Asus F3SV-X1

hey

i might buy the Asus F3SV-X1. Are there any issues with it? Would you recommend this notebook? and how is the battery life under normal conditions (typing and web browsing)? i am in university and have long classes so this is important. i assume gaming is good. Can i use windows office xp on a vista OS? thanks!

 

The battery life is supposed to be underwhelming, at best. Ask in the F3Sv owner's forum for specific battery length, but it's not supposed to be great. I'd recommend the Compal IFL90 for better gaming and better battery life.

 

The F3sv X1 is a great notebook and offers great performance per cost. If you are looking at it also look at the S96s. You can get them custom built, and they will usually be the same or slightly cheaper since they are not supported by Asus but instead by INtel. The battery life is not so great on the F3sv but that is to be expected with such good components and such a small battery. It is only 6-cell. They should have probably given us an 8-cell or 9-cell.

 

To give you an idea of actual battery length, I'm at full charge right now with my screen brightness at about 1/4 and everything set to max battery and I'm getting about 2 and 1/2 hours.

XP can be installed but it doesn't come with a vista install disc, so if you think you might end up wanting vista sometime the road, I'd recommend getting a partition manager program, compress the vista partition to just above its usage size, and hide it. Then delete the storage partition, and install xp on one big partition.

The tricky part about installing xp, is that XP drivers aren't provided by asus for the f3sv, so you have to borrow drivers from a similar model. Unfortunately, all the guides I've read on installing xp and setting it up (a lot) are either way more complicated then they need to be, or don't explain enough. You've also got to slipstream the sata drivers into your xp install disc.

The bottom line: this notebook is very powerful for the price. So far, I've played dod source and c&c3 on it and both have run beautifully with graphics medium-high. The only real problem with it is battery life. I think if you looked into it, you could probably push the battery life to nearly 3 hours. But if you need more than that for your lectures, then this probably isn't the best buy.

 

Thanks for the help so far…

What happened to me is this…I bought the A6Jc in Feb 07 and now the screen has gone bad. It turns out the laptop wasn’t new in the first place. The retailer said they would give me a full credit and now I have to pick a new Asus laptop. I originally spent 1367 Cdn (with tax) on my A6jc. I was impressed with it so far. It has Win XP, GeForce Go 7300, very quiet, 4 ½ hr battery life…this lasts me a most of my school day and I can plug it in, in some places at school.

Now I have to choose another laptop. They said I can pick one from asus’ website, however I don’t see any prices or a main category for laptops. Is it possible to get one ordered with Win XP?

Can someone recommend one with equivalent or better gaming, quiet, 4 hr plus battery?

So far I have seen these two:

ASUS F3JC-AP141C Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHZ GeForce 7300 1GB 100GB 15.4IN WXGA Vista Premium Notebook

However the F3Jc review said that it runs loud but it is also a more affordable alternative.

Asus F3SV-X1

This is a little more expensive which is alright but the batter life is very short. It was almost perfect until I read about the 2 ½ hour battery life. Is an 8 or 9 cell battery available? If so how much would it cost and how much more life would it give?

Thank you.

Please feel free to recommend any other laptop from Asus.

 

one more question...what does barebone mean. I'm assuming it has all the components but does it come with an OS?

 

If you want good batter life, look into the Asus W7S.

 

No, a barebones laptop will not generall come with anything but Chassis, LCD Screen, Motherboard, Graphics card, and possibly some RAM (if it's soldered onto the mobo.) Most resellers however, will also sell you all the parts you need and install them for you.