Thoughts on a new W3a

I finally decided to u/g my trusty Acer Travelmate 350TE....

Looked around at all of built on Asus resellers, and narrowed
the field to either ynot2k.com, or Proportable... As it turned out, I ended up with a Cambridge, MA vendor (PCs for Everyone) who resells built on Asus from a shop named Spartan. I paid a bit more, as well as state tax, but they're a 20 minute drive, and the thought of dealing with either the USPS or UPS sends shivers thru my spine.

Specs: W3a /Z63a
M740 1.73Ghz
1 GB 533 Mhz Sodimm
40GB Hitachi 7200 HD
8X DVD R/W
Free Case, Wireless Mouse
3 Year Parts/Lifetime labor
$1,629 plus tax.

Hardware:
Bought the system with no OS, installed XPSP2 myself. NOTE:
Many of the ASUS drivers require SP2. Install XP first, get online and take the Windows updates (SP2),THEN install the drivers. No problems with any of the drivers, or components. DVD, Mouse, USB, Modem, Video, Wireless, IRD,LAN all went smoothly.

Screen/Battery:
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL, crisp, sharp. Crystal Shine, Color Shine is stunning. my Jpgs look almost 3D...

The Intel Graphics Media app is useful for changing screen size and launching a photo viewer using their 'Scheme Option'.. I step it down to 1024 x 768, and auto-return to 1280 x 768 when the app closes. Cool.

The Power Gear Utility is quite useful - Defaults to 'Super Performance' when running on AC, and 'High Performance ' on battery. 4 hours on a charged battery using 'High', a bit more if you turn off the WiFi.

Keyboard:
Larger than my Acer, but a clever twist of Acer was to curve the keyboard into a semi-arc,making it ergonomically comfortable. The Asus trade-off is it's larger, comfortable, and sensitive to the touch.

TouchPad
Love it.. The seamless pad works well, particularly the scroll feature. Plenty of room for one's palms on the dead space to prevent palm-brushing. Synaptics has done much better with this Rev. (6.1).

Heat/Fan
In High Performance or less, the fan seldom kicks in. When running on AC in Super Performance, the fan is more constant.
Note: using Skype, or other VOIP in Super Mode is a problem if you want to use the built-in mike : the pin-hole for the mike is so close to the chassis (fan) that your caller hears a constant whir on top of your voice). Recommend either a headset, or turn down the Performance .

I've read many complaints about heat. NON ISSUE. Minimum heat generation. Amazingly so.

Nic/Wireless
By default, the Intel Proset App takes over the wireless settings, which confused me at first - I'm used to XP's wireless Network (which sucks)... If you look at the Wireless Network Connection screen while the Intel App is managing it, you get a: "Windows cannot configure this connection. Another App is managing it". I think that Intel does a stellar job at it ! It recognized my old Linksys Wap11 immediately, with NO tweaking required. If you insist on using the MS WZC, simply select 'USE MICRCOSOFT CLIENT' on the Intel Menu.
The signal strength is about 100 % stronger than my old PCMCIA Nic card. Better range, better speed, fewer latency issue. KUDOS.

Wired Cat5 to the RJ45 is straight forward plug-and-play.

Sound:
I've read a lot of trauma threads about how ****ty the Azalia/Realtek is. It's NOT stellar, by any means,however, make sure you enable the Equalizer either in the Realtek Sound Manager app, or if you're using it, in WinAmp. Once the Equalizer is enabled, your stereo built-ins gain appreciable volume.

Having said that, it's STILL tough to listen to a DVD if there's any background noise in the room.

I own a Loogitech USB headset with in-line volume control, which really circumvents any sound /volume issues with Skype, CD, or DVD playback.

I probably should have bought a 2nd hard drive for the optical bay to Ghost with - I'm still shopping for it. The box comes with a 'travel drawer' which is a plastic insert to save weight by removing the DVD player. I suspect that the kit for the hard drive uses the very same 'drawer' with the appropriate adapter screwed on the butt end of it.

Conclusion:
I love it. It's bright, fast, light weight, slim, great performer (I suspect that the 7200 RPM HD and the Gig of Ram makes a greater difference than going with a faster processor)...
The blue neon LCDs on both the power switch as well as the custom buttons are wonderful as well.
Highly Recommended !

Alan

 

Congrats! Welcome to the club! That was a great overview - you will continue to love this machine.

 

yes indeed..welcome to the club!
Sounds like you love it just like the rest of us do..

 

Nice review! If I might ask, are you considering the second hard drive just for the purposes of backing up? Unless you have some specific reason for needing the second harddrive to be in the notebook, I'd suggest looking into an external USB harddrive. I find them to be much more useful -- you can get more storage capacity, they make transfering large files between your notebook and other PCs easier, and I've seen some pretty good deals on them lately. But anyway, just something to consider.

Congrats again on your new notebook!

 

Actually, I've been burnt too many times, and I was considering the hard drive kit to use with the dos Norton Ghost, and simply do a disk to disk and throw in in my office safe for the inevitable crash.. USB drives aren't recognized by GHOST (dos versions).

Does anyone know whether the hard drive kit for the optical drive is an IDE drive? Will it be seen in DOS?
Alan

Whoops... It just occured to me that I need to boot from a floppy to run the Ghost 2002... and there's no floppy drive... never mind.