Asus M6BNe coming soon :)

Well, I took the plunge and ordered the Asus M6BNe (or, all the parts for it, to be precise). I've been deciding on a notebook for the last few weeks and finally decided on the Asus over the eMachine M6810 (Athlon 64 3200+) and a Toshiba (P4 3.0).

Why the Asus? Dedicated video (Radeon 9700 no less), 5400RPM HDD out of the box, battery life and relative portability that the Centrio affords. Most of my work will be presentations, graphic design and some video work. I was a bit concerned with performance of the Centrio vs. the "desktop replacement" chips like the A64 and the P4 - so hopefully it won't let me down. I've gone with the 735 (Dothan, 1.7)... fingers crossed.

Anyway, all of the parts will be ready and I'll be assembling the system myself (I'm not new to system building, but it is my first notebook) on Monday. I found this guide: http://www.legitreviews.com/reviews/whitebox2/index.html, which makes me fairly confident it won't be a problem... but maybe I'm overestimating myself .

Full specs:
Asus M6BNe (WXGA, Radeon 9700)
Pentium M 735 (Dothan, 1.7)
Kingston 512MB PC2700
Hitachi 60GB 5400RPM
Intel ProWireless 2200
Toshiba 24x24x24x8 optical drive

Price before tax: $2084 CDN ($1582 US)

I'm going to post a full report of my assembly trials and tribulations as well as some benchmarks and a review of the system once it's all set up. Wish me luck!

 

well, I hope the parts go together well! It'd be great if you could stop back and give a full report of how things go with this purchase and how the system stacks up.

 

Well nearly two years later, here's my update :

Everything is still working flawlessly - I don't have anything bad to say about my M6Ne. Every part is still working just like the day I built it, and I'm a very heavy user. It's still looking great as well - the silver paint on the trim is starting to come off a bit but it's holding up extremely well otherwise.

I ended up getting the 60GB Hitachi 7200RPM drive and it's still going strong. And I've added another 512MB RAM for 1GB total. Performance has never been an issue while doing video editing or anything else for that matter... well I do wish I had dual core now for video encoding, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

I did have one dead pixel originally, but it actually corrected itself after a week or so and the display has been perfect ever since.

Based on my experience with this laptop, I'd definitely buy Asus again for my next machine!

 

WOW! A blast from the past!

Good to hear, The M6BNe was my original purchase, but I canceled that order when I heard it was going EOL.

 

Indeed...my M6Ne has held up well too!
However... in the original post, you wrote that you bought the WXGA version... (M6BNe)
but in your signature... you have the SXGA+ version.. (M6Ne)

So which one DO you have?

 

Oooooooooh nice update~~!!!

Any creaking of the palmrest? I'm going nuts b/c of it.

 

RUN...this thread has risen from the dead!!! I shall call it a Zombie thread.

I think it's pretty cool to get a before and after like this - it really gives you a sense of the long term durability. That was a great value for two year ago. Thanks man - good stuff.

 

Zombie thread? Hahaha.

Okay I've narrowed down the creaking to the cpu cover and not the palmrest.

I found this out by using it on my lap and there was no creak on the palmrest near my right hand, it was the dang cpu cover. Rawr, I hate parts that don't fit right.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Noone likes to adapt my vocab... I call it necroposting

 

heheheh .. what if it was just in a coma?

 

haha

Yeah sorry, I did end up with the M6Ne, not the BNe.

As for creaking of the palm rest, if the laptop is on a perfectly flat surface (which is most of the time), I have no problem whatsoever. On the other hand, if the laptop isn't resting evenly on all 4 (?) contact points then yeah, I do get some creaking. Sounds weird I know, but you're probably right about the CPU cover... although I've never really narrowed down where it comes from myself.

 

^ Doesn't sound weird...if it's on a flat plane there's equal support on all corners - otherwise one side has less support and it caused stress on something internally.

 

Yeup it was the CPU cover, but I just noticed the palmrest has the same problem I had before with the piece moving in, sooooooooooooooo, I guess these newer M6 bodies are not built as well as the old ones.

Oh well, not a deal breaker still.