Asus U81A

Does anyone own this laptop or have any good reviews for it? I'm looking for a laptop under $600 and this looks really good. Should I look at any other laptops that are under $600 that are better than this one?

thanks

 

You could check out the ux50v. bigger screen, better graphics card, more hard drive space, backlit keyboard, and slot loading drive. almost thin as a macbook. super light.

 

I just purchased mine last night. Had a 7200.4 500 gig and since the orginal ram is CAS6 and I had CAS5 around the house I changed that as well.
put in the 500gig, used the restore disks to get the default install and then upgraded, not fresh install, to Win7 RC.

I can tell you the T6500 in these makes vista extreemy smooth and just totally rocks Win7. While the su3500 just barely gets you buy with flash video once the bandwidth was downloaded playing Poker Face 720P flash I was using only 20-30% of the CPU and 30-40% during the loading. This extra CPU usage is for the encryption of the wireless I think.........

Forget all but light 3d gaming, the 4500 just isn't made for that. I ran a downloaded 720P trailer and the cpu was at 2-4% usage.

So for general/video usage on the web and multimedia or multitasking the U81a, for better gaming and multimedia the UX50v.

 

i bought mine from BB about 3 days ago. it was 633 after tax. its great!
ive kept mine original except that i formatted the whole drive and reinstalled vista business using my retail copy. i downloaded the drivers from asus website and now its super smooth. the t6500 is a realy znappy cpu and the graphics card is ok. i havent tested it but it should work for anything non intensive. the laptop itself is really light. the glossy is super sleek, but can be really of a magnet for fingerprints. i love mine and its the best thing i have gotten for my self!

 

Bestbuy has a red version available. Does anyone know if the top lid is red only? How about the interior? Is it red too?

 

I just updated to the 208 bios, had the 205 originally. I don't see any real difference though. The 208 is available to the U80a, not the "Best Buy" version page..........

 

anyone in new york or boston can confirm if this model is still available in their local store? I'll in ny and boston next week to get this baby.

 

go to BB's web site and enter the zips you are interested in the store locator from the item. You can even reserve it with an account and a card........

 

You updated your U81A with a BIOS for a U80? That sounds really dangerous. They are two similar but different machines. You could brick your machine by doing that. The latest BIOS for the U81A is 205 and I wouldn't use any other. Mine came with 205 -- it's the ONLY BIOS for it, so far.

To nitric0 -- I've had the U81A for about 10 days now and I'm really happy with it. For the money, it's really fast and powerful as long as you don't want to run any heavy games on it. And like another poster mentioned, with Windows 7 it really flies! Install the 64-bit version of Windows 7, it DOES make a difference. File copy operations are about 10 times faster, for one thing.

 

when I did the ASUS auto finder it came back as my laptop being the U80a and offered the coresponding files. Also Winflash checked the bios version and gave the OK! I would have never forced it.......

 

I should also note that I am now getting 240 Mbs on my WiFi with Draft n router.........

 

I don't know, maybe in my old age I am easily impressed but this notebook is just totally awesome. Other than gaming it just flies..........

 

since this model is being discontinued, any idea on it's replacement?

 

I would guess the UL80a or some other UL model. I grabed this as I really didn't want a SU proccessor. I prefer for now the full fledged CPU and faster speeds. The battery life is more that sufficient for my needs. It seems models, especially BB's models, have extreemly short runs as of late too............