Asus U35JC/U45JC

If I'm online, sitting at Barnes & Noble or on campus, brightness at 30%, not browsing but using MS Office apps, I typically get 6-7 hrs if I'm browsing. I see 7-8 hrs if I am doing desk work, wifi on, but no browsing. If I hit a page with flash but I'm not watching a video, the rate goes down to 5+ hrs. If I watch HULU, it goes down to around 4 hrs. If I turn off wifi, I can get 8-9 hrs.

Right now, I have wifi on, 4 tabs in FF (no flash), battery saving mode and BatteryMon says my battery is at 95% and it is fluctuating an estimate of between 7.5-9 hrs of life left. Mostly, it hangs around 8-8.5 hrs. I doubt the 9+ hrs it so generously predicts at times, esp on 95% battery.

For the fun of it, I just opened a 5th tab in FF in HULU. Looking at the episode panes pass by, my discharge is hanging at 9-10W and at 92%, I'm told I have 7.25 hrs left.

Turning on an episode of "Lie To Me" (480p) and over 3 min, the discharge holds at about 19W and the 89% left reads a constant 4 hrs.


Only once have I succeeded to be out and actually run out of battery juice.

 

So muting the microphone drained battery? Thats odd

 

Yeah, it is REALLY weird. Since I did the restore I am slowly adding things/performing things and closely watching how it affects the battery life before I move on. I was not getting a <10,000 mW discharge rate at idle with BatteryMon after I did the microphone muting. Once I re-enabled it, the battery life came back.

Odd indeed.

 

I don't see how a CPU can whine. And in notebooks, most have passive cooling with no fan. You could get a whine from a cooling fan in the housing or the spin of the hard disk. But the CPU? ... How?

 

there has to be 2 diff whine's ppl are experiencing, because users with the u45 were able to solve the problem by muting their mics but u35 users can't? also as far as i know none of the 45 users have complained about battery drain

 

Strange. I tried this and (as I would have expected) I got the opposite results. 4 tabs in FF, 30% brightness, Battery Saving, when I look at the microphone settings, my discharge goes up to 14W (yes, it goes up in Watts & stays up when I have it open via Control Panel>Sound which tells me it is inactive until then.) Then when I disable the microphone, my Watts go down to 8.5-9W. When I reenable it, it goes back up to 14W and stays there. When I close the microphone settings window, it goes down to 8.5W again, so Win 7 is shutting it off when it's not needed automatically.

That's on my set up. I can't say for yours.

 

Hi everybody new to the boards, I'm gonna be receiving the U35 very soon and this might be a noob question but what should I do immediately upon receiving it?
I know I should be checking for any faulty pixels or defects and reinstall the OS?Since the u35 doesnt come with a drive and I heard that ASUS doesnt supply the OS cd so do I have make one myself somehow with an external drive and then install the drivers cd?
sorry i'm not entirely tech savvy :[

 

What I do mostly when I receive pre-installed computers/laptops, I alwaysinstall a fresh clean copy of that OS since I hate having all those bloat-ware crap.
But for other users they'll probably keep them and just use the laptop as it is since they don't encounter any problems.

Yes, you'll have to obtain a new copy of the OS and you don't really need a external DVD drive since you can install via USB flash drive. However you'll have to press 'f2' upon the asus screen so enter BIOS and re-arrange the boot priority.
Best to use drivers directly from the Asus website as they will be the updated drivers.

 

This is weird. I did it again just to double check and this time it still spiked the battery, BUT I think it was because I left "Listen to this device" checked off like the mini guide says to. As soon as I disabled that I got the battery life back.

 

Congrats on choosing the U35JC! It is an excellent machine.

First thing I did was fill out the registration card which gives you an additional year of accidental damage! I thought that was really awesome of them. Make sure you fully charge your notebook before you turn it on. It shouldn't take long. The LED light will turn green once complete.

Also remove ALL the trialware/bloatware that will arrive on the machine. Use this guide to find out what each program is and whether or not you want to keep it or remove it.

A GUI will pop up once you finish restoring Windows and it will walk you through making the recovery discs. You don't have to do this immediately if you don't want too. You will need an external optical drive of course.

ALL the drivers you need will arrive on the machine. There are updated drivers that you will want to install though. You will need to get the 258.96 video drivers for Optimus found here. This update is to make Optimus work more efficently. You will also need the 208 BIOS update found here (Choose Notebook -> U35 -> U35JC. Then choose BIOS and 208)

You will need to flash the 208 BIOS and USE WIN FLASH TO DO SO. DO NOT USE EASY FLASH. Some users have bricked their machines using EasyFlash.. WinFlash will already come pre-installed in your notebook. Boot it up and point it to the BIOS 208 that you downloaded (Link above). Make sure ALL programs are not running and your anti-virus/Wifi/etc are OFF. Once you successfully flash BIOS 208 THEN you can install the nVidia 258.96 drivers. DO NOT install the drivers before BIOS 208 as it will NOT work.

Please let me know if you have ANY questions! Enjoy the notebook!

 

No, the first thing you do is ... open the box! :wink:

Next, you carefully unpack it.

Then you heft it in your hands and feel the awesome coolness of the metal & plastic. You turn it in your hands and run your fingers over its sleek exterior.

Then you fantasize about carrying it around campus and the cool comments people will give you about your thin & light notebook.

Then you imagine how good it will feel to regale them with tales of your incredible battery life and dual-graphics power of this machine ... YOUR machine.

Then you'll plug it in to charge and sit around frustrated waiting for the little light to turn green (fully-charged) before turning it on. It will be the longest two hours of your life. You will count yourself blessed if the little green light comes on sooner!

(The wait is a great opportunity to fill out your extra-year Accidental Damage Warranty card so that you can mail it in.)

 

This is true. I think I gazed at this sexy little machine and was just in awe over how thin it was for about 15 minutes before I plugged it in.

 

Just read that new Nvidia drivers are out (v. 260.63) They're beta, but the changelog makes it sound like it'll be a worthy update. Has anyone tried it yet?

NVIDIA DRIVERS 260.63 BETA

Relentless, sorry about the hassle you went through over the last few days. Glad you guys figured out what was causing the battery drainage issue. I'm sitting at about 8500 discharge rate. Very nice...

 

It was a hassle, but I am glad its over now. It brought me back to the hassle of the days of the U35JC release date and J&R Like Quatro said, it was a puzzle and in some twisted way it was somewhat fun finally figuring out the culprit....

I am also seeing similar discharge rates now and getting 8+ easily.

 

Not quite sure about this one Quatro. But the noise can also be present when my fan is off so i dont think its the fan and its not coming from the HDD area either. People in the past have reported it coming from the processor. How the processor makes the noise i am not sure.

 

Nor I. I have a Palm TX PDA. Many complained that some of the screens gave off a high-pitched whine and there was a fix that changed the refresh rate or frequency or something on the TX. I could never hear it and thought it was fine. Then a few months ago, students complained that the whine from my Palm PDA was driving them crazy. I tested turning it off & on with my back to them ... and they really were hearing it!

Perhaps this is like that as well. I've no idea. Depends on if it is a frequency whine (LCD) or a rotation-based whine (like HDD's or a fan.) Perhaps there are other electronic parts that can emit a whine (CPU?) And then there is the background hiss or pitch that a speaker system can give.

As you may guess, I can't hear the whine on my Palm, so I can't hear a whine on my ASUS either!

 

sounds something like a mosquito ring tone

 

I have a question about the recovery files. Are they currently saved on a separate partition on the hard drive? If so, are creating restore DVDs a necessity?

What I'm asking is if the laptop can be restored without creating a set of recovery DVDs (since I don't have an external DVD drive).

 

I had a curious question with regards to the driver updates planing on picking up an U35jc for my kid.

If i jump on the Optimus page at Nvidias site there is no driver since April 10 here: NVIDIA DRIVERS 189.79, and then I see you guys refer to 260.63 which where just released.
I did install these on my GTX480 today great drivers and nice performance boost on BFBC2.

But I really see no reference to being able to use these with switchable graphics cards like the 310 with Intel so what gives 260.63 Verde works with switchable graphic cards on the U35JC or are they in fact the same as Optimus pretty confusing.

 

Use the "regular" Nvidia driver for 310m, which is now 260.63. It has an optimus function built-in.

 

After intense research
I found the culprit

From my understanding the CPU does cycles, but intel new power management somehow subside the cycles, so when you are not doing much, it lowers them down. Which is why when you open Firefox or another program it starts too. I didnt think it was the speakers because I disable them and still, couldnt be the hdd because I swap it to an SSD which is what you wanna do, PC boots in less 25 secs and shuts off in less than 8. AMAZING. Also, from the research I did, there is a way to turn off intel power management something by regedit manually and changing a 1 to a 0 then going to Power Management and changing a setting there but doing so will increase the CPU temp by 15c or so. Here let me post the page where I found this.

Asus laptop high pitch noise? - Notebooks


Author: Ed Posted: 7/1/2010 1:37:00 AM

This way you can remove the high pitched noise.

High pitched noise comes from the inductors on the motherboard.

Intel invented a new energy-efficient processor, Microsoft included in Windows controls power processor,


Trueyears: So, I think both programs are fighting or something. updates should fix that




and Asus is packaged in a notebook, but not very successfully.

IHMO, Asus engineers have made a mistake in the design of the motherboard, but they are not recognized.

The ideal solution would be to get a new model of the motherboard from Asus, but it is not realistic.
Therefore, we will correct the problem by means Microsoft (Windows 7).

1. We have to change the registry.
Typing in the command line "regedit", you go to the registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Power \ PowerSettings \ 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 \ 5d76a2ca-e8c0-402f-a133-2158492d58ad

2. Included option in this branch will enable and disable the idle processor. In this case, it should be included.
To enable one or another hidden parameter, it is necessary to find and edit the value DWORD, changing its value SettingValue from 1 to 0.

3. Then, through the control panel – power – in the settings mode select power management processor.
There will be an option disabling idle processor and high pitched noise immediately disappears.

 

I have the u45 and I think my battery life is on the lower end. I'm getting about 5.5 hours on a full charge.

 

did you do the mic repair solution that was posted?

 

Also, whats the recommended charge time for the Asus u35? I only get like 4 hours but thats because I only leave it charging for less t han an hour.

How long should I charge it for?

 

Trueyears, thanks for the info! The 15 degrees C increase is a lot though and I imagine without the power management, you'd be getting less battery life.

I'm not sure about charging time, but people have reported at least 5 hours, I think on a full charge. Relentless also got close to 10 after an OS restore.

 

So yeah, also, my dad has an Asus UL30 Vt something not sure but I know it UL and it does the SAME high noise


oh well, I rather put up with the pitch than heat. But its annoys people next to me, so I cant even take it to college or a room fill with people. It grabs their attention.

 

Yeah, that's another big problem because of that noise... I know it'll distract other people and stuff when I bring it to school.

The VT also has that problem? D:
I just saw this price on the UL30VT-X1 Amazon.com: ASUS UL30Vt-X1 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (11 Hours of Battery Life): Computer & Accessories and thought about getting it.

 

yeah, it seems All of Asus U series have this problem

I wish I could have waited for the Essential model

man arghh

Asus BETTER fix this high pitch sound or something other wise I will just have to return it

its an awesome pc but the high pitch is a HIGH con for me I really need it for college and 15C is A LOT and will probably ruin the notebook over time

 

Funny enough I don't even know what this 'high pitch sound' is... Maybe because I'm used to loud fan noises from my i7...

I can't complain really though, decent speed with very nice battery life is all I wanted.

 

Did anyone figure out a solution for locking this laptop?

 

if you have an iphone or touch there is app called Dog whistle or goolgle that and hear it

it sounds JUST like it


BUT BUT BUT

only some certain people can pick up that frequency

At least I can but my mother cant pick it up

 

Yes, I did.

 

It does sound pretty similar to that. I had come across that article earlier, but it seems the cons far outweigh the pros of that fix.

 

I have made a solution that works for me. I have access to a lot of tools that made it very cheap for me, but you could buy the parts already made.

What i did is buy six and a half feet of 1/8th in thick cable and make a loop on each side by crimping it. I then loop it through itself to attach it securely to a desk. With the other side i put the loop through the space between the hinge area and battery and then use a masterlock to lock the loop to the cable itself. Its very strong, the only downside is that the laptop has to be open to be locked up. If i can borrow a camera from someone living around me ill try to post pictures.

But im happy i could fashion a solution for under 10 bucks (cable, ferrule and stop set to be crimped on for the loops and a masterlock w/ 2 keys came out to $9.41 after tax) + some work of course. =)

 

Thanks JFlem, you're a genius! If you do get a chance, please do post pics. I will be leaving for college this weekend and would like to try my hand at recreating your solution before I leave. The only thing I did was purchase LoJack for laptops, which is more reactive then proactive.

 

Ok, maybe a dumb option but I will offer it... as stated in this post, I only hear the noise when the laptop is sitting idle for a while and (according to this post) the CPU steps down... so... if/when you are in a situation where the noise would be offensive or concerning, can't you just go to the 'performance' mode or the like to keep the processor stepped up?? Anytime I have had the tone, if I start actually using the laptop, the noise ceases.

 

Okay, then when you idle is there anything running? because whenever I open ANY program or application ex Firefox the noise starts its musical but if I were to close anything, it ceases.

The problem is when your CPU is given stress and the noise starts
but if you close EVERYTHING and leave it in the desktop it goes away.

I did that redegit thing but the cons really do outweight the pros and because that hack did the job i can only assume the CPU Is at fault and Asus crappy motherboards.


Right now I can hear that high pitch EVEN with headphones

its really annoying but it doesnt affect your ears so thats good wont harm you

 

Haven't had alot of experience with the noise (definitely get it though)... for me it seems to happen with nothing going on and doesn't happen when I do stuff... but could be that I just don't notice it when I am doing stuff! I must be blessed by bad hearing because even when I hear it is isn't that bad.

 

when the CPU gets stress its starts it because Intel and Windows power saving w.e takes over and controls how faster it should go, CPU is getting cycles or something like that at the speed its going.
Right now my u35jc has been on for over 4 hours and it didnt do that at first but once it got stress it started and now even if I closed everything I can hear it! and yes you are lucky! I mean, i guess its not that bad but I cant have it in college or the library people WILL get annoyed

 

I am now fed up with the issue

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- How to eliminate high pitch noise?

No solution at all

curse you Asus T_T

 

Ok this high pitched noise thing is really disturbing. Is there anyone that does not to have this going on with their U35jc??

I was waiting on buying one to see what kind of problems it'd have and so far the hit or miss battery life and the processor noise are 2 BIG issues.

I half want to chance it and order, hope the battery life is is normal and no whine but also think there are enough other options out there for good prices.

The U35jc is a beautiful laptop but no way am I turning off CPU idle as a 'best fix' option. That's just friggin unacceptable. The Acer 3028T for $150 less is becoming quite appealing. Then again, so is Sandy Bridge.

 

If you go HERE, and select 310M and Win 7 x64, you'll get a list of compatible drivers, including the latest Beta 260.63 drivers. Nice drivers indeed!

 

Yes, the recovery files are on a hidden partition on your HDD. You can restore using F9 on boot up without using the recovery DVD's. I suppose the recovery DVD's are for those who want to replace their HDD and they don't want to use a burned ISO DVD.

Is there a college class with students that are so quiet, others can hear a high-frequency whine? And it gets through headphones? That is really odd.

 

My computer has been making the high pitched whine even when I have it on the High Performance Setting sometimes. I find it to be quite obnoxious and almost unbearable at times... Today in my marketing class with the laptop in my lap I could not hear it over the professor and the typing of students around me. If I moved my ear up to the computer though I could hear it. Later in the day I took the computer to the library and it was doing it again. It was much quieter in the library (obviously) and therefore the whine was much more noticeable. I was a little worried it was going to be bugging the people around me. Heh, no one said anything, but i'll bet the person sitting across from me probably could have heard it. Hope there is a fix soon...
My battery life was EXCELLENT today by the way. It's strange though, if I change my shortcuts in my start menu to direct to the D drive for music, video, documents, etc... I notice that my discharge rate hovers at 14-15K idle. When these shortcuts direct within the C drive I have no problems and my idle discharge is 7-8K. Moreover, when I loaded up Windows Media Player, I had a similar experience. WMP populating its media library from the D drive caused my discharge rate to jump so I removed the path linking to the D drive! I downloaded songbird and linked to my D drive, and my discharge rates are fine. I don't quite understand why this is...but these are just my experiences.

 

I reboot it and the noise is god but in a while it will start because it will get stress

okay there we go, I was starting to worry after I didnt hear it!!!!!!!!

well, it seems that temp solution i posted its BAD and you will have to configure your settings even mor ein the powerg4 thing and set the fan higher and it will be louder and you will lose some battery life. So, the main culprits are Asus of course, Windows and Intel


LOL


I guess our best bet is to wait for asus to give us another update

BUT seeing how that forum has well over 25,000 views it seems asus wont be doing anything anytime soon which I have noticed about them they tend to forget these issues.

Oh well, I cannt get rid of this notebook, its just too awesome

BUT here something interesting I read in the asus support forum

someone booted it with Ubuntu and high pitch was GONE!!!!!! which can only mean Windows is to blame arghhhh LOL

 

i get the noise too but i have just come to accept it. anyone know for sure the source of the whine? I hope its just the HDD (which i thought it was) so i can just buy another harddrive, preferably an SSD.

 

Maybe there will be some Windows app to come along that will get rid of your whine?

 

On page 195 a user says he has an SSD and still has the noise, plus on the ASUS forum, people have removed the HDD has the culprit. They're positive now it's the motherboard. People in Europe have taken them to service centers to be 'fixed' and they come back the same with the techs basically saying..."yeah we can't do anything about it.." People in Africa are having the same problem.

I thought I'd found my perfect 13". Lets all keep our fingers crossed for a BIOS or Intel driver update that somehow fixes it.

 

I havent been able to get a hold of a camera yet, but ill keep trying! Haha i made it because im going back to college on saturday too. =)

 

yeah I have an SSD drive and the noise is STILL There. I turn off the monitor and IS STILL There, I COMPLETELY disable both audio and mic and still there. I know its the CPU management driver or software because I tried that hack I posted earlier to change values in the regedit and its GONE BUT CPU temps will go up thus louder and you will have to twick it to get it back but yeah I wouldnt recommend it because might make it worse over time




I would open it and apply some better thermal paste in the cpu



I think its Windows because I tired it with Ubuntu and noise gone


sooooooo combination of everyone


so yeah Hopefully a update will do it