Asus W7S dead, Asus offering me a M50sv

Hey guys,

Well I have had an Asus W7S notebook for about a year now, and I really liked it. However in the course of 1 year, I have had to return the laptop for repair 4 times. Ranging from dead hard drives to dead power supplies. This 4th time I adamantly requested that it be fully replaced with a brand new W7S. They eventually agreed that they would do so. About a week later, a tech from my local Asus repair warehouse calls me, to tell me that they no longer have the W7 laptops, and they can replace it with a M50SV.

I bought the W7 because of its small size and even though the M50 is much better spec wise, it is way to big for me. I travel alot and a 15.4, 6.5lbs laptop isn't too optimal for me.

You guys have any suggestions? I am going to ask what other options I have, but any suggestions on what I should ask for? I paid close to $1600 Cdn for this laptop and I would want something equivalent or better.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

A U3S perhaps?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220222

heres a review:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mobile/display/asus-u3s.html

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the only 13.3 equivalent that ASUS have now.

I would say you could ask whether they could get hold of a W7Sg, it's a nice incremental improvement over W7S. But since they said they can't get any W7... that wouldn't probably work.

 

Well the options I have now are these 3:
R1E-C1
U6E-A1
M50SV-A1

I am leaning more towards the R1E since its a small notebook at 13.3 inches and has specs equivalent to the M50SV. I havent seen much info about the R1E though? Specifically the C1 model. Anyone have any feedback on the R1E-C1?

 

Asus' tablets had all kinds of issues historically. Take the U6 if you can't live with the M50.

 

I'd go U6. Probably the ONLY Asus laptop worth paying money for right now, everything else has gone far downhill since even a year ago when the W7S came out. The W7 was probably their last good model line other than the U6....maybe the U2, also.

Its also what, 3lbs or something and actually gets decent battery life, which is significantly better than the usual Asus range of crap to megacrap battery life.

Pity they can't get you a W7S/g though, I love my W7 dearly.

 

Happy to hear that. I'm glad that I take the right decision in buying W7S. I love it dearly, too Just get too hot sometimes

 

Thats its way of showing love

Then again, I'm pretty certain that the heat is what killed my GPU a while back, so maybe it is overexerting itself...

 

I also recommend U6 over R1E, if only due to the well-known excessive battery wear issue on the R1 (it was there on R1F, and it's there on the R1E as well).

Also U6 is smaller than the R1. Due to the way it's built and because it's a tablet and has a hotswappable removable ODD, the R1 has almost the bulk of a 14". Unless you need a tablet and a hotswappable drive, that bulk is spent unnecessarily.

 

Not really....R1 is still like 4.5lbs with those things, isn't it? Maybe 4.8lbs, but I remember it being not all that significantly dimensionally larger/heavier than the W7S (I cross-shopped the W7S and the R1F, went W7 since it was newer, cheaper, way faster, and didn't have the battery wear issues...)

 

Well I may be wrong because I've never really seen them side to side. But I've seen them both, and the R1E seemed bulkier than the W7. (not heavier, I could not compare that, but in size). Let me check the sizes on ASUS.com, see if I'm hallucinating or not

R1E: 31.7 x 23.2 x 3.5 cm
W7S: 31.5 x 22.65 x 2.9 ~ 3.69 cm

So it was indeed mostly my imagination. Perhaps because of the screen articulation? I don't know. The weight is larger for the R1 though, it's 1.98kg with 3-cell and traveler's drawer, whereas the W7 is 1.95 w/ 6-cell and the optical drive in.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys. I did love the W7S, it was an awesome notebook and its too bad I had to give it up. Now in terms of the R1E, the specs for this model make it almost worth it, even with all the battery issues you guys are mentioning.
The R1E-C1 has the following specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 @ 2.5 Ghz 6 Mb Cache (Crestline chipset)
3 GB
250 GB HD
4.2 lbs.

Now comparing this with the M50SV-A1 the major specs are exactly the same, except for the video card, extra interfaces, and other minor details. However this one comes in 6.65 Lbs. I mean if this notebook is lightyears better then the R1E, the weight wouldn't put me off completely, but they seems like they are almost the same spec wise.

The U6E-A1, while much smaller at 12.1" has the following specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo t7500 @ 2.2 Ghz 4 MB Cache (Crestline Chipset)
2 GB
160 GB HD
4.36 Lbs.
So I would be giving up speed and better overall specs for weight basically. I dont really care for the tablet feature, but in my opinion, getting a notebook with essentially the same specs in a smaller package is much more attractive.

 

Well besides the battery problem there is no real issue against the R1. Just be aware of the full scale of the problem before you buy. Basically every time the battery charge drops below 30%, a few percent (0.5 to 3% usually) of wear is added to the battery. Doing the math, discharging the battery 33 to 200 times below 30% will kill it completely, and its usability will become severely impaired much earlier than that (e.g., after 17 to 100 discharges below 30%, you will have half charge left).

You can avoid to discharge below 30%, and in that way extend the useful life of the batt to over a year, but you're still limited to 70% of a battery life that isn't stellar in the first place; also, this 70% is a percentage of a full charge that diminishes every time you discharge below 30%.

OK. Now you know. You can make an informed decision

 

Well I think you guys have convinced me, I am probably going to pick the U6E. Quick question, does it support 64 bit Vista or XP?

 

Wasn't trying to convince, just show you every side of the problem. If battery life is not important for you, you can still go for the R1E.

I don't know about 64bit support. Ken says that drivers for new models such as the M50V work equally well for 32 and 64 bit. But I don't know about earlier models such as U6E. You could ask him directly about it (PM).