New Asus u50 w/ core i3 pics

Hey everyone. I just stopped by best buy today and they had the new u50f-rbbag05. It is not on the website yet
Based on what I could tell, battery life will be around 4 hours standard use, 5 hrs max. You can see that the i3 shows as quad core too.

Retail price is 629.99

You can see them on flikr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46319003@N05/

 

what GPU does it have?

 

The gpu is an intel hd.

 

lol? I think that win7 index is off haha. 1.0 for win7 graphics but 5.1 for gaming graphics?

 

Yeah, I know lol.

 

Isnt the i3 dual core, but w/ hyperthreading?

 

Yes. Which is why it shows as quad core.

 

not bad, the 6.2 is just a tad lower than my 6.4 score with a 2.8Ghz... are i3 really that good? or does the hyperthreading just help that much?

 

I'd imagine the difference will be nothing revolutionary, but more than noticeable.

Consider, the i7 outperforms the core 2 quads substantially. However, there are still very few benchmarks out.

I will say that the windows rating was much higher than the core 2 duo nearby at the store.

 

Wow they actually let you take pictures they never do that much.

 

you mean you've tried and they've told you to stop?

 

Actually they usually will at some point tell you that you can't take pictures, which personally I don't understand why not.

 

Well you can always take pics. The worst they can do is throw you out.

 

Hey Argyle! I was just at best buy looking at the U50F - did you see anything about it that might be a reason not to get it? It seems to have the main specs I'm looking for, but I'm not at all savvy and would love your opinion.
Thanks!

 

If you're happy with the battery life, it is a good buy. My complaint, which applies to every asus u series I have tried, is that there is substantial keyboard flex. This has always bothered me, but may not bother others.

Best Buy also has a similarly priced dell with an i3 which seems to have better build quality, though I did not check the battery life. Likewise, hp has now released their new dv4 series with an i3 and twelve cell battery which may be what I end up buying when I get a computer here in the next few weeks.

 

What's the battery life? They didn't even have any specs up when I was there and it's nowhere on line except for your post. (at least it wasn't earlier). Thanks!! Can I ask you something else - have you seen this one? ASUS K50IJ-X8 - amazon has it for $550 after rebate, seems really good I just don't know if it's missing anything. Ok one more question if you know - is there much of a difference between the i3's vs the core 2 duos?

I'm hoping keyboard flex wouldn't bother me, maybe I'd get used to it...

 

yes, i saw a bencmark between a c2d 2.2ghz and an i5 2.2ghz and the i5 is 40% faster on the benchmarks, maybe it is because of the hyperthreading tech that is used in the core cpu's.

 

wow I just bought one of these for my mother and my heart is broken. Drove an extra 50 minutes to the only best buy I could find with this in stock and the f***ing touch pad is very broken. It skips around EVERYWHERE and clicks itself and all kinds of crazy stuff without even being touched it's like magic. Can't believe I need to make the drive again and return this unusable machine. Don't buy it. Asus used to be my favorite brand but I guess they dropped quality control entirely.

EDIT: this might be a drivers problem I put it to sleep and opened the laptop again and the mouse is working fine...

 

go to elan driver and configure it from there, set sensitivity to maximum.

 

the sensitivity was too high.. it would sense my fingers when i was hovering over the pad without even touching... pretty ridiculous but then it started to work fine. i tested it out with a few things but i'm going to end up returning this computer. i hooked it up to my HDTV via hdmi and when i play 720p mkv files from the hard drive, the picture skips quite a bit. processor load isnt even near 100%, but the screen keeps skipping and i cant figure out why. it works fine on my (asus) m50sv so at this point i think i just need a laptop with a video card :/
i don't know if this is a failure of the u50f or me (although i'm decent with computers) but potential buyers should be aware.

p.s. i played with the touchpad settings quite a bit and the multitouch is kind of overrated... while it does work in some instances, your fingers need to be the proper distance apart (too much and it thinks you want to zoom, too little and it only senses it as one giant finger) to scroll and even then it doesnt work every time. also couldn't get a few of the gestures like window switch, my computer, or magnifying glass to work once on my machine, although the mag. glass did come up once when i was trying to scroll (??). might take a lot of getting used to or just getting a mouse.

 

Well I went for it and got it. Had to return it next day b/c graphics card didn't work. Best Buy gave me a new one plus I got free back-up discs b/c I complained a bit.

The touch pad was SUPER sensitive but I took the advice above and adjusted it, hopefully that will help. So far it definitely seems better though I just did it 2 minutes ago. Special functions of the touch pad seem pretty cool so far, though forward and backward a web page don't seem to work, maybe with new touchpad settings...

Otherwise it seems fine so far...only a few hours of use.

OH the battery life is a lame 3 hours with ONLY antivirus and OS running. Sales guy told me 4.5. Very disapointing since I passed up the Toshiba L505 6980 (7 hrs battery life though maybe that means 4?) to get this one.

 

any feedback from owners of this unit? any issues? have you re-configured the machine (updated drivers, removed bloatware, etc.)?

thanks.

 

Hi there,
I wrote a review on Best Buy's site - http://tinyurl.com/ykfjzsc.
I had Best Buy do an "Optimization", haven't updated any drivers that I know of (not really sure what that means)

 

alvord13 -

are you still having the keyboard hesitation issue? and tell me more about the "graphics card blew out" -- what were the symtoms (dead display?)?

thanks

 

I'm a computer consultant and my computer died and I had to have something fast so I bought this without much research. I bought it because it was a great spec for the price. It's been a nightmare. I've had it about 3 weeks and I would return it if could. When typing the cursor will jump around the screen and you won't be typing where you thought you were. In fact you will often erase what you typed and not realize it. Also I've experienced 2 times now when it has come out of hibernation that the time and date will be off by YEARS. I've found some information around the net that I'm not the only one with these problems but no one seems to have a solution. I haven't had time to call Asus. I've reinstalled, uninstalled, danced around the chair and stood on my head trying different drivers to see if the cursor will quit jumping. The best drivers I found are from Elan that are dated 2006. Oh this is running Win 7 pro, clean install. I'll see if pushing the sensitivity to max helps. Now what do I do about the clock and date? It happened again yesterday.

 

Hey, just saw your question...

I think I had the hesitation only once more, but on a milder scale - it didn't last as long, and it stopped without needing to reboot. And again, only once.
The graphics issue - The day after I bought it I turned the computer on and got a red 'warm-up' screen, and then once the desktop came up there were weird red blocks, as if 1 or 2 colors weren't working, and were replaced with red. That's all I can say about it - everything else seemed to work.

 

teamssc,

I have experienced the cursor jump and the date/time change as well. Plus one more issue.

Cursor jump -- I discovered that the active typing cursor will jump to the mouse cursor location on its own. I have the touchpad disabled and conducted a test to make sure my palms or fingers were not close to the touchpad and the cursor still jumped to the last position of the mouse cursor while typing. This does not happen all of the time, but a few times is enough.

Date/Time jumps -- I have found the date and time to off three times, twice the date was set back to Nov 2009 and once just the time was off.

Screen issues coming out of hibernation -- three times the screen has garbled graphics coming out of hibernation. It has ~1 inch alternating veritcal bands that look like they contain very tiny type running the full lenght of the screen. Unplugging the AC adaptor appears to clear this issue.

If you are anyone else has insight or better yet solutions to these issues, I'd appreciate a response.

******************* update************
so I did some more testing on the cursor jump issue. turns out that hitting fn f9 keys was not actually disabling the touchpad. The touchpad icon in the tray had a red x in the smartpad area of the icon which I took to mean it was disabled, but I could still use the touchpad. After re-booting, the fn f9 keys worked and it turns out the real disabled icon is a red circle with a slash through it. Therefore, I now think there was an issue with the touch pad disable or drivers. I just typed about 1000 words and no jump occurred. Phew. One issue down I hope. For the $$$, I'm still happy with my purchase, not ecstatic, but happy.

 

Anyone here care to give updates to their purchases? I'm thinking about purchasing this laptop for myself soon.

 

Same here. Have you guys updated all the available drivers to see if any of the problems were fixed?

 

no I haven't done anything to fix the issues because
1) the date jump has not happened since I posted (knock on wood)
2) the screen display issue coming out of hibernation is resolved by unplugging and plugging in the AC adaptor. (and its only happened ~2 more times).

So given the constant use of the laptop and the low occurrence, I'm not inclined to updating the drivers... yet.

 

Got the same Laptop at BestBuy, love it so far but the time does reset radommly. Sent an email to ASUS and some tech send me a new BIOS. Do not update your BIOS to U50FF1.203 it will crash Windows 7 during install and then when Windows restarts it shows that copy of WIndows is not Genuine anymore. When I stated that to the ASUS tech they simply sent me an email (see below).

For this problem, would you please send your laptop in?
There is something wrong when pre-installed.Sorry for the inconvenience. Please fill-out the online form to request a RMA/Purchase order. eSupport Case Submittal Form (USA or Canada Customers ONLY)
This will auto generate a 6 digit service number. You can response to this call with the service number that was provided, from there we'll start the RMA/Purchase process.
Fill out this form before calling. Please provide your Product S/N and the service number when you call in. The telephone number is 1-888-678-3688 or 510-739-3777 option 2 then 3 for Notebook Technical Support. Monday thru Friday 7:30 AM to 6 PM Pst.

Needless to say I was furios and sending it back to ASUS wasn't going to happen. Thankfully my company has a MS Enterprise Agreement and I was able to resolve the issue with Microsoft.