Asus UL30JT

If that's with the 9 cell, 12 hours probably isn't too far off the mark. It will quite likely be getting more than 10 for light usage, since I've seen it tested at 7-8 hours with the 6 cell. However, the 3820TG you listed is pretty close to the UL30JT overall; though we're looking at a 2.53GHz Core i5 vs a 2.13GHz Core i5, this specific Acer only has an HD 5470 which is in fact pretty close to the 310M.

 

Dammit Asus, hurry up and release the UL30JTs! Stop with the "long wait" bull! You're losing sales to other i5 competition!

 

Help. I just received my U30Jc and reinstalled Win 7 H Premium. Now I have 2 problems:
1) Device Manager shows "PCI Simple Communications Controller" not installed properly. I tried to look up the DEV ID but only found "Intel Management Engine Interface MEI". Any idea what it is & what driver is needed?
2) ASUS' website list FOUR drivers for the webcam (different companies). How can I find out which one to use?

Thanks.

 

The Acer 3820TG is right around the corner here in Norway as well... ETA at various web shops is april 15 and 16..

The cheapest I've found is $953,- USD without 25% VAT..
So actually it costs here in Norway $1190,- USD.

But then we have a great law, that more or less gives consumers 5 years warranty on computers and everything else that's supposed to have a lifespan over 5 years. A little paper work, but the consumer doesn't have to pay a dime if a HDD breaks down after 4,5 years.... I like it...

 

manufacturing quality maybe?
I've been yesterday in Tianhe compuer city (Guangzhou, China) and nearly all timeline laptops in the shops had broken keys (very very weak keyboard design by the way) where not a single issue reported on Asus or whatever brand.
As a satisfied previous owner of Travelmate laptop, I was interested by these new TimelineX but not anymore...

 

Ignore my last post. My trusty ASUS DVD had the missing "Intel Management Engine" driver (unlike ASUS' site, which was missing that one under my model.

All's well!

 

Perhaps, but I think we'd have to wait for the release of both laptops to conclusively decide about the build quality of either.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100413/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc1585

It seems Apple might have gotten precedence over other manufacturers after all. Hopefully that means Asus will get its processors now and the JT will come out finally.

 

Apple did not get any processors that this Asus unit will be using...

 

In that manner, you're getting an excellent deal--if not much better than what we here in America are getting. I'd rather pay the 25% VAT since I'm GOING to be paying for a 3-year warranty anyway! 5-year MANDATORY no-frills warranty support? Sign me up!

 

Good point. Judging from the way those Macbooks are rated to have a 9-10 hour battery life which historically has always been conservatively estimated and often below what owners actually get, I have to wonder whether there's any point in putting ULV i5 processors in the UL30JT if tests in Europe are showing only 4 hours.

Would someone care to enlighten me on why this is the case?

 

Where are these 4 hour tests?
As for the Macbooks, I think OSX is responsible for the 9-10 hour figure, and not hardware.

 

no, 3820T was on display at several shops with huge 5m width ad posters on walls at pc-online building. new and already broken keys... (and this keyboard has really a bad feeling, ie when you press a key, it doesn't go down straight, instead the key doesn't stay flat and a left or right inclination appears... weakest island keyboard ever)
On the other side. U30JC and N82 were also on display. nice manufacturing quality overall, with a proper solid feeling keyboard, miles away of the TimelineX.
Only UL30JC was missing but I expect similar keyboard and manufacturing quality than U30JC and N82.

 

You mean the UL30JT!

I expect the same on my end too! Part of the laptop experience includes typing coherence which is linked to keyboard quality.

 

Thanks for the information, ArthurG. I quoted your post over in the TimelineX thread to keep people informed.

 

my bad, you are correct, I was talking about UL30JT

regarding the timelineX, only Core i3/i5 version with ATI HD5470 and 6 cells battery are available now )

Still don't know which model I will take.
N82 is very nice but only the 6 cells battery SKUs are available now. me wants the 8 cells version !
U30JC was another option but for same size, N82 has USB 3 and faster GPU
finally UL30JT is the last contender. I like the size and battery life.

between N82 8 cells battery and UL30JT, I will buy the first one that will be available
(and if money was not a problem, then Sony Vaio Z will be mine )

 

your welcome
the best pic I found to illustrate my words is attached to this message
look at the keys alignment, the central fixation is so thin that they don't stay straight. if you take the keys opposite corners between your fingers you can turn them by ~10 degrees. stop the rotation and they stay nearly like that !
I don't understand how Acer can produce such bad keyboard

 

A few pages back. Someone posted 4 hours or some similar really low figure from a German website. I'll see if I can find the page #.

 

Page 168.

I'm well aware that OSX is bringing about these power saving requirements. This brings about the central question. What kind of software tweaks does OSX have that allow for 9-10 hours? Is it really that much better than Windows at bringing that much efficiency despite the i5-520UM's much lower TDP? I understand both OSes are fundamentally different in how they do things but how exactly is the difference allowed to be so stark?

Assuming that the German article's testing deserves some credit, the fact that the UL30JT would get lower battery life on the same OS when compared against a UL80VT is puzzling.

 

That site tests battery life under load, and is very unspecific about what kind of load we're looking at. When you're testing battery life, you need to look not only at how much power is eaten, but how much work gets done in the meantime. If this "load" consists of running some kind of calculations continuously, it's unlikely to consider the amount of work done while being tested. Considering the UL30JT is capable of scaling up to significantly higher frequencies, and the Core i architecture is faster clock-for-clock, who can say how much work was actually done by either computer in the testing?

All battery life tests should always be taken with a grain of salt, but when I look at battery life testing I tend to put a lot more stock in so-called "web browsing tests" than testing under an unspecified load, because at the very least the former implies the two computers will have the same workload.

Also, I might have been wrong about OSX being responsible for most of the battery life of the MBPs. I saw some instances of very poor figures for Windows 7 on MacBooks, but I think that although OSX does have an edge in battery life, I saw some results for Windows 7 on MBP that weren't too far behind OSX, e.g. 3.5 hours vs 4. I guess poorly optimized drivers were the main culprit. If that's the case, then there's other factors at hand as well.

I've seen tests that confirm ~8 hours for the TimelineX laptops with a 66Wh 6 cell, for example. If we compare those to the MBPs, the MBPs have similar specs (except that the 5650 is much better than the 330M, but battery life would be with IGP anyway), and they could well have around 10 hours for similar types of usage. I would expect that some of that would be due to the bigger batteries in the MBPs, and some of it due to OSX. I think both Acer and Apple have put a lot of work into optimizing power usage for these laptops, and they both deserve plenty of credit for it.

I suspect that ASUS hasn't done as much finagling as Acer or Apple; they seem to be mostly getting by on their 84Wh 8-cell. However, if you look at LaptopMag's testing of the U30JC they got 7 hours of web browsing, and not anywhere near 4. I'm sure you can agree with me that there is absolutely no way the UL30JT would get any less using the same battery in the same test. 10 hours is definitely not out of the question.

 

Ooops!
A little tooooo much, I believe...
The price for
Acer 3820TG 13,3-inch 16:9 LED Intel Core i5 430M 4 GB RAM / 640 GB ATI HD5470 1GB DDR3 9 cell (12 hour) 1.3 MP HD-webcam
1 254 dollar that's in swedish crowns: 8 990

Swedish prices on electronics are usually higher:
A price in US at 1 000 dollar gives often a price at 10 000 crowns i Sweden

The real course is:
1 000 dollar = 7 200 crowns

 

That's the main point of confusion for some of us here. Why market an ultraportable as being slim, light, and under a reasonable assumption, having having good battery life as most ultraportables tend to have? I understand why the Envy 15 doesn't get a 10-hour battery life with its high performance--no one was expecting any battery life miracles well before release date.

If the German website's testing is somehow by bad luck of the draw truly representative of what we can expect to get in real life, either (1) What another poster said concerning Intel not thoroughly optimizing the CPU to take advantage of power savings/optimization is correct or (2) Asus dropped the ball. In that case, we might strangely enough be better off with a M-series i5.


I truly hope it's neither. Though I did earlier state battery life isn't a high priority, it worries me somewhat that Intel may have rushed the ULV i5 out the door within the shortest time frame possible without doing everything that should've done right the first time. Who knows what other unexpected surprises might pop up?


Oh well. I'm not going to buy the UL30JT first thing when it comes out. I'll let all the major mags review it first. Though a release date isn't known for certain, I truly do hope we get one within 2 months.

 

In line with what I said in my post, I have every confidence that the answer is indeed "neither". The comment about the CPU being unoptimized applied to the Arrandale architecture in general, not just the ULVs, and so I wouldn't expect the difference between the ULVs and the full-voltage chips to be much different from previous generations either.

Though it depends on the "real life" in question, battery life in typical usage scenarios should be equal or better for Arrandale than for Penryn.

Despite Arrandale needing more optimization, it's still better than its predecessor in terms of performance per watt, if only by a little, judging by the Tom's Hardware review. You'll note that Tom's Hardware thought to consider the workload as well as the power usage, and the lack of such detail in the German review calls for a lot of skepticism.

AnandTech's review seems more accurate, though, and it suggests that battery life between Arrandale and Penryn is a wash, with a slight advantage to Arrandale for light to average web browsing. AnandTech is also quite specific about ensuring the workload is equal. Particularly relevant is this quote:

As such, at the very least I can say that Arrandale is generally no worse for battery life than Penryn. While this may not apply equally to the ULV CPUs, I don't see a good basis to suggest they're much worse than their predecessors.

I have every confidence that ASUS' claims for the UL30JT will be similarly accurate to theirs for the UL30Vt. The ASUS World thread says 10 hours for the UL30JT, though, and that is a little disappointing, but if the UL30JT is indeed worse for battery life, it's going to be by around 20% at the most, not the 60% you see in the German review.

 

Speculations Rock!!!

 

4 hours is possible if you use the core i boost + asus turbo 33% Together
with wifi on and full screen brightness

 

what site did you find this from..

 

http://prisjakt.nu I assume. It's far better than pricerunner crap..

 

I don't know what sort of battery savings OSX offers since I never had a chance to use a "real" Mac. I have installed OSX86 on my Dell Mini 9 and battery life was comparable to that of Win7.

With that said, perhaps the claimed battery life is a result due to Apple's built-in battery? "Built-in 77.5-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery" seeing how the c2d they use have TDP of 25 watts, and the u30jc has a 84wh battery with a i3 TDP of 35 watts, it seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeems about right.

 

I've a new problem on my U30Jc running Win 7 64-bit Home Premium (fresh install w/ basic ASUS-supplied drivers). Secret of Monkey Island & Half-Life 2 (downloaded via Steam) do NOT run.

One says "MISE.EXE has stopped working". The other says a certain dll cannot be found. Neither even go into the opening or setup page.

I've reinstalled DirectX. No joy.

Any ideas?

Win 7 64-bit issue or RealTek issue or something else? The forums are loaded with people having problems with Steam games not running under Win 7 64-bit ... but not everyone.

My Flash works well. Hulu play HD and 3dMark06 runs fine. Everything else seems to run fine. Unfortunately I don't have many games here to test out.

 

That's interesting.

On a hunch that it's a Steam-thing, I bought & downloaded "Monkey Island SE" from Direct2Drive.

It works perfectly. .... I wonder if Steam is now dead to me. Two games from them. Neither work on my U30Jc & Win 7 64-bit.

I hope George Lucas enjoys my extra $10.

 

I really want this laptop. I hope it comes out this month.

Also, the PL30JT looks even better to me because it has the matte screen. If that is around the same prices and has the same release date, I'll probably get that instead.

 

Well, I've had my U30Jc for about 3 days and it's a really great machine.

But for lighter weight & slimmer (plus the overclockability of the i5), I think you'll really like the UL30JT.

I'd have bought that if it had been out this week.

 

cant say much about monkey island never played or used it! half life is a issue with the game & 64bit windows (support seems halfway there but truly implimented its not for HL2) the game tries to use its 64 bit mode hence windows dosent kick it over to the 32bit subsystem built into vista & 7 both but for whatever reason the 64bit mode of the HL2 dosent work(at least on my setup) after finding the hl2 main exe & tring sevral "compatibility" settings to no avail i discoverd that there are some manual commands you can have steam issue the game as its launching (its been a long time) but if i recall right from steam right click your looking for propertys or settings or somthing similar. if you get the right option there will be a txt box to type commands issued at launch i forget if its "-no 64" with or with out the dash or somthing completly diffrent but similar in meaning (google should give u the proper command) once i tried that it started working.

(currently running without steam installed as my win7 rc1 expired dualbooted into xp & taking time to reorganize everything & convert everything (media ,games ,ect) so as to have a libraryish catagory system. Before installing a new copy of win7. If i had steam atm i would be ALOT more
precise about this)

PS: on a topic related note ASUS HURRY IT UP EGH!!!! I really wanna get the ul80jt (or prefrably a 15" version)

 

Okay gang, on the U30Jc I've had for three days, there are some things that concern me though the UL30JT may not be better than this if this was also true with the UL30VT.

Well, one of the issues would probably be a problem with the UL30Vt as well: the screen. Good screen color-wise, but I seem unable to get it at ANY angle where it isn't darker on the top two edges and lighter in the bottom two edges.

I'm getting used to it. My Dell Vostro's screen was no better nor was the Sony Vaio 13" at Best Buy for $1,100. It's not so obvious when I have a normal screen full of Windows work and most obvious the more black you have up on the screen (washes out to gray). There is a lot of room for tweaking the visual contrast & brightness, etc in BOTH of the Intel & nVIDIA GPU's, so I may be able to improve this with experimentation.

I've been using as my main PC (!) my 10" ASUS 1000HA for the last 2 yrs so this is quite an improvement. I had wanted something like the UL30Vt w/ no DVD drive, 1 lb lighter and longer battery life,but I liked the idea of a faster CPU and Optimus, and the casing looked so good. I had no idea when the UL30Jt was REALLY coming out.

Another con is something I also like about it: the aluminum sheeting on the lid & palm-rest (& trackpad). On the lid (unlike a MBP's unibody) it's really just an aluminum sheet covering the back of the screen. No plastic support underneath that I can feel. It feels like it can be easily dented & bent, so I'll need to be careful with the lid. I noticed at times when I lifted up the lid grabbing it near the webcam lens, that the bezel pops against the aluminum lid. The aluminum sheet itself visibly bends in place. A solid plastic lid feels more solid than this.

But I love the aluminum look & feel. Very classy.

The central mouse bar/button is thicker than the bar on the UL30Vt. Mine works great & is easy to use.

Another con (made about the UL30Vt as well) is the black bezel around the screen is easy to pull out from the screen a bit. The plastic looks & feels as if it warbles a bit (not thick & smoothly flat against the screen.) I suspect this has to do with keeping the weight & thickness as low as possible and that the aluminum in the lid (It's the same lid as on the UL30VT & JT) is not that thick; it easily flexes. This is probably the downside of trying to design a thin-as-possible lid.

Beyond that (and who pulls on the screen bezel anyway?), the notebook shines with a look of class. The trim looks good.

I've not had a chance to really test the battery as I've not switched over all of my apps yet. That will take a day when I'm free and carry it off to campus & work without the adaptor.

I'd say, with wifi on and general desk work, 7 hours. I'm betting with all power-saving features on and no wifi and only Word & Excel & Quicken, I could get the 9-10 hrs they claim.

Though I wanted the UL30JT (or VT) with no DVD drive, I now find I've missed having an internal drive. Three different times yesterday, when I had unplugged & then plugged in my external DVD drive, my 1000HA netbook wouldn't see the drive until I rebooted. The internal one just works every time.

The extra 1 lb weight, to me, isn't that big of a deal carrying it around in my hand. I hardly feel it (took it to campus today & carried it around in my hand). The extra weight is about the weight of a medium paperback. It's a bit lighter than my wife's standard 13" white Macbook, if that helps. Her Macbook weighs 4 lb 15 oz.) The extra thickness is hardly noticeable (3/16" thicker than the UL30Vt and 1/16" thicker than the UL80Vt.)

Optimus is cool, but I wish I could tell which chip is running. But it just works, which is the point I suppose.

The air coming out of the vent gets warm when in game mode, but the notebook itself is as cool as ever.

I love the keyboard. Backlit would have been nice, but the battery life suffered as it is. But the option would have been useful.

The .3 MP webcam is okay (barely adequate). My ASUS $300 1000HA netbook has a 1.3 MP webcam and a much sharper image (of course). Why the cheap lens ASUS? (to be fair, the white Macbook only has a .3 MP webcam as well. The MBP just got upgraded to 1.3MP ... dubbed "iSight". Cute.)

The VT has longer battery (2 hrs max extra) and I'll miss that. The hopefully-soon-coming UL30JT with the i5-520UM is rated for nearly the same battery life as the U30JC.

Another con is that the trackpad available gestures are more limited than the UL30Vt (less gestures offered). It does NOT have pinch/squeeze & zoom. But I like this smooth, brushed metal surface more then the UL30Vt's dimpled surface. ... but the UL30Vt had zoom/pinch unlike the U30Jc.

Personally, if I didn't want the internal DVD drive, and .45GHz (450MHz) extra processing power wasn't that big of a deal to my work (it isn't. the SU7300 overclocks to 1.76GHz. The i3 is stock at 2.26GHz.) I'd go with the pound lighter, $200 cheaper and 2 extra hrs battery life and get the UL30Vt.

Or if the extra $200 is no big deal, I'd wait and get the UL30JT when it comes out.

The UL30VT still looks nice. Not as fast as the U30JC, but how fast is fast?

 

whaaaaaaaaaaaattttt??
gotta be kidding
i7 and 310M and still 12 hrs?
it's been a long time i have not visited this website after i got this beautiful machine ul30vt-x1, right after it came out.
but i was almost buy the new macbook pro 13 and found out that it doesnt have i3 and better graphics.
but now asus has this monster about to come out....
im giving my laptop to my sister and gonna get one of this when it come out.

 

when it actually comes out.. I've only recently been looking at these new notebooks but some people been waiting for months I think.. FFS..

ARGHHH!!! where are the UL30JT and PL30JT?

 

I wonder whether the PL30JT will be released at the same time as UL30JT, as I'm inclined to PL30JT's matte look much more than UL's glossy. Man, I have promised this laptop to my wife 3 months ago and now I'm embarressed to open the issue anymore

 

Hi all,

i've a question about calibration battery on this nb. I'd like to know if there is a BIOS option for this action or if there is a specific asus utility.

Thanks.

 

You guys do know the Macbook Pros don't make these numbers right? Frogot what site but during a video rundown test it lasted only an hour more than the vaio Z

 

ASUS' site is rating the UL30JT at 10 hr battery life, not 12.

 

I remember during some of the early demos of the Optimus Technology there was widget that the reviewers had, which displayed which GPU is in use..maybe its available for download or maybe on the nVidia site? Not sure, but yeah if I had that I would love the option to see which GPU is running

 

Its 10hrs on the site also more than likely the i7 CULV wont be as powerful as the i3 mobile processor, but it should be a step up from SU7300 (how much? nobody really knows at this point)

 

I hope they have a model that can go up to 12 hours since they advertised 12 hours in CES2010

My thinking is that they will have a lower end and higher end models with different battery life at different price points much like the current UL30VT

For example the black UL30VT had a lower wattage battery and was rated at 10+ hrs whereas the silver Ul30VT had the better battery rated at 12+ hrs for about 50$ more.

It should be noted that some resellers did put a UL30VT-A1 battery into the UL30VT-X1 thus giving the black model 12+ hrs too. So battery life on the future Ul30JT should vary base on model and retailer.

 

So how many hours DID the MBPs get? Sorry, never read about the Vaio Z

 

Since I'm a new member I cant post links, but the Asus UL30JT is now listed at the swedish retailer Dustin (dustinhome.se, search for asus ul30jt). The specs are as follows: Core i5 520UM, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Geforce 310M 1GB. The price is 9990SEK which is about 1k euros. Expected releasedate is May 1st.

 

9990SEK ~ 1400USD (-26.3% Swedish TAX) = roughly $1031 USD!
Too much money for an i5 in my opinion.

I hope ASUS isnt planning on releasing this NON-i7 UL30JT for $1000. I will be very disappointed. That would mean a i7 model will probably be in the 1100-1200+ range.

Will probably buy a UL30VT @ $650-700 at this rate if it comes out at anywhere near $1k. too much money for a low income college student like myself.

 

I thought of the same thing and have looked high & low on the net, but no joy. I can't seem to find the "nVIDIA Test Tool" widget/gadget any where.

Has any one else found a place to download it?

 

I'm pretty sure the i7 model is vapor ware. To be fair though, there isn't much difference between an i5 520um and an i7 620um (I miss the days when you could look at two processors and know which one was more powerful by how many MHz it had. Thank goodness for notebookcheck).

As for the price, it doesn't seem as simple as doing a currency conversion minus tax. It seems we get these goods a fair bit cheaper. I'm still expecting $900. I would be extremely shocked if the UL30JT breaks $950.

 

As for having various flavors of processor on the UL30JT available for sale, I wouldn't get my hopes up. Typically on the UL30VT, U30JC, etc, the models in the US only came with one choice of processor. And ASUS' site at present ONLY lists the UL30JT as coming with the i5-520M processor.

Unless you can buy the UL30JT from some place outside of the US.

I think the 10 hrs quoted on the ASUS site for the UL30JT, I suspect that is due to the more power hungry i5 (like the i3) than the size of the battery.

I bet, due to more power demands, that the UL30JT in the US will ONLY come with the 5600 mAh 8-cell battery (like the U30JC has in the US)

And the only difference between the US-sold UL30VT-A1 (silver) and the UL30VT-X1 (black) was the color, size of battery & the warranty ... not the actual internal hardware.

I doubt the UL30JT will be much different.

 

And those are the exact specs listed for the UL30JT on ASUS' general site. No surprises there. ASUS reps have repeatedly said it will sell for less than $1K here in the US. I'm guessing $899-$949 max.

What does it have better than the U30JC?
1) Processor can be overclocked? It's still slower than the i3-320.
2) No DVD drive? Would you pay extra for that?
3) Longer battery life? All of the iProcessors in notebooks are eating more battery life, so no big difference there between the U30JC & the UL30JT.

The new U30JC sells for $899 now in the US. Why would the UL30JT be more?