Asus U35JC/U45JC

I thought this was an Asus topic.

amazon.ca just updated and the shipping time for the Asus U35JC is now Sep 7-8.

 

YAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! AT LAST!!!!!!!

Congrats.

 

Yes, I know! It has been such a long journey! I couldn't wait for J&R anymore. It was ridiculous they could never give me a true ETA.

Thanks!

 

See... now you're making me feel especially bad. I thought we were in this together! Everyone's sharing their reviews and all I hear from J&R is "any day now!" "Give it another day or two." This was yesterday. I'm not in a rush though (I swear!)...

 

I honestly couldn't wait anymore. I remembered you when I placed my order . The one guy who stuck it out with me with J&R for so long!

Its just weird that MANY companies are on their 3rd+ shipments and J&R still has yet to receive their first. I just want to get my hands on this laptop already.

I stuck in with J&R when they told me they would receive them by the end of August. I waited patiently while I saw other companies receive their stock. Today is the last day of August, and nothing! I don't feel like waiting AGAIN with "We aren't really sure when we will get them".

I also had to settle with the Free Ground Shipping with ExcaliberPC. I had 2 day on J&R. If J&R gets them tomorrow I will be so pissed! Although, it would be just my luck!

 

So Excaliber does have them in stock? Their website says otherwise. Also, why them over GenTech? (Careful how you answer...Banker might sock you one.)

 

I got a call from Gentech yesterday verifying my order. I was told that they should be getting their next shipment in next week just FYI.

 

i've got one of these to swap in:

WD Scorpio Black 320 GB SATA Hard Drives ( WD3200BJKT )

how much would the battery life suffer having a 7200RPM rather than 5400RPM? anyone rated the battery life using a 7200RPM?

 

So I've been playing with my U35JC all day and I love it! I've got absolutely no work done today... haha.

Anyway, can someone explain SHE to me. I have this widget on my desktop that allows me to turn it on and off. My understanding was that it allows for processor scaling, but then why do I have to change it manually and it does not change normally from different power modes?

 

Hello Schwann,

I talked to a rep at Xotic and he said a 7200 rpm hard drive should take away no more than 10-15 minutes of battery life.

 

Getting a SSD will give it right back and then some!

 

Hi guys, I was just wondering how heavy the U35JC is, because I have been doing some research, and have been given conflicting reports by Asus themselves.

In some instances, they report a weight of 3.74 pounds. In other instances, they report a weight of 1.9 kg. Yet as far as I know, 3.74 pounds is 1.7 kg, not 1.9 kg.

Does anyone know what the actual weight of this thing is?

 

I went to Exacliber over GenTech simply because Excaliber had them and GenTech didn't. I would have liked to order from GenTech, but I couldn't wait any more. Mine shipped a few hours ago.

It showed Out of Stock for a while after I placed my order, but it seems like they are in stock again now.

 

Its 4.0lbs.

 

True, but right now a SSD will set you back a few hundred dollars while a 7200 rpm HDD provides a speed boost for those of us who aren't bankers. =)

 

I got my u45 today! yay! I'm liking it alot so far (that could be because it's my first laptop, though). Had some problems with some programs freezing and the mouse track is a little finicky but hopefully I'll be able to customize it to my liking. I just finished creating the recovery cd's which took almost 2.5 hours. Being a beginner I will probably be visiting these forums quite a bit and asking lots of questions, so I hope you won't get sick of me!

 

I just placed an order through excaliberpc.com. Oh god, I hope this comes in soon!!!

On a side note, has anybody experienced any issues with their units yet??? I saw a video on youtube about some guy having issues with their speakers.

 

I've had mine since Monday, with no issues so far (knock on wood).

The speakers are pretty tinny, especially since they are on the bottom lip of the laptop and down-firing. So if the speakers aren't over a flat surface or your lap, the sound will be even more hollow.

The touchpad will still take some time to get used to. The texture is fine, as are the multitouch functions. But the damn thing is too jittery when you want to move it a very small amount, even when the default "enhance pointer precision" option is checked). I'll try and hunt down some new drivers this afternoon.

Now that I've gotten rid of the bloatware, startup time is nice and zippy. Nothing to write home about, but I'm definitely not sitting there twiddling my fingers. I've actually used the instant-on OS once already, and while it's no speed demon, it was quite the life saver!

Last night, my laptop had about 80% battery left when I left my apartment last night. When I sat back down again, I browsed the web on quiet office for about 3 hours, played a game on high performance for an hour, and then went back to quiet office for some more web surfing. When playing games, the laptop did not feel hot to the touch at all, and while hot air was being expelled from the side vent, the fan was not particularly loud.

In TF2, with everything on low, I get anywhere from 20-40fps in native resolution. Later today I'll try cranking things up a bit, since I distinctly remember that with my UL80JT, the framerate remained at 20-40fps even with everything on medium or high...weird, huh? Anyhoo, this figure might be fine for some, but TF2 is one of those games that I need to run super smoothly. So I put it in a 800X600 window, at which point the average framerate was closer to 60fps.

Killing floor, which runs on a heavily modified Unreal 2 engine, ran extremely well in areas where there wasn't smoke. I didn't have FRAPS running, but gameplay was smooth enough for me to do my thing, which is notable because there are no on-screen crosshairs in Killing Floor; you can only fire from the hip or use the sights. So accuracy counts!

Optimus has been pretty reliable so far. I'm waiting for the 208 BIOS update to be released for the U45JC, just to be safe. I don't want something to go wrong and have Asus tell me that I was using an unsupported BIOS.

 

would there be any chance they would release a version of this laptop in the future with an regular i5. not um or ulv. if i was willing to wait kind of thing. if they can use an i3 i dont see why they cant use an i5. plus i5 processors are suppose to drop in price in the next 2 months.

 

I got my U35 today, yay. Lambdatek did a nice job with the packaging.

It weighs exactly 1845 grams according to my kitchen scales, with the battery and with all stickers still on

I can confirm what Chanda Bear said about the jittery touchpad, but it's not really annoying for me. I'll mostly be using a real mouse anyway. I can notice some slight flex near the middle of the keyboard, but it's nothing serious. I got used to the keyboard immediately, it's great. I like the feel of the keys, they're a bit matte to the touch, if you know what I mean . Monitor viewing angles aren't bad, but not great either. Brightness is good and I like the fact that it can be turned down quite a lot to save energy.

Windows took about 10 minutes to boot the first time, I'll do a fresh install sometime in the near future. It's really filled with bloatware, nothing that can't be removed though.

It got slightly warm to the touch on the left side near the vent while installing some software, but the room temperature is high here in Greece so I can't really blame Asus for that. Build quality looks good so far, no creaks or anything.

I'll post a more complete review in a couple of days, I hope it helps

 

Weird, TF2 runs great for me at native res, with default options (not lowest), and I even enabled 2x AA. Maybe the Optimus isn't kicking in?

 

i could say the same thing about the macbook pros appleusr . i would have gotten a 13.3 pro but they decided not to throw in even an i3 into the mix.

 

did you update your bios to 208 and then update the drivers?

 

Sasoi will be ok. He ordered from Amazon, and Jeff Bezos will take care of him LOL!

 

Hah, well if you read my post I was saying that I wasn't having any problems, so Mr. Bezos' excellent services will not be needed at this juncture. And yes I updated the BIOS and nVidia drivers, so that might be the difference.

 

while funny at best, your mocking is not helping.

 

Who's mocking? I'm only repeating the confidence that Sasoi has in Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

I do agree that it's funny at best though!

 

I just updated my drivers to the newest ones that don't need the BIOS update, and now its running like a charm with all details on high except for shaders, AA, and AF! I'm getting between 30 and 70fps, which is definitely playable.

 

Great! TF2 was pretty much the only reason I wanted discrete graphics in my laptop (and otherwise just wanted something with amazing battery life), so I'm really happy.

And bankergolfer is only riffing off the ribbing I was giving him earlier, so no problem there

 

@ Chanda, can you tell me what you uninstalled and what settings you changed in order to speed up start time (either here or in a pm)? I've only uninstalled a few things like microsoft live and some games because I'm kind of fearful of removing something important. Also, can someone tell me where I can view whether the discrete or integrated graphics card is in use, where I can see the fps while playing a game or video, and where I can monitor the temperatures? Thanks.

 

LOL! It's all in good fun!

At least until you really need Jeff!

 

Asus Utility and Bloatware Guide
Here are the Nvidia testing tools that tell you when the Nvidia gpu kicks in. This functionality was also introduced in the latest Nvidia drivers, but these require a BIOS update first and I'm too much of a 'fraidy cat to do that until it's officially released for the U45JC.
For system temps, try CoreTemp. I use that on my desktop to monitor CPU temperature.
For framerates, some game engines have console commands that will display the framerate. Otherwise, the free version of FRAPS will do nicely.

 

Thanks for posting the Nvidia thing. You say its built into the latest drivers, which I installed after the BIOS update I did. But I can't seem to find it anywhere. Any idea where it could be with the drivers?

Thanks

 

Hello, I need a new computer for school, also gonna use it alot at home, right now I'm thinking either the u35jc or u45jc.
Is there any negative sides with the 45jc compared to 35jc? (screen being bigger is fine with me)

The only thing I'm wondering is if u45jc also got the 2 graphic card function? If you look Komplett.no - ASUS U45JC 14" HD LED (its a norwegian site) and you see below the pictures and next to "Grafikk-kontroller" (graphic controller), you'll see it only got NVIDIA GeForce 310M listed, to compare with u35jc sold from the same site it got this listed instead: NVIDIA GeForce 310M / Intel HD Graphics.
So what I'm wondering is, could it be that Norway sell a version without 2 graphic cards (if that exist) or did they just forget to add it on the product info. (I've also called them, but the ones I've spoken to, are not sure...)

And if it should be without 2 graphic cards, how big difference in the battery life do you think it will be?

Christoffer

 

I personally haven't installed them, but the "verde" drivers apparently have an option in the control panel icon.

 

The bloatware thread recommends to uninstall LiveUpdate b/c it's buggy; if I do this where would I receive the latest drivers and BIOS? Is the program on the desktop called 'e-Driver' a way to receive the latest drivers?

 

Does anyone know if I can create an iso for the recovery dvd? I don't want to burn it, I just want to have the iso somewhere. Asus' program tells me that I don't have a DVD writer (duh).

 

TF2 is running terribly for me. Im using 208 bios and the latest nvidia verde drivers (258.96).

Those of you with good framerates on TF2 can you tell me your bios and driver version please? I will probably need to downgrade.

 

Stock BIOS (not sure what number, it's just whatever shipped with the laptop) and the 257.37 drivers.

 

anyone care to tell me how i would go about flashing to an older bios and a older nvidia driver? I dont have system restore points for these.

 

Do I have to uninstall the current nvidia driver before installing the new one? Is 257.37 the latest driver, b/c in another post someone mentioned that 257.21 works w/o flashing BIOS so I'm not sure which of these to dl.

 

e driver only hav the default driver whn u bought the notebook..

i didnt use liveupdate tho, so usually once a month i will check at the asus site to c if there is any driver update

u can find those on asus website.. older nvidia driver can also b found on nvidia site, but its recommended to use on asus website as some driver r not compatible on nvidia site..

 

Yeah i know how to get the files, just not sure how to update a new bios with an older version. Normally i get an error msg saying that the version is newer.

I have yet to try but could i flash to an older bios just by using winflash normally even though I have a newer bios? I have never flashed an older bios before.

 

u using winflash? i dunno how it works but im using easyflash which is in bios..

it can update either to the newer or older version of bios...

put the bios version u want on ur usb drive, n it will detect it whn u using easyflash..

 

Have you tried just rolling back the driver/downloading the older one? That would be simpler (and much more painless) than flashing the BIOS.

And no, comp, you should be able to install right over it.

All this being said: can anyone say for sure whether the BIOS versions/drivers on the Asus website are model specific? I would assume that that gpu drivers are not to a certain extent, but part of why I am hesitant about flashing the BIOS is that the 208 BIOS is for the U35JC, and that the most recent version provided for the U45JC is the 207 BIOS.

Regardless, games seem to be working fine with my current configuration, so I will roll with that for the time being

 

its better to stick with wht on ur notebook specified...

 

This is how i got it to show up for me with latest drivers. Nvidia Control Panel/View/Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification Area. Odd thing is the Gpu doesn't kick in for high def youtube vids like chanda bear's linked vid claimed but it does for games like tf2.

 

Just got mine yesterday (Amazon)... opened and flashed with easyflash... update seemed to work fine... computer shut down, and bricked! Would not boot (power button seemed unusable). Tried Asus and they recommended returning it so I am doing so today. Asus also said NEVER use easyflash as it will brick you if there is anything wrong (ok, so don't put it in!). Amazon, unfortunately, is out/backordered so will do refund vs return... now I need to find another vendor!

Bummer

 

bump, anyone?

 

Here are the product pages found on the Asus website:

U45Jc
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks - U45Jc

U35Jc
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks - U35Jc

Oddly enough, the specification tabs on both products don't list the Nvidia Optimus switching or Intel HD integrated graphics, but the product overview does. I'm sure they are virtually the same product other than the internal dvd drive and screen size.