Asus M51Ta Owners' Lounge

Hello guys, I just bought my ASUS M51TA-X2 laptop and it will ship to me on Wednesday. Can anyone give me any hints once I get my laptop to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Operating System: I know some people like XP better than Vista and so do I but I don't think I will switch to XP unless Vista is hella slow, which I doubt it. That being said, I heard some people say they do some sort of tweaking with the vista that comes on their computer. What does that mean? Like I heard there is a difference between 32 and 64 bit vista. Which one wiil the ASUS M51TA-X2 come with?

 

It comes with 32 bit premium. Im not sure why your ordered one as there are problems with ACPI that cause erratic fan behavior, standby issues and other bugs. Asus is has not issued a fix since the laptop came out.

Good luck but i would have held out or ordered something different.

 

I understand but as with most laptops, they are not perfect. The problem with the ACPI is probably because you reformatted the hard drive and forgot to install all the necessary drivers. The laptops right now are built for Vista not for XP. I am happy I purchased the laptop and will not have anyone put me down because of it just because you tweaked your laptop too much and now you messed it up yourself.

 

Hey broader congrates on ur new laptop, there are ment to be some issues with the lcd and fans etc, but i havent had a single problem with mine so far, its a great laptop, does everything i want it to and more, granted if asus support can fix the problems via a bios update then everyone will be happy.
Im going to write in to them anyway and complain of the issues in order to add another name to the list. Its the only fault of an otherwise great machine for its price.
Enjoy it when it comes on wednesday.

 

You could have a look at my Vista optimization thread(link in sig).

 

it really does work.
but somehow the 2&3d acceleration got broken. i don't know why. did anyone else try compiling a kernel with this option disabled?

by the way: i use fedora 10 and ubuntu 8.10

 

I didnt tweak anything and I am runnning vista ultimate 64 bit. Try it for yourself. I have done it several times with 32 bit vista 64 bit vista. Asus drivers, ATI drivers. It doesnt matter. Even linux users are reporting issues with ACPI. Reasearch ACPI code for yourself and you will quicky find that sometimes the hardware manufacturer is the only person that can fix a problem with a bios fix. Especially with a laptop. If you have ever build a PC for yourself you would already know about the 100s of bugs that pcs come off the shelves with.

Also, if you read through this thread, you would see that I am not the only one with the same issues. Alot of people are having the same issues that I am with even a bone stock configuration. This is also why I am whinning so much because ASUS could care less about the problems with this peticular laptop. It is probably becuase its not a popular model and ill bet they dont sell as many of these as they do Intel ones. Acutally, this is a fact.

My bet is that becuase there are so few people with this laptop, they are being lazy about fixing its issues so they can focus on popular models which will make more of their customers happy.Try to contact asus support, you will see how enthusiastic they are about fixing issues with this laptop.

Again, if you read through this whole thread, you will also notice that its been since september that these issues have been reported here and to Asus and yet there is no fix.

Please dont accuse me or anyone of screwing up their laptops without reading some history.

And... When you get yours, post back to see if you are having the same issues as others.

 

btw...
No one is running XP. You cant:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...board_id=3&model=M51Ta&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

check google too. I check on a weekly basis for someone with a fix.

http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=m51ta+windows+xp&btnG=Google+Search&=lr=

 

actually they have some problems on the much more popular G50V series that they didn't fix.

I'm afraid this is how most (all?) the consumer electronics manufacturers are... They care about getting our money, and then, the less they have to do, the better. It's just how it is...

 

Im not experiancing any of the problems with my unit, but i agree with some of the early posts, owners of the m51 ta should seriously think about writing in with complaints, unfortunatly E.B.E is correct, compainies are fast to take our money but not so keen to assist us once they have it, the more ripples the consumers make the harder it becomes to ignore.
Its a shame as its a fantastic notebook, packed full of features and at $799 (x1)or $899 (x2) great value for money...........comeon asus look after your customers.

 

mtness, can you try booting a linux live cd?
which bios version do you have?

 

paulemeister sure thing id love to help, but( theres always a but) im a complete newbi to laptops and pcs in general how can i find out what bios version im using? And where do i get a linux live cd from.
Answer these questions and ill help in a jiffy.

 

Bacon:

I apologize if I came across to strongly but I beleive strongly in this laptop, and you probably do to if you bought it. As for the issues of the ACPI, is it just an issue with linux users because I will only be using Windows Vista. I am eager to receive my laptop this Wednesday and look forward to seeing how well it runs. As for the issues with the fan running too much, is it because of too mnay programs running, maybe optimize your vista?

 

Brooder

Both Vista and Linux users are experiencing ACPI issues.

The problem with the fan is that occasionaly when you resume from standby, the fan comes on and stays at 100% even if the cpu idles.

I bought this laptop 2 weeks after it came out in august. Had there been any info on it (such as this forum) at the time, no, i wouldn't have bought one.




For all others. Catalyst 8.12 seems to have fixed the LCD issues under 64 bit vista. I am still installing the SB drivers from 8.12 then the full 8.12 with CCC suite and always uninstalling everything ATI before i begin. I have been running them for about 4 days now.

 

thanks for your helpfulness but it would be too much work regarding the chances of success.
if you wanna try linux anyway I would recommend ubuntu for beginners
hxxp://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download
but don't be suprised if the screen goes blank with your notebook.


I asked the asus support concerning the bios version 205 and 206 which are not available for download but still are displayed in "history"
I was told, that bios 206 did not exists at all and that bios 205 was currently not uploaded (no answer to my question why...)

 

well.. 205 was available for a short period of time but unfortunately they removed it from their servers after a few days

i already had 205 on my M51TA when i received it and my machine is one of those who have the issue with the fan running at 100% after awaking from standby

i´ve read in the asus forums that somebody managed to permanently fix the fan issue by reflashing the bios so my guess is that the bios flashing procedure they´ve used during production didn´t do the flashing process entirely clean

i´ve been trying to grab a copy of bios 205 for a while now since i really want to try fixing those problems by reflashing but i couldn´t find it anywhere

as i´m absolutely sure that there has to be at least someone who has the flashfile for bios 205 saved somewhere i ask to please upload it on a sharing service like for example rapidshare or mediafire... in order for it to be available again

 

I am actualy running 205 with my fan pinned @ 100% as I type this email. PM me your email address and ill send you bios 205. Its about a meg. I tried to post it to this but max size for attachments is 97Kb. Tried to split the file into multi part rars too but it wont accept rar files to post.

 

@Wayn3

if it works, please let us know.

the fan issue only occurs only if the notebook was in standbymode for less than about 5 mins, as far as my notebook is concerned... I have absolutely no idea how the standbytime and the fan issue could be connected...

 

i´ve just found out that sending pm won´t work for me since there seems to be some limit concerning the number of posts before you can use the pm feature in this forum well, i guess i did only post very few times up to now...

anyway, as pm isn´t working right now i´ll just post my special email address here:

[email protected] (written as wayn_3 but the _ isn´t noticeable because of the automatical email highlighting)

thanks a bunch.. i´ll try and see what can be done and at last hopefully prove my guess right

 

yeah, will do if i find out something interesting

that´s odd because i can´t see any obvious patterns with the fan, sometimes my notebook awakes without a single problem other times the fan runs at full speed until the next time i do a full shutdown and start it again

i tried a few times to send it to standby or even to hibernation when the fan ran @ 100 but that didn´t help since every time i reawoke it the fan would simply keep running at full speed

 

ok paul well i can say that im running bios version 205 and as i said i've has my pc for over a week now ans im still not experinacing any issues at all with it.
and this version 205 was the one that was installed with the laptop, i havent done a thing with it.

 

What a shame the M51ta has got so many problems... I really wanted to get an AMD's Puma based notebook, but those ACPI issued don't seem to be resolved in the near future, and I could not find another Puma notebook with decent graphics card. I ended up getting a F8va.

 

for anyone who ist interested.. here you can find a version of ATI Catalyst 8.12 which has been modded to specifically support ATI notebook graphics

i´m currently using those with my m51ta and both cards are recognized plus switching between graphics cards works fine.. also the lcd issue after standby seems to have been fixed

as for the problems with the bios i´ve tried to reflash it but that didn´t exactly help with the fan issue at all.. what i´ve noticed is that though the bios had been reflashed the settings which i had specifically chosen still remained the same

that lead me to the suspicion that the cmos in which the bios settings are saved had somehow been corrupted and i´ve since then been trying to find a way to reset it but that is always difficult when dealing with notebooks

 

thanks for the ati catalyst link, this is exactly the problem ive been trying to find the problem with for the last day.ill let you know how it goes cheers.

 

thanks for the link too.
during the installation my screen went blank and after several minutes I reset. however the new driver seems to work

in the meantime I asked asus support several times if the known acpi issues will be fixed in the near future and for the first time I was told that my request will be passed to the appropriate departement. hope it helps somehow

merry christmas (to ?) everyone!

 

new bios 206 is (unofficially) available (dated 9/9/2008)
read more about it here

 

thanks for the new bios heads up, im abit hesitant in installing this version, im not experiencing any of the symptoms that others seem to be, and aim sort of thinking better the devil you know than the one you dont.
anyway ill definately go take a look cheers. :smile:

 

if you don´t have any of the common problems with your M51ta it´s best not to change your bios but rather leave your current one (probably 205?) be...

 

ok great, exactly im using bios 205 and i dont seem to have any of the issues so ill stick with the one i have cheers.

 

did anyone try to boot linux with the new bios 206?
however I'm not very confident...

 

i didn´t specifically try if bios 206 changes anything regarding the linux boot issues but apart from that it is possible to boot and install linux on the M51ta with ACPI enabled and working... actually i already managed to do that a few days ago when i still had bios 205 installed but i couldn´t find the time to write a howto until now.. read more about it here

i´m not really sure if the bios is even at fault concerning this issue because earlier kernel versions seem to work fine up to a certain release where something must have been changed in the kernel which seems to be the trigger for this issue so it could very well be a kernel issue that only occurs with a certain combination of hardware

 

Is this laptop avaliable in Malaysia? o.0

 

I posted this solutions some days ago here


however the graphic acceleration does not work anymore with this option disabled. i don't know if I made a mistake or if the option CONFIG_MTRR is responsible for this.

if anyone successfully compiled a new kernel with acpi and graphic acceleration working, it would be nice to let us/me know.

 

yes the graphics acceleration is broken and no, i don´t think that config_mtrr has got anything to do with that

i guess it´s more likely that the included graphics drivers won´t work with 2.6.28 up to now and the proprietary ATI linux driver fails to boot at all..

 

Hey I've been looking to get the M51TA-x2 for awhile. I'm very pleased to see this Lounge, but need input. It seems this notebook is riddled with problems. Is this still a good laptop? I found a F8Sp-X1 for less, but has a smaller screen (14inch). I do plan on gaming and will drag it to class(current lappy is dv6000 amd 15.4 so used to size) only a few days a week. I loved the idea of puma but it seems to fall short? sooo...buy this with the problems and hope for a fix, or get the smaller one? They have the same video card so not sure. Also how does the hdmi work? anyone tried it. I really want to use it and the F8sp only has dvi.

really hope to get lots of feedback, BTW NICE forum!

 

there are several issues with acpi:
-sometimes the fan does not stop running at 100% when the laptop comes out of standbymode. (as far as my notebook is concerned it hardly ever happens)

-some people report about an issue with the lcd (my notebook obviously does not have this issue)

-most annoying (in my opinion) is that you cannot install any linux os without disabling the acpi options or building a new kernel (but the new kernel somehow kills the graphic acceleration)

nevertheless this notebook contains a nice bunch of hardware and if you are not interessed in linux it would not be a wrong decision to buy this one.
personally i would not buy it again. asus does not seem to attach importance to (this) notebook(s) at all...

 

Thank you for your response. Thats really what I need to know. Would you guys buy it again?

All owners chime in!

I still like the look and Idea behind this system, although I may have to install Ubuntu or other user freindly linux for a class coming up.

 

im very happy with my laptop, it does everything i need it to, i dont have any of the earlier mentioned problems so its the perfect laptop, and if these issues arnt affecting you i would say it is the best "bang for your buck" laptop around.

i wouldnt hesitate in buying this laptop again.

 

I see you have the x-1. Maybe that model doesn't have issues. What kind of battery life do you get with the lower watt chip?

 

I have the x-1 too and unfortunately it does/can have some of these issues.


by the way, my battery lasts for about 90 - 120 minutes (internet, office...)

 

I would hold off. THe past two days i've opened my screen up and not been able to get my lcd going and had to cold boot to get it working again. I often leave my laptop on while downloading/torrenting. Very frustrating as the sceen coming back on is much faster than a reboot. Not to mention loosing work that I had open....

I would look for a company that actually addresses issues for its customers. There is an awesome set of hardware in this thing however. What a shame. Email asus and tell them that you love the specs on it but hear that it has many issues. Then, maybe all of us will get a bios fix sometime.

 

I have the M51Ta-X1 and don't have any of the problems mentioned here. I have zero interest in Linux for this laptop, so any issues regarding that are also irrelevant.

So far I'm very happy with my purchase and would buy it again.

 

I have the X2. Perhaps we have uncovererd an the issue here. Maybe only the x2 has the problems as there is another x1 user who is issue free. Can anyone else comment on this?

 

i have the X1 and also the issues...

 

When I get home from work I'll check my Bios version. I think its 205, but I'll double check and post it here.

 

bios 205 runs on mine, too.
the lcd and acpi problems are still there

 

yeap im also running bios version 205, but still not experiencing any problems.

did the 206 bios update not address the issues?

 

no, it didn´t help at all..

 

oh, so what did the bios update actually address then?, ive heard really good things from people about asus support and it surprises me that they are ignoring this issue completely.

at the end of the day they will lose customers so its only going to hurt them in the long run.

what i find strange is the fact that we all have the same pc, with the same bios why isnt everyones laptop acting the same way?:confused2:

 

I verified that I do have 205, and no issues here.

Anyone know if 64bit drivers will be available ever? And why did they partition the drive with an OS partition of half the disk? Stupid..