Asus Vista Drivers?

Anyone have an explanation as to why Asus has yet to release Vista drivers/apps?

Is it normal for Asus to be fairly slow?

Thanks,
Bob

PS I have gathered all of the necessary drivers from 3rd party locations and Vista works great, but the apps sure would be nice.

 

They're probably waiting for the retail release on 30-Jan. If it's any consolation, I've got an HP and am in the same boat.

 

I just grabbed one of those Asus A8Jp from newegg and while scouring the asus site for a new video driver (the one installed on the laptop is from August) I ran across a bios posted the 22th of dec that has the following description.


BIOS 208
Support Vista, include SLP2.0, ASUS RCD, TPM.
Support T5500, T5600 L2 stepping CPU

Anyone know what SLP2.0 or ASUS RCD are?

There is no readme with the file...


BTW: I also noticed a fresh bios for the A8Js with teh similar "Vista" note

 

I think it will come once they start loading Vista as standard on all their laptops. I'm looking forward to it.

The only reason I haven't loaded Vista on my G1 is because I expect that 90% of all the cool widgets that came with it will instantly stop working.

 

Spatial and hkarth are both correct - ASUS is not really pressed by the Vista business release but will probably take more proactive action when it's actually widely available for consumers.

Also at this point in time, with the advent of Vista so close, it's just so hard to buy a laptop. I'd rather let the numerous guinea pigs out there suffer the consequences of early adopters.

 

One cool thing with Asus is at they are right there in Taiwan with their hardware manufacturers so their turnaround time for drivers should be significantly quicker than for bigger companies like HP, IBM, etc who have to go through the pains of getting new drivers, testing them, stamping their logo, and then putting them up on the website. A company like Asus is probably able to turn things around much more quickly.

I wouldn't hold off on buying a laptop because of Vista...go ahead and buy one if you found one you like. Vista support will trickle in over time.

 

To be honest I'd make any laptop purchase while you can still get Windows XP + Vista Upgrade Program. That way you can still have a usable PC while everyone else is off beta-testing Vista for MS.

 

Well, considering that Asus still hasn't released the Merom compatibility BIOS for their pre-Merom laptops, I'd say that Asus has a history of neglecting customers who adopt earlier technologies with the hopes of upgrading later.

I'm pretty happy about my laptop overall, but I have to admit that I am extremely disappointed at this lack of dedication to their customers. Especially since everyone on these forums were convinced that they'd be able to upgrade their CPUs as soon as Merom came out, which is the reason I chose this laptop in the first place.

I have an A8Ja, which is identical to the A8Jm except for the ATI x1600 GPU. Would it be conceivable for me to use the A8Js BIOS?

 

Well even if you use only vista you get more for your money buying a computer with xp pro or media center. You get two oses

you might only end up using xp for an emergency but who knows.

 

It's actually pretty stable and it works well with most of the apps I've transferred from XP (X86 version). Then again, the friggin' OS is 3 years late, so I'd expect it to work somewhat reliably or at least better than the Win98 to XP debacle.

User Account Control will take some getting used to though...

 

SLP is the Service Location Protocol, Version 2
(Abstract from the RFC);

Asus RCD may mean being able to configure memory timings. As in;

Although this is purely my guess.. (I don't run BIOS 210 on my A8Js, which is the BIOS that supports these same updates, so I can't tell if memory timings are configurable..) Obviously the big BIOS feature update for 208 on the A8Jp and 210 on the A8Js, is the Vista compatibility.

 

Regarding that memory timing question.

I have been able to change memory timings with Systool and bios 207. I don't really think that Asus RCD has something to do with that. Systool can be found here: http://www.techpowerup.com/systool/ But it is still an alpha/beta software.

The memory that came with my A8Js don't really like lower timings. I wasn't able to tighten Cas latency, but for example tRAS could be tightened. There was a very little performance gain so I left the memory timings as they were