* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

Donald, if you have an image/ad for the right frame of andLinux.org, I am more then happy to give you some free advertising. You help out enough around here and I am more then happy to help.

 

the 10.3 catylst drivers raised my 3dmark06 score from 7200 to 8050.

 

Actually they are slightly blue. Go here and type in the background color code for the headers: #A4B1C1

http://www.mathsisfun.com/hexadecimal-decimal-colors.html

If it was suppose to be grey the RGB values would be almost even, however there is more green than red and more blue than either green or red. That would mean that a bluish tint should be visible.

 

Mine didn't change at all. Still hovering just above 8010.

 

so when can we expect you to be done with pre-orders and have this lappy in stock, so people can order it right off?

 

http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...tallationInstructionforMicrosoftWindows7.aspx

The installation process consists of five steps for Microsoft Windows 7.
1.Find the latest ATI Catalyst™ driver
2.Download the latest ATI Catalyst™ driver
3.Uninstall any legacy ATI or other display drivers (where applicable)
4.Run the driver installation procedure
Uninstall any legacy ATI or other display drivers (where applicable)
Any pre-existing graphic drivers must be first uninstalled, to prevent any errors that may occur when installing the latest ATI Catalyst™ drivers.
Note! The following instructions only apply if a graphics driver pre-exists on the system. This step can be skipped if the system currently has no legacy graphics drivers installed.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Well that's nice of Terry to tell you not to uninstall before installing. It also would be nice if the instructions for downloading the catalyst 10.3 did not tell you to uninstall the old driver first!
All I know is that I installed the new driver without uninstalling the old one and it worked like crap. Then I tried uninstalling the old driver first and it works fine.
I did get a warning while installing that everything did not install because the Adobe flash was not working correctly. I get a lot of problems like this when using 64bit Explorer which Adobe flash does not support yet. I think I will have to just stick with 32bit Explorer.

 

Is AMD stuck in XP mode Deathwinger?
http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...tallationInstructionforMicrosoftWindows7.aspx

The installation process consists of five steps for Microsoft Windows 7.
1.Find the latest ATI Catalyst™ driver
2.Download the latest ATI Catalyst™ driver
3.Uninstall any legacy ATI or other display drivers (where applicable)
4.Run the driver installation procedure
Uninstall any legacy ATI or other display drivers (where applicable)
Any pre-existing graphic drivers must be first uninstalled, to prevent any errors that may occur when installing the latest ATI Catalyst™ drivers.
Note! The following instructions only apply if a graphics driver pre-exists on the system. This step can be skipped if the system currently has no legacy graphics drivers installed.

 

There are a number of very good display calibration tools including the one built into Windows 7. Assessing font color is a poor substitute for these tools. Font is small, you have to squint close to your monitor to see it clearly meaning you will not be looking from your standard viewing distance. Font smoothing will also blend edge pixels with the background color meaning few if any of the pixels in the font will actually display at their true color. Keep in mind background lighting conditions will also effect perceptive color. Without display calibration hardware getting accurate RGB color by eye is pretty difficult. On the other hand, I find that good Brightness/Contrast adjustment is more important and can be achieved by using the test image from PhotoFriday I linked to earlier.

That being said, ASUS is well-known for shipping their notebooks with color profiles designed to brighten and saturate photos and films. These profiles will not be color accurate but may provide a better perceptual image to undiscerning viewers. If you think it looks better than a color accurate image and aren't doing design where accurate color representation is important there isn't any reason no to use these color profiles.

 

lozanogo, Thank's for the review. I posted it on the first page as I will with any owner who posts a review in this lounge.

 

Perhaps you have your reasons but I think you'd be much happier in the end switching to an alternative browser like Firefox, Opera or Chrome.

 

2MNY, The reason is I live in Seattle. Are you trying to get me run out of town! Next you will be suggesting I should drink Mcdonalds coffee and fly on Airbus planes. I'll let you know what I think of your browsers after I BING it!

 

You kidding? A quarter of the employes at MS own iPhones. It's like saying, "I use MS paint instead of Photoshop for professional photo editing because Paint comes bundled with Windows."

 

As a web developer I can tell you at least with IE7 and down Microsoft is the Airbus and McDonalds coffee. IE6 and 7 are the worst, but IE8 was released 2 years too late. Maybe they'll pull a rabbit out of their hat for IE9, but at least they are trying now.

For any site requiring heavy JavaScript IE just can't compete, it's like putting a 4 cylinder in a muscle car.

 

lol, great analogy

 

Ok guys I was kidding and browsers is off topic here. But since you started it. I have never tried another browser. At the risk of upsetting Uncle Bill and getting rode out of town, which one would you recommend?

 

Firefox > Chrome > Opera > Safari > IE8

In that order.

 

Thank's Adamal, I'll try Firefox. And even though I'm willing to spend more on coffee at Starbucks, I'm not going to spend more on buying a Mac. I've got to draw the line somewhere!

 

Wow, this made me laugh so hard
I think you're the first person I've ever heard (or read) that has ever used the words "Bing it" in a sentence.

 

Thanks Greg. By the way, following the discussion of other browsers, definitely Firefox is better than IE.

 

That is fine, but the issue is that the notebook still ships with an overblown colour output. It burns my eyes at night, and adjusting the brightness has no effect as it makes it washed out. So a colour profile is needed, but this always unloads as soon as you load a game! So you then need monitor calibration wizard to prevent that.

The jumping through hoops to get an acceptable colour setting is rediculous and unnacceptale for a £1100 laptop. Oh yes that is pound not dollars, we get ripped in the uk. Every correctly setup monitor I have had does not show it to blue as the default profile does.

 

Thanks alot my drivers are now updated to 10.3

Driver Packaging Version 8.712-100302b-096986C-ATI


downloaded new drivers
uninstal old ati catalyst install manager (complete uninstall)
ran driver sweeper
ran ccleaner both junk files /registry
rebooted
installed new drivers

i have one question will i be able to use that to download the new 10.4 drivers when they become available . thanks

i have noticed dirt 2 runs alot smoother . and idle temp has dropped around 5 c . plus pixelated pictures in vlc seem to have gone

 

When you uninstall a display driver, Windows 7 auto installs ANY old driver it finds in its cabs straight away. It thinks we are all noobs you see.

There's a good chance you are installing over the top of an old driver anyways, just an older one.

Check device manager next time you remove your display drivers and I'll bet your GPU has a driver installed instead of showing as a standard VGA adapter.

This behaviour drivers people nuts all over the net as its not easy to stop it.

On a side note, I've got a 12 hour flight on the new Airbus A380 coming up and its supposed to have laptop power sockets. I was looking forward to GTA4 at 40,000 feet but upon further inspection it appears the sockets supply only 75w max or they trip.....

I've checked the laptops comsumption with a power socket watt matter and it is 85-89w playing GTA4. If I limit CPU to 80% and GPU to 80% I can get it to 75w, has anybody got any other tips to save power without slowing my laptop down too much?

 

once you start to remove ati catalyst install manager windows switches to standard VGA adapter until you install new drivers

 

Have you checked device manager?

 

yes i did .

 

You are one of the lucky ones, it always whacks in WDDM drivers for me, not that it worries me. I just update without uninstalling first anyways as I like keeping all of my settings, profiles and whatnot.

If its good enough for Terry Makedon of ATI its good enough for me!

 

Not to be a total homer but we do use that phrase here in Seattle. If you don't believe me you can Bing it!

 

Create a custom power profile in Windows for the flight. Set it to turn off WIFI, bluetooth, USB ports and PCI slots. Don't plug in any USB devices and dim the screen down. Drop the settings in GTA down a few notches so it still runs smooth at slower GPU and CPU settings. If the game needs a DVD to run, find a no-cd patch so you can run it off the hard drive instead. You can now go in to the Windows Device Manager and disable the DVD drive so it isn't drawing any power either. Set your power button to hibernate the laptop so if you do have to shut it down you can turn it off to charge the battery for a while then boot straight back to the desktop or your game.

 

Also, you can change the PowerPlay setting in CCC to save battery while plugged in.

 

I was wondering. I am planning to buy a power inverter for my car, so I can run my laptop inside my car. Do you guys know how much watt needed to run ASUS N61JQ? Does the amps matter? Thanks.

 

I have seen my laptop draw up to 115 W from the wall. I would say this is about the maximum you would see, so a power inverter capable of 120 W would be fine.

 

Thanks, stevedogg. I thought it draws only up to 90W, because from my understanding, since the adapter's output is 19V with 4.74A current, it should give me about 90W. Well, I could be wrong. Physics was not my strongest point anyway.

 

You are correct that it comes with a 90W power adapter but it can under heavy load pull more than 90W.

 

It also depends on the efficiency of the transformer. I read somewhere that laptop adapters can be as low as 80% efficient. So 115 W wall => 92 W laptop.

 

Placed my order for a n61jq-x1 last night now I just gotta wait for it to ship through amazon (had a gift card to take care of some of it) says it'll be a few weeks :/ Replacing my old asus W7J (1.8 core2 nvidia 7400go) gonna be playing lots of starcraft 2 beta and teamfortress 2 with this cant wait.

 

I'm not in the starcraft 2 beta, but I can tell you TF2 runs like smooth silk on this baby with everything cranked.

 

niceee I haven't played tf2 in a long time cause all i use is my laptop and I dont like using my desktop (hate sitting at a desk on a computer) so it will be good to get back into it.

I try playing starcraft 2 on my W7j it runs on settings on all low and the game play is smooth but it makes my gpu run at 103 degrees C yea it gets a lil warm. But it doesn't show any problems atm. no crashes or anything. *shrugs*
It'll probably fry sooner or later.

 

may i ask what's resolution you use for benchmark? with 1280x1024 it's only 7198 for 10.3 driver, with 1024x768 it's 8551.

 

sc2 runs pretty decent on high, ultra kinda lags. need alot of leeway for this game since it's heavy massing

 

I always use the default resolution when running benchies.
Resolution 1280x768

I'm guessing you ran yours on an external monitor. I had similar scores when I wasn't using my external monitor.

 

hi guys. im not to sure whether u guys look at n71jq thread aswell i watch both their almost the same . im just wondering has anyone upgraded their ram or have the 6gb 8gb ram. i upgraded my n71jq to 6gb no worries cept for the fan is now sitting on max speed. i take out the 4gb stick back to normal put it back in same thing. anyone else have this? wat would caz it? do i need to worry about it? will it caz more wear and tear on the fan? cheers

 

arg that worries me I was hoping ultra.

 

HA! This comes out the same day:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/26/the-vampire-diaries-and-microsoft-team-up-try-to-add-binged/

 

This evening, I decided to cancel my order at Amazon and switched to XoticPC.

I got bored just now and decided to check on Amazon. Nice little surprise awaited me: the status of N61JQs are no longer "Pre-Order" (for A1s) or "In Stock - Ships in 2 to 4 weeks" (for X1s) but are now "Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available."

 

There is so much demand for this notebook line, its such an amazing product

 

Hey, not sure where to turn for this question. These forums helped me decide to purchase my N61JQ a few days ago. I've noticed, however, that my FN key does not work with F8-F12, and specifically, the volume controls. It does work with F1 (sleep), F5 and F6 (brightness adjust). Anyone else have this problem, or better, a solution?

 

My volume controls are working. Did you updated any new drivers from Asus or erased some of the Asus programs included in the laptop??

 

yep it's amazing. I just hope it lasts.

 

Hey guys, I need your help.

I've been seriously considering getting the N61 for awhile, but I'm concerned that I will not like the resolution. I also don't plan on doing my heavy gaming on this system as I do that mostly on my PS3 and X360.

I then came across this Sony VAIO yesterday, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+...ategoryId=pcmcat196200050015&id=1218154378383 and am considering buying it. However, I wanted to hear what you all think about Sonys in genera.

I know that the fan noise is an issue, which I need to determine on my own if this is a deal breaker, but I'm more interested in the reputation of the build quality and of VAIOs in general.

I could ask this question in the sony threads, but I wanted objective views, which I believe I would get from the group in this thread.

I appreciate any thoughts you have on this subject. Thanks!

 

maybe it was just me, but the link doesn't work. It says that page not found. Could you give the model number instead?