*Official UL30VT-X1 Owners Lounge*

Sorry but to me your answer makes no sense? Nvidia optimus seems to be a special driver feature by nvidia that allows exactly that - switching between the onboard and nvidia gpu. And asus will be on of the first manufacturer to support that. So there is hope it will also work for the VT series.

 

Sorry about that, my bad. I was scanning your post, and missed the part about Optimus.

I just read it over, and it seems that it would apply to UL30VT. Maybe not right now in its current form, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does become supported soon. Seeing as how all the notebooks they're featuring on the Optimus page right now are made by Asus.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/09/nvidia-optimus-automates-graphics-switching-promises-the-best-o/

Anybody know anymore details?

 

I am not quite sure if I understood this right. Those are all legal isos from Microsoft? Of course I already "bought the license for Windows 7" but will the licence number from the bottom of my (future) laptop work even for Windows 7 Professional?

That'll be awesome

Thanks for your advises. They'll be very useful



I am also wondering about Nvidia Optimus. I think it may NOT be just a software thing. The new drivers may not be enough to make this work.

 

I'm pretty sure the windows key will only work for the version it was designed for (that being, Home Premium)

 

Yeah, but I saw a video where the guy used his 64-bit version key on 32-bit Windows and it worked..

I guess it is not the same thing, but somebody should try that anyways.

Therefore I don't see any point in those links to Windows 7 Pro isos.

 

Those are legit isos but you still need the corresponding license key. That means the home premium key will not work with the professional iso.

This.

It does not matter if you use your license key on a 32bit or 64bit version. MS does not differ between those.

Why?, afaik there are versions of the UL30VT that come with a professional license. And maybe there are people who bought a key but dont have an iso or dont know how todo it what so ever. Besides i also posted the home premium isos

 

If anyone has been looking at the Pelican 1080cc hard case. It fits perfectly for the UL30vt. Exact width fit and 3/4" extra depth which is great for gripping the laptop to remove it. Height is perfect also. This is the plush foam model not the cube style model. Awesome case. Bombproof and relatively slim.

http://www.pelican.com/cases_detail.php?Case=1080CC

 

I put Win 7 Pro on my 30VT and those links sure would've come in handy then. I'm glad they are posted. It might save some time for others.

 

you can upgrade from 32 to 64 bit or downgrade from 64 bit to 32 bit as long as it's the same version (ie home premium, pro, ultimate). so if you have a 64 bit home premium key, then you can use it with a 32 bit home premium windows 7 disc.

 

After doing some more reading, Optimus is a new hardware implementation, which means don't be expecting it for our A1/X1's. So... that means our A1/X1's are now out of date. Asus is already selling Optimus enabled notebooks. In fact, the UL50Vf is just a UL50VT with Optimus.

Here are some great articles on Nvidia Optimus, how it works, what it does, etc.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=868
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3737
http://hothardware.com/articles/NVIDIA-Optimus-Mobile-Technology-Preview/

 

Thats sad.

Btw. how do you people detect the noise you hear is the hdd and not the fan? Just curious because i am unable to distinct between those two :x Thanks

 

Thank you all for clearing out the Windows licencing question. It actually makes sense like that.

I did some research about Optimus. I am not really upset that this feature is missing on the UL30Vt. If it is really hardware device (and I really DOUBT so!) we won't be able even trick our UL30Vts into it.

But.. who cares? I am not a stupid user who would forget to turn on G210M when doing somethin 3D demanding. Before I start Autodesk Maya or a game I just turn the card on. I wouldn't like the laptop just decrease battery-life whenever it wants to. For example whenever you watch a video in flash. What I learnt from experiences with Optimus it has a list of 3D aplication for which it turns the card on. Somebody tried to play the new Batman game and the dedicated card wouldn't turn on because the game simply wasn't in the list! So it is just little software feature to me. It's not like the computer would actually KNOW that it is trying to do something 3D demanding and turn the card on. It's just what is in the list.

Also Nvidia Optimus doesn't switch between graphic cards smoothly, there is still noticable blink in black screen.

I am 100% I will not miss this BFU-proof future.

________________________________________________
Anybody bought ASUS UL30Vt from Amazon?
http://tinyurl.com/amazonasus

Does it come with Atheros or Intel wi-fi?

 

You know what else I don't get, the testers played 1080p YouTube movie trailers on the UL50VT on IGP mode, and they all stuttered. I played those same 1080p YouTube trailers on my X1 without any frame loss in IGP mode & Power Saver power scheme. So I don't know what's going on with their units.

Also, the A1 comes with the 1 antenna Atheros wireless card.

 

anyone have problem getting the microphone to work with gmail talk video chat? my mic works fine in windows recorder, but cant seem to work with google video chat.

 

Did someone found a fix for the sometimes not reacting fn brightness keys?
And is there a way to solve the upside down camera without turning it in the corresponding application?

Thank you

 

my not reacting fn brightness keys have fixed themselves im not sure how. i think it might have something to do with plugging in the power and unplugging it. mine works fine now. i did nothing!
update ur camera drivers with the one on the asus support website.

 

When this happens, I usually switch to the other graphics mode, adjust the brightness and then switch the graphics back to what you want. Adjusting the brightness when switching seems to make it work for some reason. If I just switch graphics and then switch back then it might not work. Go figure.

 

I just bought a UL30VT-A1 (used) from Ebay. When I started the windows (and later), I heard some sounds like electricity leaking or DVD writing. I think it's from hard drive. A lot people said that it's very quiet, so I don't know it's normal or not.

Is it normal? I'm gonna return if it's not normal.

Thanks for reply.

 

There are free disk checking programs on the Net that report the SMART status of the drive, any major internal errors, and should be able to indicate if your drive is on its way out. Noise, especially loud squealing or clicking, is not usually something you want to hear coming from your drive, but some do make soft background sounds even when all is well. It's really a matter of degree...

But download a disk check utility and see what you can learn.

 

I just have to know, what exactly does an electricity leak sound like?

 

Rice Krispies? You know: snap, crackle, pop?

LOL.

 

I have a clicking sound quite often. I don't really equate that to snap, crackle, pop as you described, but it definitely is obvious. There are many previous posts in this thread that seemed to say this was common with drives of today. So I will bet there is nothing wrong with yours. But as someone suggested, running some diagnostics might put your mind at ease.

 

Thanks for all your replies. I will download the software and test now.

 

i noticed one difference between asus ul30vt ul80vt, the nvidia g210m in ul80vt is connected to a 16x full speed pcie slot, but our ul30vt is only operating at half which is 8x pcie. check it using gpuz. i'm sure this has a performance penalty.

wonder why asus did this...

 

However they both score the same points in 3dmark06 so the difference cant be that big?

Btw, I was thinking about using turbo mode all the time, but lowering the max cpu % in batterysaving-mode to ~45% so that it would operate somewhere around 800mhz, the same speed it would operate at without turbo mode but at standard 60% maximum cpu set in g4p. What Im wondering is if using the turbo mode option with the lower % would give me shorter battery time? It shouldnt, should it? That way I wont have to reboot when I get home and plug it in in order to get maximum power from it..

 

Been away for awhile, before I left I had read all the pages of this string, but then there were only 100!!!

I found a place to buy the ASUS UL30Vt-A1, is it still the best of the 13 inch?

 

i'm also getting the same reading from gpu-z.



anyone know how to get the bus to 16x?

for the hd noise, i also hear a faint clicking sound every 5-10 seconds. i only notice it when i'm in a very quiet place. turned off windows indexing and it seems to have improved a little. and i think it's part of the normal operation of the drive.

 

It seems that the UL50VT also has an 8x PCI-E speed with the Nvidia G210M. It's very strange that only the UL80VT has 16x. I'm guessing the programmers at Asus screwed up when making the BIOSes for the UL30VT and UL50VT. Or maybe the one who made the BIOS for the UL80VT screwed up cause it's supposed to be 8x just like the other models.

In any case, the difference between PCI-E 8x and 16x is only felt when playing 3D games that stream a lot of textures from system memory to video memory in real time. Benchmarks like 3dmark06 loads everything to video memory before each benchmark segment starts, so it doesn't measure memory transfer speed between system memory and video memory through the PCI-E bus. Games that do real-time texture streaming will probably suffer more slight pauses and hiccups during play when in 8x compared to 16x, but most games load as many textures into video memory as possible as well as use prefetch and preload techniques to minimize pauses, so 8x is still fine for most games.

 

thanks for the info!

 

I think the U30Jc puts the smack down on the UL30Vt, but it's not quite out yet. It'll probably be out by the end of the month and is available for pre-order at xoticpc. If you're willing to wait a bit longer, the UL30Jt will probably blow the UL30Vt out of the notebook market straight to obsolescence.

 

Does anybody know a Belgium store/site which sells this asus model? All I can find is the one witouth a seperate gpu.
I also wonder how the overall cooling is after gaming a while on this mode.

 

nevermind, I mis-read

 

Thanks for the info..

One other thing, I forgot to mention I'm not a gamer, would your answer change? I was looking at the UL30a-a2, then the vt, now the ......

should I just go back to the a2? It's quite a bit cheaper

 

I'm mainly waiting for JT because of the better CPU - unlike GPU, better CPU helps out all applications.

 

What will you be using the notebook for? The UL30A is more than adequate for regular Internet use, office productivity software, and 720p HD movie watching. If you're going to do audio/video encoding, photo editing, or 1080p HD movie watching, then the UL30Vt is a better choice. For even better heavy duty use (not just for gaming), the U30Jc and UL30Jt will be the best because of the faster and better processors. However, I'm sure Asus will continue to release better models to replace the U30Jc and UL30Jt after a few months of their release, so one can play the waiting game indefinitely. Just buy whatever fits your current needs according to your budget when you need it. Don't buy a notebook now if you don't need one now, but don't wait to buy one if you need one now unless there's nothing currently available that fits your needs.

 

Guys.. but that new i-processor is not such a beast.. The power is supposed to be somewhere around SU7300. So YES it will be FASTER but it may not be worth the waiting and higher price.. nor accepting the ugly black version. (more black aluminium means more soaked oily spots unpossible to sweep off)

Silver Jt for about $850 with G210M would be an over killer. We do not need massive gaming graphic card. Otherwise we would buy a gaming laptop. Right?

 

From the early benchmarks, The new i appears to be giving us about 20% improvement over SU7300. You may or may not care about this. As for the GPU, the speed is essentially the same. So JT doesn't really make it much better laptop for gamers. Silver vs Black is a fair point. I personally don't like Silver because it will eventually show worn marks pretty easily - at least all silver ones I purchased in the past shows this mark eventually. But I don't like shiny black either. I hope JT is not shiny.

I can afford to wait a bit right now so JT seems to be the right choice for me. If I needed one right now, I would buy UL30VT-A1.

 

the normal UL30A can do 1080p movies easily. I have yet to find a clip that staggers.

 

I just got my new Asus UL30Vt-X1 today, replacing a lemon 1201N unfortunately--which had a bad BlueTooth module--and you know I read this entire thread yesterday before it arrived...and it just amazes me how this thread is filled with nothing but reference after reference to *other Asus products!* Which just strikes me strange, but so be it.

Apparently everybody is trying to blow this little PC notebook into planned obsolescence long before its time is due...honestly, I could have waited for this new model to come out 'in the next month or two', whenever it happens, but this is really fine for me, and I don't need any more of a notebook than this one.

So I'm happy to have it!

Now it's time to learn all about it, hopefully a little here, because there is little to no documentation that came with it in the packaging! Now, first question I have is for owners of THIS model only, please...and I don't need an indoctrination about the computer, just a simple question or two today, thank you very much.

I am in the Energy Saver mode right now to try and see how good the battery is with my uses, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I have a battery that fully charges, so yaaay for that! But about the Energy Saver setting, it displaces the normal desktop completely, apparently, so that surprised me a bit...but am I doing the right thing by selecting it with the Space Bar and the Fn Key? I hope so...so that is one question.

Second, what's the preferred method of turning off the trackpad?

I use a BT mouse, a Logitech V470 notebook mouse, so don't need the trackpad right now...is it Fn then F9? Seems to have that sign on F9 but I don't want to press it without knowing that! The 1201N had a switch to do that little trick, this does not...

Thank you for those answers someone, it will be appreciated!

Have a nice day...to everybody...the evening anyway.

 

2nd first, Fn + F9 does turn the trackpad on and off. Hit the keys together, not sequentially.

Fn+Space accesses the four ASUS Power4Gear settings; Windows has a number of other power profiles and those are accessible via Control Panel > Power Options. You will find if you experiment with the Advanced settings that your new computer is extremely configurable. Enjoy!

 

Thank you tallan, it's appreciated very much...I honestly did not want to push the F9 key if it was going to do something like Reformat the HD or worse, so that is good to know...push them *together*, so will do that from now on.

On the four power settings in Power4Gear, that High Performance overclocks the CPU doesn't it? That is interesting! I saw 1733Mhz in Everest Ultimate 5.0.2 and about fell over earlier tonight until I figured that overclocking stuff out, Wow! That's some stock CPU...I LIKE this computer a bunch! That is a neat trick to pull on the CPU, a little old 1.3Ghz 3MB Cache C2Duo at that, impressive!

I haven't had a battery this good yet in 4 different netbooks, so I am happy for that also. My battery has a design potential of 61,600mWh, and yet it charges up to 61,684mWh, so a good battery in this PC notebook also...

It looks like with nominal settings, that is WiFi shut down, BT on, 25% LCD brightness (I don't need much when typing and writing), other settings turned down also like no more than 60% CPU peak, I can eeek out 8+hours on this battery...or so it seems thus far with 4.5 hours down and still 55% left on the EmBatPower percentage rating, my favored battery checker.

Does that sound normal? I'd guess 5-7 hours on 'normal settings' with WiFi on and everything turned down pretty much also...and 4-6 hours turned up brighter, which is fine with me...a big improvement on the 1201N, which I could not get out of the 3 hours range no matter what I tried.

That battery run time is amazing for a 13.3" PC, virtually the same or better than my wife's 13.3" MacBook Pro notebook, which I never thought I'd see a PC equal but this one apparently will do it. Before I set things up for 'endurance and long-life' I played some COD:WAW on this notebook at normal settings, and it played the game fine, too! So all in all I think this is a winner!!

I guess there are better PC notebooks down the road coming from Asus, but this one will do just fine I think, for my purposes. Even the screen isn't so bad, and I was thinking I couldn't stand it from all the bad press it got in this thread early on...it's just NOT that bad to me.

Those are my 1st impressions of this little monster, ie it's aok fine...nothing bad, some xlnt features, good battery life, xlnt performance, in short I see why people are buying/bought this notebook now...count me amongst the owners who like the UL30Vt-X1 a bunch.

As far as the trackpad goes, when I was using it earlier this afternoon I just didn't have any problems with it either, so all the bad things being said about it here early on in this thread don't apply to my liking it either.

Even the Seagate 5400RPM HD gets good marks from me...I ran it through HD Tune Pro 3.50's battery of tests and it came up 63MB/sec average across the volume read speed, peak @ 80MB/sec, with no spikes to indicate bad sectors or lots of fragmentation, so I dunno...maybe there's no reason to install my WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache HD! I may just keep that for some other *good purpose* since the Seagate seems to be a good HD for this notebook.

I also rate the WiFi (Intel not Atheros) in this one xlnt, as I'm getting 5-bars everywhere in my studio and around the house, no matter where I have been toting the notebook. It just seems to be a solid WiFi 'N' setup in the UL30Vt-X1, so basically I haven't found anything to dislike about it yet. If I do run into something that bugs me, I'll come back and crow about it, but so far this first day with the computer has been stellar, and I look forward to using it in all types of uses as time goes on! :smile:

 

Only thing missing IMO is a backlit keyboard. As for that F9 key, be careful: if you hold it down during boot you'll go into the ASUS Recovery Setup. But you have to press and hold as you boot.

I put a Scorpio Black just like yours in and it's noticeably quicker, but you may have a vibration issue; mine doesn't do it all the time and even when it does it's not enough to bother me, but it does make the whole laptop feel like it's buzzing very slightly.

The battery in the X1 is smaller than the A1, so you probably won't achieve the full 10-12 hours A1 owners may get. The larger battery is available from ASUS online however if it's a big deal for you.

I love the lappie too - no doubt the new ones will be a bit faster but "a bird in the hand..."

 

"I put a Scorpio Black just like yours in and it's noticeably quicker, but you may have a vibration issue; mine doesn't do it all the time and even when it does it's not enough to bother me, but it does make the whole laptop feel like it's buzzing very slightly.

The battery in the X1 is smaller than the A1, so you probably won't achieve the full 10-12 hours A1 owners may get. The larger battery is available from ASUS online however if it's a big deal for you."--tallan wrote


I'll probably Clone the boot HD after I get *rid* of the 2nd partition and try out the WD Scorpio Black HD, just to see how it makes the notebook feel, but chances are I'll put the Seagate right back in this one. It seems like a good match for the Ul30Vt-X1 for some reason, and those HD Tune Pro 3.50 tests don't lie, that's impressive performance for a 5400RPM HD. FYI my Scorpio Black doesn't vibrate at all--I had it in the 1201N and it was smooth and silent, so I'm not concerned about that with this particular HD.

As far as the battery goes, no, I'll most likely live with this OEM battery, won't swap it out for the 5600MAH job unless something really strange occurs...and even then I'd most likely go eBay on a replacement battery, and get a Chinese-Panasonic-cell battery from a certain supplier I know well, for something like $50 shipped instead of the $120 from Asus.

It is refreshing to read your comments by the way, when all I could cull out of the thread mostly when reading it yesterday was a *lot* of negative crapola about things that just are not that terrible, it turns out. Especially the LCD display, back lit LED though it may be, the viewing angle is just not that important for a user unless the person is overly critical. I can go look at my MacBook Pro's LED backlit LCD right now, and I guarantee that it's just marginally better than this screen in the Asus...not enough to really matter.

I agree with you 100% about being enthusiastic about this series, and who knows *what* the next one will be like with that i5 CPU in it...chances are it is going to be a little power hungry vs the 7300 C2Duo, which seems like an ideal mix between power and long battery run time. You just don't need a lot of CPU power to do most things a notebook like this will be doing, even playing games is more GPU dependent than CPU...so I don't know what the folks who are waiting with baited breath for the new notebook are going to gain overall, if anything?

I like this package of goods here, and I am glad I bought into it frankly...I don't know what else that is out there will do things better than the UL30Vt-X1/A1 series of notebooks, you know what I am saying? For $800 or so this is a solid package, a proven quantity of parts and pieces, and the long-term outlook for one of these is pretty rosy to me.

I don't think I am going to clean install this HD either, as there is little to none interference from Asus programs as I see it, and if there were then it can be dealt with easily by uninstalling the culprits rather than nuking the whole deal. I think a nice Clone job by Partition Manager Personal 10.x will be just fine, thank you very much! Just get rid of the 2nd partition to make one, contiguous space, and BAM! Done deal, and all is well!

 

I stand corrected. The UL30A can also handle 1080p movies perfectly, except perhaps QuickTime 1080p HD movies in battery-saving mode using unaccelerated video playback. Of course, nobody in their right minds would play such movies that way. If you're not into gaming, heavy multimedia encoding, or heavy photo-editing and content-creation, the UL30A is an excellent and cost-effective choice.

 

Hello everyone, I'm trying to install Arch Linux on my UL30Vt. This distribution pretty much requires a working internet connection in order to install properly.

The bad news is, the system does not recognize the wired network card. I think the problem can be solved by installing a missing kernel module, but I have no idea where I can find it.

It is an Attansic Technology Corp. Device 1063 (rev. c0).

 

This is what I do, and no problems as of yet.

 

The processor state sliders in P4G Hybrid don't work that way. The SU7300 processor only has 2 distinct states: 4x and 6.5x, which corresponds to 800MHz and 1300MHz with turbo off, and 1066MHz and 1733MHz with turbo on. There are no in-between states. This can be easily proven by setting both sliders to 0%. Obviously the processor doesn't just stop, does it? Using Cpu-Z, you can see that the CPU speed doesn't go below 800MHz with turbo off, or 1066MHz with turbo on. During heavy load with turbo on, the cpu speed jumps from 1066MHz to 1733MHz as it changes state, and afterwards will go back down to 1066MHz when there is low cpu load.

So, the slowest the cpu can go is 1066MHz with turbo on and 800MHz with turbo off, and the fastest is 1733MHz with turbo on and 1300MHz with turbo off. That's why the battery can last slightly longer with turbo off.

 

Try installing over wifi. I believe the drivers for Atheros wifi cards are now part of the kernel. I did an Arch install on a netbook with Atheros wifi not too long ago and the wifi worked right away

 

It did not work over Wi-Fi, it said it could not aquire an adress from the DHCP server.

I installed from CD, but I still can't get eth0 to show up. I tried running modprobe atl2, atl1, atl1e, atl1c. The NIC still doesn't show up in lspci -v.

 

The thing about the Scorpio is that the UL30 mounting is direct, does not have any shock-absorbing materials like a MBP. The vibration seems to be a resonance issue, and thus varies drive to drive, machine to machine, even minute to minute depending on the spin rate; hopefully yours will not be effected. Like I say even at its worst it's no big deal to me.

Otherwise I'd say our opinion on this little portable is much the same: it's got more than enough horsepower for anything I'm likely to throw at it in a very small and light package. I traded up from an ASUS N10J which is about the nicest of the netbooks but was just too constraining and under-powered for me: the UL30 has just enough extra room to be comfortable viewing and typing on all day, and more than enough power for daily tasks and a little WoW or Left 4 Dead on the side. And I couldn't agree more about the screen; not as luscious as a MacBook Pro's, but plenty bright, sharp, and clear. Considering it costs over a third less than the 13" MBP it's a heck of a fine value, too.