Asus W7J Review (pics, specs)

by J.K.

Asus W7J 13.3" widescreen notebook (view large image)

Overview and Introduction

The W7J is Asus' entry in the relatively new 13.3" widescreen notebook segment.

Pretty Box (view large image)

Contents (view large image)

In the United States, Asus is better known for their quality line of main boards than their notebooks. Until recently, I had no idea Asus even made notebooks. The Taiwanese company is exceedingly more popular in Europe and Asia.

The model I'm reviewing is the W7J-3P014P in Carbon Black. The notebook is configured as follows:

• Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz
• 1 GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM (2x512 MB)
• 13.3" WXGA Color Shine (Glare Type) and Crystal-Shine (High Brightness) LCD
• Hard Drive: 100 GB; SATA 5400 RPM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 PCI-E Graphics w/ 128 MB VRAM (256 MB w/ Turbo Cache)
• Wireless: Intel PRO Wireless 3945 A/B/G miniPCI
• Optical: 8x Super Multi DVD Burner
• Battery: 6-Cell Li-Ion
• Sound: Azailia compliant audio chip
• Dimensions: 315mm x 226.5 x 29 -- 36.9mm (W x D x H) [12.4" x 8.92" x 1.142 -- 1.453"]
• Windows XP Professional

Reasons for Buying:

My previous workhorse notebook was a Dell Inspiron 8200. Note the word "was." The notebook finally kicked the bucket two weeks ago.

This was both a curse and a blessing. I regularly dragged my Dell Monday through Friday to and from work for presentations. The Dell decided to ascend to the puffy clouds over the weekend and of course on a Sunday. Good grief.

Luckily I had been browsing Notebookreview's Asus forum for about three months. I narrowed down my choices to the W3J+ and the W7J. Ultimately, I chose the WJ7 because of its portability. I was really getting tired lugging around the old Dell, which weighed in at a hefty 8.0 lbs. With the AC adapter and other miscellaneous accessories, the weight quickly exceeded 14 lbs. Also, the fact that the W7J had discrete graphics was icing on the cake.

Where and How Purchased:

I purchased the notebook from PROPortable.com. The owner of PROPortable, Justin, frequents Notebookreview's Asus forum. Justin consistently gives reputable advice and is respected by forum members.

The purchase price for the W7J is $1,499 (MSRP), which is a steal taking into account the specifications. There are other online retailers that sell this notebook for less, but I felt the service I received from Justin and his staff was well worth the extra cost.

Build & Design:

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What surprised me when I first started browsing Notebookreview was the size of the Asus forum. I fully expect the Sony or HP/Compaq forum to be huge, considering the popularity of their notebooks. But Asus? I thought to myself, either A) Asus has a lot of problems and owners are complaining or, B) Asus has a lot of happy owners bragging about their machines. I'm happy to report it's the latter. One of the qualities most talked about in the forum is build quality. The W7J does not disappoint.

The W7J is not as flashy compared to other notebooks. The design is quite simplistic yet stylish. I work in an office where literally laser printers have grown legs and gone missing. Last thing I need was a notebook with shiny "steal me now" aluminum trim all over it.

Top lid of the W7J (view large image)

Another shot with flash(view large image)

It's hard to describe the finish of the W7J. At first glance, the finish looks matte. However, under different light angles you can almost make out what is best described as metallic flakes in the finish. The surface does attract smudges. After an afternoon of presentations the lid looked like a third grade finger painting project.

A good amount of the notebook is made from a blend of carbon fiber and plastic. There is hardly any flex within the chassis. The only flex is found around the palm rest when applying more than usual pressure. Protecting the screen is mixture of magnesium alloy and plastic. Impressively, pressing hard on the screen lid exhibited no ripples. The screen is secured to the chassis by metal hinges. Hinges are not overly tight but on occasion I had to use two hands to lift the screen. There is no latching system; the cover stays closed by the retention of the hinges.

Overall the W7J is a well built, solid machine.

Screen:

The W7J incorporates a 13.3" WXGA LCD screen with a native resolution of 1280 x 800. It has Color Shine (Glare Type) and Crystal Bright (High Brightness) technologies.

Coming from a traditional 15.1" screen, I was somewhat worried the 13.3" screen would be too small. After two weeks of typing reports, I have found the screen to be first-class. Brightness of the screen is quite good; I consistently run the screen at seventy percent brightness. Text is sharp and clear.

New to the model is V-Cut screen technology. In a nutshell, V-Cut utilizes prisms to decrease weight, increase screen brightness, and lower power consumption. Sounds fabulous, but it is not without side effects. I noticed the bottom left and right corners of the LCD is slightly darker then the rest of the screen.

Light leakage was minimal. The only visible light leakage is on the bottom edge of the screen.

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I was impressed by the viewing angles. Vertical viewing angles are adequate while horizontal are much better. Once you adjust the screen to that sweet spot the screen easily accommodates three people side by side.

Mounted above the screen is a 1.3 mega-pixel video camera. You won't miss it considering Asus plasters a huge "Built-In Webcam" sticker on the right palm rest. Now my co-workers think I'm some sort of internet pervert.

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Quality of the camera is reasonably nice for a 1.3 mega-pixel. The camera works well with MSN Messenger and Skype. Asus includes a security utility unimaginatively named Asus Video Security. This program allows a user to configure the camera to take pictures of would be vandals scoping out your new toy.

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Speakers:

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The speakers on my old Dell 8200 were nothing to brag about, neither are the ones on the W7J. The speakers are mounted in front just underneath the screen. Volume is sufficient and does not get distorted when you turn it up. However, don't expect earth shattering bass.

Volume can be controlled by using the function keys or by a nifty two-way radial switch. Rotate the switch up to raise the volume, down to lower the volume. A simple yet brilliant design.

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In an office setting it is proper etiquette to not have your volume cranked up to instant deaf. I suspect the woman working next to me must have called in sick that day and missed the memo. I swear I can hear her instant messages from the break room. To drone out her rudeness I often put on a set of ear phones and listen to music. I inserted my Britney Spears CD and prepared for another productive day. What's this? This is not the intro to Baby Hit Me One More Time. It sounded like a F1 engine. What I was hearing was the CD-ROM spooling the CD through the ear phones. Good thing this only happens during the beginning of the CD or else I'd have to sabotage my coworker's internet connection.

Processor and Performance:

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Under the hood Asus shoehorns an Intel T2400 1.83GHz Core Duo processor. Combine that with 1GB of DDR2 memory, the system makes quick work of all my word processing tasks.

A minor gripe. Why tease us with only 533MHz DDR2 memory? The system can handle 667MHz. On top of that, 512MB of original 1GB is soldered on to the motherboard.

Situated on the upper left corner above the keyboard is a power profile button. Pressing this button instantly changes the power profile of the notebook.

NVIDIA's GeForce Go 7400 handles all the video tasks for the notebook. Compared to newer graphics cards the 7400 is a donkey. But I rather have a donkey than a snail that is the Intel GMA 950. Integrating a more powerful video card would be catastrophic. I imagine the heat generated would be rather unbearable.

Benchmark:

The following benchmarks were conducted using stock drivers. Power profile was set to Game to allow full utilization of the CPU/GPU.

SuperPi

Notebook	Time
Asus W7J (1.83GHz Core Duo)	1m 15s
Asus W3H760DD (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 33s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s

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3D Mark 05

Notebook	3D Mark 05 Results
Asus W7J (Core Duo 1.83GHz, nVidia 7400)	1,9743D Marks
Asus W3J (1.83Ghz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	3,925 3D Marks
Sony VAIO SZ2 (2.16GHz Core Duo, nVidia GeForce 7400)	1,851 3D Marks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4,236 3DMarks
Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB)	7,078 3D Marks
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,092 3D Marks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB)	2,530 3D Marks
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273 3DMarks
HP Pavilion dv4000 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB)	2,536 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3D Marks

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PC Mark 05 Results

HDTune

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Everest

Memory Read:	3394 MB/s
Memory Write:	1364 MB/s
Memory Latency:	98.6 ns

Heat and Noise:

For daily use the W7J is virtually silent. Only audible sounds are from the hard drive and the CD-ROM. I switched the power profile from Quiet Office to Game. Going on eight hours, I don't recall ever hearing the fan.

The W7J gets considerably warm around the palm rests, warmer then any other notebook I have used. It has been 100 degrees almost everyday of this week in Los Angeles. Using the W7J my palms have been sweating more than a thirteen year old in an adult book store. What's generating all the heat? I suspect it is a large part due to the hard drive. Asus integrated a 2.5mm hard drive where others would have used a 1.8mm.

2.5mm drives are faster than 1.8mm drives. The fastest 1.8mm drive I have found that didn't cost an arm and a leg spins at a meager 4200 RPM. 2.5mm drives come in 5400 and 7200 RPM flavors.

I'm willing to bare the heat annoyance for the ability to upgrade to faster hard drives in the future. Now I know why Asus plasters all those stickers on the palm rest. It is probably to protect the finish from my sweaty palms. Clever.

An exhaust vent is situated on the right in between the USB and Fire-wire port. I prefer an USB mouse instead of the touch pad. Using the mouse approximately 4-5 cm away from the vent I could barely feel the exhaust heat.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

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The keyboard is exceptional and exhibits no flex. Keys have a very responsive feel with good travel and feedback. My only complaint is the layout. The Backspace, Enter, and right Shift key are noticeably shorter. I constantly hit the Home key instead of the intended Backspace. After a couple of minutes, my report soon resembles something written by Master Yoda. Like, the layout I do not.

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The touchpad surface is made of the same material as the rest of the notebook. I had rarely used the touchpad on my old Dell so I did not have any high expectations. From what I gather, the touchpad is responsive and easy to use. If the touchpad is not your cup of tea, you can easily disable it using the function keys.

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Input and Output Ports:

With the battery occupying a good amount of real estate, majority of the I/O ports are evenly distributed along the left and right sides of the notebook.

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Left Side:

• RJ-45 Ethernet Jack
• RJ-11 Modem Jack
• 1 x USB 2.0 Port
• 4-in-1 Card Reader

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Right Side:

• 54mm Express Card Slot
• Microphone-In
• Line-Out
• 1 x Firewire
• 1 x USB 2.0 Port
• D-Sub VGA Out

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Rear Side:

• DC Input
• 1 x Video Out Din
• 1 x USB 2.0 Port
• Kensington Lock Port

Wireless:

Completing the Centrino package is an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G miniPCI wireless card. If you skim any notebook forum you will find that the 3945 is not well liked. Complaints range from poor reception to constant dropped connections. Despite all the hate, I actually have had no problems connecting and staying connected to the wireless router at home or work.

Powered by Broadcom, the W7J boasts Bluetooth with EDR 2.0. Having no Bluetooth devices I hurried down to my local Best Buy looking for a Bluetooth mouse. My efforts were to be in vain. None of the walking blue drones could find me a Bluetooth mouse. Yet they were more than quick to sell me a replacement plan for a mouse pad. Until I can source a Bluetooth mouse, the Bluetooth capabilities will be temporarily untested.

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A toggle switch is located on the upper left corner above the keyboard. This switch allows you to disable wireless signals at the flip of a switch.

Optical Drive Performance:

Since data on floppy disks are easily corrupted and my boss can't grasp the concept of flash drives, data is usually passed along the office on CDs. Of course by the time the CD gets pass down to me, it looked like someone had used it as a hockey puck on asphalt.

A quick search of the model number on Google tells me the drive was manufactured as a joint project by Toshiba and Samsung. The drive spun the hockey pucks and read them without incident.

Burning CD/DVDs also proved to be no problem for the drive. Although not as fast as desktop counterparts, the drive was still remarkably brisk. Cheap media was not an issue. DVD, uh, backups written on cheap Ritek media played first-rate on my set top box.

Battery:

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Bundled with the system is a 6-cell battery. The battery is rated at 4800mAh. Once installed, the battery sticks out from the back ever so slightly.

Battery technology is constantly improving. Reading the reviews of other notebooks, anticipating 3-4 hours should be fairly reasonable. My deceased Dell was four years old and it would run just over two hours with general use.

Power4Gear is the bundled power management software. There are eight different power profiles ranging from Super Performance to Battery Saving. I tested battery prowess using the Battery Saving profile. Battery Saving profile runs the LCD brightness at 17% and the processor at 25%.

Because I needed my daily fix of online poker the wireless was left on. I disabled Bluetooth and disconnected all USB devices.

Using my trusty stop watch the battery clocked in at paltry 2 hours 40 minutes. I can not help but to feel slightly disappointed. I was hoping the battery would achieve at least 3 hours.

I frantically searched the Asus forum looking for answers. Thanks to an observant member, he noticed the top mounted camera was warm to the touch. This led me to believe the web cam was stealing valuable battery power even when not in use. I disabled the web cam under hardware profiles and retested the battery. This time around the battery lasted 3 hours 5 minutes.

Unlike its older brother, the W3J, the W7J does not have a modular bay so a modular battery is out of the question. If you want more juice your best bet is a 9-cell 7800mAh battery which should available late August.

Operating System and Software:

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Bundled with the system is Microsoft Windows XP Professional (SP2). The first time I shutdown, I'm greeted with 46 critical Windows updates that need to be installed. Damn. According to the pretty sticker, the W7J is Vista capable. I'll believe it when I see it. Knowing Microsoft, I'll need a 4GHz processor with 8GB of memory to run Vista.

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I guess Asus felt 1 GB of memory was colossal. There is enough bloat ware during start up to sink a battleship. Luckily most are effortless to uninstall. First to reach software Valhalla was Symantec Norton Antivirus. The 90 day trial version is utter crap.

Customer Support:

The W7J comes standard with a 12 month global warranty which should be plenty. But if you are riding with the likes of 50-Cent where a bulletproof vest is your daily attire, an optional 24 month extended warranty is available. With the extended warranty, the 12 month warranty is extended for a total of 36 months. (3 years)

I have not had a chance to call or e-mail technical support. I hope it stays that way. Asus has all drivers available for download online on their website, www.asus.com. Make sure you select "Global" as your location; looks like the webmasters at usa.asus.com fell asleep at the keyboard and forgot to update the site.

Being the W7J is an Ensemble unit, any modifications to the original specifications will void the warranty.

Conclusion:

Asus has earned a reputation for producing some of the best notebooks available. Companies like IBM, Apple, Dell, have all one time or another trusted Asus to manufacture their notebooks.

Crammed into this little machine is a lot of value. You get a speedy processor and plentiful amounts of memory. The screen is bright enough to give you a radiation tan. Discrete graphics permit you to play something other than Solitaire all day at work. If you're having a mid-life crisis, fire up the webcam and make some new friends online. How can you put a price tag on that? For $1499, that's a bargain.

Pros

• Design and build quality
• Great performance without sacrificing portability
• Impressive screen
• Excellent webcam along with security software

Cons

• Heat
• CD-ROM spooling is audible through headphones
• Soldered memory that's not removable
  

 

Nice review. Thats an excellent laptop, especially for its size. I am surprised that the memory is soldered on. Weird.

 

Great review. It's cool to see one so soon on the W7J. It's a nice little notebook. Amasing it's price at $1499.99 I like that the Ctrl and Fn are not reversed on this model.

 

Asus, please stick a Merom chip in this, please stick a Merom chip in this, please stick a Merom chip in this...

Nice review!

~ Brett

 

A few questions I forgot to ask..

Could you tell us exactly what is included in the box? I see the picture but does it come with drivers and is that a full copy of Windows or a recovery disc (i.e. how easy would a complete reformatting be)? Also, how exactly is the RAM configured? Since at least some of it is soldered on, how would one do a RAM upgrade? What is some of the other bloatware included?

Thanks!

~ Brett

 

How long do you think that will take? By September? I need a laptop for school....

 

oh man, as a fellow So Californian.. I can definitely relate to the heat. Am also interested in this notebook and the heat (while is to be execpted) is a bit of a bummer. Thanks for the review.. its other features still make it worth while

 

To be honest, the odds of Asus making Merom part of the stock equipment on this model are very slim. We've heard that a person can swap the current processor with a Merom but then you're stuck with the other processor and we still aren't sure if Asus will ever release a BIOS update (which will also be required). What I'm really hoping for is essentially the same model with Merom included as part of a "refresh" of their current model line and some slightly upgraded RAM to make it truly Vista-ready.

~ Brett

 

great review
was thinking about getting this, but required more video power.
a note of interest

this isn't exaclty true, as it's an ensemble laptop, so warranty is ONLY through Asus, so it really makes no difference where you buy it from.
you're best to just get it from the cheapest place

 

I disagree - You could be plagued by slow service, expensive shipping a person who doesn't even speak your language or any number problems which are common in small internet companies. To ensure that you don't have any of these problems or if you do, you know they will be taken care of, you may have to pay a small premium.

~ Brett

 

I'll try to answer some of your questions.


Here are the CD's that came with the notebook.



Unfortunately, it's not a full copy of Windows XP. Rather it's just a restore CD.

Performing a clean install and then running the Driver CD will install everything.

512MB of the memory is soldered on to the motherboard. Another 512MB is installed in the SoDIMM socket. To install additional memory, that 512MB has to be discarded.

As for the bloatware, I can't really comment on that. I uninstalled all the junk the 2nd day

 

I guess I should of clarified. I received excellent service throughout the whole transaction from Justin and his staff.

I'll just leave it at that before I sound like a cookie-cutter eBay feedback.

 

Yes the heat is annoying(even up in the Bay.) Before this heat wave, my notebook would stay cool and not stay hot. Now even when coming back to the notebook, its still a bit warm. Do you know what are the operating temps since its so hot right now? Maybe AS5(Arctic Silver) could drop the temp lower for you ,but its alot of work. Great review btw.

 

What the heck is going on?! And CalISO wants me to set the thermostat to 86? No thanks buddy, I have it cranked all the way down to 40

I'm too lazy to disassemble everything just for AS5. If it ain't broke, why fix it right? Also, I don't want to void the warranty.


Is it hot in NorCal also? I missed the weather up there when I went to SJSU.

 

i bought from ewiz, and it got to me in 2 days. no tax, and $18 shipping.
i'm happy.
they did have the W7J for $1350 for a while!!!

 

Thanks for getting back to us so fast. Waiting the next few months for Merom may be intolerable - I might just spring for it now... ughhhhh - It's too bad they don't include full XP and it's a little weird the way the RAM is configured (aren't you always supposed to replace it in pairs?) but nonetheless, it's an incredible laptop at an even more impressive price.

~ Brett

 

Did you just use the Add/Remove program or did you do a clean install? I don't have a fresh copy of XP Pro and the only way I can remove all that bloatware is to use the Add/Remove program. Do you think that'll clean things up?

 

Im indian, so im used to heat and humid temps(kinda wishing that humid comes in). But dangit, continous heat is just horrid. If your interested in keeping tabs on your temps; Mobilemeter is a good temp gauge.

 

Most was removed through ADD/REMOVE. The rest was done with MSConfig

 

Is the LCD bezel(frame) feel kind of loose to you? Mine left is not as tight as my right. Thanks

 

Just a bit of info, all the 'programs' there aren't really bloastware, except for Norton, they're just all the programs for all the parts(like BT, WiFi, P4G, TPM, volume, etc.)

For some odd reason, ASUS always has like 4 seperate programs for just Wireless Internet and BT.

Great laptop there, I've seen a couple and they're quite a looker

 

I lifted the LCD up to 90 degrees and gave it a slight twist. There is a tiny bit of flex but I expected that. Both sides seem equal to me.

You have a valid point. I guess I'm just peeved that Asus they have to have 4 programs running to controll the functions instead of just 1.

 

Try to push the left and right size of the bezel see if you can tell if it's a lil open..

 

Excellent review.

I can now order this laptop without any qualms. I was waiting for this write-up before making a purchase and can now do so.

Thank you.

 

don't forget you can push the volume button to mute.

 

thanks for the W7J review, been waiting forever for one!

 

Thanks for the review. It makes my purchase seem worthwhile. Im still waiting for mine to be delivered. The excitement is killing me !

 

hold up ppl is it me or does anyone else see that he got 1 minute 15 seconds on super pi at 2m, on a 1.83ghz 1gb ram machine. Is that even possible? If it is, then how did you do it?

 

i am wondering about the repercussions of having 512mb soldered, if I want to keep this laptop 3-4 years, is the fact that this laptop cannot support more than 1.5gb ram going to inhibit it from let's say running Vista WELL, or even future adobe programs(we all know how intensive those applications are) as far as the ram being 533mhz instead of 667mhz, the difference is fairly negligible if you check out the CAS latency of each ram

 

Cool to see a review of this smaller Asus...I have been considering a Macbook and thought this might be a good alternative however the lack of being able to upgrade the RAM is a big negative, also Asus again doesn't have a DVI out which I would prefer.

How is the weight? Alone and with power adapter? You mentioned that your old system was 14+ how about this one?

Thanks.

 

i get 1m 18s

 

I was a bit baffled at this also. Just for safe measure, I ran the test 3 times. I got the same result all three times.

Without the battery the W7J is atleast half the weigh of my Dell. With everything stuffed, weight is just below 10 lbs.

 

wow amazing, i turned up the cpu to max and i even oced it a bit and closed all apps. I ended up getting 1 minute 4 seconds at lowest. Iam running 2ghz 1gb ram

 

weight just below 10lbs? I was hoping somewhere closer to 4lbs

A typo? ^^

 

No, that's the weight including my notebook bag and my junk accessories. The notebook itself is about 4 lbs.

 

Great review! I especially liked the comic relief!

You mentioned that you choose the W7J over the W3J mainly because you wanted something more portable. With the W3J being only about 1 lb heavier, was this really the determining factor why you chose the W7J? The reason why I am asking is because besides considering the W7J, I have also been looking at the P1 MX (A8JM) which is about the same weight as the W3J. I can't seem to decide if shaving off and extra pound is that noticible and worth sacrificing a slightly larger screen, better performance and more upgrade options.

Since I am not near a dealer that sells the W7J, my closest comparision came to the Sony SZ series. I was initilaly hesitant about any sub 14" laptop after using my friend's Dell 700M which is 12". Despite the weight of the 700M, I felt the screen size was much too small for a laptop especially since I will mostly be doing programming and some games.
So after looking at the Sony SZ, I immediately fell in love with the 13" class notebooks (but still refuse to purchase any Sony product after I put up with their still struggling MD player which was a great piece of hardware at the time but was killed with the annoying software that you were forced to use).

 

Does this laptop not have a PC Card interface? I see it has Express card....

Sony SZ has both...

 

Regarding the RAM, keep in mind that you could theoretically upgrade to 2.5GB if you put a 2GB stick in the slot. The official max memory is listed as 1.5GB, probably because Asus hasn't bothered to test with 2GB sticks (since they're still quite expensive). But in theory, a 2GB stick should work and will eventually be more affordable.

 

Ok so at first, you did a very nice review on that one.
Been looking for the notebook for a while now.
Was just waiting for a review before buying it.
I still have a couple question though...

I've heard asus have a no dead pixel warranty... Is that correct?

Have you tried playing any games with it?
Not that i want this laptop to be my first gaming device, but id like to play
BF2 once in a while with it.

Would i hear the cd-rom spooling while playing games or only whiwle listening to a music cd?

Does the windows restoration cd means i wont be able to format it without a full cd?

 

I'll try to answer questions 1 by 1.

Crow610:

I carry the notebook around everyday to and from work. I'm starting to get back pains so any weigh decrease was a good thing. I really didn't need all the power the W3J offered so I decided to save a couple bucks.


Sinner6:

Nope, the W7J only has Express 54mm slot. I believe the W3J is the same way.


SKINp:

Asus has a policy called Zero Bright Dot. According to the Asus website, it does list the W7J as one of the models thats covered by ZBD. I'll have to ask around to make sure if this is in fact the case or if Asus just didn't update their site.


It seems like the CD-Rom spooling sound only happens initially. For example, for a music cd I only hear the spin up in the begining when it's trying to read the cd. Once the music is playing I can hear it anymore.

The restoration CD just restores the the OS back to the first day you bought it. It's not a full Windows CD.


I haven't installed too many games. I can't really get away with playing BF2 at work and I have a desktop at home for all my games. I'll try some out and get back to ya.

 

The ZBD policy only applies for the W2, V6, W1, and M6 models.

 

great review...i chuckled when you wrote 'according to the pretty sticker'

this makes that much harder for me to decide between the hgl80, A8jm, and the w7j...

 

What is the average amout of time it is taking people to receive their W7J from ProPortableOne?

 

From the date I ordered, the W7J arrived in 3 days. (1 day processing, 2 days in transit)

 

Are you saying I could have my W7J by next week?? Sweet!

Time to put the old desktop up on ebay!!!

Also, I know this has probably been asked many times but is the SZ the best representation of the W7J? I would hate to buy it and realize that it is too small for me.

 

Here are some pictures that sort of reference the size of the W7J

 

Lol, I think you forgot to put up the pics? I can't see 'em

 

I see em.

Pretty much sums up as, screen = 2 dvds side by side, thickness = 2 dvds + a little more.

 

One thing I really want to know is, how does typing on it feel? not necessarily the keyboard..but from what people have told me.. the palm rest is only 2 7/8 inches deep while other 13.3" models are usually around 4-5 inches. do you feel there's not enough room for your hands to reach the keys comfortably?

 

One question. Do you know if there are some shops or web pages that sells this asus for spain? because I always see here the w3j, w7j... and this are so beautiful laptops, but here in spain I can't find them.