Buy A8Ja/m or W3J from New Zealand?

Long time lurker first time poster.

After saving up my pennies, have been told the A8Ja is unavailable/discontinued here in NZ. Been offered W6Ja or A8Jc as replacement, but I've got stuck on wanting a 14" with x1600 or Go7600 for a portable gamer to last me a couple of years. The A8Jm & W3J never made it here afaik.

I've checked out milestone and portableone, after much reading on the forums. But am wondering if I can buy somewhere closer to NZ and have something shipped in. The US$ difference and shipping costs are bad from here, and NA w/o bluetooth seems a pity.

Or am I being too picky holding out for 256mb dedicated gfx, or too lazy to pick-up a 15.1/15.4" screen? I travel by air every week, and my current lugtop bums me out.

Thanks for any suggestions for alternative kit, or where to buy.

 

I think there are a couple of Oz resellers on Google with A8Jm/A8Ja available.. maybe from them since it's closer...

 

Thanks for that, haven't had much luck with Aussies - they won't sell/ship to NZ. Can possibly get a delivery to a mate in OZ and forward on, but was wondering if anyone knew somewhere that did international delveries as a matter of course.

 

I havn't seen those models here in NZ either. Only seen 17" ones with X1600 GPU's.

 

The A8Ja was listed on all the usual reseller sites, but by the time I'd done a thorough job of figuring out I did indeed deserve it they weren't available.

I assume it did sell here, but maybe it never did ?!!?

 

How much is a ticket to Aussie from NZ.. maybe you could fly there on occassion and get it ? Might be cheaper than getting it sent from US and paying any import duties/tax ?

 

There's a thought. I am at a conference Sydney end of September so if all else fails between now and then. You'd recommend your A8Jm spec?

 

You should try Ascent, from memory I think they are based in Wellington I have actually been to their premisis last year when I was applying for a new visa, I had a look ina few other shops around wellington but the Asus models I found were older.

http://www.ascent.co.nz/Category.aspx?majorcatID=43

Scroll down, they have A6, A7, Lambo, A3, W2 & W5.

But if they sell Asus you could always email them and see if they could get more models??? worth a try.

Hey found another site

http://www.aquilatech.co.nz/index2.htm

and

http://www.tradepc.co.nz/prodtype.asp?s=aho56u6428&strParents=9869&CAT_ID=9870&numRecordPosition=1

 

dave: Definitely, I haven't had any problems with the A8Jm so far..... or if you can find it in and spare some cash for it, the W3J is one heck of a nice machine...

 

Thanks NZwaverider, I've done a pretty good ring around resellers nationwide trying to track down an x1600/Go7600 equipped 14", they'll list them on their site but can't get them through from Asus NZ.

I was hoping to get a lead on importing one myself, say from Taiwan or somewhere close to manufacture rather than go through the US to pay more for something without bluetooth.

Re: the W3J, i've spent a lot of time on this forum figuring out models, but there is only so far you can go without getting to see something in the flesh. The A8J whatever looks better in photos imho, and has DVI, is the thing about the W3J the main processor perfromance and hot-swappable drive bay?

I realise thread is of limited interest to anyone but myself, and I'm developing a serious Asus-interest-disorder, so thanks for the comments and time taken!

Cheers, Dave

 

The thing about W3J is mainly the better quality materials (carbon fibre chasis, aluminium brushed lid etc) & looks + modular bay...

Performance wise they should be similar (though the newer W3J versions does come with T2500 vs T2400 in A8 series)....

The A8 series has more USB ports (5 vs 3), a bit more screen res (1280x800 vs 1280x768), webcam and DVI compared to the W3J...

 

If you are going to a conference in Sydney, I would recommend trying to hook one up when you go then, from what I have heard on the forum here Australia would be better stocked, although expensive.

Over the last 2 years I have looked for the W3 in the following countries: Thailand (had models with good processors) , Dubai (which was useless, old models and XP home & shifty sales people), NZ (not a very good selection) UK (average spec and expensive).

To be honest the best place I have found is here in the USA, the price is the best I have seen and the spec is good, but buying from Asus is not easy.

I supose it depends what you want to use it for, I got the W3J becuase of the hot swappable optical bay, (I run a second HDD), good reviews (of previous W3V's), good graphics card, HD Intel Audio, & good construction (the construction of W3 models is highr than the A8, to be honest I have seen the A8 chassis and in my opinion it is ordinary, where the W3 is very sharp, nice looking, however I also think the V6 is a superb design, and other top looking models being the W2 and W1 Carbon fibre model.

I know it is hard because you cannot see them, but if you were going on looks I am sure you would pick the W3 over A8.

 

the A8JM's 7600 512mb seems to perform slightly better over the x1600 with 256mb in some tests - at 14" its amazing how much power and performance they pack into such a small shell.

overall my recommendation is to try and get your hands on this machine in any way you can. its a pity NZ asus suppliers are pretty ignorant thinking people would like big clunky 15-17" laptops as their target market, favoring the a6j and a7j cousins over this one. the closest you could ever get for a 14" screen is the A8JC which does no justice. you'd be hard pressed to even find the A8JA in the NZ market

 

hey thanks for that. I'm currently looking at the A8Jm vs W3J to get from US. I've looked hard for an A8Ja here, but no luck.

To my mind the 14" with gaming power is the killer package, and Asus would own it. I can't understand why its not better served here. I guess as you say they're pushing the bigger screens.

You seem to rate the A8Jm over anything else, can you tell me why that is - the power of the Go7600? The DVi, USBs and slightly bigger keyboard is leaning me towards it, altho everyone seems to pump the w3j big time on the boards?

Thx, Dave.

 

IMO, the reason it "seems" that everyone is pumping up the W3J more, is that it's got more US exposure. The A8Jm was never "officially" released in the US, it was only released as a Canadian model. Even though it can be had now in the US, I think it still lacks the recognition by lots of ppl and also resellers since it's not a model they support...

 

Interesting, thanks for the history behind the story. At an extra NZ$600 the W3J would be 25% more expensive than the A8Jm, so I feel like it should be at least 25% better! Which at this far remove I suspect it is not.

 

Well, in terms of performance and features, the A8Jm and W3J should be comparable, where the W3J should be more expensive is the superior material quality used.

 

maybe other people's needs are different but my experience from owning numerous laptops is you can never have too many usb ports which the W3J is lacking. Dell and HP are too focused on having 17" gaming machines which in my view, is totally defeats the whole purpose of owning a laptop. Granted its easier to fit the components in but having a 2.4kg machine that performs better than most office desktops out there today is my view of mobility and performance.

many suppliers seem to think that gaming heads go for big screen notebooks but thats the realm of alienware and for LAN parties.

although it lacks bluetooth and if you arent concerned of looks (quite frankly, no asus owner should be considering what fujitsu and samsung churn out with) you cant make a wrong decision with going with the A8JM - sadly we'd probably see neither W3J or any A8JA/A8JM 's in the NZ market

 

Well in terms of perfornamce they are probabaly quite similar.

Although A8 has over the W3J:
DVI
4 USB
web cam

and the W3 has:
5400rpm 100gb HDD
Hot swappable muiltbay so you can run a second HDD and second batery

I have seen both chassis and I suspect a lot of the extra $600 would be paying for the nicer chassis design and material finish of the W3J, in my opinion the A8 chassis is quite ordinary, I have actually seen that chassis on other branded laptops as well.

So it really depends on which features you prefer and then do you really care what the laptop looks like?

 

NZ: The A8Jm also has 5400 rpm HD.... and 5 USB ports, not 4

 

Can anyone tell me whether the weight saving is significant swapping out the W3J drive for the empty bay? Does it give good 'carry' - I know the new gen designs with the main battery along the hinge/spine are much easier to heft in one hand.

The slightly more compact chassis and weight (W3J) is attractive, as I will take it on the road a couple of times a week and i do hate the weight of my current old timer. Same with the build quality, as bits are falling off my old plastic compaq - although i'd treat something new with a bit more love.

To be honest I don't think battery life will be a biggie, as long as I can finish a DVD, but then I may be naive in saying that - never had good battery before!.

At work whatever it is will be plugged into a 19" lcd and external keyboard. But i do want to be able to take it home and game without the external screen/keyboard 1-2 week, and the road trips always involve showing off in front of clients. One of whom has actually laughed at my old compaq! He has an SZ. So yes, the looks are superficially important but i think both the A8J- and W3J meet the minimum standard required.

Anyway, looking at the supply issues/discussion in other threads, the discussion may be moot. I would hate to fall back on an A8Jc and end up hating it for mediorce game performance.

Again, thanks for your comments everyone, it is helping me get things clear in my head.

 

Sorry I was looking at a UK model A8Jc, it is slightly different and their detail spec was wrong.... 5 USB ports thats prety dam good.

http://www.asuslaptop.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=Asus_Laptop_A8Jc-H002H

well it looks like the A8 has more features than the W3, but I still prefer the design of the W3 and the multibay, but if you save $600 you could buy a new HDD and plump for more ram could be a great option.

 

You deffinately have to get the W3J if you want to show it off, the brushed aluminium lid is sweet, and it has much cleaner and sharper lines, if you want to see any close up pictures of the W3J let me know.

interms of weight, taking the DVD drive out is minimal but I am sure would be noticable after carying for some time, I don't have scales so can't weigh it?

what are we comparing to what is the weight of your current laptop?

 

i seriously hope people arent evaluating the W3J over A8JM's over the rpm of the hd - likewise with bluetooth, its possible to get mini pci Wireless LAN + Bluetooth but its only Wireless B/G (and not A).

but i'd definitely agree the W3J's brushed metal looks very good

 

The frustrating thing is the A8Ja, which was supposed to be available here (but couldn't be got for love nor money), and the A8Jm as I understand it in Australia, both ship with the bluetooth onboard. Its only in North America the Bt is left out.

I did get distracted by numerous threads discussing the nitty gritty detail of drive RPM, but realistically neither that nor in fact Bluetooth are going to make any difference to my day-to-day computing.

I suspect I should be paying more attention to the DVI, but then again my non-DVI LCD out of my current mahcine looks better than anything I've had so I can't imagine/know how much better the go7600 thru DVI will be than the x1600 thru standard vga plug.

I'm hearing you on the W3J brushed aluminium and carbon etc, but have seen the basic A8 chassis in store here and it wouldn't embarass me

 

Well if you have seen and like the A8 chassis, that would be a good buy it has some good features.

I am a bit biased because I have a W3J, but I do like the multibay, I have a 160gb seagate drive as my main and I have a second 100gb seagate drive (which prety much is installed in the multibay most of the time) effectively giving me 260gb of storage, and I also use photoshop, so has the added advantage of using the second drive as a dedicated scratch disk. and it is prety cool telling people it has twin HDDS in this small chassis

 

Got a A8Jm in OZ....$2499.

A/B/G, BlueTooth, + The rest.... Asus Case and Mouse 2yr Wnty.

Its very nice, slick silver finish all over, not as nice as W or Sony SZ, but still nice.

Dont' expect to work for over 3hrs, also, its very light at just over 2kgs. Have no problem lugging it with powersupply but, perhaps to heavy to put in a Brief case.

Keyboard kicks arse all over any Sony keyboard I've tried.

Personally I couldn't justify the extra $500 for W3j with only 512mb ram, 80gig Hdd, and without all the USB and connectivity.

 

I'd be tempted by the sony if it had the x1600 or go7600, and it wasn't so expensive I destroyed my last vaio, but that was a while back - are they sturdier now?

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up on Aussie A8Jm, can you recommend a supplier. I'm still stuck in that they won't ship to NZ, but can posbly get a Oz delivery fwd'd to me here.

I have seen ProPortable's comments in another thread (haven't figured out linking yet) about the w3j lasting due to its quality, and I am reasonably rough on my toys, so that still is a factor.

Should I also figure the go7600 doesn't have the grain issues mentioned with regard to the x1600, or is that real screen queen stuff and the normal person won't see the problem?

 

The Sony SZ is a very nice laptop, but for some crazy reason they are rediculiously expensive in NZ, I was looking for a laptop last year when I went back to NZ for visa renewal and I was comparing prices, for the same spec a sony was at least 30% more expensive than in the UK! and factor in that the US prices are about 20-25% cheaper than in the UK, if I were you I would check out importing from Proportable although I dont know how you woud get on with importing duties?

And in regards to the grainy issue, i have my desktop set to windows classic, to increase performance and there is a slight grainyness in the flat grey parts (if you look up at the screen) otherwise if you are looking straight on or watching DVD's or editing / viewing photos, the screen looks surperb.

I thought it had a problem, but my mate who owns a new Mac BP said it looked fine and everyone else that has seen this laptop comments on how nice the screen is. I guess im just picky!

 

the newer sonys still value looks and lightness above sturdiness so thats a no (talking about 14" and below here)

concerning the graininess..it really depends how anal you are..i recently noticed it but it doesn't bug me in the least..assuming you're normal it shouldnt bother you

 

How does the battery life of the A8Jm compare to the W3J's?

I've been reading a lot of posts here and there is quite a bit of discrepancy between reported A8Jm battery durations. Some users have reported battery life similar (perhaps slightly shorter than) W3J battery life, while others have reported the A8Jm to hit 3.5 hours fairly easily.

Also, how do the two models compare in terms of heat production?

 

Honestly I get 3.15 hrs main battery and 2hrs optical bay battery on my W3J

 

A8Jm 3.5 hours easy? I doubt that... .... I've never been able to hit that mark, not even with wifi off.... maybe if someone used the lowest available brightness and do limited activity... but with wifi on, acceptable brightness and regular work, 2 hrs 45 mins seems the limit for me... dunno maybe I got a bad battery or something...

In terms of heat, I think Milestone posted a comparison somewhere either here or on NBF and found that in both idle and load cases, the W3J is a few degrees higher than the A8Jm...