Asus Q550LF-BBI7T07 (Best Buy Exclusive ???)

I use Fedora only like a Live OS, I use Ubuntu to

 

So after a week or so of pouring over laptops, I went with the q550lf. I even had some incredible luck,after driving an hour to get to the only BB in 200 miles that had them still I not only found it was $899 which was cheaper then the website, but a blunder in understanding that the sku/load out that I had them pull up and the q550lf that was taken from the case were different. I didn't realize it at the time but he had pulled the new refresh with windows 8.1 which of course rang up at $999. When I pointed out the price difference (we had the old one on the search screen with the low price) he looked puzzled and then did a price match. My guess is he hasn't been there long and best buy doesn't really carry different load outs on the same models, so when the same model came up as 2 different prices then he assumed they were supposed to be the same.

So far I am really liking it, it had everything I was looking for in a laptop and then it even a had few surprises (I'm coming from a dell e1505 which I had maxed out). It even had gotten me to finally accept and use windows 8. Normally I would have wiped it and slapped windows 7 on it but I realize that a lot of the touchscreen features and extensive power management can only be had from inside windows 8 (and 8.1). I'm digging the sub speaker too, the toshiba I had considered had a quality speaker set on it and I originally hated giving it up (I watch a lot of anime and movies) but now no qualms.

BTW whats with the super tight headphone jacks and usb ports on all these new laptops?

 

Groupon had the refurb. Asus Q550LF-BBI7T07 for $719 and I bit. So I'll be joining the club here. I have a Seagate 240 SSD on the way too. I might try to see if I can have a msata rig going also at some point.

 

So which one is better? The BBI7T07 or the newer BSI7T21?

 

There is--.get a USB sound card. Behringer makes a good one

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

You seem to mis understand. The T21 is the T07 upgraded to windows 8.1. Also a new dual band capable network card was added, my guess because the last card did not support the new sleep mode 8.1 introduced. Having 8.1 pre-installed would be better considering alot of people had issues when updating 8.0 manually.

 

Thank you, jeffmd.

 

Would swapping the network card for the new dual band one be an option if one runs into sleep problems after upgrading to 8.1?

 

It won't be a sleep problem, but it looks like 8.1 offers up a low power sleep mode that allows for programs to still be sentient and run executions for things like polling servers over the internet. Much like notifications on cell phones when asleep. This feature would need all hardware to support the mode. Replacing the card is pretty obvious.

The mode is called connected standby, and indeed does require full hardware support to achieve it. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn481216(v=vs.85).aspx . It does appear that this is an 8.0 feature (used for tablets), no idea if it worked on the T07. I read something about driver support for it being like, non existent until 8.1.

 

Well after looking into the connected standby it does not seem to be supported in this laptop's bios. /sadface

 

Happens every time. You place your order and then something else pops up on techbargains that looks better for less. In this case a Samsung model NP680Z5E-X02US for $620. Samsung 15 6" Laptop 8GB 1TB NP680Z5E X02US | eBay

$100 less for a quad core. Which would you rather have?

 

Havec, a number of things just tell me "no". First right off the bat, SELLER REFURBISHED. These are customer returns that the seller has found working and is selling again. This usually means the system has not been checked thoroughly by a tech, and minor defects that caused the return like dead pixels, non working usb ports, are probably not fixed.

The quad core looks to be a little more powerful, but the ATI video chipset is a little slower then the geforce 745m, Chances are the samsung would give you better cpu power, but the asus would still be better at gaming and give you A LOT better battery life. The display is also TN based. No optical drive.

 

Thanks jeffmd. It did sound a little too good to be true. The Asus Q505-BB17T07 that I'm waiting for is from Groupon and is manufacturer refurbished. I trust Groupon more than this ebay seller. The 505-BB17T07 also got a good rating (70 one above a macbook pro) from Consumers Reports which is something I generally go by. It's also great that there is an active thread going on this machine. I appreciate your feedback.

 

i read this thread extensively before making the dive to buy one off groupon (doesn't come with mini woofer). since you've all been so helpful, i've signed up for the forum to add my two cents in hopes other shoppers/owners might find it useful/time saving.

pros:
it is a fingerprint magnet but as a machine of utility, i expect to use it and not have it sit pretty. i could do without optical drive to make it lighter, but it has a dvd drive. it remains quiet and cool even after hours of use. the screen is also beautiful. finding a full HD resolution IPS screen in this budget range was a pleasant surprise. i was worried about the windows 8 monstrosity, but after upgrading to 8.1 and understanding how the start menu works, i work mostly in desktop mode without a hitch. most interesting note about windows 8 is that my first exposure was on my friend's duo core i7 HP laptop from costco and her laptop crawled, despite being a new machine. i was afraid duo core i7 might not be enough juice, but this purrs compares to her HP. less bloatware? i don't know. there's been some growing pains, but overall, i am happy with the machine

cons: most of the problems i've encountered are software issues that were resolved.
(1) windows 8 has its learning curve. transition is easier with 8.1 but that's a manual update which took about 30 mins.
(2) the constant fan being on issue mentioned before was resolved by flashing to the latest bios.
(3) out of the box, my wifi couldn't maintain a constant connection at all. this was resolved by updating the wifi drivers (downloaded via wired ethernet)
(4) the most time consuming issue was graphics issues. the specs say this machine has a dedicated nvidia gpu, but it's actually a dual gpu setup. never had one of them before so i wasn't exactly sure how it worked at first. turns out you have to configure in the nvidia control panel. by default it uses the intel integrated gpu (battery saving?), then you can set each app specifically to use nvidia gpu or make the default the nvidia gpu. the default intel integrated setting worked fine for photoshop, but trying to get it to switch to nvidia was a nightmare. i kept getting an error saying photoshop was blocked from using the graphics hardware...then other apps like chrome started suffering same fate. changing the TdrDelay in the registry as suggested by others on the web didn't resolve it. updating to latest intel and nvidia drivers didn't resolve it. i think it finally went away after i uninstalled ALL video drivers AND deleted them, then installed fresh versions of latest drivers.
(5) keyboard was the biggest annoyance i had. it seems like it wasn't sensitive enough and would not detect all keystrokes, which made for errors galore typing. i uninstalled asus smartgestures and it seemed to have improved the performance at the loss of the ability to use gestures on the trackpad. that seems like the lesser of the two evils and with a touch screen, i can just flick to scroll without two finger touch so it's manageable.

so it definitely didn't work as smoothly as you would expect out of the box. i have lesser computer savvy friends who would encounter those issues and just accept that's how it's going to be without trying/knowing it can be fixed, which would make it for a really annoying machine to use. once you put in the sweat equity to sort it all out though, then it works just fine and is a great bargain.

 

Hey guys!! Hope you're doing well. This is my first post.

I'm trying to help out a friend who just bought this computer. Apparently, he was just reading a PDF when suddenly his screen went black and it turned off. Then when he tried to turn it back on the screen just goes black, there is a strange clicking noise, and then it automatically jumps into the BIOS set up. He has the updated 211 bios version. Here I've posted the link of a video he took https://www.dropbox.com/s/itl0ay599ao46s6/VID-20140326-WA0003.mp4

I think it probably has something to do with the HDD, which is why it doesn't boot properly and then jumps to bios. However, it could also be that here we have 220v outlet current rather than the 110v that there's in the US (where his laptop was bought) and the PSU is doing something wrong. But I'm pretty sure that 1 the PSUs (charger) now are multi voltage and 2 that if its a power problem that affects the HDD it would have to be that it doesn't get enough power to spin properly so the system doesn't recognize any disks.

It's very strange cause he was working on it before. Unfortunately I don't know what OS he has installed or if he's had any issues with the GPU drivers like other people because he probably couldn't tell me even if I asked. Also, I haven't had the chance to look at it my self, all I have is the video and the description I just gave you.

I'm just asking if anyone could have any insight or tips I could try out and troubleshoot as I'll be having a look at it on Friday. I'd really appreciate t.


Cheers,

Daniel

 

Dan, your hard drive is slamming its head against the edge of the hd.. it needs a new one.

crackie, did you do all of this in a low powered battery mode? The idea is all your apps are configured to use the default GPU mode, and this default gpu mode changes depending on your power settings (performance/battery saver). Also you don't WANT non game/3d intensive apps like chrome and photo shop to use nvidia. There is no improvement, the intel chip is just as agile at 2d graphics and video acceleration and uses less power.

 

jeffmd, Thanks for your reply. Do you think it might be fixable rather than swapping it out for a new one? The laptop is brand new... If not, he is out of warranty because we are in another country and the ASUS international warranty doesn't cover us (Chile) even though we have an authorized repair point. What would you recomend? Would I be able to ask for warranty for the HDD manufacturer?

Cheers,

 

Hard drives are sealed and generally non user repairable.

 

it was screwy in both low power or plugged-in mode. i also didn't assign chrome to use nvidia chip. the nvidia experience app thing also didn't pick up some my games. so i ruled it to down finicky drivers overall. i did read one of the other big benefits to haswell besides better battery life was the integrated video performance, but i just think if i flip the video card for an app regardless of whether i needed to or not, being locked out of something as critical as graphics hardware is as far from the definition of working properly. if i can't use the second gpu, why have a second gpu, right?

p.s. the machine is now $20 less than groupon at staples. also refurb.

 

Some games are not detected yes but the boost to battery life over dedicated only is very large.

 

crackie, what games are you running that the app does not detect with a game profile let alone recognizes it at least as an executable that you can manually set up? I think you messed it up just be fiddling with it more. ^^

 

well like i posted earlier, my video issues were finally fixed after i uninstalled AND deleted (checking "Delete the driver software for this device" in device manager) all the previous graphics drivers. the uninstall from programs for existing drivers didn't seem to cut it when i used that option to first upgrade my video drivers.

 

I used a a pentalobe screw driver on the back cover screws on my refurbished Q550LF and got 4 out before I realized that I was stripping them. I guess they're torx screws. Does anybody know what size torx screws these are?

 

I picked up a teeny turner with a T5 torx bit at sears and exchanged the 1 gig hdd for a 240 gig Seagate SSD. Then booted I off of the Aconis True Image 2013 DVD and followed the automatic cloning instructions which worked flawlessly.

Now to upgrade to 8.1. Can anyone tell me the proper sequence to upgrade to 8.1? I've already flashed the bios to 212.

 

Hi Havec,

I also picked up this laptop from best buy, I'm kind of new to this but I also wanted to replace the 1TB HDD to an SSD, could you please provide some instructions on how to go about this? I was reading the forum on this and I'm guessing the SSD is a 7mm standard for laptops? Was it really hard to replace it with the HDD any special instructions?

Also, did you upgrade to windows 8.1 prior to changing the HDD to SSD also, did you have any boot problems? So once I do replace the HDD with SSD what's the procedure on how to go about?

 

also does anyone know what kind of SSD is an exact fit for this laptop? I was thinking of purchasing this Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB SSD. Any recommendations as what kind of SSD you folks bought for this laptop and it was an exact fit, didn't have trouble fitting it??

Thanks

 

2.5 is a standard. There is apparently a small thickness variation but it can more or less be muscled in. They are as easy as inserting an NES cartridge, once have removed the mounting screws.

The real fun is when you need to hook up the old drive externally so you can clone the drive to the new SSS.

 

The Seagate 240 is a 7 mm drive and it fit easily. Fitting 2.5 drives is not a problem with this laptop as it is with ultrabooks like the Dell 7000.

Cloning drives under UEFI Bios is a little tricky. The Aconis cloning SW said to put the new ssd in the computer and clone the original from the USB docking station. I did this and all of the partitions were faithfully reproduced on the SSD. Keep the old hdd in a safe place as a back-up in case.

 

Sorry I'm asking redundant questions but I just want to know. so how does this Aconis cloning SW suppose to work once I install the new SSD.

Shoulnd't I boot the computer from HDD then use this Aconis cloning sw to create an image copy to the SSD through USB?
then install the SSD and go through the recovery mode??

 

According to the Aconis knowledge base for win 8 UEFI systems you have to put the new blank ssd in the laptop and put the old hdd into the usb docking station. Then you use the Aconis disc to boot your machine which takes you into the Aconis softeware. You then go to the clone utility and select automatic which scales the partitions from the 1 TB hdd down to the 240 or whatever size ssd you have. Select the source as the original drive on the usb dock and the destination as the ssd in the laptop. Push the button and the drive is duplicated. Then reboot and you will have an exact copy of the old hdd on your new ssd with all of the boot and recovery partitions. I think there were 4 partitions on the one I got from Groupon. If you can find a special you should be able to get the Aconis 2013 True Image disk for around $20. Aconis got smart and locked the new disk to your machine so you might have to load the sw on your old drive first. I'm sure there are other ways but this was relatively easy and I got all the factory partitions duplicated.

I upgraded to 8.1 after I cloned the drive to have the original disc be as close to factory as possible in case 8.1 was a disaster.

 

Hey, what kind of screwdriver did you use to open the laptop?? T5 or T6? also once you unscrew all the screws, is it hard to remove the back cover?

 

T5. It pops right off. You have to fold it a little to get it back on. The screws inside are all philips.

 

Thanks Man, I got my Kingston HyperX 3K SSd and this weekend I'll try to install it. Will update on the status.

 

Hi guys, I finally installed my SSD into my laptop but when I boot up the computer; It recognizes the SSD (says Kingston ) however I have no BOOT options. I can't boot from USB or DVDRom; I have created a clone from HDD to an external HD as well BOOT CDROM but I can't seem to find the option to boot it by CDROm?

Do I need to update the Bios?? Any help would be much appreciated.

FYi I have Bios version 2.15.1236 currently on itl

 

You need to disable secure boot and Uefi boot in the bios.

 

I'm pretty sure the secure boot UEFI bios is why ACONIS has you install the new drive in the laptop and then clone the original drive off the USB dock.

 

What's UEFI and how do I disable that? I think I've already disabled launch CSM boot...

 

when you say install new drive? what do you mean, which drivers?? update the bios??

 

Do well not to mix drive and drivers up.

 

$100 off the Groupon price: Asus 15 6" Touch Screen Core i7 4500U Black Laptop Refurbished 4716659490135 | eBay. Manufacturer refurbished from Beach Camera. I'm liking this laptop. It's super quiet and doesn't get hot. Not too many laptops out there with displayport which works great at 2560X1440 on a big monitor. HDMI did not work when I plugged it into my home theater set up. Anyone know if there is a button somewhere that needs pushing for HDMI out to work?

 

no, hdmi should just work. It is super cool.. in fact the fan only runs during games and it seems to only have one speed.. low. I believe it is a dual fan system cause the q55 and i believe it was the n55 use the same motherboard, and I saw that the n55 used a dual fan system when taken apart.

 

Did the drivers detect the monitor? Did you try different resolutions?

 

The laptop's HDMI works fine on my Dell U2713H monitor and now it works going through my receiver before the plasma display also. I don't know what I did differently this time. Thanks.

 

okaaaaay hello im new here and im a little desperate

I got this laptop from best buy in January just before i move to costa rica for a new job, 10 days later la laptop detected a problem with the graphics card, windows reported it as error code: 43, i tried to update video drivers, then all drivers, then made a fresh install of windows from the hidden partition of the HDD, nothing worked... got in touch with asus they told me they couldnt help me here even though they do have a asus center here... long story short i shipped the laptop and they gave me a new one, they said it was a burn fan problem...

This week i finally got the new one here in Costa Rica i started editing some projects and designing some stuff then played some battlefield, i started to work with the laptop, im a film maker a journalist, and a gamer, so i use the laptop for gaming, heavy video editing and especial effects and writing, and on last Friday the laptop gave me a blue screen with the code DPC_WATCHDOGS_VIOLATION restarted the laptop and boom there it was same old Error code 43 in the nvidia card im not sure if this is a design mistake in the laptop or something! has any of you have this problem? any solution? asus told me to send the laptop to them again but i dont know two laptops same problem, this doesnt sound normal not at all!

 

also first laptop also had problems with the DVD drive right out of the box
and this one reported a problem detecting hardware changes right out of the box

 

Wow I hope I dont see that error ever. I did a quick search on it and some people linked it to fast boot being OFF, and that turning it ON helped. Not sure what the linkage is but you could humor yourself and see if yours is off. I left mine on because i expect that all the hardware in the laptop full supports it.

 

Just picked up the T21 version tonight from BB... And looked on Asus' homepage and noticed the N550 for essentially the same price but with a quad core and a faster GPU. I was planning on using this T21 primary as a HTPC and some light gaming on on my 70" tv for fun.. nothing crazy, maybe some LoL and Diablo3 .. But dang, should I spend the same cash and order a N550 instead? I know that the ULV processor will take a lighter hit on my electric bill if I leave this T21 turned on 24/7 vs the N550.. But I wonder if i'll be disappointed in the gaming performance overall of the T21 :/ Since I used my BB credit card, I could just have BB order the N550 in for me and just swap this out.. I have 45 days (I'm a BB premiere member) to decide.. I'll be giving the T21 a run through the paces and decide.

If I were using the T21 as a on-the-go machine, i'm sure battery life would excel immensely over the N550.. But as a HTPC, i'm already thinking I made a mistake to get this T21.

Edit: I'm not opening the Q550.. Returning it tomorrow to BB.. Ordered from Amazon the newly released refresh of the N550 with 850m for the same exact price $1066 (Amazon credit card bonus). Receive it on Monday! Excited.

 

divers, interesting choice. You should see a significant boost in gaming performance simply because you have both a better next gen gpu and a true quad core cpu. Clearly you don't intend for this to be used on the go so battery life isn't a huge deal. You will get plenty of it but the T21 would just give you even more. However looking at your needs, the N550 suits you better.

2 points I would just bring up;

1, best buy does make returns easier, and when dealing with a $1000 laptop, paying a little higher then online prices is worth the feeling that returning the laptop is a breeze.
2, How is the screen? We know the T21 is awesome, here is hoping the N550 is the same.

 

Correct, since battery life isn't a factor for me the N550 should be suited for my needs better. I would actually preferred to see a 860M in the N550JK. From what people are saying in the N550JK thread, it appears the panel is essentially identical to the BB exclusive one.. Both being IPS 1080p panels from the panel lottery of LG or Samsung.. I'm hearing people are saying both are gorgeous. Kind of hard to get a "bad" IPS panel these days.. anything is lightyears ahead of a crappy TN panel. My N550JK arrives on Monday, I will update accordingly!

-Div

 

Hello, everyone,
got a refurb Q550LF, pretty happy with it.

Can someone, please, share info if touchscreen will work upon Windows 7 installation on this laptop ? If yes then what additional tweaks are required (drivers) ?

Thanks!!