Asus U35JC/U45JC

I'm new to this enormous thread, so hopefully I'm not repeating too much of what's already been asked. Like others here, I live in the U.S. and I'm trying to get a U35JC with an i5 processor (ideally i5-5xxM, but I'd settle for a i5-4xxM). From what I understand, upgrading an i3 version is not possible because the i3 is soldered, not socketed. So now I'm trying to decide whether to wait. Is it normal for Asus to release a model/configuration in China/Taiwan and never release it in the U.S. or do they typically just delay the U.S. release? Thanks everone!

 

It could be F9. I am not sure. You're the one who told me about how to do it so I am sure you are correct!

My mistake.

 

upside down camera means your driver didnt install properly. U want the suyin driver. double click the PNPINST64.exe file. restart. that should fix it.

 

Cheers again, worked

 

Did you install the ASUS LifeFrame Utility? It activates the Fn+V hotkey so that you can set up the webcam. It's on the DVD and under Utilities on their U35Jc download page HERE.

The ASUS Splendid Utility is also quite nice (IMO) and activates the hotkey Fn+C. It has nothing to do with the webcam but a nice color tint utlity any way.

Oh, great advice & good catch. Give this guy some rep points! I'm trying, but the forum's not letting me.

 

I think that when ASUS has released i5's in non-US places like Taiwan or Europe and the i3 in the US, the i5 of that model was never released in the US. If you want an i5 version of the U35Jc, you'll probably need to order it from abroad. Sorry.

 

I doubt it will ever be released to the US market with the I5. The disadvantage is if you order it overseas you won't get the accidental damage warranty. The cheapest price I found for the I5 was about $800 + shipping (to china). Newegg china even has it, but won't ship to US. There are 3 models I5-440 (or 420?), 450, and 460. Not all have the 8 cell battery.

 

I dont know about you, but I love having my notebook not shake or vibrate or make any noises (aside from the high pitch whine)also, notebook boots in less than 20 secs while it boots in 1:45 or so on the HDD. Programs load on an instant and close on a instant. I can switch from games to docs to youtube in a matter of seconds.

 

What? You must have had some series issues if your notebook took 1:45 to boot. I have the stock HDD and mine also boots in less than 20 seconds. You also have some issues if your notebook shakes or vibrates. Mine doesn't do either.

I am not saying SSD's are not worth the money, but your reasons are a bit exaggerated.

 

I didnt even bother trying the HDD long, I turned it off, it made a funny noise thought it was normal and just installed the HDD


I think I mustve gotten a crappy HDD then =/

 

Mine arrives tonight. I'll report back the timed boot-up for the stock configuration. I will be putting an ssd in mine once I get time. I just still want to know why my old cpu gets a higher cpu score for windows 7 than these (2 year old e8400 core 2 at 1.6 ghz).

 

Omg, Im so happy that I bought this laptop. It was over my expectations and I havent found any downside with it yet, the multitouch trackpad is epic aswell. I just might get a SSD for it soon cause Im SSD damaged from my other computer .. 5400RPM is not fast .

 

Just noticed that Amazon.com and .ca have the black version of U35jc now as well. I'm perfectly happy with my silver U35jc though~

 

I would like to ask someone, who could compare screens on Asus u35jc and Acer 3820tg. Which one is relatively better?, what about vertical viewing angle on acer, cause it was mentioned that it's poor on asus.
P.S. I'm tired of waiting asus in europe. Bought one from amazon.co.uk, but they have only with UK keyboard layout. I would prefer asus for better battery life, but it's not on sale for too long.

 

I have an Intel 160Gb 2nd gen SSD, and it's absolutely brilliant. Dead silent, no worries about minor bumps, everything loads up almost instantly. I never bother setting the laptop to hibernate or sleep because boot and shutdown times are so fast.

The only thing I HATE on this laptop is the shiny bezel. But I found a plastic polish that takes care of any minor scratches and gives it an even texture.

 

I don't know if this was replied to, but you can install games by copying the contents of a game CD or DVD to a disc image (.iso) and then transfer that to your laptop's HD via USB drive, and then you can mount the image onto a virtual optical drive to play it.
If you don't have a desktop to make the .iso's, then you would probably want to buy an external optical drive.

 

Mine is quiet, the only noise I hear is from the fan. I also haven't noticed shaking at all, in any laptop I have ever used.

At the moment the boot up time is pretty short, I haven't timed it though.

 

New Touchpad Driver update: OK... really interesting twist on the 8.0.7 driver. Today I installed skype and it wouldn't work. Figured out I had my camera disabled in the P4G... enabled the camera and it worked fine... HOWEVER... after putting the laptop to sleep and waking it... the extra gestures went away! I was one of the 'lucky' ones that kept the gestures through sleep/wake so this surprised me. I then re-disabled the camera... and the gestures stay! Perfectly repeatable on mine. My guess is the cam and touchpad are on the same USB circuit, and the camera waking is messing it up?? Anyone else care to give this a try to see on their computer? Good news is, if this is repeatable on other laptops, and you don't care about your camera, everyone can now use/keep the new gestures!

UPDATE: Messed around with this on mine, some more. With mine, the gestures disappear and appear with the selection of the camera... doesn't require a restart or anything. Turn on the cam in P4G (i use the newest version) and the gestures disappear after you sleep it... turn off the cam and the gestures 'magically' return/appear. with the camera off, they work all the time... with the camera 'on' they disappear if you sleep the computer and will not return unless you reinstall or disable the camera!

 

1 minute 30 seconds boot time (2nd boot) is what I got after the initial configuartion and setup intial boot. Are people getting 20 second boot time from a fresh OS install?

 

Well when I first had the notebook, I was getting times of around 20-30sec with the bloatware and stuff so 20sec probably can be achievable on fresh OS install. However I will find it quite hard to believe that you can still maintain those times despite adding lots of programs or using it for at least a month.

Straight fresh install on an intel SSD, gave boot times of 15-20sec but adding various of programs (office 2010, matlab, 80 process startup) increased the times to about 25seconds.

Also depends how you people are timing it... starting timer as soon as you hit the power button till desktop screen popup?

@above, If you are getting 90seconds on your 2nd boot without adding any programs then yours not normal.
A fresh install will not give a 60seconds increase over a out-of-box OS stuff.

 

also if anyone cares

here are some tips to increase your boots speeds


so the first thing you want is really turn your pc and load firefox of whatever browser you use, so its pointless for your computer to load programs you dont need loaded.


First thing
1. Type, "msconfig"
2. Nagivate to the second tab called, "Boot" and change the time out to 5. No matter how fast your pc is, it will always take 30 seconds to load everything it needs.
3. Head over to, "Services" and uncheck anything you dont think you need.
4. Now lets go to Start up, yup, thats right now you can see what gets loaded and what does not. You can decide what needs priority and what can wait. I only have the essentials that I need.

 

I'm timing counting from the power on press. Now after the 5th boot it's about 52 seconds from power on till the login sound. 58 seconds until the mouse icons stop spinning
Yeah, I find it difficult to believe that these physical disks can boot so fast even on a new OS install. My crucial ssd on my desktop takes 13 to 19 seconds on fresh install.
Is it normal after a new battery charge for the indicator to says "97%" charge available?
Now, How do you overclock this? It's too slow. I see nothing other than turbo in the bios, then the watercooling will be tested against this toy.

 

Hello,

I have a question for U35jc owners:

What is the max resolution supported for vga port?
What is the max resolution supported for hdmi port?

I ask because i'm not able to find anything about in official asus site, and in a seller site i find the vga port support only 1.600 Px X 1.200 Px as max resolution, is this true?

Best Regards.

 

Not certain I would characterize 1600x1200 as 'only'... but just tried HDMI with my desktop monitor that is 1920x1200 native and the laptop ran the monitor at full resolution (1920x1200) with the laptop monitor at full res (1366x68) as well. Didn't run anything taxing nor run a benchmark but seemed to run great while I did it. So will definitely exceed 1600x1200. No VGA handy to check... but you aren't going to get those resolutions in a usable way over a VGA cable anyway! Hope that helps.

 

Damn! I thought you were on to something, but this didn't work for me.

 

bummer, figured it would work for all since it is so clearly reproducible for me. I never did a clean windows install so maybe we have some drivers different. Sorry it didn't work for you.

 

I didn't do a clean install either. I really want to know why the hell these drivers won't work when I awake from sleep! Such good drivers, but it sucks that I can't put it to sleep without losing them.

I never updated my P4G. Is there a new one? Did you disable camera on battery AND when plugged in?

 

The new P4G is definitely different than the previous one... get it from the apps section, not the model specific one (Notebook, Apps, P4GHybrid). The version is: 1.1.40 and upload date was 3 September.

As far as disabling the camera... there is a checkbox in the bottom left portion of P4G... to disable, remove the checkmark and click on apply.

Hope that helps...

 

Whats different about it?

 

Seems to have SHE 'built in' and has a different looking user interface... seems to work great and battery life is definitely no worse, so recommend you give it a try

 

I have the upsidedown camera issue too. One thing I noticed is I put some h.264 1080P videos I shot and it had difficulty playing these videos with the power saving on. This kind of surprised me as my e8400 had no problem playing the videos when it was downclocked to 1.2 ghz. I hope this is just a video driver or codec issue, but the studdering does not occur if the cpu is running at full 2.4ghz without the power saving.

 

the upside down camera disappears when you install the asus driver for the camera

 

I believe I may have found a fix to get the new touch pad drivers(8.0.7.0) to work when waking from sleep! This is mostly thanks to shotgun for bringing this to my attention.

Shotgun mentioned he had his camera off when his drivers worked when he awoke from sleep. This lead me to believe he had the camera OFF when he installed the drivers. My camera must have been on when I installed them. I decided to turn the camera off and then install drivers.

I put it to sleep...and the drivers continued to work!

Everybody try this if you had issues with your gestures not working after awaking from sleep!

Primary credit to shotgun for even finding out about the camera conflicting with drivers! Thanks!

EDIT: Well, I had the laptop plugged in and decided to put it to sleep one more time to see if it worked again. The gestures didn't seem to work after waking up from the 2nd sleep.

 

This may also be a conflict with the P4G application. I have been using the new touchpad drivers with no problems for about 2 two weeks. Before installing the drivers I had uninstalled P4G and continue using my U35JC under windows power plans. My camera has been enabled the whole time.

 

That's plausible as well.

 

Just to chime in, as you know, I had no problems with the new touchpad driver gestures disappearing after resuming from sleep or hibernation.

Relating to ShotgunB & Relentless, I did not have my web cam on when I installed the drivers and I typically don't keep the camera on anyway.

I have P4G 1.1.34 installed (from the ASUS U30Jc site). The U30Jc doesn't work with SHE.

So perhaps that's why I had no problems.

 

Shotgun, Is there any way to know FOR SURE that S.H.E is enabled with the new P4G utility? I no longer have the S.H.E gadget that tells me its on. It shows S.H.E under every battery mode. Wouldn't it be better to have it off under max performance? Just want to be sure its enabled under power saving.

 

I tried to awake from sleep after uninstalling P4G completely, but the gestures still didn't work.

I installed the new P4G and the gestures still do not work after waking. This is so frustrating. I got it to work that one time. I just disabled the camera and installed the drivers. Rebooted and the drivers worked. Awoke from sleep and it worked. Hasn't worked since.

Bah! I really just want these to work all the time.

 

This has been a true mystery to me. I wrote a post about a month ago asking this very question. Through communication (poor communication) with Asus, the best I could find out is the P4GHybrid has SHE 'integrated', thus it removes the stand-alone SHE (and therefore the gadget). It is, in theory, an optimized mix of the two. Tried to get more info and never got anywhere... bottom line for me is the battery life seems easily as good as everyone else's and I therefore figured it didn't really matter. I have kept the 'new' version of P4G and figured I'd just take what it gives! Not a great answer, I realize, and if anyone can get something better I am interested as well!

 

hmm... was excited to see your earlier success. I actually never use my laptop plugged in, so can't say I have tried the 'sleep' issue in that situation. Afraid to try after this as mine still works great.

 

hey guys what is the battery life with these 2 laptops? Do you say 13.3 and 14.1' in screen size is a real big difference?

 

Also, there is a J and R in nyc that according to the site has these laptops on sale along with other laptops. I should be able to hear the whining noise when i take a look at those laptops right?

 

Also, i would need 7200 rpm. Would you guys say its a better idea to just buy this laptop with 5400rpm and then buy a 7200rpm hard drive and install it or say go to xoticpc.com and customize this laptop to 7200rpm hard drive? Which would be cheaper?

Also, is the battery life of these laptops worst than the ul30a? I heard that laptop has the strongest battery life though the processor is not that good.

 

Drew1, some of your questions are going to fall to preference. Battery life for the U35JC is going to be in the 7-8hr range when you conserve power. Like every laptop, it will be significantly shorter if you are watching movies, playing 3d games, etc. There is a reasonable difference between 13.3/14.1 but that difference goes 'both ways'. 14.1 looks/feels quite a bit bigger... great for some, not so much for others. I fall in the latter category... coming from a netbook, 13.3 was as big size/weight as I wanted to go for a 'travelling' laptop... 14.1 is just too big. As far as the 'whine'... it is highly unlikely you will hear it in the store unless it is really quiet. Even those who are really bothered by it only hear it in a quiet environment. When mine does it (infrequently) it is absolutely noticeable to me... but along the lines of an audible hard drive platter or cooling fan. Even with then noise, it is quieter than any other full laptop I have owned. Your HD question is also in the personal preference category. I personally would buy/try the stock drive to see if it meets your needs... if not, buy a replacement and enclosure and keep your HD as an external drive. Hope that helps.

 

Drew,
When I took out the hd and put and ssd into the u35, which reduced some mechanical noise somewhat, the fan sound is more noticable than the whine. The whine was only noticable when the system was stressed like running W7 scoring. That whine sound doesn't seem to come on very often. I had a desktopboard that did the same sound from either the cpu itself or capacitors when cpu usuage went up past 50%. So the chipset drivers for this are the 5 series? (Same one that the intel 3 series uses, funny how my ssd on a p35 desktop system just slipped right into this notebook with minimal driver updates). Now I wish I could just figure out a way to make mts videos play smoothly with power saving enabled.

 

Actually, P4G 1.1.40 IS the official version listed for the U35Jc on ASUS' driver site. Very model-specific page.

 

You are correct Sir! Saw that last night... when I originally downloaded it, it was not in the model specific section yet... it absolutely is now. Thanks for the update.

 

Would you suggest i buy the asus u35jc/u45jc at j and r with the 5400 rpm and then buy a 7200 rpm hard drive and install it or just buy it at xoticpc.com and then customize it to 7200 rpm? I ABSOLUTELY NEED 7200 RPM.

 

Hey all. I'm not sure if this has been asked yet, but has the CPU whine been fixed? I've been looking at the U35JC for a bit and I'm thinking of getting it for college.

 

If you can manage the reinstall of the OS, I'd recommend buying your 7200rpm HDD separately ($58 at Newegg & $51 at Amazon). For the cost, you'll end up with TWO HDD's (old+new) and with a USB enclosure, you can use the old one for backups.

If you let Xotic do it, you pay for the new drive ($54 and it only has 8MB cache which is a really cheap drive) and they keep your old drive & resell/reuse it.

It's easy to change out the HDD physically (a few screws, lift a panel, unplug/plug, etc). A bit more hassle, but you end up with an extra drive for the price!

And if you want an even faster 7200rpm HDD, I'd recommend the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid Drive. It has 4GB NAND (like a mini-SSD) onboard the drive that works like a super-cache to speed up disc access, booting, opening apps, etc. It stores & remembers 4GB worth of your most opened files & apps and gives them an SSD-feel to their use. Amazon had them on sale Sat-Sun for $110 (regularly for $130 at Amazon & Newegg.)

HERE is a nice AnandTech article on it.

And HERE is a Tom's Hardware review.