Is the W7J worth buying?

After spending a couple months researching notebooks and concluding that the Asus W7J would be the right one for me, I want to make sure I'm making a good decision.

I've read about issues with the screen but otherwise the complaints don't seem to bad at all. So would I be making a good choice if I bought one this week? It seems like a perfect laptop as I don't do much gaming and would definitely appreciate the portability, speed and quality.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

 

I think you answered your own question. No doubt is it a great laptop, but it's a great pick for you for the reasons you've stated.

 

Thanks for the reply. So the screen issue isn't something that would stop someone from buying it?

 

W7J is a perfect one for his category, perfect quality and price, I don't see a screen issue of it, if any, that is only a rare case.

 

I was in the same boat as you e36. Not much gaming, but wanted something solid that could travel with me.

Bought my w7j from milestone last week, and it's getting here tomorrow. Got an extended battery too in case I need it. I'm pretty excited

 

If you've got the money, you should pull the trigger. I would, but I haven't figured out my net balance after housing costs yet.

 

Yeah, my W7J is great, and I have no issues with the screen at all. My only very minor complaints would be about the material of the touchpad (it gets sticky sometimes) and the occasional warmth in the palm rest area. (I have a 7200rpm Seagate, so I'm not sure what the heat would be like with a 5400rpm drive.)

Other than that, it's just about perfect for my needs! The size, weight, speed, screen, keyboard, and build quality are all excellent. (The somewhat short battery life doesn't bother me because I'm usually around an outlet.)

 

Any thoughts on it so far?

 

Thanks for the reply! How are the performance aspects and would you consider this too small by any means?

 

Absoloutely love it. I ordered it without seeing it in person, and it really looks far better than i could've imagined. I notice no problem at all with the screen, even at the lower brightness settings (I'm one of those people that likes the brightness up higher anyways). With brightness at 86%, i get around 3 hours of battery life, depending on what im doing. Going to pick up my 9 cell tomorrow, and I figure that'll tack on an extra 1:30 at least.

The only downside is the heat. It isnt as though this thing gets hot, but it'll get warm even when you aren't doing a whole lot. I've only installed FF7 and Winning Eleven 9, and havent really played anything yet, so I cant give a good update on what happens under stress. I'll let you know when I do.

One last thing, if you can, order from Danny @ milestonepc. Treated me very well, especially since I had a pretty serious time constraint as to the delivery of this baby. I wish I could've gotten a case included, but that's nothing a trip to best buy / staples can't fix.

If your concerns are portability, style, and enough power to run most of the games out there / vista, you should go for it. I'll post more once I get a chance to really push this to its limits.

 

Thanks for the update.

I will be ordering from Danny @ Milestone, but they person I talked to there wouldn't fax me a quote which I found odd. I need to send it in so the company will pay for it and they need a quote first. Hopefully they accept a printed off version.

I doubt I'll be gaming at all, but I like the option of having a small graphics card. Did you have any issues with the CD rom not working for DVD's or making any sounds when loading?


On a side note, I phoned Asus today and left a message. They didn't return my call and I have to say that's poor customer service. I wanted to ask them about the extended warranty and what the warranty covers in general.

 

Uh..you might want to allow more than a day to hear back...

 

I've used the drive on both a CD and a DVD, and can report no problems. It'll spin up pretty fast, you can feel it if you pick the notebook up. Obviously that is something you probably shouldn't do . But no strange noises or problems.

 

They still haven't called back actually.

 

Another couple months from now and you'll be able to get the W7J with the Merom processor. I have been researching for about 6 months and the only reason I didn't buy the W7J already was Merom!

 

What exactly is the Merom processor and is the current platform upgradeable to it?

 

In a nutshell, the Merom processor is the 64bit version of Yonah (the current cpu available in the W7J). 64bit will allow you to take full advantage of the features available on Vista and will certainly show significant performance increases for the newer 64bit programing. However, Merom however is much more than a simple 32 to 64bit upgrade. The new microarchitecture allows certain portions of the chip to shut down thus saving power when under minimal loads. This translates into a small power savings. The real show of strength has been in the benchmarks! Beating the old Core Duo's and AMD's 64x2 hands down, you can expect a 10-20% increase in processing power across the board. The exceptions are few and far between with some programs running at equal speeds with both Yonah and Merom.

Intell has already announced that Merom will cost the same as Yonah for the same speed. While you can upgrade to Merom at a later date (or now through certain resellers), it would void your global warranty and would not recover much of the funds selling your Yonah CPU.

What it comes down to is approximately 2months. If you need the notebook now and can't afford to wait, then certainly buy now. If you can wait, then you will certainly be rewarded. In fact, purchasing it through MilestonePC with the group buy will cost you less than if you bought a Yonah system now.

 

That sounds awesome. Thanks for the info. I think I'm just going to go for the W7J right now, as it should be plenty fast for me.