Ordering an Asus tonight! Help me pick please!

I went to 'Worst Buy" today to buy the X83vm, but backed out after I found out you don't get the great Asus warranty at best buy. So I've narrowed it down to these 3:

F81Se-X1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220517

N81Vg-X1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220519

F6VE-X1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220512

-I'm leaning towards the F81Se because of the price, but does this fall under the F8 product line? I've heard there were a lot of problems with that series. Asus' website doesn't even have this model listed.

-I like the N81Vg, but it has an Nvidia card, which I understand had some major manufacturing flaws recently and the cards aren't lasting long. I need this computer to last!

-The F6Ve looks great, but $300 price difference between this and the F81 is pushing me away a little.

PLEASE, if you own, or know a lot about any of these models, please give me your opinion. The #1 thing I'm looking for is quality and reliability. I don't want to be dealing with the little issues (wireless dropping out, headphone jacks not working) I've been reading about with other models.

 

The 120 GT is a much better card than the 4570 in the other two. The 4570 only has a 64-bit memory bus so that limits it drastically.

Which means that my vote goes to the N81Vg.

 

There were lots of structural issues with the F3 series, but the F8 series seems to have held its own very well. The issues with nvidia cards only affect the 8 series and some 9 series card, but the new 1xx series are not affect.

I'd go with the N81 if you don't mind the extra weight/size, else go with the F6Ve. You may also want to look at other more reliable venders such as gentechpc as they provide much better after-sales service than newegg.

 

Of those 3? N81Vg-X1 without a doubt. The N series is built better the GPU is VASTLY superior and with a Nvidia GPU you don't need to worry about using shady third party drivers since Nvidia has official releases for Mobile chipsets now.

Also i Second david on that if you do consider the N81Vg-X1 Gentech would be a much better option then Newegg. Newegg is FANTASTIC for FAST shipping but if you have any problems with the laptop on arrival other then a total DOA there response is basically "Not our problem go call ASUS".



As far as the Nvidia issues affecting 9 series? I have seen ZERO information of that anywhere. Far as i have read it was ONLY the 8000 series and a limited number of them at that. Primarily the 8600 is the worst offender i see (More so the GDDR3 version)

 

The "shady" 3rd party drivers were mostly prereleases or desktop drivers with a modded .inf so that it recognizes the mobile card. Either way, they were pretty much directly from Nvidia, and there was/is nothing "shady" about them.

 

I'm referring to ATI's catalyst and the modded inf's are indeed shady. Out of the two laptops iv'e had with ATI GPU's in both cases it caused severe instability. It's really no different then using a BETA gpu driver it's a mixed bag. Some people have luck with it some do not..I never have had good luck with it and i do not reccomend to anyone to use anything but the officially released and tested drivers. To each his own.

 

Thanks for your suggestions so far! I look forward to more - I'm planning on ordering it in the next 4 hours.

Still leaning towards the F81 a little - with the $100 rebate, it's $200 cheaper than the N81. Graphics power isn't extremely important, as I mostly play older games... AoE, Civ, CounterStrike etc...

I just want to make sure people aren't having a ton of problems with the F81 or N81. I'll probably load Windows 7rc on it as soon as I get it... and mostly use it for web-browsing... with the occasional image editing and audio work(w/external sound card) - And I keep laptops for a long time.. at least 3-4 years (I'm on a 6 year old Dell 5150 right now.. still kickin')

I checked out Gentech.. service is very important.. but their prices are a little high compared to newegg... i really wanted to keep everything under $1k (after ship/tax) if possible.

 

If service is important then get it through Gentech. The two times I had issues with my laptop they fixed it right away.