Couple of Q's on A8js

Heyo everyone,
I have been looking around for a new notebook for a while now and was about to seal the deal with the impressive a8js. However, i came across user's comments with regards with the cosmetics of the notebook. Here are my concerns:

1) The case is very prone to scratching and blemishes, with reasons pointing towards poor application of paints and finishes by Asus. Is this so??

2) The interior (keyboard and touchpad) apparently is really tacky, the keyboard is somewhat flimsy and stiff. The touchpad is really stale, hard on the fingers to move about. Also, the mouse buttons on the touchpad is hard to press, having to apply a fair amount of pressure and the left and right click is hard to press. Is this so??

3) There is a heavy plasticky feel to the a8js. Is this so??

Besides these possible cosmetic flaws, the a8js is perfect in all other aspects to me. So i was wondering if users could share their $0.02 with me so i can decide to seal the deal or continue swimming in the ocean of notebooks. Cosmetics is not a really big issue with me but the functionality with regards to the keyboard and touchpad can be a deal breaker for me. Thanks in advance.

 

1. I have some scratches on the lid. I havn't noticed any blemishes. Stuff gets old with use, whatever...

2. The keyboard, touchpad, and buttons are just fine.

3. This thing looks awsome.

 

The A8Js is great, just that the heavy, plasticky feeling you've heard about is kinda true. Not TOO heavy, but certainly got a cheaper feel than lappies like the W3J and Sony SZ. Keyboard is great, though the touchpad is tacky unless you have a dry finger. Bit of a shame but otherwise.... it's great! (I was testing on the A8Jm)

 

Would there be any way to fix these flaws??

 

My responses:

1. Mine still doesn't have any blemish/scratches as yet (5 mths old)... I can see how scratches would be noticeable though, due to it's silver colour....

2. Keyboard and touchpad is just fine. Touchpad feels draggy at first, and takes a bit of getting used to. After the adjustment period, feels as natural as any touchpad I've used. Buttons are just regular touchpad buttons.... not harder or easier to press than usual.

3. Plasticy feel.... don't really see or feel that way, maybe if you're comparing to W3J, but in comparison to almost any other notebook, it looks and feels sturdy and fine.

 

it has an auto type of finish on the lid. As I get closer to getting one in reality I think Ill look into actually waxing it.

I think it actually looks outstanding. I think the paint used is actually better than an alienware or other boutique brand Im not sure why other people dont think so.

 

ill point out that on the a8 series, the touchpad functioanl quality DRASTICALLY decreases when its dirty. It goes from smooth sliding to like, "cant do a thing with it."

It doesnt feel plastic-y, but its not really a full metal feel. Its....unique. : )

 

1. It's not the hardest plastic, pretty much anything will scratch it. A little tip: removing your laptop from your bag in a plane's overhead bin=bad idea. Even so I have only very few minor scratches and it still looks great.

2. It's not tacky, I don't think the keyboard is flimsy though sometimes a finger gets slightly caught under a key and it gets pried a bit. Mouse buttons are fine but the touchpad is quite a shock initially. Don't panic, in 2 weeks it gets better but honestly it's still worse than alot of other touchpads that I used. And if I wipe it off with a cloth it gets hard to use for some reason.

3. It doesn't feel expensive but it does the job. I wouldn't call it "heavy".

If the above comes off sounding really negative, all I have to say is don't let any of it detract from your decision. They're minor irritations when I think of the carbon fiber/brushed aluminum of a W3J but the benefits of the A8Jm make me happy each time I think about them.

 

What really attracts me to the A8J series laptop is the port placement.
Every port that you would want to have the cable away from you (DVI, VGA, power, 2 USB ports -great for mouse and iPod) are at the very back of the laptop where they should be. The W3J might look better, but I'd hate to have to plug anything more than a mouse into it, and it doesn't even have a DVI connector...

At the end of the day I don't think that looks is more important than functionality.

 

Its not going to be a popular opinion on the asus forum, but I dont believe in investing heavily in the computers chassis.

The computer has a certain amount of time before its basically obsolete. 4 years optimistically.

After that what you have is an email browser. So 10 years of life through bumps and bruises isnt worth a hell of a lot. If it did break after year 6 theres another one just like it at the thrift store for $50

If your w3j had a p2 with 64mb ram would you love its looks? Well it will someday.

Next Ive got to believe that pvc plastic protects a notebook from a drop much better than aluminum or carbon fiber. Those are rigid materials, the glass lcd will shatter more without a bend.
So in all honesty I feel the expensive chassis is bs. I think it is even the opposite of what you may think. The toughest material for the job is real tough plastic like a plumber uses.

Id buy one lol but what you are purchasing with your notebook is technology time. If you spend 2400 on a w2j, and I spend 1400 on an a8j we bought the same thing, a certain amount of time being up to date.

And besides all that, I think it looks better anyway.

 

I have to agree with you stamar -well said! No laptop is going to perform well after a one meter fall onto a hard surface, no matter what it's made out of...

 

Different strokes for different folks.

When I see something like a flacon northwest auto painted notebook I dont feel jealous.
I think what a dimwit. Its not even a status symbol like the car comparison. Only fat nerdy guys even know how much cash you wasted.

 

ROFLMAO!!!

Small "member" = sports car = painted laptop?!

 

A couple questions for A8Js/A8Jm owners.

1) what color are the light indicators? blue/green?

2) what kind of carry bag and mouse came with the A8Js? Backpack kind bag? And laser/wireless mouse?

3) how quiet is it? what kind of temperature does the cpu/hd get?

Thanks.

 

I'm pretty sure its the same as the regular A8 series, since it uses a similiar chassis, so the same LED colours.

The carrying bag could be anything, but if it followed the trend ASUS used before, its a Targus messenger/suitcase bag, customized by Targus for ASUS, and the mouse could be a Customized ASUS logo'ed Logitech mouse.

 

Thanks for the reply.

So what color are the light indicators? Green/blue? And what kind of mouse? corded/wireless?

 

The A8's will have an USB mouse.

I think the indicators are green....

 

That's just wrong. Plastic notebook chassis are made of ABS, which is nothing like PVC. Asus uses carbon fiber as a matrix material with ABS as the resin in their CF parts - my Z33's panels are labeled '10% CF' on the back. This provides additional stength, but it still bends under loading. Aluminum is a ductile material and will deform under impact loading.

Don't make engineering type statements you can't back up with facts.

 

lol

Its not pvc but pvc would be the best substance.

Everything I said was pretty much correct but whatever.

aluminum and carbon fiber are not protective or durable materials, they are light materials.
It is something used to fool people because it projects the image of toughness when it is quite the opposite.

If you dont want to receive this message dont what can I say. Ill actually post whatever comes off the top of my head without anything to back it up thank you.often I dont have time. If thats not good enough for you use the ignore function.
Im not playing quote and contradict with you though I probably wont respond to you again.

most important thing I wanted to relate to a consumer is that an aluminum lcd lid will make your lcd break MORE often. The consumer who has a broken lcd ( like me) might want a strong metal looking lcd lid. However its just the opposite, those break the lcd more they are used to make the lid lighter. bump hits it goes straight to the glass.

you dont want your chassis to be strong you want it to absorb. Thats why the dell inspiron is actually called road worthy and the lattitude is not. Its light. plastic is the best substance for a notebook chassis.

 

Hardness is a material property that engineers use to describe the resistance of a material to plastic (permanent) deformation, usually by penetration but also resistance to bending, scratching, abraision, or cutting.

A hardness property value is the result of a defined testing procedure. The Rockwell Hardness Test is once such procedure, as are the brinell hardness and vickers hardness test.



The summary of hardness values above clearly shows that Aluminum has a greater hardness value, and therefore a greater resistance to scratching/penetration then plastics. Carbon fiber is much more difficult because its results are highly dependent on the type of resin or plastic used to form the composite.

Toughness is a material property defined as the amount of energy a material will absorb after plasticially (permanently) deforming but before fracturing. Typical values of fracture toughness for aluminum and plastic are:

Aluminum Alloy - 36 MPa * m^1/2
Polymers - 1 MPa * m^1/2

 

Stamar is right. Let me put it in a car analogy. Cars now use aluminum frame. Cars back in the 60's used steel. Which is stronger? Aluminum is meant to crumple to absorb impact. Steel doesn't as much. If carbon fiber and aluminum are so strong, why aren't they used in building? (I know that was exaggerated, but think about it.)

Though, what about magnesium? Stamar can you shed some light?

 

In comparison of Aluminum with Steel, sure. In comparison of Aluminum with PVC, no way. Carbon fiber is highly depentant on the EXACT composite being used, so I can't make any conclusion without knowing what the structure of the laminate is and what resin or plastic is being used, you can't make a gross conclusion like that.

Carbon fiber is often not used in building because it is very expensive, and the material properties are not ansiotropic, that is, they no not have the same material properties in all directions. Quality control and inspection of the complex laminates required to use carbon fiber composites in large scale construction projects are also difficult to impossible. This is improving lately, with Boeing fabricating entire fuselage sections of the new 787 airliner in single sections of carbon fiber... However that project resulted in an industry-wide carbon fiber shortage last year as Boeing bought up large amounts of the available supply.

 

From reading the chart, I know what you mean. Yes, by far, aluminum is stronger than plastic, but plastic can absorb impact better. Of course it depends on the grade of aluminum and plastic. Its all relative. Same with carbon fiber. I didn't mean to make a gross conclusion. I guess I should have been more general/clear. I was thinking about (well, again it depends) of the CF they use on car parts mainly trunks,hoods,gas, interior. Since I doubt most manufacturers would use the highest quality CF. But, now that I think about it. CF on cars are actually pretty good, well it depends on the situation.

Either way, if you drop your computer unless its a toughbook which it might survive, it will break.

 

It's funny that you say that since Stamar's whole argument is based on plastic being able to absorb an impact better than aluminum. He said so right here:

If plastic is such a good absorber and stamar said that's what you want in a labtop, the question isn't whether aluminum is used instead of steel in cars it's why all cars aren't plastic? Logically, it's because aluminum can deform (self-sacrifice) to absorb energy while plastic will generally absorb energy up to a point and then fail catastrophicly, ie. crack/shatter.

Besides, as I believe Jumper pointed out, carbon fibre, aluminum, and magnesium generally aren't used as pure materials, but are composites probably plated on top of a plastic inner frame so you're really getting the best of both worlds.

 

I don't expect that in a well-designed laptop the surface parts of the chassis are what is going to be 'absorbing impact' to protect the internal componants. That is the job of whatever rubber standoffs/gel material is inserted between the internal parts and the chassis, or in the case of a Dell laptop, probably regular old rigid plastic. What you want in a well designed external chassis is the ability to resist permanent deformation and scratching/abraision, which is the point in things like aluminum lids and palmrests. Using the plastic shell of a chassis to 'absorb' impact through flex might be a good compromise for $500 machines with no internal isolation to speak of, but is really a bad tradeoff in both respects - it dosn't protect the internal parts as well as carefully designed isolation, and it cracks/deforms/scratches easily.

The carbon fiber which is used on cars is several plies of laminer CF with a cured epoxy resin. Depending on the construction, impact can cause delamination, although it's not as big a problem on cars as it is on things like...oh...airplane wings, or highly pressurized fuel tanks for the cancelled X-33 single-stage-to-orbit vehicle.

Having not cut apart any of my Z33 chassis panels, I don't know what Asus uses, but I imagine it is something more like 10% bulk carbon fiber strands mixed into the ABS to supplement the cross linking of the polymers, providing for additional strength/hardness at a lighter weight then an all ABS product. I did notice when I took the bottom panel off to add RAM that most critical things are 'stood off' by rubber bits.

 

My eyes are getting bad...and my mind is going...I feel old...

 

Pretty good information Jumper. Are you a materials engineer or something close to that?

 

Just Mechanical and Aeronautical, with a leaning towards space. All that is just stuff we cover in our basic classes. Materials Science, Strengths of Materials, Mechanics of Machine Elements, Aircraft Structures, things like that - they start us off very general like that so we have a good understanding of different techniques for modeling and how to work with other engineers with different specializations.

One more year of classes (well, more like 6 months now) and I'm off to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to work on the next Mars Rover. Just accepted my offer yesterday. I've worked there the last two summers on Sample Acqusition/Processing and Handling for the Mars Science Laboratory '09 mission.

One of the big downsides to being an engineer is it takes me forever to buy stuff, since I am so concerned with good design. I drive a Mazda, my laptop in an Asus, and I build my own desktops.

My roommate bought an old original Pentium 75 Toughbook off eBay for kicks one time. The ones with a magnesium shell and a handle like a suitcase. The hard drive was literally encased in 1/4" of gel on all sides - it was a very interesting machine to take apart. I can't imagine what the engineers had for requirements designing it, they may have been even stricter then for our flight hardware for spacecraft

I don't know what it is about Asus, I get the same feeling when I look at an Asus laptop that I do when I look at a Mazda Miata - they are designed to fullfill their intended purpose, nothing more, nothing less, with the kind of care that I don't see in things that come out of North America a lot. It's something Dell and GM just don't understand - I don't know if it's a cultural difference, or just their desire to compete and be the best while we are too self-assured to realize that we are loosing our edge to them.

The new complete redesign of the Maita, Mazda employed the same type of weight shaving programs that are in place for Formula 1 cars and spacecraft - shaving fastener lengths for fractions of a gram, reworking the molding for the rearview mirror to save .4g. They ended up with a car ~1.5 inches longer, 1 inch wider, and .75 inches taller then the older Miata, and weighing only 20lbs more, with a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. Say what you want about the Maita being a 'chick car', it's one of the most reliable and fun to drive cars out there.... I can't wait to get one, I've has such good experience with my '95 Protege. Maybe I'll upgrade to an Asus Ensemble at the same time

 

maybe for more impact resistance, should use some type of rubber material or titanium (flexes).

then again, this may bring up the cost.

laptop bag - it's our best defence.

personally, I would like to see a magnetic attached power cord, to guard against a potential accident. I wonder if it's patented by apple - like their ipod click wheel.