F3SV-B1 Questions

I am considering purchasing an F3SV-B1, or possibly a G1S. I don't need a lot of GPU power though, so I don't know if I can justify spending $300 more dollars for the G1S. I do have a few questions about the F3SV-B1 that would really help me decide what to do if I knew the answers.

1.) What sort of battery life can I expect from the F3SV-B1? I have heard that the G1S gets around 2 and a half hours, but I know it has a bigger battery. Assuming I only did GPU and CPU intensive things when the thing was plugged in, how much battery life could I expect with non CPU intensive things?

2.) Can the F3SV-B1 boot from a USB flash drive? I had considered putting a small installation of Linux on a 4 gig drive, and booting it up when I felt crazy.

3.) Does Asus make a larger capacity battery that will fit in the F3SV-B1? That seems like the easiest way to increase the battery life.

4.) How is the viewing angle for the screen? I haven't heard this talked about much. It seems like it's a pretty nice display from what I've heard, and the resolution seems great, but I'm always concerned about LCD viewing angles since I'm so used to using a CRT on my desktop.

5.) For those of you who have ordered from gentechpc, how long does it usually take them to add a stick of ram, and ship your order from the time you place the order?

These are about my only concerns. I would hope the build quality is decent, but I don't think I can justify spending all that extra money on the G1S if I'm not going to do any heavy gaming on it. The battery life thing is one of my main concerns though. Thanks to everyone who answers any of these questions.

 

I have just ordered a F3SV-B1 with 4GB ram, Vista Ultimate 64, 1GB Turbo Memory, 7200 Hardrive. This laptop will Rock. I also ordered this from Gentechpc.com and they answered all my questions. I ordered this on Tuesday, and it has already been shipped!!! GentechPC rocks and I have nothing but good things to say about their professionalism, knowledge, and speed of shipping. Why would anyone buy from Dell when you can get I higher quality ASUS for cheaper. Gotta love the cost of memory upgrade as well. I will update when I get the laptop and play with it a bit.

 

wow how much di dyou pay

 

Please write a review.

 

Yeah. Any sort of review would be great. It seems like this model is sort of getting lost in the G1S shuffle. I'm surprised more people aren't all over this one, just because of how good the rest of its specs appear to be. I still don't know if I could pay an extra $300 for the extra graphics processing power.

 

1) I haven't done any tests yet, but it appears to get around 2:30 hours when in battery saving mode. Hopefully I can increase that.

2) Yes. In fact, my F3SV-B1 is booted into Ubuntu right now (albeit I can't get the display to work, so I am using a terminal).

3) I cannot answer this.

4) IMO, the viewing angle is excellent, but I don't have any other laptops to compare it with. I love the screen, it is very sharp and bright.

5) Gentech is amazing. I ordered the laptop thursday morning, about 11:00AM (PST) and it was at my door by 1:00PM on friday. Of course, unless you live in southern california, you can't expect such fast shipping, but processing time was fast. They added a stick of RAM and TurboCache, and it was shipped within 3 hours.

 

just so you know gentech has the g1s for about 200 more than b1, which is pretty cheap

 

That's great that it's only $200 more. I believe that if I got the G1S though, I'd still have to pay another $109 or whatever for the extra gigabyte of memory. I guess this is the same I'd pay to add 2 gigabytes to the F3 though. I still can't get past the looks of the G1, either. I know you can turn those lights off, but they're still there, and I really don't like how much room there is above the LCD. That thick flap of plastic above the screen is really weird looking to me.

Does the turbo memory seem to be helping anything out? My other question about it, I know people were talking about it using the internal express card slot. Is that a purely internal thing, or does it make it so you can't use express cards in the actual external slot too?

I wish I knew about the possibility of a bigger battery. 2.5 hours seems pretty good, but if you're watching videos and things, I can imagine that would be a bit lower. It seems hard to find any information about Asus batteries and what models they'll work in. If anyone has any info on that, it'd be great.

 

The TurboCache card is purely internal. The express slot is empty. The problem though, is that mine doesn't appear to be functioning. I installed the drivers, but in the device manager I get a "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" error.

This is what I am currently trying to fix. Then I will see how much battery life I can get if I underclock.

EDIT: I shouldn't say turbo cache, since that is something different. I meant turbo memory.