v6va, some questions before I buy

I will be purchasing the v6va soon, mainly because of the IPS screen and screen size and ratio. The only place I can find it is at newegg and zipzoomfly, newegg being the cheapers one by about $120 after shipping. I just have a few questions.

1. Are there any other places where I can get the v6va for cheaper? Considering it's newegg, probably not, but I can't search all of the vendors in the asus vendor list because I'm on a 56k-type speed (went past my university limit).

2. Is there the remotest of chance that either of the v6va from zipzoomfly or newegg will NOT have the IPS screen? That worries me the most as I have read from a few posts way back that there were shortages in the screen and that Asus might have (???) used a different screen as a substitute.

Thanks in advance.

 

All v6va have IPS screens, but double check if the V6va is in stock

 

I've been thinking of getting this computer too, but it seems risky because Newegg doesn't take notebook returns. I also kind of want to wait until Lenovo releases a widescreen T series.

 

are you sure you want to spend over $1500 on a Sonoma notebook? Asus used to have rebate coupons for the V6va, but the past two or three months, its no longer there, and instead, has the V6J.

 

But the V6J doesn't have the infamous IPS screen...
Besides, not everybody needs the power of Core Duo.

 

Yes it isn't dual core, but for my purposes, I don't think I will be needing dual core. The screen is everything to me, and my last 3 notebook purchases (or blunders) have all been screen based. There is no other notebook with this screen, nor is there one with the appeal or the carbon fiber chassis. I have a desktop at home for serious mulittasking and such. Also, the newegg one has a $200 instant rebate/discount, which drops it to $1600.

 

If you concern the IPS screen more than the Dual Core processor's performance, to choose v6va is a better choice than v6j. Not only this, the price also cheapter than that. Normally, the previous models will provide a better deal than the current models in order to have a clearance even below the cost, and make sure that it still have a valid warranty from manufacturer.
Cheers

 

thats usually true but with the IPS screen most places haven't dropped the price too much from what it was about 4 months ago..the only place that i've found it at was zipzoomfly for 1730..it was going for 1800-200 rebate back when I was waiting for the W3J

 

If anyone was wondering, newegg said they had it in stock, and supposedly their quantities and availability is in real time. They suggested typing in 99 for the quantity to see how many are left. It showed 34 after quantity update so I am assuming that's all they have left until it all vanishes.

 

I have chosen the V6Va because

(1) its screen has just what I want: IPS (giving high-quality wide-and-deep-angle viewing), SXGA+ resolution (1400x1050), and glossy finish (this feature took me the longest to warm up to: although it provides more vivid color than a matte finish does, reflections were my worry, but I now know that if the glare drives me crazy, I can buy a screen cover for it that will reduce the glare, as I have posted on another thread in this forum),

(2) the materials it uses on the casing are super,

(3) I am quite adequately served by its generation of hardware,

and (4) overall, I am more impressed with what I have been reading about ASUS than what I have been reading about Lenovo (the Thinkpad T60 was my only other candidate), for example, the V6Va does not come with a boatload of bloatware like the T60 does.

Although zipzoomfly's V6Va webpage has been showing for a while, and still shows, that the computer is in stock, a rep told me on the phone on Tuesday, Sept. 19, that it was not in stock (I had thought to call because I had seen further down on the V6Va page that the computer is a special-order item).

On the other hand, on Wednesday, Sept. 20, a newegg rep told me that their database showed that they had 34 V6Va's in stock.

Very early on Friday, Sept. 22, I ordered a V6Va with the full extended warranty (and newegg charged me sales tax). At that time, the instant rebate was $200. Later in the day, I looked at the newegg V6Va page again and saw that the instant rebate was changed to $225. On Saturday, I called customer service, and they said that, as a one-time courtesy, they would credit me for the extra rebate amount.

Although newegg makes it clear on their website not to expect an item to ship on the same day it is ordered, mine did, and I should be getting it on this Wednesday. I eagerly await its arrival!

Just now, I checked newegg by typing in 99 for the quantity and got that 32 are available. silverwolf0, did you order that other one?

 

silverwolf0, in answer to your question "Are there any other places where I can get the v6va for cheaper?", I do not know of any. The only other V6Va's I know to be available are on ebay, and they are more expensive.

 

Good to know I'm not the only one getting the v6va from the egg. Yeah I am actually behind. I ordered on the 23rd I currently am having verification issues because my bank account address and my dorm address aren't the same. So I will be getting my notebook after you. Hope it is everything you've wanted. I hope it is for me too. I am tired of buying laptops, but I am such a picky bastard.

 

v6va? v6v is older version of v6j. v6v isn't even core duo

i'm waiting for a merom core 2 duo v6? but may just get the v6j for now though its hard to justify the price when its getting old itself and there are other laptops you can get that have more for less, just not as thin and nice looking

is the v6j and v6a the only thin 15" laptops? the asus w3j is 14"

 

is the 200 rebate only for the v6va not the v6j?

so the screen is better on the older v6v? what else? different exterior material? that is just preference then

i feel the v6j is getting dated enough i couldn't bring myself to get the v6v but with the rebate its tempting and enogh to make me not want to overpay for a v6j that is starting to age itself yet has a price higher then other laptops with higher specs

 

quatre, I think you are confusing yourself. You might want to research about the different v6 models and why someone like me would buy one in a niche market. You might want to go Dell as you seem overly paranoid about the price and having the newest cpu/chipset/gpu and don't care about the screen or build.

Okay I've been with my new v6va for half a day, here are some prelimnaries:

1. Screen is better than my samsung 940t 19" lcd. Viewing angle issues are non-existent, as many have mentioned. Defaults to highest brightness which is very good for watching movies as now I can actually see what is happening in dark scenes but kind of hurts my eyes when reading. When unplugged, goes to email mode and brightness is halfway, perfect for reading now.

2. Haven't messed with many games. I've played a little Painkiller and both power4gear set to super performance and powerplay set to optimal performance and I have no idea where people get this issue with noise and heat. It gets warm on the right palm rest, but it's the kind of warm that is soothing when it is in the low 70s at night. The vent on the right never has air coming out of it and asusprobe says the fan is basically off unless I decide to play a game. Even when gaming, I don't hear the fan. I am sure it is audible in a completely silent room, but the last time I remember a dorm room that was silent was never.

3. Very slow bootup times so far. I have deleted all the partitions, including the small recovery one, and split it into a 25/75 ntfs system. The actual windows boot screen is pretty quick but after that, it gets stuck on the blue screen for quite a while, hangs a bit on desktop, and than loads the system tray icons at a standard rate. System responds decently enough once everything at startup is loaded. I am tempted to remove bluetooth/intel proset/asusprob/power4gear and all that other stuff down there but am not sure if they are what is impacting my bootup performance. Not much listed in msconfig. With all my stuff installed I usually have 33-35 processes on my other computers. This one has 45-46 and I don't think I've installed everything either... Got to go Sherlock Holmes on those extra ones soon I guess.

4. DVD drive so far isn't that great. Dragging 2 gigs took 15-20 minutes. Either it is purposely reading it very slow or it can only handle slow speeds. However, it is almost silent when reading. I popped in a mni-CD and it basically couldn't read it. Then I put the same CD in my fujitsu and it worked instantly, so no kudos in this department.

5. Keyboard isn't as tactile, but has better depth than my really short travel fujtisu. Like the keyboard on the z70va, it has that slight mushy resistant feel to it. I guess this is to keep from accidental key strokes. However, even though my typing is light and I barely push it, it still registers the keys, which is a set up from the z70va and better than my fujitsu in that respect. Touchpad is kind of coarse and not that smooth. I may grow into it though as I actually like the texture and don't like slimy touchpads that much, compromising smoothness I guess. The default sensitivty is impossible to move, but setting it one knotch down, which is the lowest setting btw, puts it to a normal level. Talk about gigantic leaps.

This seems so far to be a keeper. My fourth laptop in one year basically. :O) I need to fix the slow performance issues at bootup though. Maybe install updated omega drivers, or would the default ones be okay?

 

The OD is a slow one, but thats because its so thin, so it was made to be a tad slower to prevent damage.

 

The other thing (I am pretty sure of this) is that the HDD and the OD are on the same channel, which means that coppying data is slower, especially when you go to the HDD.

 

Response to Silverwolf0 post.

2. When playing games, the vent on the right side keep blowing warm air continuosly. Since I am right handed, it goes directly to my mouse hand. It gets unconfortable after a while.

3. I figured that slow boot time is contributed to the 4200rpm drive and Norton Internet security software. Investing in 7200rpm drive and ditching the Norton bloatware will improve boot time significantly.

4. I agree that the OD is slow and loud, but it does its job and it's thin.

ps. I am looking for the wallpaper like the one on my avatar. Anyone can help?

 

Er I never said Norton was installed. Nor did I say the OD was loud. It is the quietest drive I have encountered. Also, the OD being on the same IDE channel as the HD shouldn't effect it too much as I am not doing anything while dragging and the HD itself probably can't surpass ATA33? speeds.

I am having a lot of problems with wireless. It drops the campus connection frequently and has a weird behavior of slowing down drastically and then speeding up. Also, when I connect it to an ad-hoc network, the transfer speeds are soooo slow. It takes me 30 minutes for 500MB. Downloading the new whopping 50MB drivers from Intel now. Hope this does something...

 

Regarding Norton, since you only had the machine for 1/2 day, I assumed you'd still have the 3-month-trial version of Norton bloatware installed.

Last time I updated wireless driver, the hcontrol stop working, so you'll loose the 5 hardware button fuctions. I ended up getting an Atheros card and I never have anymore wireless problem since then.

 

Yeah I had removed basically everything except for the needed stuff. I uninstalled the proset software and installed only the newest drivers from intel without the extra stuff. The ad-hoc stuff is still really slow but the dropped connections and funky speed changes are gone when I use the wireless internet on campus. I don't really use the buttons for wireless/bluetooth so what is the bare minmum I can do with as far as software? I am planning to remove:

1. Bluetooth stack
2. Wireless console - don't know what this is but its for wireless...
3. Ulead disc-direct sdk - I have no idea either, someone clue me in?
4. Asusprobe - don't care too much...
5. Power4gear - going to replace with rmclock probably

How does that sound?


Edit: Also, does anyone know what types of processes are initiated when the blue welcome screen is showing? That is by far the longest part of the boot, taking 30 seconds or more. I've known it to stay on that maybe 3-4 seconds on other computers unless I had just installed something windows related that needed a restart. It will stay on the welcome screen, half way in there it plays the windows logon sound, and then 15 seconds later it will finally show the wallpaper and subsequently the desktop. The icons on the bottom load fairly decently, so what is happening before all of this that makes it soo slow? BTW, the windows boot screen with the little bar on the bottom only does one bar before going black and then to the welcome screen. Usually it takes 4-5 bars of circulating before it goes on with the boot process. I guess this is a good thing, if it weren't for the slow welcome screen boot part.

 

Anyone? Anyone? Windows Welcome screen loading issues?

 

1,2 and 4 aren't needed, but I'm not familiar with 3. As for P4G, I use it along with NHC and its fine.

 

I've narrowed my system tray to only a handful of icons. I've uninstalled P4G as I found it pretty useless for my purposes. Manual screen dimming and speedstep are good enough. I use to use NHC on my old Gateway and found how little of an impact it actuaally made and how slow and cumbersome it was so I opted to not use it again. I am not sure but before I uninstalled NHC, I had seen my current voltaage for 800mhz as something around .798, .778, or something close to that in the .7 range. Considering I had not touched or enabled custom voltages yet, would this mean Asus already has it undervolted by default? I know CPUs vary in quality so that may not be the case. However, if it were true, undervolting with a third party program for a voltage that is already so low would be redundant.

Another cool thing is that this laptop never ever gets hot, or at least mine never does. Even when gaming, my CPU shot up to 77C but the air from the right vent was only breath air warm and so little air was coming out, I had to place it smack up to the grille to feel a decent rush of air. I can't even tell my laptop is running a game as opposed to the usual internet surfing.

Compared to what other people have experienced, maybe I got one of the creams of the crop? Maybe? Maybe? I want some bragging rights!!!!

 

I guess thats where NHC comes in. When im' having a game it doesn't go over 70-73ish degrees.

Also, my mouse hand doesn't slide all the way to the vent so i'm good about the heat though.

 

My v6va have super boot times. It takes about 25 seconds in total to boot to desktop view including all icons etc... I do have 7200rpm drive though and I use freeware program called TuneXP which vastly improved boot times, shutdown times etc. There is an option called ultra fast booting (rearrange boot files).

Ati Mobile Catalyst 6.9 will improve your GFX performance even more I got about 2500 3DMarks'05 with stock drivers but now get around 2800 with 6.9.

And yes the laptop is supremely quiet. I have used tons of laptops and this is the quietest by far.