Initial Thoughts on my new F3SV-B1

1. Build quality: So far I found the build quality to be solid. The plastic is not really a problem for me, and the hinges are sturdy. Keyboard is solid, without a lot of flex. Only complaint for me is that the touchpad buttons are a bit too stiff (i.e. takes a little more force than I would like to depress the button). I guess better be too stiff than loose.

2. Screen: Screen is bright. Colors seem well represented. You can tweak your setting with the built in Asus software, movie mode, normal, soft, etc. Resolution is 1680x1050 which makes for some small fonts. So if this is a problem for you then don't get this computer. Setting to a lower resolution for business apps, and vista looks terrible.

3. Speed - I added a 2nd gig of RAM. Everything seems to run smoothly, although to be quite honest, I really thought everything would be super fast. Load up time of Vista is longer than I expected (subjective feeling). Other applications load quickly but I really expected me to double click and have the application "instantly" load up. I guess it was a little unrealistic. Although, once applications are open such as word, excel, etc. things are fast. Processor is T7500 with 160gb HD 5400rpm. Haven't run any benchmarks, and don't really have the time or inclination to do so.

4. Battery life: I rarely use my laptop on battery power only. The few times I unplugged it battery life meter indicated a max of 2+ hours of battery time at 100% charged battery. This is with WiFi on, and the rest of the power setting set to Power4Gear max battery. So I would have to say battery life is pretty bad. Again, I don't really use my computer on battery power, I'd say less than 5% of the time, so really no big deal to me. Also never really used the computer just on battery power for more than 15 minutes. I just wanted to see what the battery meter would say.

5. Other observations. DVD drive is really noisy. I installed adobe photoshop, illustrator, etc. and office 2003 off my CD-Roms, and when the drive is spinning, it really shakes the computer. No problems with the install just a comment.

6. I don't game at all so please don't respond asking about FPS in games or 3dmark scores. You can check out the huge thread with the benchmarks comparing g1s to the f3sv. I mainly use my computer as a desktop replacement for financial modeling, word processing, email, internet, some photoshop and video editing, and for some 3d image manipulation and rendering. Don't have any games.

7. Also, intially the webcam and microphone did not work properly for the first 2 days. I must of spent 10 hours wasted trying to resinstall drivers, vista, etc. Finally called tech support, they said call back on monday as others were reporting problem. (this was last week). Anyway, over the weekend I checked the driver page on asus and noted some new drivers were posted for the sound card, webcam and other stuff. Downloaded and installed now everything seems to be working great (except for google desktop search which is not doing a good job at indexing my drive).

8. fingerprint reader works well, but not so sure of its utility. Although, i do have many passwords and could be helpful as I am always clicking on the forgot password link to my various online accounts.

9. Overall, I think of the computers out there this is probably the best bang for your buck, in terms of CPU speed, GPU speed, HD size, and other options.

 

thanks for the post, im looking forward to my new F3SV-A1 (i know its an A1 not a B1, but they are simmilar) and its good to hear that you are mostly satisfied, i just cant wait for mine to get here now, dont know how i will sleep tonight

maybe i will write a review on mine

 

Good post! Rep up! Nice to hear that Asus is making quality down the line.

 

good post,i'm intrested in the b1