Planning on preordering a V2S-A1, but...

...I have some concerns.

I have been following this forum off and on for the past 6 months (first post btw). The discussions here have convinced me that ASUS is the way to go. At one point in time I was about to buy W3J, but I saw the santa rosa speculation and decided to wait in hopes of a refresh to the W3. Well it appears that I missed out since the W3J is no more. So that leads me back to the V2S, since it appears to be the W3J's successor.

I have never been comfortable buying preordering anything, especially something that is near $2k. The reason I'm thinking of preordering is for a possible discount and I would like a new laptop for the vacation I'm taking at the end of the month (currently without laptop).

So finally to my questions.

1. After reading reviews of the V2JE, the battery life has me greatly concerned. Does anyone have any speculation as to whether this will be improved for the V2S? I would like the laptop to be able to run for at a minimum of 2.5 hrs with light usage (web surfing/dvd watching). I'll buy the 9 cell if I have too, but I'd like to keep the travel weight down.

2. Weight is also a great concern of mine. I used to own a Dell Inspiron 9200 with a 9 cell, that was just way to heavy to carry around. Does anyone known what the travel weight of the V2 line is? Travel weight as in laptop, charger, bag, etc.

3. I have other minor concerns about software, os, and gaming performance, but those are answered in other threads so I'll leave that alone.

In summary, should I wait for more reviews or stop being a worrier and get what I want? Well thanks in advance for your sage wisdom.

 

1. The V2J's battery problems stemmed more from bad ACPI in the motherboard, than actual power consumption, from what I understand. Therefore, the new chipset revisions in the V2S should somewhat remedy the problem. I would say to expect a 20% improvement in battery life over the V2J, so you could get over 3 hours with the 9-cell battery with ease.

2. The laptop itself is 5.0lbs with the 6-cell and 5.4lbs with the 9-cell battery. With the charger and mouse all inside the included bag you may be looking at 7-8lbs total. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's probably less than the weight of the Inspiron 9200 by itself, right?

I think you, and all prospective consumers, should take a good hard look at what they want, and what laptop offers the best compromise of that. I was torn between the Macbook Pro and the V2S, because the MBP had a slightly better graphics card and better battery life. I chose the V2S because it presented a great value (for the same price as the base MBP I got a superior V2S and a free hard drive) and the battery life issue could be equalized with a 9-cell battery.

 

If im not mistaken the V2S is supposed to have GREAT battery life somewhere around 4 hours??? also again if I am not mistaken it has the option to remove your optical drive and put another battery there instead for 2 batteries.

 

That's the V 1S. The V2S doesn't have a modular bay.

 

Ahh the V1S is the one I like anyways thanks for pointing it out tho.

 

Thanks for the info Bona Fide. I did not know about the bad APCI in the motherboard in the V2J's. I know santa rosa in theory was going to increase the battery life, but I haven't seen any hard figures on that (might be looking in the wrong places). Yes the 9200 was probably more weight by itself, which pushed me to wanting to buy from the ultra portable end of the notebook spectrum. In the end my slight gamer needs brought me to the 14' screen range.

 

Yeah the 14-15" range is the typical "compromise" of portability and power, though it's admittedly more on the power side.