When/why did Asus's new model engineering jump the shark?

I like to keep up to date with the latest Asus models, since I will eventually want to replace my Z33. I'm really interested in what is coming out/will be available over the next 6-8 months, since I'll be working and will be able to save up for a new laptop once the Z33 hits the 2 year old mark.

However, lately it seems like the engineers/designers at Asus have lost their mojo, so to speak. I haven't decided if I want to go bigger then the Z33 or smaller, so I've been looking at everything from 11.1" to 14" widecsreens.

The V2Je looked great on paper, especially before they axed the modular bay (why???). However, ~3:45 battery life on an 8-cell with a 14" widescreen and an x1450 is not acceptable battery life. I would expect such a system to get at least 5 hours.

The U1 is also very tempting, especially considering how little I use my optical drive. But 4 hours on a 6-cell with an 11.1" screen and a ULV CPU??? Again, unaccptable battery life. If my Z33 had a 6-cell, based on the performance of my 9-cell and 3-cell, I'd get ~5 hours with a 12" regular ratio screen and a P-M 2.0ghz.

The C30 is aparently going to be a 13.3" laptop with a desktop Conroe CPU. I want to meet the guy who came up with that wonderful idea. A 65W+ TDP CPU in a laptop, let alone in a 13.3" laptop??? I thought we were done with that stupidty after the P4-M. I can't wait to see the battery life on that one - the C90 gets 81 minutes on "power saving" mode, so maybe 2 hours tops.

The S7 isn't coming to the US as far as I know, and there has been no new news on the Z37 other then people seeing it at one of the trade shows.

It seems to me that Asus is doing their best to put all of their distributors out of business.

The C series I really don't understand. Is Asus designing the new whitebooks based on what Alienware wants? Becuase that's exactly what it seems like - Alienware and VoodooPC have always loved selling the Clevo and Compal "cram desktop componants into a laptop to save $$$ and boost the margin" models. Asus never really played into that (except one P4-M based model I forget the name of) before the C series.... It really harms their image in my mind.

 

just buy more batteries.

 

Wow, what an enlightened response.

Can you explain to me why I shouldn't expect better battery life from a design that is 4 years newer then the M5/Z33?

Especially since Intel promised it all over the place in the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo presentations.

Especially the U1 - it's an 11.1" screen, no optical drive, and the slowest ULV CPU out there. It should do better then 4 hours on a 6-cell.

 

Quoted from
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/02/16/Asus-U1F-Ultra-Portable-Notebook/p4

"Asus supplies the U1F with two batteries – one three cell and one six cell unit. I wasn’t able to run Mobile Mark on the machine, since the current version doesn’t run on Vista, but I did use the U1F on battery power and managed to get about three hours 15 minutes out of the three cell pack. Rough maths would indicate that you’ll get around six hours out of the six cell battery..."

 

The 4hrs is probably the 3 cell then.



edit: C = Conroe?

 

I already posted in Jumper's other thread that I get around 7 hours on the battery, but it seems all he's interested in is complaining.

 

You said you got "more then 4 hours", not 7. Big difference.

I'd consider it with ~6:30-7:00 out of the 6-cell, it might just be too small though. I wish I could go somewhere and see one before buying.... Maybe drive the 5 hours up to Fremont if Milestone has one on display.

 

I don't think MileStone has a display store in Fremont, they have one in Markham though.

 

6:30-7:00 out of the 6-cell is a lot. I wish mine had that kind of battery life.

 

It is a ULV Core Duo

 

well duuuuh... still, I couldn't get my batterylife above 3:20-ish while typing in word, and that's with the processor throttled at 240 MHz, screen brightness third notch from the end, no BT or Wifi, killed as any processes as possible and many services disabled. And that was in XP, with good drivers and a newly defragmentated harddrive. Now I'm using vista with crappy nvidia drivers that don't even have powermizer, so i can probably forget even pushing 3h.

I have to say though, the U1 is on Smexy laptop.

 

What I would really like to see is Asus working around Intel's lower voltage lock.

 

well I think the u1 is an outstanding computer

I would have no complaints about its battery life at all.

Just the price. Its pretty expensive.

You can get a fujitsu ultraportable for 1500$ and it gets better battery life as well.

 

Which one? The only one I've seen for near that price is the 10.6", and that's just way too small.

 

well research the models and look here

http://stores.ebay.com/Fujitsu-Computer-Store_Notebooks_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ2QQftidZ2QQtZkm

The one im thinking of is the 2010, none available atm

 

The cheapest Q2010 on the Fujitsu site is $1999 - very interesting model though, I'll have to keep it in mind.

 

Hear is a little video on the Q2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyjntkOY7-E

 

the link stamar gave is to fujitsu's ebay store. sometimes they even sell brand new units and you can get it for hundreds of dollars less.

 

Umm... while I admit that the design is going a bit south on some things, it might actually be good to let them actually RELEASE the damned thing first?

Also, as far as 7 hours of use, I'd really like to have that on my laptop. I don't think I've seen a single laptop ever on its stock primary battery under normal conditions ever last that long. If I turn off the wireless and remove the optical drive on my Z63A and lower the brightness to 30%, the most I could ever get out of it was maybe 3-4 hours. If I disable the backlight, I might get an extra hour, but it makes it unusable.

For most laptops I've seen, anything more than 3-4 hours of "normal use" battery life on the standard battery is pretty much a premium feature. That's what the accepted as what a normal user would need. If you need more, you simply need to buy a secondary or a spare primary battery.

 

Those are probably all the DOA returns (ie: broke in less than 30 days from initial purchase) after they fixed them. If it was a minor thing, it's a great deal. If it was a major thing that was wrong, it can turn out to be a nightmare. The problem is, they never tell you what was defective with it, and you only have 90 days to figure it out. After that, if you're unlucky and had one that had major problems, it'll cost you in the hundreds of dollars to fix since the majority of things are integrated into the main board.

 

most of them are brand new never opened. The ones that are opened say so. look at the listing it changes. You can hit it at the right time and there are great ones.
most of them are just old models.

There were a lot of q2010s a while ago. Maybe even research what they went for to get a better idea. It is an auction and its a time consuming way to get a machine.

right now they have a lot of those tablet things which i personally dont like because look at how thick they are.

 

i have a refurbed unit from the fujitsu ebay store.

has been working fine for the most part.

 

I think that whover reviewed it and claimed low battery life should have taken a similarly equiped dell or whatever and tested that with vista as well. they are all pretty much in the same boat. in the past at least with win xp jumping from brand to brand did not make any diff on batterty life if the same ammount of cells.

 

Not all li-ion cells are made equal though. Just like NiMH batteries, they can have different capacities. I think the number of cells is just a good way companies use to trick people into buying by having larger numbers in the specs.

 

Agreed. It's really dependent on the size of the cell and the technology used.

It's like saying a size AAA battery lasts just as long as a D battery. Same number of cells.

 

You really can't compare by Cells in within the battery, it should be all based on whr of the battery and discharge rate, or the lowest discharge rate you can produce with being able to use the notebook.

To take a quick comparison of the V1JP (XP Pro) and the V2JE, compare both MysticGolem's review and his Battery Article, with the V2JE. You can see that the V2JE has a similar discharge rate as the V1JP, thus resulting in lower than anticipated battery life.

The V2JE has a smaller screen, less powerfull GPU, less features, when comapred to the V1JP. Yet under my testing the V2JE was had a discharge rate that was similar to the V1JP under the same conditions.

If a laptop were to have a lower discharge rate then this would result in higher battery life.

Some people like to claim battery life in minutes per cell, I think this is wrong, because this does not pertain to whr of the battery and discharge rate, which are obviously correlated to battery life.

So comparing notebooks within a review is not really feasable, however reading multiple reviews and comaring through reviews, and comparing battery capacity to the battery life would result in a better understanding for the consumers.

FYI "Why not have me do a review of all competitors of the V2JE and put it all into one big review and come with a conclusion on which one is the best" We all know that this would be just wrong and could end up being biased because everyone has their own needs and wants. This would end up being unfair for all notebooks. If the notebook meets your needs buy it, if it doesn't then look to competitors. Or find what negatives you can live with, no laptop is perfect, and this is a give and take type thing.

The V2JE is still a great notebook, there are going to be people who find 2 hours or so on a 6 cell to be ok and will purchase it, and other who don't mind carrying both 6 cell and 9 cell, since Asus provides it, so they would get a total of 5+ hours of battery life.

Aside from this, there are other variables to consider, we know Vista does drop battery life, by roughly 10% or so, improper drivers, disabling and enabling devices like the webcam, and so much more can affect the battery life.

Now back on topic of whether Asus's Engineering has jump the shark? Nom they are trying different things, it doesn't hurt anyone here to have more models to choose from. I am sure everyone here is interested to know what Asus can do with any of their notebooks. Whether or not they would like to purhcase one because of what is being developed.

Asus is offering several laptops to the market, an amazing array of notebooks that could hit the target for certain target markets. Think of this being innovative.

 

I was under the impression you tested vista while mistic tested xp pro? that is very different. what is wrong with the v2j battery discharging at the same rate? since when does a 14" lcd consume noticebly less energy then a 15.4"? in the past 14" and 15.4" nb with the same cells get about the same battery life. I think your recent conclusions of poor battery life on one brand are limited to one brand. take a similarly equipped dell or what have you and test the battery under the same o.s.

 

They may have several models, but no S7 in the US is a big bummer for me. I found specs for one of the models in Australia and it looked great.

 

That's correct, Mystic tested under XP, Lendardg tested Vista, We have tested the V2JE in both Vista and XP, we found a 10-15 minutes increase while using XP over Vista. While similarly Lenardg experienced some loss in battery life when using the Vista.

You raise a good point, when does a smaller screen constitute to less power being drawn? When does a lower end dedicated graphics card lead to less power drawn?

If you have a look at all the comments, everyone states they are unhappy about the battery life, despite the fact it is a great notebook.

What is your honest opinion about the notebook when you first either saw it or when u read through the review? Were you happy about it? What were your expectations of the battery life?

Were you expecting 30 minutes per cell? 6 Cell = 3 hours, but under my multiple tests it only get 2 hours, how about the 9 cell = 4.5 hours, but under my multiple tests again, it reaches 3 hours to 3.5 hours.

This is why we prefer to do real tests on the battery than claim minutes per cell, because the discharge rate is higher or lower on notebooks. This leads to differentiating amounts of battery life.

I personaly was pretty pleased with the notebook as a whole, I would have liked to have the multi-bay, and longer battery life, but aside from that, I wouldn't mind getting a V2JE and carrying 2 batteries since Asus clearly provides both, so why not use both anyways. It is light enough to carry, and with both battery you wouldn't need the AC adapter.