are getting half an hour to an hour less, some even using a larger cell battery.

 

Not the first the z62f is actually longer. Also right around the 4 hour mark with a 6 cell. It depends on the reviewer. Alot of the reviewers got the laptops decked out with everything from monitoring utils to scanning soft to whatever. Alot dont realize the power drain of having your brightness set to 20% vs 50%. 4 hours is a stretch but it is posible. You just have to want it bad enough. One brand should not be any worse then another with an identical battery. They all use the same chipset.

 

Actually I meant with the core duo AND the ATi card I was thinking their latest X series were real battery drainers

 

hey Symetrikal, I'd like to know if the palmrest is still making heat under light conditions. I'm still deciding between a 5400 or 7200 HD. Thanks.

 

Eddie, so you watched a movie at 20% brightness, can you even see? Man below 20% brightness i would expect it to be un-usable... or am i totaly wrong.

Is the screen that good, that you can really put the brightness at 20% and you'll be conformatable to do almost everything?

PS: i din't know monitoring programs and basicaly all background programs drained batterylife too =\ <- I thot it just occupied a small amount of ram, and maybe a constant 2-5% cpu usage to keep the monitoring up to date.

Thanks in advance,

MysticGolem

 

You prob. can in a dark room, though it's defiantly not my style...I like the colors to POP.

Also it's that CPU usage that "drains" the battery - can't imagine that it would impact much though - 10-15 mins. max right? I feel bad for the poor dude that disables his anti-virus upon reading that, only to forget to reactive it before surfing the web...

 

I have a 7200 rpm 7k100 and there is no heat on left palmrest (where the hard drive is). Only the right palmrest gets warm for me.

 

Symetrikal,

I'm posting here because I'm not sure if you saw my reply over at notebook forums.

Power4 gear will not run untill after you run setup which is on the the CD in the P4G directory.

Webcam will not work until you install software. Run setup.bat in the camera\bison directory on CD. After you install there will also be a LiveCam app in the Windows\BisonCam directory (in addition to cam in Explorer). The web cam works quite well. I have not figured how to tie sound in yet though but I have not spent much time with it.

 

double post....doooh.

 

Is the screen of this notebook glossy or matte?

 

it's glossy. unless you get a wsxga+ from geared2play, which is matte.

 

$300 for a screen up and downgrade... Even if you're the only one to offer that, that's just way too expensive. >.>

 

any chance we'll get to see the INSIDE of the chasis sometime soon? Like, when you're not busy with it?

 

Here's a link to my review at NBF.

Direct link to pics.
Open
http://www.piratecandy.com/open.jpg
With heatsink
http://www.piratecandy.com/heatsinkset.jpg