A couple of questions for N56 owners.

Hi all, I just got my N56VJ and and I'm pretty happy whit it, but, I have a couple of questions.

1. Is there an option to disable glowing ASUS logo on the back?
2. Is there an option to disable FN button ( turning Wi-Fi On-Off, Mute, Sleep... without pressing FN )?
3. How to add back and forth gesture for Google Chrome? ( In IE if you swipe left or right with three fingers you can go back and forth )?
4. Is it safe to use notebook without battery?

Thanks!

 

1. Not that I know of, at least, not without some cable management.
2. Nope. FN key cannot be disabled.
3. IE is optimized for touch/swipe gestures. I don't think Chrome for Windows is just yet.
4. Of course! In fact, you don't want to leave it plugged in constantly if you ever intend on being mobile with the notebook. You can "overcharge" the battery, which will reduce it's lifespan significantly.

Which version of Windows are you using?

 

You can remap keys with a tool called nbkeys. You will lose the osd/popup, and it can be a bit difficult to get it to run, but it's possible. Unfortunately, Asus doesn't see the wisdom in creating a bind-application in their keyboard driver, because they're tremendous knobs.

Chrome (like Firefox) has several massive and long-developed extensions for mouse-gestures. Opera has in-built ones, but with less features. IE copied everyone else on the cheap.

Battery thing - you have overcharge protection in-built in the battery module nowadays. It charges the battery up to 98%, then lets it discharge without draining it to 95% or something. Since there's no memory effect, and the battery doesn't heat up during the recharge cycle as quickly as before - letting the battery go through that charge/discharge thing doesn't really damage it much more than just using it normally. Just make sure you drain it until the computer turns off once in a while. A lithium-ion battery still will lose half the max charge in about 6 months, though.. Specially if it's cooled down, stored a day or two with low charge on the battery, that sort of thing.

But yes, backlight on the logo seems to be hardwired to the monitor led somehow

 

Wow, thanks for the quick responses.
I'm running Windows 8, it's actually not bad - once you get used to it ( gestures are quite useful and boot time is amazing even with HDD).

Nipsen - thanks for extensions tip, It never occurred to me to check Chrome Web Store. I'll check it out.

 

Hello again.
I'm happy to report that Swipe Gesture 2.0 solved my problem with back and forth gestures in Google Chrome. Here is the link if anyone is interested. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/swipe-gesture/mgegfjnccpnkdppohmfgnjalkediapkc

Now, I am having difficulties with file sharing between my Desktop PC ( Windows 7 ) and my N56 ( Windows 8 ). I set up HomeGroup and everything is working - well, most of the time. Sometimes I can't access my Desktop PC - I get following message: When I try a few minutes later everything works. It's very annoying. Is there a way to fix this?

 

Oooh, a networking question... /shutters I imagine that has something to do with P2P protocol configuration between Windows 7 and Windows 8, but I'll leave this one for someone with more networking experience.

As for the swipe features; way to go! And thanks for the link (and thanks to Nipsen for correcting my erroneousness. ) IE 10 was designed (as was Windows 8) for touch gestures, so yeah... it's built into the browser by default. How does the Chrome extension fare? With it being loosely based off OSX style gestures, I'm curious.

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gestures-for-chrometm/jpkfjicglakibpenojifdiepckckakgk

..I like this one^. Thing is it's not immediately a really good idea to actually draw the gesture on the screen. There are about... fifty million things that could go wrong then. But since Chrome has it's own context, there aren't any double-buffe.. flickering problems, and the gesture shape can be read just once at the end of the swipe, without having triggered an exclusive thread that interrup.. no stuttering or huge processor peaks, etc.

If some genius programmed into, say, windows 8... that the finger-swipe was a different type of button than just the mouse, only with fewer buttons, and so on.. it would be possible to bind this input to the browser as well.

Right now, that -- and this is not by design, surely -- is limited to IE only.

(I'm not going to touch the network things. Last time it involved goats, dancing, purple smoke and blood-sacrifice.. I think. Didn't make the network work the way we wanted to in the end either.)

 

Hahaha! :thumbsup:

Turns out Google Chrome actually has built-in support for gestures. Just swipe with three fingers left or right and voilà. :hi2:

 

Oh? Nice. ..So you get right-click and hold with three fingers? Or can you trigger the right-click with three fingers and then have a more accurate swipe after you release two fingers..?

Or do you trigger "back", and "forward" functions through a device-driver of some sort, that picks up gestures?

 

Hmmmm. No. Just place three fingers on the Touch Pad and swipe left for back and right for forward. No Extensions - Drivers needed.

 

Oh, both Nipsen and I were just out-ninja'ed. So are you reverting to the default gestures now? Or do you like your OSX style ones?

 

Just so we're on the same page here, though. The built in ones work on the input device itself. These are the OSX style swipes, as you call them. This is essentially the same as binding "back" or "forward" to a mouse-button, that sort of thing.

The thing I wanted/thought would be nice was a way to pick up on a gesture and draw the gesture on the screen with an extension. Then you could have context-sensitive gestures, right? ..move and scroll inside document controls, back&forth swipes outside, that sort of thing, and have visual feedback for what you're actually doing.

 

I returned to the default gestures. After installation Gestures for Chrome ( Nipsten posted a link ) Swipe Gesture stopped working ( every tenth command would be detected ). I guess reinstalling Google Chrome would solve the problem but I'm too lazy to export-import bookmarks and history.

In my opinion Swipe Gestures are better ( when they work ) then default one because they require only two fingers while default one require three fingers, plus, on Swipe Gestures you get nice animation showing what gesture are you performing.