Asus U35JC/U45JC

Really? I'm still confused about U45J. I cannot find it on Asus official website!!! I think U45J and U45JC are in the same series (like U30JC-A1, U30JC-B1 etc.). The name is considered for specific area.
I need someone to confirm my idea whether it is right or wrong!!

 

Yeah, but what if its more than that? That is worse case scenario (Waiting 3 weeks for something I could do myself).

 

Someone else earlier in the thread ordered one and while it does fit snugly, it fits. See the image he posted here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/490903-asus-u35jc-u45jc-179.html#post6691012

I'm looking to order one too. I asked the seller on eBay if all the variations on the 13.3 sleeves were in fact different depending on the laptop shown in the item title or if they are one and the same. Turns out that they are all identical.

 

I meant that he could use it to restore his current OS if the fresh install fails to improve the battery life.

 

So Quattro or anyone else out there let me get it straight, if I get a discharge rate of under 10,000 mW I should be be on set to get in the 8hr range? So far I've only been able to get those values while completely idle. Usually in the 16,000 18,000 range with FF. Whats discharge values are you getting w/ a web broswer like FF running only?

 

I have a U35JC, which I've had for about 2 weeks now. The computer has been great so far, especially since I'm coming from a netbook. Everything is much faster and less wait. However, I've run into a problem that keeps on happening.. Every time I run netflix in fullscreen mode, at some point, the system freezes, and I hear a nasty audio sound. I can't use control-alt-del. Escape key doesn't work. Only thing I can do is hit the power button. I was wondering if these hard boots will mess up my system, but more than anything, I would like to know if anyone knows why this freezing of the computer keeps happening?

Like I said, everything runs great so far. This is the only problem I have run into. Youtube is excellent. Upgrades I have installed are the bios 208 and nvidia 258.96. I doubt that the nvidia drivers would be causing the problem, because netflix uses silverlight. Silverlight doesn't use 3d acceleration like youtube would with adobe flash. Maybe a problem with the intel graphics? Or it could just be netflix, because I've searched and read about netflix freezing on other machines and devices.

 

As in a fresh OS state like when you first ran the Win7 Utility when getting your pc OR clean install?

 

I am contemplating which one to do exactly. I have the ability to get Win 7 Ultimate for $15 so I may go that route. Still unsure.

 

If I were you I would go for the fresh clean windows since there will be none of those asus bloatware and would give a clear indication if its software related.

Is this with Power saving mode?
If so, mines 9k-14k with 80 processes, on FF with auto refresh (5seconds) and a ton of add-ons.

 

I believe the U45J and U45JC are the same computer. I got my U35JC a while ago and on all programs such as CPU-Z and updates and things it says U35JC while on the sticker on the right of the trackpad it says U35J. Hope this helps.

-Jflem

 

What KIND of web page you're on really affects power use too.

Right now:
1) I'm online (obviously)
2) with one tab open in FF, so my wifi is on. This forum has no flash video material, though there are some moving ads.
3) I've answering an email via Windows Live Mail, so WLM & an email are open.
4) BatteryMon is running
5) brightness at about 35%
6) AV has stopped a scan (I stopped it, but the AV is still protecting
7) I have 11 little icons in my little lower-right taskbar
8) Battery Saving mode
9) I showed 13W-16W discharge. Then I looked and discover my AV (Kaspersky) was doing a rootkit scan so I finished that.

BatteryMon shows 8.2W-9.5W avg discharge rate as I watch it & type.

Of course, if I do anything that requires the CPU to kick in more, that rate can spike but it reads 8540mW as I type this.

If I open 3 more tabs in FF (news & Amazon), the rate spikes up to 18W and then settles down to 10.5W while I type. So more tabs do use more power, even after the page loads. Also, sometimes I find a web page has engaged something and even if I close the tabs, the power usage still rides at 14-15W. If closing FF doesn't do it, then I'll need to reboot to clear whatever needed clearing.

Is that what you wanted to know?

 

I want those discharge rates! I don't even get <10,000 at idle as you know.

 

Both of my desktops did that whenever they overheated. Monitor your temps while running a Netflix movie in full-screen. Either use a second external monitor for that, or alt-tab to the temp monitor every once in a while.

 

I am fairly disappointed in Asus right now. Not because of anything to do with the computers capabilities (except for the high pitched whine i get), but because of their decision to switch the lock slot at the last minute. I have been looking for solutions for a while, but could not find anything that would fit their strange triangle lock slot. Today i finally called Asus support and though they were very attentive and helpful, the rep could not find a single lock that would fit it and ended up recommending getting a kensington lock adapter. I thought this was fine and an easy solution until i looked it up. It requires gluing a large piece of plastic with a kensington slot in it to the computer. =( I am displeased.

And the high pitched noise is still annoying...

 

An update on the U35Jc Atheros wifi Win7 x64 drivers: Some of you may have done this already but for those who have not, this update may help. I downloaded and installed the Atheros Wifi driver for win7 x64 from Asus website (8.0.0.215) into my u35. It works fine with wifi-N but sometimes, it does not even see/connect to wifi-G. So I downloaded a newer driver, 9.0.0.173 (google it). This works wonder. hope this helps.

 

i think the handful of you who are experiencing battery problems should collaborate and figure out a commonality between your NBs from the time you opened the box till today. Also look at the serial numbers/product number of the battery itself, maybe its a bad batch? That way if some sort of relationship is found you can convey that to Asus, which in theory should decrease the amount of time spent trying to fix your laptop.

 

I think my U35JC is fried.

I was testing out the dedicated gfx with a trial of Eve Online and simultaneously installing some apps (photoshop) in the background, which caused the comp to lock up. So I attempted to reset the power by holding the power button down, but I may have let go early and put it into sleep or hibernation mode. Anyway, the screen goes black and a try to boot her up again, and all I get a blank screen (without even the ASUS splash- NOTHING).

The blue LED's still light up (power, "A/1" button thing, left-most indicator, hdd indicator), but I get nothing on screen and no fan.

Am I overlooking something, or should I go ahead and RMA this brick? It's getting pretty toasty without the fan running.

 

Hey guys I have a quick simple question.

Say I install a fresh copy of Win 7 with 0 bloatware. Lets say I mess something up and can't figure out how to get a driver to function properly.

Is it possible to go back to the factory copy?

P/N and S/N on the battery match that of the Notebook unless I am looking at the wrong thing.

 

I am doing an OS Restore now. Not a Fresh windows 7 install, but I will if this doesn't work. I didn't have anything on the HDD besides Firefox/Thunderbird/AIM and some other small programs so its not a huge deal.

If my battery life doesn't come back I shall be crushed.

 

Don't expect too much, mate. I installed a fresh copy of win 7 x64 on a 60GB Agility SSD and I saw around 7:43 at 99% and 2:12 left at 18% after 5:21 minutes of 3-5 firefox tabs open (with wifi on, of course) along with word and excel.

 

So today I got 4.5 hours lowest brightness setting the whole time, quit office mode, but I did watch about 15 minutes of you tube. Still... I think this is unacceptable. Currently battery mon showing 13700mW discharge rate which is the lowest I have ever seen it! I emailed gentech this morning to see if they could do anything or give me some suggestions. Haven't heard back, but ill keep everyone posted...

 

Just curious, how are you guys doing a fresh clean win 7 install if there is no DVD drive? An external DVD drive? Is it possible doing it using a USB memory stick instead?

Also, is a fresh reinstall recommended? Or just uninstalling all the bloatware?

Thanks in advance.

 

So I did an OS restore and these are my results.


Wifi On/Brightness 0/Power Saving/SHE










My battery is back! I hope it stays this way!

I have been on it for 2 hours and it still says I have 8 hours left (Took the pic a lot earlier)

 

I may be another owner of the 'high pitched noise'... seems infrequent for me and only noticeable with no audio in a quiet room... sounds like the hard drive to me... noise originates from an area to the left bottom of the keyboard. Really annoying when it happens... but generally only happens when the computer sits idle... and goes away shortly after I start using it. Have only noticed 3-4 times in the week+ that I have owned the machine. So far just a mild annoyance for me

 

I will install batterybar and check later.

I really hope it stays this way. I am not going to install anything additional for another 2-3 days to make sure it stays this way. Afterwards I will slowly add each thing one by one and monitor battery life after each one.

 

Yep that's what I wanted to know. That makes sense, I am usually on atlest 5 tabs at all times. I know you have a U30JC(which is what I was originally suppose to get), if you were full charge doing light work how much hours would you typically get?

 

......... .

 

It sound like the Appollo 13 (battery scene)...

 

That's hilarious.

So what was the verdict on Relentless's problem? What did he do "wrong"?

Btw, anyone got an answer for me about reinstalling windows? I just recently got the laptop and don't want to waste too much time setting it up if reinstalling is the way to go.

 

Yep an external. I am actually not sure about the USB mem stick method but I am pretty sure it's also possible. Some said uninstalling the bloatware is good, but clean install is even better.

 

It's pretty obvious if you have the time to perform a clean install you should. I've always have done since you get processes ranging towards 70 without installing a single program you want.

IIRC, A fresh install of windows 7 only has around 30-40 processes. If people haven't done a fresh install I'd definitely recommended it.#

Hopefully this has solved the majority of the 'battery problem'.

 

That's the thing I DID a fresh clean install and did not even hit 5 hours on 0 brightness web browsing/word.

 

wait, so a clean fresh install is bad for battery life?

Reading back onto relentless's posts, i'm not sure why his battery life was so poor.

 

I have been doing some research on the issue and i dont think it is the processor. The only times i found incidences of a processor making a high pitched noise was when it was a bad processor or dieing. I have a seagate 7200.4 HDD and used seatools from their site to run a series of tests, all of which it passed multiple times.

I did however read a few times that the processor can make a high pitched noise when it enters low power states. This makes sense to me as the high pitched noise is much more frequent for me when not much is going on with the processor. It also isnt supposed to be bad for the computer, just annoying.

Hope some of this helped.

-JFlem

 

UPDATE: So after seeing Relentless's success with the factory reformat, I decided to do the same thing and it worked! Keep in mind my first charge was only 5 hours. With firefox open lowest brightness and SHE enabled my discharge rate is 8500k. Battery reads 94% with 9 hours of battery life left! Woohoo! I hope it stays like this. Thanks everyone

 

I got mine 2 days ago, immeditally I installed the SSD drive I bought a while back, OCA Vertex 2 120 gb and amazing laptop

what I dont like about it its the CPU whine it does =/

anyone know how to correct this?

I found out the reason behind this was intel power management or something like that

 

Thanks for the enlightening information about that! I can imagine how annoying it can be and am also trying to find a fix or something.

I'm also looking.

 

I don't think it's the HDD as I have an SSD and that high pitch noise appears from time to time. It is more noticeable in the quiet room. At first I thought it was from the fan on the left side. But the more I search, I think that the speakers are sources of the noise.

 

A fresh clean install of windows 7 without any programs installed and you're getting discharge rates of 16k? And that's only when its idling right?
Also could you see what 'CPU-Z' is reporting the core speed is at whilst idling.

On my fresh install Its ranging between 6k-8k whist idling. So something powerhunger in your machine :/
In that case we can say that its probably hardware related so there's not much point in tweaking the settings. (That's if you did)

Sorry to say but you may have to contact Asus and likely RMA it.

 

I agree you on it not being the HDD in most cases. Some people have found that disabling their speakers solved the problem for them. It didn't work for me however so i know the noise isn't my speakers. I still believe its the processor when its in low power states as has been the case with some core2duo's and possibly now the i-3.

 

Does anyone know if, for the U35JC, the HDD can be replaced with a SSD drive and if its easy to do? Thanks.

 

May be a driver/power mgt utility is 'missing' when folks are doing clean installs... like relentless, I recommend you try an F9 restore (assuming you didn't delete that portion of your HD) and see what happens before you return. Is everyone that is getting 'bad' battery life doing a clean install? At least if you do a factory restore you know all the drivers are there...then, like relentless, you can see if the battery life is good and, if so, try to figure out what is causing the drain. Sounds like it is a software issue and either something folks are installing... or not installing

 

As you can see, two posts above your's the writer commented on having an SSD!

 

Piece of cake. No harder than swapping out any other HDD.

 

Like Relentless, you may need to do a fresh OS restore to see if it is a software issue (some service or process) that is sucking extra battery power.

Like Relentless found, I think you'll find it's a software issue and GenTech or ASUS would just reinstall the OS to a fresh start to get the battery life back to normal.

 

I followed Relentless's footsteeps last night and did the clean install and my battery is working fine! Now I just have to find a way to deal with this dreadful high pitch whine. I tried the Microphone method again, but every solution drastically decreases my battery life. Rather than my discharge rate being 8-9 even while browsing firefox, it becomes closer to 12 and my estimated battery life drops to 6 hours.

 

Am confused...
Are you advising me? Cause I'm not the one with the problem , I was advising the other user on what he could try out.

Mines perfectly fine atm but still need some tweaks to maximise battery life

 

I just tried the microphone method too and it also decreased my battery drastically! I remember I did this before. This could have been what was decreasing my battery at the beginning. Once I undid what I did the battery life returned.

I just found this out too and was about to post it, but I see you already found the discovery as well!