I received my Asus F9S [Pics Included]

Got my Asus F9S today..had to pick it up fro UPS's drop of center.
First, a few words.
I'd like to thank the NoteBookReview community, as well as the company who sold me the laptop, www.BTOTech.com, for their support, and help in answering my every whim.
I know the F9S is a new notebook that hasn't been out for too long, so I'm taking the opportunity to write a full detailed review within this week. This isn't the review--these are just some thoughts and words that I have from my first impression of the system. The pictures you see here are of low quality, and were taken in a hurry. When I write my full review, you can expect better quality of pictures, and more details.

And now, on to the laptop. These are the pictures:










My first impression: Very nice laptop. Build quality is excellent (plastic). Sound quality is also pretty nice, and sharp. Nice and sleek design as well. Pretty nice of it to have a 128 MB dedicated GPU (and this is an ultraportable laptop!)

Performance: I haven't gotten the chance to fully test it out but so far, it seems that it can nicely handle day to day routines such as e-mail, word processing, net-surfing. The system does slow down sometimes, and RAM is rarely ever below 50%, but that is because of Vista.

That's all I have to say for it right now. This is what I will be covering for my notebook, so please, if you see that I'm missing something, or if you have a question that you feel will not be covered in the topics below, then request it here, and I'll be sure to cover it. (Also, more and better pictures will be included)

Physical Aspects of Notebook
--Build Quality
--Sturdiness
--Rigidity
--Size & Comparisons against other notebooks, and everyday objects (to get a scale size of it)
Performance
--SUPER PI
--PC Mark 05
--3D Mark 05
--3D Mark 06
Battery Life
--On Stand-by
--Stand-by with wireless on, doing word processing
Game Handling
--F.E.A.R.
--Ghost Recon Advance War Fighter
--Quake 4
--Lost Planet
Temperature
--CPU, GPU, HDD after 1 hour of day-to-day activities
--CPU, GPU, HDD during intensive activities (Virus scan, installing software)
--CPU, GPU, HDD gaming
Noise
Monitor [pictures]
--In the dark
--under florescence light
--under sunlight
--compared to other notebooks (Acer Aspire, IBM Lenovo T60, and a traditional LCD monitor)

Points of improvement (what could have been done to make it better)
Final thoughts
Rating
Conclusion

 

Please hold the camera still

It sure looks nice though... you can't go wrong with black! Enjoy the new notebook.

 

You're obviously giddy from excitement.

Thanks for the pictures and your thoughts.

 

Not bad, except I still hate having batteries stick out the back. Personal preference though.

 

I've heard "made for vista laptops" can be difficult to migrate back to XP. Is this the general consensus among new laptop owners? I wouldn't mind knowing the issues of migrating the F9S-B1 back to XP before I buy.

 

i would be interested in knowing how well its works with ubuntu
you can just run it off the cd without installing it
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

i am mainly interested in whether it recognizes all the hardware or not

im definitely interested in those battery life numbers too, but i have a feeling 2 hours will be the result

 

wow is it just me or does the f9s look alot like my v2s except smaller.

 

Can't wait to get my F9S. Ordered it from ZipZoomFly early on Monday and those idiots still have not shipped it out!

 

As I understand it ZZF doesn't actually stock the units, they place an order with the Asus distributor after your purchase and have them ship directly to you. Delays can occur if the disti doesn't have stock on hand or if there is processing time for ZZF's order to go through.....

 

Yep you're right. I called ZipZoomFly and they told me they have to get it from another warehouse. What is bugging me is that I paid for a 2nd day shipping upgrade, which was pretty pointless considering it has almost been a week and it hasn't even shipped.

 

I'm curious about battery life as well and how it compares to my F9Dc-A1. In my case, while reading .pdfs and compiling C# code, I can only manage around 2:20hr in power saver mode with lcd brightness at 40%, wireless & bt off and the cpu undervolted to .675V (default .800V). I'm trying to determine if the abysmal battery life is due to:

1) Vista
2) an AMD cpu
3) the dedicated 8400G video
4) poor power management at the hardware level that can hopefully be resolved with a BIOS update from Asus

 

Is the wireless mini-PCI card accessible from underneath anywhere or is it hidden beneath the keyboard requiring disassembly for an upgrade?

 

All very good questions. Mar2k-- I will go into how easy/hard it is to upgrade any component of the F9S. I will take off the panel from underneath and take pictures to show waht everything is like, under there.
For the battery review, I will go into full detail how it is, and I will make reccomendations if you are buying this notebook soley for batery.
Also, I apologize, but I will not be going into how other OSs perform on this notebook (Ubuntu, Linux, XP, etc.) mainly because I do not want to mess anything up in this "Vista-ready" notebook. But to answer your question about hardware recognition on this notebook with other OS's installrd, the general answer is: No it will not be recognized. Mainly because (as for XP), it needs a new set of drivers to allow the motherboard/CPU to intergrate everything of the notebook (mouse, video, display, etc.) into one harmonious entity. SO before you reformat and install XP on a Vista-machine, be sure to find out and get all the XP drivers that you need.

More to come, a full detailed review, this Saturday. I've already started on parts of the review.

 

OP just needs a camera that has Image Stabilisation.

Very nice notebook, wouldnt call it an ultra portable though!

 

I actually increased the shutter speed of my camera for something that I was taking a picture of a while ago. Forgot to change it back to normal.

 

Omni the pics are bad
But my video is good. have one of my 2 min clip reviews of this on my server but not uploaded to the host yet. will do it next week. check coris sticky

 

you can run ubuntu from a livecd so that it loads everything into memory and doesnt touch the hard drive
im pretty confident all the hardware will work fine in ubuntu though so if you dont test that, its cool

 

it looks great have fun with it :]

 

I will put XP on it first thing when I receive mine. I'm confident that it won't be a problem. I have already found most of the drivers I will need. I will post my results after I've done it.

 

Yeah, let me in on that too.
Vista is def. a reason why this notebook gets so hot a lot of the time (RAM is rarely ever below 50% for me). And I don't doubt that Vista has something to do with the battery life.

I sent a technical inquiry to Asus, regarding both, the battery life and downgrading from Vista to XP. I'll let everyone know what happens with that.

 

Aww the c90s little brother.

 

What does 50% RAM usage have to do with heat? I mean there can be a relation, but most of the time I use that much, and my computer is cool as could be. I think its more an issue of faulty design/bad drivers than RAM usage.

 

I meant that during idle, the RAM is never below 50%

 

Nice, do you have any links you could post up for the drivers not found on the ASUS website, if they are handy. No biggie if not.

 

I will try and compile a list of all the drivers needed starting from a fresh XP SP2 installation. I don't have the notebook yet, so I can't post what is needed. Stay tuned though, it should be arriving by Tuesday.

 

pics with a cellphone? anyway the frame built looks like a barebone type. I'd prefer build of W7 and U3 than this one.

 

can't wait bro

 

Hmm, the F9 uses the same keyboard as the W7....I actually don't see a point for the F9 and W7 coexisting in the Asus lineup, they hit essentially the exact same market, with the exact same specs, and the exact same price....

 

Anybody have news on the U6S. I just read about it (right after ordering F9S) and it looks like a nicer version of the F9S. The specs are almost exactly the same! I guess the only difference is the build with the U6S being more of a business class machine with really good looks and the F9S being the consumer line. The U6S is a little bit smaller than the F9S as well. I don't know if it will be worth the difference in price though. I'm expecting the U6S to sell for about $1800.

When are they going to be available in the US?

 

Omni
Awaiting ur review quite eagerly
thanks

 

My first impressions and XP install guide is up at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187600

 

If the F9s would have a web cam built into the lcd frame I think it would look better. I really don't like web cam sticking out like this. How does it look in real life ra990 ? The camera seems disproportioned from the rest of the laptop from the pics I've seen ?

 

Yea the camera does look odd and sticks out from all angles. I don't like the camera like it is. I would much prefer it in the frame of the lcd, such as in the U3 and U6 laptops. I don't have much need for the revolving camera.

 

I don't really like having a webcam on a notebook, as I rarely ever use those.

Hey, notebook! I sent my review into NBR.com that saturday. They're currently editing it and they will post it onto their front page before the end of this week.
On there, you will find info on battery, temperature, as well as 4 benchmarks and 1 performance test.

 

Great
thanks omni