Initial thoughts on my W7j

Hi everyone, I have had my W7j for about two days now and I thought I would share my initial impressions. This is my fifth notebook, it is replacing a Sony Vaio S380p.

Initial impressions:

The W7j is a tad lighter than my Sony with its exteneded battery.

Screen the W7j screen is fine no dead/stuck pixels. It is close to the quality of the Sony.

Keyboard: The W7j keyboard will take a little getting used to from my S380p all the keys are slightly smaller but not so that you can not type on them.

Heat, the w7j has slight warmth on both palmrests, but is definately cooler than the Sony. Noise from the Sony fan is annoyingly loud, the W7j fan on the fastets PFG settings is detectable but not loud, a great improvement over the Sony.

Underside heat is also very improved on the W7j compared to my Sony, the Sony will scald you and the W7 is just warm to the tough.

Touchpad:
I do not have any real problem with the W7j touchpad it has been discussed in this forum and honestly, its not a big deal to me there is a very slight difference in friction to move the cursor compared to the sony.

Bloatware and uneccesary software:
Sony loaded their machine with it I see a few thing on the W7j that needed removing: Norton security trial (you need something running to safely hook to the net during registration etc so this may not be considered blotware by some), Mortorola Modem Helper, I never use a modem so I would like to disalbe this. Asus Live Update, I would like to disable this, and manually update when needed. Security platform: have not looked into this yet



DVD drive:
The dvd rw drive is not too noisy, the eject button is a bit small and you need to hit it just right to get it to work.

Activity lights:
The front left of the w7j has six activitiy lights for power, battery, bluetooth etc, I would like them to be slightly brigther. In my office with a east facing window I can barely see the active lights.

Stickers:
The two large stickers on the palmrest are a pain. While one came off glue free, the left sticker left a huge amount of glue on the palmrest, and you have to be very careful getting it off so you do not introduce a small glue ball into the left side of the touch pad or the bottom keys including the control, Fn, and windows key.

Web Cam:
Tried it it works fine and yes for some reason is slightly warm on the lid side

Ram:
I replaced the stock 500mb stick with an OCZ PC4200 Sodimm 1gb, worked fine.

HD: The 100gb drive comes partioned in three segments: Recovery, C:, and D: all Fat32. Used Partition Magic to unify the C and D partitions and change them to NTFS. I had the reseller change the HD to a Hitachi 7200 rpm drive and all they did was clone the original drive so heat may be different for the stock drive (although I doubt it).


Gripes:
Only 1 so far: the Bluetooth and the Lan have both lost connectivity. Unplugging the lan cable and replugging it fixed it after a few tries. My bluetooth mouse which I used for several years with my Sony is seen fine by the W7j and works for a while then mysteriously the device disappears from the Bluetooth setup??? Not sure what to make of this.

Build and overall impression of quality:
The w7j is engineered better than the Sony S380p for heat, fan noise, and the overall layout of usb ports etc.

The keyboard is slightly smaller than the Sony S380p but betterm (IMO) than the SZ model.

Speed: I also put a 2.16 T2600 in my machine and it is easily faster than the S380p which has a dothan 2.13 ghz chip. I will do some benchmarking once I get all my work stuff moved over. If anyone has a suggestion regarding the Bluetooth issue I would appreciate your thoughts and of course I will try and answer your questions.

Hox

 

Thanks for sharing your impressions with us, hox!

I'm not sure why your BT mouse would be doing that, does it get "rerecognized" after it drops out?

From whom did you buy your Asus? Can you describe the quality of the experience you had with the reseller?

 

Thankis for sharing your initial thoughts. Seems it is quite a good notebook. Im just thinking should I wait for Merom or not ?!?! hmm... how long do u think the W7J will last us if we buy now ?

 

I purchased it from Portable one, it was a special order they do not normally stock the w7j. They did an excellent job in set up and communicating with me before, during, and after the purchase.

 

Asim2002, if you get a W7J right now, it should serve you well for at least a few years, depending on how you treat it.

Vista isn't coming out for a little while yet, and you won't see Service Pack 1 for an even longer time. By the time that 64-bit will be fully implemented in the computing world, your warranty will have likely run out, and then you can try updating your W7J to a Merom chip if you so desire.

@Hox- Interesting to know that P1 would set up a special order like that. Pretty cool! Any luck with the mouse yet? Does it reappear in your Bluetooth manager after it disappears? Have you tried contacting PortableOne about the issue? They have a reputation for being very prompt with customer support.

 

As to the BT mouse, it is a thermaltake BT500 mouse. The BT hardware search finds it and I can use it then after doing some lengthy file transfers, the mouse will not work and when I open the BT control it is no longer listed. I do not recall having to save the found intrument once the BT device search finds it and you set it up so its a mystery?

 

It could be a crappy mouse as well, I have a logitech cordless presenter which is also a mouse so I will see if similar things happen with it.

I am still getting used to the notebook, I have to find the never options in p4g to prevent the machine from hibernating.

hox

 

How much did the entire setup cost u hox

 

@asim2002: I supplied the processor which I believe runs now around $425, then I had P1 ugrade the hd and put my processor in, I also purchased a 9cell battery, and a 3yr warranty from P1 total: $1737 + $425 for the processor.

 

hmm.. thanks hox...

ewiz just ran out of stock on the W7J's as well... any idea how I can order one on portable one ??? Im hoping I can get it for 1350 from P1 as well... how much was the basic book for there ?

It would help if you just gave a breakup of the amounts you paid for the laptop, the hd, the 9-cell battery (which I also thought was not available) and the warranty

 

one more thing hox.... whats the total ram on your laptop now .. is it 1.5 gb??

 

He's not alone in experiencing periodic Bluetooth dropouts. I'm using a Microsoft bluetooth Intellimouse, which worked perfectly with my previous machine's internal bluetooth.

Here, it works perfectly for a while... then inexplicibly the device can still be seen, but will simply not connect. It has just "dropped connection" after reboots, and in the middle of use. You have to go back through the setup wizard, re-detect the device, then it will work again. Hopefully, its just a driver issue.

Haven't experienced any LAN dropouts, which I've gotten plenty of use out of since the Intel 3945 WLAN card is so flakey. You'd figure after 2 generations of poor compatibility with common wireless router chipsets, that Intel would get on the ball and "fix the glitch".

 

how much of a weight difference is the 9 cell to the normal 6 cell? i'd like the added time for portability, and its always nice to have a spare battery.

 

18.75 lbs.

 

Yup, that's about right.

It's actually more like .3 lbs. or so. Nothing terribly significant.

 

if it was 18 even i would have no qualms with it, but that extra .75 i couldnt take. how much are they/where can i get them from?

 

I'm pretty sure there's limited/no availibility of the 9-cell W7J battery in the US at this point, but it should be coming out soon. It will stick out a little in the back, but won't add more than a fraction of a pound. 9-cells for similar Asus notebooks sell for over $100.

 

Better start juicing.

 

thats the thing! i already am. i just grew a beard in like 15 minutes. it rules

 

Hahah! Nice.

 

Hey, are you guys keeping that Infineon Security Platform software? I don't really know what it is or why I would need it.

 

I don't bother installing that at all... just the driver so there aren't any "?'s" in the device manager. I don't believe you can even use it whether the software is installed or not, since it has to be enabled in the bios, and Asus didn't make the option available as far as I can see.

You can pretty much dump everything they installed, though I keep Power4Gear and Wireless Console 2, since they actually provide somewhat useful functions.

 

yeah i uninstalled that.

i kept P4G, wireless console 2, the intel wireless software thing, ermm thats about it. well and like the asus splendid, update and stuff,but the are set to manual so they aren't on unless i need tem.

 

thanks for the input!

 

What kind of battery life are you getting with the 9 cell?

 

I am waiting on the 9 cell battery. It will drop ship from the manufacturer (asus) when it is available. As for the ram yes I am running at 1.5 gb now.

 

I'm getting readings of 1350mW draw which translates to over 3 hours after optimizing...brightness on second level, cpu kept at 1ghz, unclock the 7400 to 100mhz gpu and 250mhz memory clock.