C90 Reliability?

Hello everyone,
I have been reading about the C90 on these forums for some time now and I think it is exactly what I am looking for. I do have a few concerns however, as I will need it for school in September and I have read about many issues involving crashes. Since some of you have had this notebook for a little while now, I was hoping you could let me know how reliable it is if you are just running it in standard mode.
Thanks.

 

I think the main issues regarding crashes are resulting from what components (RAM, heat from fast CPUs/Disks) are being used and how the OS is setup. If you ensure both are done thoughtfully upfront I don't think you'll have any issues.

I've been using my C90 nightly for the past two weeks and have had some heavy 4+ hour gaming sessions and I haven't had any issues. I have been mindful of the environment of where I use the laptop; not on the carpet, fairly cool room, etc etc..

 

Thanks for the reply, that certainly puts my mind at ease. Can anyone else comment on this?

 

I own one.. I find it very helpful to use cardboard beneath it in a AC'd room.

It seems to blow heat against it and out instead of being
absorbed and blocking the vents, also good for use on lap ^.^
even if it is a heat monster, i got like 2 layers beneath it on
my own makeshift lap-table for it ^.^

No it won't catch on fire.. it doesn't get hot enough for it.

 

Thanks for the helpful tip, but unfortunately my residence room will not have AC. However, from what I understand from reading about the experiences of others, it is not necessarily a heat issue that causes the crashes.

 

no its not heat (unless one of your components is faulty) its mainly unsopported hardware which should be fixed with new bios.

 

Any idea when the new bios will be released?

 

A couple of weeks, end of August should be the latest.

 

Well in that case, I'm sold. I guess I should start shopping around. Thanks for all the help.

 

Welcome to the c90 club!

 

Yep, if you get your configuration right it will definetely be very reliable.
I live in Spain and it is very hot this time of the year and I am not even in an airconditioned room. The C90s DOES get very hot but it handles the heat very well. I even did hour long sessions of overclocking and benchmarking without any crashes. If you have ever heard the 4 fans on full power you know it can handle quite a lot

 

Based on what I've read here, don't bother.

Seriously, this forum was 75% praise and 25% questions/issues before the C90 came out.

Now it's 90% people with C90 problems.

Asus just threw their name down the toilet making this abortion of a model.

That's what happens when the entire objective is to cut costs, not make a quality product. The exact opposite of the Asus notebook design philosophy 2 years ago.

 

Ugh, and I was so set on it's specs too...

 

never had a problem - have seen no one with a problem who purchased from circuitcity.com (the velocity micro rebranded c90s)

ordered from btotech, 90% of orders are from gentech

 

Well, here's my experience on the c90s. I pre-ordered mine from gentech and have been using my c90s for almost a month now. I use my notebook about 8 hours a day, daily and never had a ram compatibility issue, battery issue or any crashing problems (well, there was only ONCE that my c90s took about 5 min to shut down... a lot longer than usual, but again, that only happened once). The only thing that doesn't work is the Turbo Gear hot key on the upper right most corner (which isn't a big deal because you can always open Turbo Gear from your programs menu). For me, this notebook is just superb. The c90s is simply a beauty and one of the best notebooks currently on the market.

 

Thats a pretty harsh statement, the C90 IMO is definitely not a bad product. Its a very end-user configurable platform which ups the variability and range in quality of parts used and final assembly.

I think its a crap-shoot when it comes to getting a custom configured system from any small vendor, by small I'm talking about vendors who deal with a hundred or so systems a month not like DELL, IBM, who deal with thousands and have a different parts acquisition, assembly, and quality control than smaller boutique vendors.

I'm not a "fan-boy" of the C90 but I do confirm that its a stable system, and actually I'm running a little experiment right now. My C90 is sitting in my office and doing Monte Carlo Quantum calculations for a public distributed computing project, the processor has been pegged at 100% for well over 10 hours now and I'm going to let it run for at least 24.... granted there isnt much disk I/O going on but lets see if it blows up

 

hey emproium - does "turbo gear help" start when your computer starts?

you can check via: start:run:msconfig and then startup

if its unchecked, thats why the hotkey is not working (or if its not there entirely)

if both the synaptics driver and the turbo gear help aren't started when your comptuer starts, both buttons wont work

 

Not sure how many people know this but theres a new turbogear version on the asus member site... Im using and have no issues so far now it sits on the tray cant remember if it did that before

 

Hmm.... my turbo gear help does start during startup, but still, the button doesn't work. It's no biggie though.

 

I can play dirt for hours with my c90 in overclocking mode. My c90 is definitely a keeper.

 

Thanks for all of the feedback! I have recently taken over my sister's IBM T41 laptop, which should allow me to get a C90 and not worry about being left without a computer if it turns out to be unreliable.