A8JS - Clean Format Question

Hi All,

I have decided to purchase an A8JS to replace my relatively new Acer 8204WLMi. I love my 8204WLMi, but I am selling it on Ebay because it is going for about the same amount as I purchased it last year (I got a very good deal). Since I am expecting it to sell for $1500 and that is about how much the A8JS is going for, I figure it is a good idea to upgrade (essentially for free). I really love the idea of a smaller notebook with this much power. The main reason I went for an Acer 8204 was because it was the best size/power ratio at the time. From what I read, this title now belongs to the A8JS.

I am wondering if anybody here has an A8JS that they did a clean Windows installation on? I can't stand the preinstalled crap that manufacturers put on their laptops and usually format first thing after getting a new computer. My 8204Wlmi works perfectly with a clean install of Windows XP. I don't have a single piece of Acer crapware on there. Can I expect the same with the Asus?

Some notebooks just won't support certain features unless they use specific software. For instance, the wireless on/off switch, volume controls, display device switching, media buttons usually depend on some proprietary software to run. My Acer 8204Wlmi does not have this issue and everything works as it should with just the built-in Windows XP stuff. I hope the A8JS is the same way...

Any feedback on this would be appreciated!

Thanks,
RA

 

I actually did a clean install with my recovery dvd. it's quite simple actually: when it prompts you for the driver cd don't insert. But to get all your stuff up and running (like buttons and hardware), you need to install the drivers from the drivers and utility cd.

 

I have a WinXP installation guide somewhere on the Guides forum. Check that out.

The (wireless and other) switches on the notebook will not, indeed, work for ASUS if the proprietary touchpad/keyboard and wireless driver helpers are not running. But those can be made rather inconspicuous (no icons, no explicit user interaction, and not much RAM consumed either).

Other than that, you can run the notebook with a clean WinXP installation. And, of course, the supplied drivers - the drivers supplied by the notebook manufacturers are almost always the best idea, even though WinXP might provide substitutes.

There isn't a lot of "bloatware" as they call it, installed.You might want a different antivirus than the default norton since that loads the system quite heavily. The rest of the software, like Power for Gear, ASUS Splendid if it's the case for you, etc., you can just disable, and since it doesn't eat more than 50 MB in all (at most), you shouldn't be disturbed by it in any way.

So you don't really need a clean install. But if you still want to do it, check my guide.

 

The only buttons I will ever use are the wireless and bluetooth on/off switches and the volume controls. Do those not function at all without the Asus software?

It is fine with me if there is no On-screen display when using those buttons, as long as the volume actually changes and the wireless/bluetooth actually turn on and off without the Asus software.

Thanks,
Raheel

 

u need to install the wireless utilities for the wireless buttons to work, but it's easy to do after a clean install. i would recomend installing power4gear and splendid though, since they're quite useful.

 

I don't entirely agree. This machine is a Core 2 Duo with 1 GB of RAM, yet Windows takes an unacceptably long time to boot because of all the junk starting up.

I think the default setup that ASUS provides is simply too bloated with software. And I can't understand why they don't provide a regular Windows install disc...

Anyway, I just wiped the thing clean to install Gentoo Linux, anyway, so I shouldn't complain.

 

Do the switches work in Linux? How about the media and volume buttons?

 

I just built a basic Gentoo install so far... I got the WLAN adapter working and that's about it... haven't even installed Xorg / nVidia drivers yet.

Some of the buttons are OS-independent (for example, the LCD buttons work on a minimal Linux LiveCD without any drivers loaded). I haven't tried them all, however, and can't verify what works and what doesn't until I finish my install and play around with things more.

 

Great, thanks. If you get the chance, please report back here.

 

I found two very useful links:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Asus_A8Js
http://www.rothlaender.net/a8js.html

These pages describe how to get just about everything working in Linux. Although the authors both use Gentoo, Linux is Linux - this information can apply to any distro.

As far as the media buttons go, I'll have to play around with them. Assuming they generate normal keyboard events like other keys, then you could really make them do whatever you want with a little scripting... heck, you could probably make the volume buttons work at the command-prompt console if you linked them into ALSA (I'll experiment with this).