Asus U35JC/U45JC

My U35JC just arrived from Amazon too, and when I got to the end of the initial setup (the first time through) it blue screened and restarted... not an auspicious beginning.

Now that I'm into windows its so loaded with crap I'm going to reinstall instead of trying to go through fixing it piece by piece. Here's hoping I don't get a startup bluescreen again...

 

Oops. I just assumed it was 9. I checked the box and it says the battery is an 8-cell.

I left on the large sticker above the keyboard that reads 16:9, DDR3, and Cool Palm Rest. I also left on the Optimus sticker to the left of the trackpad, the large features sticker to the right of the trackpad, and the Core i3 and Windows 7 stickers. I'll remove them all later.

Anyway, I have to go to work soon, so I won't be able to review until at least later tonight if I do at all. Here's a quick review.

Overall, I like the laptop a lot and my biggest impression is that what flaws the laptop has seem insignificant when I actually have it to use in person.

The biggest standout is the screen--I suppose it's average by today's standards. It's very bright compared to the 17" screen on my old Dell E1705 laptop. The text on the U35JC seems grainy because I'm used to the Dell's 1920x1200. The resolution could be better, but it's standard on this size anyway. Overall, I like the screen.

I played a couple of music videos on youtube and the speakers are very good when the laptop is resting on a table.

The air from the vent is warm, but not enough for me to notice it unless I put my hand in front of it. The laptop can get slightly warm on my lap, but not bothersome at all. I've only used it for an hour or less so far.

The keyboard is very easy to type on. I am a fast touch typist.

The touchpad is not bad at all. I mostly use a mouse, but use trackpads a lot also. I am already used to the U35JC's trackpad and can see it's something I can use easily without thinking about it at all. The buttons aren't nearly as hard to push as the ones on similar models at display at stores like Best Buy. I don't hear any clicking sound from them--I do if I put my ear very close to the buttons... They're only slightly hard to click, but I have very strong, medium-sized hands.

I can see that I will like this laptop a lot because it's obviously very portable, looks very nice in person, and the battery seems like it's going to last a long time.

I am going to install my OCZ Vertex 2 SSD in it tonight and reinstall Windows 7.

 

So I just called J&R again once more. This particular lady said there is NO ETA on the laptop whatsoever. She said hopefully 1-2 weeks, but there is no firm date. This is absolutely ridiculous. My parents will only buy it with the "Bill Me Later" option which is very annoying. I am limited to when J&R gets it in stock and when Buy.com gets it as they both have this option.

 

Does these come with the drivers and OS on a disk or do they all need to be downloaded online? I plan do the initial setup on the stock hard drive just to make sure everything works properly but then immediately swap the HDDs.

 

I suspect this may be why they have such a good price on the UL80vt and the U45jc, to move what they do have & make up for the canceled U35 orders.

 

Agreed. No skin off my back, though. I can almost forgive J&R, especially since my U45JC, which shipped out last night, is already in Columbus

I'm not sure if UPS delivers on Saturdays, but if they do, that sucka might beat me to school!

Oh, and comp321: I ordered the laptop at noon yesterday, and they shipped it around 6pm the same day. Depending on what time you order, they might not ship until the next day. They will send you an email right when it ships, although the tracking info might not work until the next day.

 

You have a great machine yourself. I was actually going to buy a U35jc from GenTechPC.com until I saw the 3820TG.

They're almost the same with regards to capabilities except that the 3820TG has a much more powerful dedicated GPU. Other than that, they are very similar laptops.

 

Anyone got one from xoticpc yet? I ordered one from them the day before I saw this thread or otherwise would have gone with gentech (didn't know about that one before!). Seemed like a hassle to switch and the check is already in the mail. No complaints though, they have been very responsive to my numerous issues/questions!

When I talked to someone there yesterday she said she thought they may have received a small shipment earlier this week and then were expecting another larger one in the next week or two (no way mine was in that first batch, just ordered on Tues). I was being overly hopeful thinking I might hear something before COB today but I guess that's it for the weekend! At least I won't be obsessively checking that email anymore...

In any event, if someone gets one from xoticpc, would love to know!

 

I actually called XoticPC today and they told me they received about 30 units a few days ago, but it all went to pre-orders. They said they are receiving another batch to fulfill the rest of the pre-orders. The 3rd batch should be available for everyone else.

 

That probably means Xerisx will be waiting a while.

 

You think? Mine probably won't count in that 2nd pre-order batch? It's already paid for (secure payment, they have my card on file while waiting for the check and have assured me after I've asked about 5 times that I have a place in line already...)

I don't NEED it need it right away, but if it will be longer than 3 weeks... might start running into some problems. Sadly last weekend the hinge on my old Asus F3T pretty much snapped in half, connections included. I'm able to plug it into a monitor to transfer stuff off and I have my desktop, but I'm starting grad school and that portability sure would be nice... (although, in my day we relied on good old college-ruled notebooks and everything worked out just fine...)

At least I have my trusty droid for emergencies.

 

It comes with a DVD called "Driver & Utility Ver 3.0". There's also a hidden partition on the HDD for the OS. You can create a recovery DVD from it.

You can legally download a free copy of Windows 7, install that, and then apply the key printed on the sticker on the bottom of the laptop.

 

Shipped today! Guess that was quick. Glad I did the 'amazon' backorder vs the 3rd party... saved me $30+ should get it Mon or Tues!

 

Sorry. Yes, it does sound like a hassle.

I hope you can get it from a more direct dealer like GenTech or Xotic or Amazon itself.

 

Well said!

Life is not complicated. People just make it so.

 

What is "bill me later" as opposed to paying by Visa?

 

Lay-away? LOL! Just kidding!

 

Bill Me Later allows you to pay it over 6 months with no interest. My parents have had so many school expenses this year for me that they want to make the laptop purchase a smaller burden which I can understand. I can't really argue about it since I am not paying for it.

 

Hi,
I am coming to the US for 3 days and I want to get the u35jc there since its way cheaper than here (actually its not even released yet). I leave on 9/7 so I need to have it delivered as soon as possible, ideally by September 4th.
What do you think is my best bet?
I can order from amazon, JR, xoticpc, excaliberpc, gentech or from anywhere else you can suggest.
I am hoping to place an order today.
I will not need anything customised on the laptop.
Thank you in advance.

 

I'd phone GenTechPC and see if they can meet your deadline. If not, then I'd try XoticPC.

They will provide personal service. Amazon can't.

 

Gentech has an eta on 8/30.
I noticed that excaliberpc has 4 in stock, can i trust that or should i call them anyway.
I'm worried because I wont be able to call until monday.

 

just call. doesn't hurt. these people are personable. you can even chat online with them.

 

I called ExcaliburPC sales just in case but nobody answered... I guess we won't be able to find out for certain until Monday by which it could be sold out again lol

 

Great, thank you! So Win 7 is like XP (and maybe Vista?) in that you can use your personal serial from your comp with any disc or download with the program?

I ask because my brother has a Windows 7 retail upgrade dvd. I assume I could just use that instead of the download.

It seems like one should NOT upgrade to the newest Optimus driver but are all the other newest driver versions trouble free?

 

J&R just now told me over the phone that ETA for U35JC is sometime during this coming week... I am just going to trust ExcaliburPC and put in an order today. $819 + free shipping is not bad at all.

 

Anyone know if the U35jc will come in black? Weird question: how is the keyboard? I didn't like the flex of the 14" ASUSes, and even the U30jc has some flex. I was wondering how the U35 keyboard quality compares to something like the VAIO (so far my favorite keyboard, if only the keyboard). Hoping they fixed the flex issue (which some don't consider an issue, but still).

Amazon sells a U35F for $738 (in black, oddly), which appears to be a trimmed down version, lacking the discrete graphics.

 

Yeah, hopefully J&R receives them sometime next week. I am mostly in a rush just because I want it so bad. My sister has no problem letting me use her laptop until mine comes in which is great. I just want to get my hands on this laptop!

 

When i ordered mine from ExcaliburPC, i actually ordered it from their ebay store. They were always very prompt at responding to my ebay questions usually took no more than a day to get a reply. Email might b your best bet of getting a hold of them.

 

Yea I don't want to wait any longer for this notebook to be widely available. My only other backup is a 1005HA netbook. I hate typing on that thing not to mention how slow it is when you are trying to have multiple apps running.

Thanks for the tip... I just went ahead and ordered hoping they really did have 4 in stock as indicated on their website.

 

I may not be able to produce quite the detailed review that BankerGolfer did for his 3820TG but I figured I'd give it a try, so here it goes...

First reactions:

My immediate reaction on opening the box is "this thing is huge". But then I'm coming from an 8.9" netbook, so really, even the M11X would have been a sizeable change.

I am, however, very glad that I went with the U35 instead of the U45. The extra .7" may not sound like much but when it's sitting on your lap (and you're used to, basically, a 9" screen) it is.

Specs and the basics:

First of all this is the basic US model, at least for the moment. It's the core i3-370M, 4 gigs of DDR3, and a 500 gig 5400RPM hard drive. It gets a windows experience score of 4.6 (the screenshot of the full test is attached).



The keyboard feels quite nice to me. I may not be as touchy about "squishiness" as some, but it feels very solid to me. There isn't any apparent give in any part of the keyboard, palmrest, or touchpad even with a very firm push.

The entire top and bottom also remain mostly cool to the touch. The only sources of heat are a slight warmth in the top right and bottom left of the underside, and a decent heat output from the single vent on the left side, even after running 3D games for a while.

I have also yet to get a noticeable fan noise out of it. I haven't tried sitting in a dead quiet library and pushing it hard, but in all of the usual places I use it (including my relatively quiet bedroom) I haven't been able to hear the fan.

A few unscientific benchmarks:

I may, if there is a desire for it, find some real benchmarking utilities and run them but I figured that has been done to death many other places before now so I would try out a few less scientific, more real-world types of benchmarks.

The first thing I have to say is I've actually found it difficult to make the discrete GPU kick on. I've left the NVIDIA GPU state tool up in the corner the entire time I've been playing with it and have only seen it switch to "on" a couple times.

Running Guild Wars (an older game now) at native resolution with all the settings on high I consistently got 20-30 FPS even in very congested highly animated areas... with the Intel HD chip. Even plugged in and in "high performance" mode the game wouldn't force the discrete GPU to come on.

Running Team Fortress 2, also at native res with all the settings (except AA/AS) on high, I also get a consistent 20-30 FPS... also with the discrete GPU off. This thing will not turn on. I'm actually a bit confused by it.

(I'm looking into this and will follow up in a new post, but even adding the program in the Nvidia control center and telling it to force it to use the discrete GPU doesn't seem to do it - I'm going to try updating drivers to
258.96, so we will see)

Youtube HD videos run without a hitch, also still on integrated Intel HD, and decoding local 1080p .mkv files also works perfectly, no hiccups or problems (although there the discrete GPU does, occasionally, come on).

I have tried all of these things in "media mode" and in "high performance mode", but not any of the lower options. I did try the 1080p video file in "quiet office" and "battery saver" modes, but there it started to stutter and skip, which shouldn't be surprising because those modes turn the maximum CPU speed down to 70% or less and the 1080p playback tends to push the CPU pretty hard.

The battery:

I'm sure this is what everyone is most interested in, I know it's what I was dying to know about, and it doesn't disappoint... exactly.

I've only had this computer for about 24 hours now, so I haven't been able to do really comprehensive testing of the battery and settings and all of that. But I have managed to fully discharge it twice so far, and here's how it went:

I initially ran it with about 75% brightness doing constant file transfers over the wireless and watching an HD movie and got about 4.5 hours out of it (it was actually something like 4 hours 37 minutes, but I figured a few minutes didn't make much difference).

Then I charged it back up and put it on "quiet office" mode (I didn't like some of the things it automatically did in "battery saver" mode, like auto-hiding the start bar), using it to stream pandora and do general web browsing occasionally again with 75% brightness (I didn't let the screen turn off during the entire time). I got 6 hours 12 minutes out of that.

So it definitely has enough juice to watch two full HD movies if you'd like, and if you're using it for lighter tasks you can probably (with more judicious backlight settings and wifi off) use it on a full transatlantic flight.

Unsurprisingly it falls short of the 10 hour+ promise, but I never expected to get the full 10 hours out of it, even with a brand new battery. I think 50% brightness is enough to be very usable in a moderately lit room and using it for basic web browsing and word processing, i.e. what you would expect in school or most work situations, you could easily break eight hours. But that's a test for another time.

My complaints (so far)

My biggest complaint has to be with the initial setup and initial state of windows. Both were absolutely wretched.

I went through the entire Windows 7 first time setup, got to the end, and was greeted by a blue screen and a restart. The second time through it went fine, but wouldn't let me use the same username (as it had already been created) but demanded that I make a new one. Wonderful.

So I get into windows and decide to start customizing it. I'm not too concerned with picking and choosing which asus bloatware is worth keeping because I have a 64 gig SSD in the mail that'll be replacing this stock harddrive, so mostly I just wanted my usual handful of programs so I could be comfortable using it for the few days before I reinstall windows.

The three most common programs, which I wanted immediately, were firefox, digsby (a multi-messaging client), and winamp. I proceeded to download all three, and was greeted by a "this page has been blocked for being suspicious" message from the trial version of trend-micro's security suite on the digsby download page, and a corrupted download of firefox (because the trial version of trend-micro crashed half way through scanning the executable for viruses and corrupted it).

I then, infuriated, went to take the security suite off and had to jump through half a dozen hoops, two restarts, and what felt like an endless litany of warning messages and popped up websites asking why I didn't want to use their fine product before I finally got it off. I realize that is not, in the grand scheme of things, a huge deal but it really turned me off the laptop to the point where I just set it aside (my brand new toy!) for a couple hours because I was too fed up with the crap that had been loaded onto it "for my convenience".

My only other complaints are quite minor, one of which will hopefully be addressed by the driver update I am going to run after posting this.

The fact that the NVIDIA gpu will not turn on, even when I give it specific instructions to do so for a certain program, kind of disturbs me. It makes me wonder if this is a defective unit or something. But we will see about that soon...

Finally, there is the touchpad. It is a very nice, responsive touchpad. But sometimes too responsive. It drives me nuts to have the cursor jump out of the box, or another program become the selected one, because I bumped the edge of it with my palm while typing.

Maybe I just have fat hands, or maybe I need to get used to the proper hand position on this laptop, but for the moment it is the most annoying thing about the laptop and its one real downside. But, given all the positives (i.e. power, battery life, beautiful screen) I think I can overlook it.

 

Well done! That was a great review!

I get 6 hours and 6 minutes with my 3820TG (6-cell battery).

 

Aha! A driver update fixed it!

And for anyone who is getting theirs soon, 258.96 (the latest set from nvidia) is... broken. It'll make windows freeze after login.

257.21, the previous stable version, does work however. And, with those drivers, setting whether specific applications should use the discrete or integrated GPU actually works!

And, as an update to what I posted above, I now get 40-60 FPS in Guild Wars (depending on the complexity of the scene) and 35-75 in Team Fortress 2 (depending on the size of the area and what's going on).

 

I find that the latest GPU drivers rarely work out of the "box" anymore. I wait for the "early adopters" to beta test it for me!

 

And another update...

The latest BIOS update, 208, fixes the NVIDIA driver compatability issue. So flash that first, then the 258.96 drivers work just fine.

That's the sad thing, these aren't all that new... they're from early July and are WHQL certified so they really ought to work just fine. The issue, this time, was on ASUS end. Good thing I tried the BIOS update.

 

Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to do this when I get mine on Monday.

 

What do you mean here? It makes it seem like your saying .7" is a big difference when sitting in your lap. You make it seem like the 14" would've been better than the 13.3".

Great review BTW! Can't wait for the day that I actually receive my U35JC.

 

That's actually the opposite of what I was saying... but what I was seeking may be different than most. I wanted a serious leap in power from my netbook but I wanted something small and light, similar to the netbook.

What I meant was the extra .7" didn't seem like a big deal when it was a question of "get it now or later", but now that I've gotten the 13.3" I'm glad I waited a bit longer because the loss of the .7" was absolutely worth it to me.

My personal notebook history may have something to do with that too, my first college laptop was a 17", heavy as a lead brick, desktop replacement monstrosity that was awful to haul around and drag out of my backpack. After a few years I replaced that with the netbook, which was a drastic shift in the other direction, and now I wanted something in the middle, which I think I've found!

It boils down to an issue that has been addressed in this thread a number of times, though, which is more important to you: screen size or weight. I personally feel that the 4 pounds but good power and good battery life of the U35JC is very good balancing act that loses some of its appeal with the extra half pound and .7" but that's a personal choice.

I hope you'll be happy with your U35JC, though I'm sure you will be. This is one nice machine.

 

I am sure I will be happy with the U35JC. I also don't want the 14" as it comes with an extra .4lbs of weight and thicker as well. I am also going to be hauling this around campus so the lighter the better.

I am very eager to get this laptop in my hands. I have been waiting for months.

 

We're all rooting for you, Relentless, to finally get your U35Jc!

 

I know haha. It feels like such a long journey and a tiring one at that.

 

Who did you talk to? Seems like they have no clue themselves.

Person I spoke with at J&R said he'd call his buyer.. and then emailed me and told me "within the next 2 weeks".

 

So I've been keeping up this forum for a long time and it led me to the final purchase of the U35JC! Think I'm one of the few who have already got it in my hands in North America (Canada) as of yesterday.

My first impressions are pretty good and I generally agree with beavertank.

However, I'm here wondering if someone with the U35JC has had the same problems as I have. I've been trying to get WiFi to work on the computer for 2 days to no success. WiFi is on and I can see the network but when I connect i get the "Limited connectivity" issue. I've tried updating and rolling back the drivers, I've tried reseting my router and modem. I've tried tinkering with the IP address and DNS stuff according to some forums I was reading but none of them worked. Wired internet works and my other laptop connects via Wifi to the same network fine.

Has anyone else had these issues and figured out how to fix it? Any help or a general point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

hello there.
this thread has sold me on getting one of these.
i am going to be ordering one from gentech, and since i am still a "newbie"
i would like to know what i could probably get from the listed items onthe list to make the most out of my purchase.
currently i am going to upgrade the wireless card.
but if you had the extra cash, what would you upgrade.
please, and thank you.

 

Talk to Ken Lee. He will steer you in the right direction. If you are going to order from him, then you might as well seek out his professional help.

When I was thinking about buying an ASUS G73jh from him, I was thinking about adding everything under the sun to it. He asked me what I wanted to do with the laptop, I answered, and then he told me that I had no good reason to spend all that money to upgrade my G73jh left and right.

While I didn't buy the G73jh (and Ken /GenTechPC did not sell the laptop that I ultimately bought), his honesty and integrity greatly impressed me. He did not take advantage of my naivety by selling me stuff that I didn't need. He earned my trust by putting my intrests first.

That is why I, and many others, sing Ken and GenTechPC's praises.

 

Just a question for all those Canadian owners, does this laptop use the bilingual keyboard or is it English only one (standard shift keys and all). A lot of people have said Asus ships laptops with English only keyboards to Canada but I have seen several of their laptops in store with the bilingual one.

While the keyboard may not be a dealbreaker for me, I AM curious as to which one this laptop uses.

 

AWESOME! I have been struggling with this all day! Could you post a good tutorial on how this procedure is done? This is unknown territory for me and I would love to get Optimus working like it should! Love the computer though.

 

I can also confirm that my problems with updating to the latest nvidia drivers are now gone after flashing the bios to 208. Currently running 258.96 with no probs.

 

is the U35F pretty much the same laptop as U35jc, minus the 310m?

i never game, seldom watch hd movies... buying it for office/school work.

would u35f be a better fit? it's cheaper too.

 

thnx, it works like a charm

 

yes that is correct. if you can completely write off needing 310m, then the 35F is perfect for you.