Asus U35JC/U45JC

Seriously, just have him read this forum. Its a great resource. I'm loving mine and haven't had any problems except the high pitched noise (which isn't terrible) and the lack of a proper lock slot (but i made a lock that loops around the hinge).

 

Currently I play BFBC2 I don't have a lot of free gaming time so that's it for now and its reserved for my desktop.
Like I said earlier I don't use the notebook for gaming as much as I did in the pass.
My son who I bought the U45 for currently plays WOW, and the latest Final Fantasy I think the U45 can handle it for light gaming in medium to low details.

I do most of my gaming on this rig.

 

So I have the Asus U45JC with the core i5 for a while now and I am totally happy with it. It is very light and thin and the battery can go for about 6-7 hours with normal usage, such as word processing and sometimes a flash game or youtube.

But I have noticed a few problems. The first is the CPU whine, but it is only noticable when you're in a very quiet surrounding.
Second problem, is that the system froze a couple times when I was watching some 720p videos that were decoded using CUDA. It could be an overheating issue, because the fan blows very hard and the laptop feels hot when it freezes. Still have to see where this is going to.

The final problem and the most annoying at this time is the wireless. The wireless seems to disable itself mysteriously after a certain time/condition?
I cannot turn it on with fn+f2 and the wireless option in the windows mobility center is gone. And instead of saying Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter, I have an Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter #2. Which doesn't do anything. The wireless LED is also off.
The only way to solve this is to reboot the laptop, and turn on the wireless again with the hotkey or mobility center. The wireless adapter is also the same again, without the #2. Does anyone have an idea to solve this?
I tried looking for a power saving option in the bios. It came with bios 207 already, so cannot upgrade it. I reïnstalled the wireless driver, tried reinstalling wireless console. Installed the new version of power 4 gear and also disabled the option that the computer cannot turn this device off to save power. But nothing worked.
Only thing I haven't tried is reïnstalling windows, but I really want to avoid that option...

 

Well, I wasn't aware this was a 'Show off your desktop' thread, but nice rig.

 

It wasn't intended to show off seriously just making the point that the u45/35 are nice notebooks but hardly a gaming system. Remove pic so not to hurt rjoudrey feelings

 

A very nice looking desktop indeed. I like the black. But with that many cooling fans, I wonder how noisy it is.

When I had a desktop decked out with a very high-speed GPU, and good CPU with a (rather huge) copper cooling heatsink+fan and numerous other casing cooling fans, my rig was fairly noisy.

Once I switched to a notebook, I really noticed the difference.

 

I can't answer about SHE since my U30Jc doesn't show it available, but, no, other than possibly that, you can tweak actually MORE power saving features in Windows Power Saving than in P4G. (You can get to the same item-by-item power saving menu also through P4G but in advanced settings.)

So P4G is a pretty GUI (I like it, especially the animated features) and it gives you quick access to a few of the settings like brightness, CPU power min & max, etc. But they can all be adjusted w/o P4G installed.

 

What's the difference between SHE and P4G??
(I have a gaming rig too )

 

Thank you for this. I was was under the impression that P4G, Optimus and SHE manipulating things in the background were primarily responsible for 7h+ battery times owners are seeing.

P4G seems just, bluntly put..pretty Asus marketing.

 

very nice!! love the case!

my 4890 died on me so I havent been gaming much, L4D2 ftw


also, anyone witht he 35 start noticing the whine get quieter?

dead silent now and its starting to subside a bit now

 

Oh, now that's very good news.

 

So I've had the U35 for a little over a week now and I'm very satisfied with it. So far, I have not heard the CPU whine, but I hear a very low 'click click click click click', I'm thinking it's the hard drive, anyone else getting this? I had the same noise problem with my older Asus W7J.

 

Sometimes my Hitachi 320GB drive makes a clicking noise, but not very often. So it probably is the HDD you're hearing.

 

Is it possible to change the keyboard on a U35JC? Can you use the U30JC keyboard found on ebay, because I can't find a US (int.) on the net for the 35.

* allmost decided to go with the U35JC. Importing from the UK will cost me about 750 euro's *

 

where would i be able to buy a new oem battery for my u35. I dont trust the ones on ebay.

 

You could try these resellers:

Gaming Laptops - XOTIC PC - Gaming Notebooks - Custom Laptops - Custom Notebooks

http://www.gentechpc.com/

 

I have noticed that my fan is louder than is used to be. It used to be relatively silent, but now its apparent. I tried to reboot, but its still there.

Any reason for this?

EDIT: The fan just calmed down/shut off. Temps were fine and nothing was downloading. Any reason for it to happen? I closed the browser and let it sit for a few and it stopped. I brought the browser back up and it kicked back on within a couple of seconds.

 

Mine was loud during the first few days. Now it is relatively silent. Much better.

 

Just how much does the U35JC weigh with the 8 cell battery?

I'm getting confused, because some report 1.7 kg, others (1 video) 1.8 and some say 1.9 kg. I know it seems like I'm whining but I'm very particular about the weight and battery.

 

Exactly 4lbs.

Anyone know what could cause the fan to be on constantly? It has been on for the past 15 minutes.

 

anyone knows why the built-in microphone is ALWAYS on? It's really annoying when you can hear yourself type and tap on the screen.

solved the problem temporarily by muting not the mic itself but the mic in the speaker options. However the mic is still on and it kills my battery life..

HELP!!

 

I mute the mic itself and haven't had any issues. Why don't you do that?

 

I muted the mic itself and it's still on. That's why I had to mute it from the speakers, so at least it doesn't bother me..but virtually it's still on. I don't know if some program is using it, but I can't think of anything.

 

I would not worry about the Mic killing battery power. They use power in the low milliamp range. If something is killing your battery life, it's not the mic.

 

Thanks for that! 1.8kg it is.


Last and final question. Is it possible to replace the keyboard on an U35F/JC??
Can you use the keyboard for the U30JC (found on ebay)???

 

Hey guys, Im thinking of getting the U35jc, but do you think asus will replace the 310m with a 415m or make a similar laptop with a 415m graphics card in it?

 

I think that there's a very good chance (95% CI, p<0.05) that Asus will incorporate NV 400M series (even the unannounced 500M series) into its laptops. The question is when. If you don't want a laptop soon and can wait a long time then by all means, do so. But the U35jc is very good with the NV310M. I hardly activate the discrete GPU.

 

Did you have any particular time frame in mind or do you really think ASUS will still be using the same 310M a year from now?

Of course not. Technology is always marching on!

 

Hm how long would that be about, would you think it be an "update" to the u35jc or a complete new laptop?

 

Maybe within 1-2 months, sooner the better, seems asus already updated some of the gaming laptops with the 400m series. the 400 series supposingly said to be 40% faster.

The real question it seems is, if they're going to "update" the current u35jc or have to make a different laptop model to accompany the chip, if the latter then it might take a while i suppose?

 

I dont think they will

it will just be a whole new model

 

They don't update GPU's in the same model. They create new models.

 

People who are considering the Asus U35JC-XA1, might want to check if it has the 2 year warranty still. I noticed in another model, the UL30 has an A1 and XA1 version, but loses the 2 year warranty for the more new and less expensive XA1 version.

So time to retype my big ol review that for some reason didn't post earlier.

I've had this notebook for about 3 weeks now and am very happy with the notebook. It fits my needs of being a fairly powerful notebook, light, thin, and great battery life of 7-8 hours with wifi on.

Chassis: I don't have any creaks or squeaks after squeezing and pushing on the notebook. My indicator lights area doesn't squeak or have any openings like some of the other reviews. I did notice some mild keyboard flex at the upper middle portion of the keyboard and the bezel around the keys have some moderate give. I never really cared about chassis flex much before, since my old dell 6000 has help up quite well to my abuse after 6 years. Some more design issues for the people who want to know. The battery is a bit loose, but it's locked in with the dual switches. I definitely love the aluminum lid, and understand the shift from plastics on higher end notebooks. The black bezel is a smudge magnet, but what bothers me more is that when the notebook is closed, a part of the black bezel is still exposed above the battery and keyboard. This black shiny plastic is more prone to scratches, which has happened to me with no drops or accidents. The screen also distorts near the webcam area and bottom of the screen when pressure is applied in the vicinity of those areas..more so in the middle.

Heat: The notebook runs relatively cool when not pushed under quiet office mode. The areas around the keyboard feel cool and underneath the notebook is comfortable on your lap. If one decides to leave it on high performance mode, then the notebook is definitely running much warmer. You can feel the heat on the palm rest, especially on the right side and heat is blowing heavily out of the side vent. But even on quiet office mode, a good amount of heat is blowing out of the left side vent. I do notice the heat a bit on my left leg because of this side vent though. The side vent is angled down and out, which I think kind of directs the heat on my left leg during on the lap use. I think it would be less bothersome if they directed the heat straight outward, instead of being angled downward.

Keyboard and Touchpad: I like the keyboard layout and feel. The keys are quiet to me and have good travel. I like the Power4Gear button on the top left and the Fn number keypad. On my old notebook, I had to hold down Fn, while on the Asus...you can press Fn and number lock to just more easily type numbers for data input. Moving the cursor around with the touchpad is fairly smooth and responsive. I enjoy using the multi gestures, especially the two finger touch. Great to open up new tabs in firefox. Also I'm starting to use the two finger tap for auto scrolling, which is smoother then two finger vertical scrolling. I still use the two finger vertical scroll, but sometimes it can be a bit finicky and jumpy. The 3 finger tap doesn't always register and noticed that if I spread my ring finger out more, it will register. The touchpad isn't massive like the macbook, so I find using the 3 finger tap is going to have a learning curve to properly leave the fingers spread apart and within the touchpad area. I don't use the rocker button much, but it really isn't that bad. It's soft in the middle and edges of the designated left and right buttons. It it stiff in the very middle of the whole rocker button, but I never clicked there in the first place. When i tested the button on the U43jc at best buy...I definitely thought it was too stiff. These buttons have a nice quiet tactile click with little resistance and travel. I honestly like the the buttons (button?, hehe) of this touchpad more so than my old Dell which had loud clicky buttons that had alot of travel. I also don't highlight text using the buttons. I use the double tap lock feature to highlight text. I was use to this feature on my old Dell.

LED screen: Beautiful colors and display to me, but the viewing angles are very narrow. I have my screen almost always tilted back to its maximum because I noticed that the colors don't wash out when viewing below the perpendicular plane of the screen. View angles from above really do stink though. The horizontal angles are good in that they don't affect the colors and image displayed, but the Glare in certain environments make it difficult to view. Trying to share the display with friends for photos and videos is not easily done with this screen. I see the screen is more for private/business use and it's fine for me. I rarely share whats on my screen to others, so I'll enjoy the beautiful image to myself.

CPU Whine: I agree with Trueyears that it does become less prominent the more you use it. It still comes in once in awhile, but I really don't hear it most of the time I use it at all. Even when I do notice it, as soon as I start typing and browsing the web with my clicks, I can't hear it anymore. I was first using only IE because of what people said about the cpu whine, but I'm now happily using Firefox again with no complaints of the sound. I'm running it right now and hear no whine with 6 tabs open. I honestly hear the fan, but no high pitch whine, which would be more annoying.

Speakers: Sound good for a notebook and loud, while on a table. These are crotch speakers and get muffled out on soft surfaces and if you're using the notebook on your lap. Carry around those nice headphones if you got some and are into audio quality.

Webcam: Convenient to have but low quality. Make sure you update the webcam driver from asus, because after I did my clean install, windows 7 installed a more recent driver that caused my webcam to record images upside down. The webcam doesn't handle low light conditions well and is not as clear or lag free as my logitech notebook pro cam. It's still a great convenient cam to have on the go though.

Some random head scratchers: On HDMI output to a 1080p tv, the out is actually larger than 1080p, so it causes every edge of the image to be cut off. Does that happen to anyone else? Even my desktop is cut, like the windows taskbar is only showing 1/4 of it.
Also everytime I restart my notebook, windows gives me two options of which windows 7 OS to start in. I checked my disk management, and I only have 3 partitions. C: for OS..etc. D: for the data. And the untitled partition of about 20GB, which I assume is Asus's recovery partition. Any info to prevent that windows selection screen from popping up? I have selected each windows option and it really makes no difference in my usage. All my setting and data that is saved on the C partition is accessible.

Conclusion: I still love the notebook and would buy it again. It fits my needs perfectly of moderate gaming, thin, light, great battery life, and I hope reliability. The two year warranty with accidental is great. Plus with my credit card adding 1 more year of warranty, I'm set for 3 years. Also the price of this laptop can't really be beat in its class...I'll add that can be purchased in the United States. That Acer sold outside of the States is pretty damn impressive. I'll probably overclock my gpu a bit when I have the time and run some test to post up some numbers for you guys. Thanks for all the input from previous posters that helped me decide to purchase this notebook.

 

I just got around to registering my U45JC on the Asus website this afternoon. Is this all I need to do for the warranty? Because I'd rather not have to mail anything out.

 

So would it probably be at least a couple months before a new model will be released? =(

 

Excellent review!

nah, give it a year at the most, I have seen some laptops with the 400 series but not any NOTEBooks. Also, the 210m isnt half bad either, pretty

 

Unfortunately if you want the ADW you need to send in the registration via snail mail. I know of no other way to do it. I sent mine in early September and got confirmation from Asus last week via email (make sure you write in your email, that part of my card was obscured and I almost didn't see the block for email address).

 

Probably. Depends on what line of ASUS you're looking at. The N and G-line has a different release schedule from the U+UL-line.

For example, here are a few release dates of recent U+UL-models:
UL30Vt / 12-2009 (210M)
U30Jc / 04-2010 (310M)
UL30Jt / 08-2010 (310M)
U35/45Jc / 09-2010 (310M)
U33/43Jc Bamboo / 09+10-2010 (310M)

So the U-series and UL-series seems to eek out a model every 4 months or so. But even then, the GPU didn't change in any of them (since the 210M is essentially the 310M).

Probably, the next release in this processor line should be due to go to the 400M-series, but who knows for sure?

If the GPU is important for gaming to you, and you don't want to wait too long, order an Acer 3820TG from overseas. Its ATI HD 5650 GPU is over twice as fast as the 310M at a similar price point and its build has been getting kudos, though the included 6-cell battery is weaker than ASUS'.

 

So guys, listen up! Great news!

The keyboard from an U35JC can be replaced! You can use the keyboard from an U30JC.

Wasn't sure about that. Looking at the pictures the looked iddentical. Quatro didn't know it too, but he told me to email Ken Lee @ GenTech.
He answered back just now and confirmed it. They're using the same keyboard!

 

No need to order from overseas anymore. There is an I3-370M/HD5650 model offered for sale in Canada now. Canadian retailers are shipping to the US. The only issue is the KB is bilingual FR/Eng but Acer recognizes the warranty for the entire North American region so Canadian units can be registered in the US. Prices range from $735CN to $850CN plus shipping which ranges from $35CN to $60CN. Here is the thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/501992-acer-3820tg-north-america-purchase-options-145.html All of the known retailers selling the 3820TG ATM are listed on page 1.

Just passing through Quatro. Stopped by to say hi. I wonder what Asus is going to do with its dedicated GPU units when SandyBridge CPUs are released. Integrated GPU in them will be as powerful as the 310M.

Bronsky

 

Bronsky, what's up with the new avatar?

You know when sandy bridge is comming out? I mean, when will we see the first thin & lights with the new cpu's?

 

Received my U45JC initial thoughts....

Built Quality is good not great but good the lid is beautiful the deck is O.K. I didn't find any uneven flaws with the deck etc.

The strange thing is the textured look of the deck its smooth like a lacquered finish. I thought it would have been similar to the track pad in terms of a textured feel which is fine I like the smooth deck with the textured look.

The battery rattles a little almost like the one on the Sony z not a big deal.

On first firing up the system it took a good 15 to 20 minutes for it to boot into the desktop which is ridiculous, this a clear indication of the bloatware that Asus loads in this unit I mean a marriage software!!!!

the LCD is very good surprisingly the only thing I don't like is the bezel it could be thinner especially the top portion where the camera is, its too tall if it was thinner all around the border it would be a lot sexier.

Keyboard is good don't care to much for the single mouse button just feels wrong.

I have not benched it or done any performance test but I will and then post my thoughts. I have a 7200 RPM 200GB hard drive I will swap out when I install a fresh Win 7 O/S.

The plan is to install a fresh copy of Win 7 Ultimate I downloaded the latest beta Nvidia drivers but had no luck it just said no compatible graphics card etc. The 258.96 installed fine.

If anyone with a U45JC successfully installed 260.63 please share. So all in all I feel good with the system given its a 3rd the price of the Sony Z with good performance.

 

I've (somewhat) solved the issue of the jittery mouse cursor, that would either jump around the screen/be too imprecise when trying to make small movements. I turned the PalmTracking to maximum, and it seemed to greatly improve my accuracy. Mind you, it's still a bit jittery, but not nearly as frustrating as it was before.

 

hey guys i just wanted to get some feedback from people, im running 69 processes and that seems like a lot. Anyone know what the *32 means at the end of some of the processes? what processes can be turned off?

 

It simply means they are 32-bit processes. Win 7 64-bit can run both. Many programs are only written to run in 32-bit mode.

 

Did you do a clean install of windows 7. I would have less processes then 32 if I didn't install itunes.

 

Recently bought a u35, almost everything works great, but there are two things.

Is it possible to use realtek hd audio driver for the hdmi audio output instead of the intel display audio driver? The intel one works fine but simply isn't loud enough for some reason.

Also, if the speakers are plugged directly into the laptop, it seems to amplify the cpu whine.

 

nope no clean install, seemed to daunting of a task.. on the bright side i have 0 cpu wine

 

I have zero CPU Whine as well.

 

Great to hear you guys are whine-less. Keep us updated.