U30JC discussion thread

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate the honesty. I will be in training for the Air Force for 2 years or so (just commissioned) and am a photographer on the side. As I said, I am building a desktop as well. I am a little worried about the older tech in the MBP though.

 

My neighbour got the MBP 13" today and it really is a nice laptop. They both have strong and weak points. The MBP is nicer to see and has a great screen. The U30Jc is cheaper and has better HW. You really cant go wrong on one of those, it is just what points ar emost important to you. The laptop that scores best on those points should be your pick.

Jup, if I can. Undervolting and underclocking will cause the notebook to run much cooler (and is already cool ). It will also increase battery life. Probably by 30-60 minutes.

Does it show up in device manager or not? That is the question. Wether it is working or not, it should be listed there. Did you do a custom clean install btw?

Don't know. However, there are very much options available in Windows power management.

There was some kind of trick with GPU-Z...

Shouldn't be a resolution problem. Maybe it is Optimus ing up?

Trial and error...

I will probably update the drivers now and then. Just download the driver from the Intel site and update it. After that you should update the NVIDIA driver as well. I think that will do everything allright.

 

The vast majority of the sites selling the U30JC-A1 are showing it as "DISCONTINUED". What's up with this?

 

We signed a petition to have them pulled from the shelves because we didn't want the joy of owning a U30JC to proceed any further! I'll sell you mine for $1500 if you want it...haha

On a serious note, I bet they are going to the U33 series and dropping the U30JC model if that's true! I love to trade mine in for a U33 model, they are sexy.

 

IF you actually have bluetooth internally, it will show up in your Device Manager under Network adapters. If it doesn't show up, then it's either defective (unlikely) or just not there.

Fn+Spacebar is to toggle through Power4Gear power mode states ... unless you didn't install that either. It's not for Turbo. If you have the U30Jc w/ the i5 processor, you can use Turbo, but not the i3 processor.

I don't know. I use Power4Gear, not just the built-in power saving modes of Windows. No idea why Balanced does better, but if it does, then use it!

Yes, go here and download the Optimus Test Tool for whichever ver (x32 or x64) of Windows you run. When on, it will tell you whether the NVIDIA card is ON or OFF.

I had this problem with some of my games under Steam. It turned out that my Antivirus wasn't compatible with the game. To test this, you CAN'T just pause the AV or stop it for a while, you have to turn it off completely. Then try to run your game.

For me, it meant always turning off completely my PCTools Spyware Doctor AV. In the end, I switched to Kaspersky AV and I've been fine.

Not sure there is a best way, just various versions in different locations. At first, I only downloaded the IGP & GPU drivers on ASUS' driver site.

Now I go to NVIDIA driver site here and put in my GPU's details: GeForce > GeForce 300 Series > GeForce 310M > Windows 7 64-bit for the NVIDIA GPU.

Then I use the driver they suggest. Sometimes they'll have a choice, incl beta drivers.

For Intel, you're probably safe to let Windows Update suggest an Intel driver as there's a relationship with Intel and the Intel driver isn't limited to Optimus. The regular one will do, though Windows Update often won't suggest the latest driver. I'm presently using the Intel driver 8.15.10.2102.

You can go here and let Intel detect your Intel HD IGP driver and suggest their latest driver. That would be the safest & most up-to-date.

... Oh look at that, Intel suggests I upgrade to their latest 8.15.10.2141 driver. (As an example, Windows Update just now wanted to update my Intel HD IGP driver to 8.15.10.2119 ... so Intel's site has their latest driver.)

 

Thanks.

You mentioned how I can disable the trackpad with FN plus F9. Doesnt work for me. Wierd.

And do you know how i can get this file back onto my run startup folder in the registry? igfxtray.exe

I accidentally deleted it last night.

And Im still trying to figure out why my cursor is still jumping when im typing! Why is my trackpad not disabling when I want it to with my mouse plugged in? I have that option checked off in the control panel. It is driving me nuts!

 

Are you trying it with the optical mouse unplugged? Just the trackpad?

Do ALL of your Fn+hotkeys & F-hotkeys work? They should. If not, there's something missing in your installs for your apps & hotkeys.

Which of the light-blue pictured keys do nothing when you use them (the Fn+F1-12 keys and you Fn+hotkeys.) When you reinstalled the OS, did you put in all of ASUS' little apps and drivers?

When toggling each hotkey, a little shimmering picture of the function should pop up on screen (e.g. wireless, sound volume, sound off, brightness, trackpad off/on, etc). Does it? (I don't mean a flat 2D icon in the upper left but a 3D kind of icon right in the middle of the screen with shimmering waves around it.) If not, you've most likely not installed all of your ATK drivers from the ASUS DVD. There are five of them.

Just reinstall your Intel HD IGP drivers. That's just for the little Intel Graphis quick-access icon in the lower right.

Even better, update your Intel IGP driver. See above for the location. The latest is 8.15.10.2141

 

I just reinstalled the ATK drivers off the disk and then tested which F keys work. Every single one but the F9 for touchpad.'

Wierd I only saw one ATK drivers menu in the disk. How did you get 5?

WHen im disabling the trackpad I have my mouse plugged in. If you go to the ELAN tab in the control panel mouse settings, I even disabled the trackpad on there and nothing! WHAT THE HELL?!!!!!!!!!??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS REALLY PISSING ME OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

You need the ELAN driver for the "disable touchpad" button for it to work, get it at the asus site.

Looks like I don't have integrated bluetooth, argh. I hope I can find the internal module.

Do you all recommend using power4gear with the u30jc or does windows power manager do the job just fine? If p4g improves battery life any I'll definitely want to install it.

 

I have it already but I d/l and installed it again and all 5 ATK links on the asus drivers site and still nothing!

IM REALLY GETTING PISSED. THIS IS BEYOND RIDICULOUS NOT BEING ABLE TO DISABLE MY PAD.

 

Go here to the ASUS driver site and search for U30Jc. When you get to the drivers listed by category, open the ATK category. There are 5 drivers listed there. Download each of them and install them ALL.

First try to disable the trackpad with NO external mouse plugged in. Put the ELAN settings to default & then try Fn+F9.

I suspect you don't have all of your hotkey drivers (ATK) installed properly.

BTW, while you're on the ASUS driver page, you may as well download & install the latest ELAN Touchpad 7.0.5.10 driver and install it.

 

I already installed all 5 drivers on asus site and rebooted. I did the rest as you said exactly and still nothing.

This is a complete joke.

 

All the features of the Power4Gear GUI are available under Windows power management, but a little more hidden. I find P4G clear, easy, actually looks nice & cool and very easy to change the settings. It also adds a few extra power profiles, which is nice.

Under Windows power management, you can change about EVERY setting, but there is quite a list of them. P4G just makes it easier for me and doesn't really use up any significant resources. Why not have it?

For BT, I use the little IOGear BT USB adapter.

I leave it in a lot (depends of what things you need to use BT on and how often. I only use BT on my PDA, so I sync that about once a day.)

To save on battery power, when I'm not using the BT adapter, I right-click on the icon and select "Turn Adapter Off".

The adapter uses up one USB port which is fine most of the time. If I need the port, I just pop out the BT adapter.

 

Then call ASUS and get a tech support person to walk you through the steps to be able to use Fn+F9. It IS supposed to work if you've installed everything properly. They can find out if something is defective or you've missed something.

There might be something wrong with your trackpad, but only they can determine that and either help you resolve the problem or issue you an RMA to get it repaired.

And you didn't tell me if you get the little floating, shimmering (outward moving waves) icon that pops up in the center of your screen with each Fn+hotkey you use. Do you?

I even have one when I unplug the computer or plug it back in.

 

Well after my horrid first 3 times I had to call ASUS Im not calling them, no way in hell because their techs are horrible!!!

Im going to first try a different mouse, maybe it is my mouse dirty inside on the laser.

And when I hit FN+ the other F keys I do get a shimmering icon pop up.

So when I have to reformat my HD, do I really have to go to asus site and d/l all 5 ATK files again? Why isnt it all on the DVD drivers disk?

 

Don't know. I would have thought all 5 were there. Perhaps they're in there as one big EXE.

For me, I've all the latest drivers in a separate folder for future installs.

ON THE MOUSE, I've popped in my wireless mouse to see:
1) The "Disable when USB mouse plugged in" is to turn off the trackpad when the ext. mouse is in. So the ext mouse then works but not the trackpad. Mine does that, though I don't leave it like that as I like having access either way. So I've unticked it again and now I can control the cursor either way.

Your's should be the same! If not, something's wrong.

2) Even with the ext mouse in, whether or not the trackpad is disabled in that tick box, the Fn+F9 still works perfectly. When I push Fn+F9, a floating icon of a trackpad pops up (with a bright-blue target on the trackpad if ON or a red crossed-out circle if it is OFF.) Your's should do the same. If not, something's wrong.

My plugging in the ext mouse affected nothing in this. SO if the icon doesn't pop up, it has nothing to do with your optical mouse being clean or not. Something's either wrong with your trackpad or the software to launch it & turn it off.

If you can't get it sorted and Fn+F9 doesn't work no matter what & the cursor constantly shakes, you'll have to call ASUS even to ask for an RMA. The trackpad shakes is harder to pinpoint, but your Fn+F9 hotkey not working is VERY specific. Let them work on that & if they can't sort it out, then get it returned for repair.

Of course, all of this could be some small corruption in your Win 7 install or in your registry at present. Once about 2 mo ago, I had one of those floating icons (wifi) that suddenly changed to a 2D ugly icon when I updated a driver via Windows Update. I tried & tried to change it back to the green floating one, to no avail. Reinstalls didn't help either. Eventually, I restored the registry (System Restore) from two days before and all was well again. I even then updated that very same driver ... and no change in the icon. That was just Windows doing something weird and I couldn't undo it except to go back to a previous time.

But I remember that you had this problem from the start.

It would have been handy to see if the problem was there with the first ASUS install, but no going back now.

I hope you can get it fixed. Have you tried uninstalling the trackpad driver entirely, rebooting and then installing it afresh?

It just doesn't feel like its a hardware problem (which means ASUS would not be able to help you at all) but some kind of software glitch.

 

Hello, I just bought the ASUS U30JC-b1, and this will be my first laptop. From browsing around the internet, it seems that doing a clean install of windows 7 is the best option. I'm a bit unsure on how to go about this, though, since the laptop comes with win 7, how can I install it, without purchasing it again?

Also, if I do a clean install, is there any way to get back the ASUS programs that I would find useful, like fastboot? Or would removing the programs/apps/utilities that I dislike be the better option? If so, how would I delete them?

Thanks in advance for all consideration given to my question.

 

Congratulations. I bought mine 3 mo ago.

If this is your first laptop, I would keep my present installation and just uninstall those ASUS apps or trialware (like Trend Micro AV or Office 2007) that you find you don't need.

There are too many small drivers that I am finding people forgetting to install when they do a fresh install. So don't make it hard on yourself and end up having less functionality.

But don't just remove those ASUS apps straight off. With Win 7 using 4GB of RAM, they're not really hurting or slowing down anything except your boot up and most of the time, I wake the computer up from sleep or resume from hibernation, so even boot up speed is not an issue.

Open and look at each ASUS app and see what it does and if you'd find it useful. A few of them are important and are linked to certain hotkeys on the keyboard (like Fn+C launches the ASUS Splendid Utility to change color tints on the screen and Fn+V launches ASUS Lifeframe for turning on your webcam and for adjusting it.)

So don't just remove. Experiment with them & look at them. THEN remove an app if you won't use it or don't like it.

To delete a program, go to Control Panel > Under "Programs" > click on "Uninstall a Program".

In the list, find the program you want to remove, click once on it with the mouse and then click on "uninstall" at the top of the list. It will do the rest (prompting you for some confirmations along the way.)

 

Thanks so much for the helpful response! Is there anyway to remove the partition in the hard drive without doing a clean install, though?

On a side note: I've been backtracking through the forums, and I felt I should share the website I bought my ASUS from: EXcaliberPC.com - Notebooks, Netbooks, Storage, Memory, Hardware, Networking and more!, since I hadn't seen it mentioned yet.

The new ASUS U30JC-B1 and the U30JC-A2B are both available, either for pre-order or already in stock. ExcaliberPC also offers 3% off, but both are still rather pricey.

Edit: I just stopped at page 100, but if you still haven't found nvidia's test tool, this link seems promising: http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/26992-optimus-test-tools-finally-in-users-hands/

I can't wait until my U30JC comes in so I can test it out.

 

Yes, there is a way.

Actually, there are three partitions on the HDD. The first is a hidden 17GB partition to hold your restore info because your unit doesn't come with a Windows 7 install DVD. But if you search this forum, you can find out where to get a legal download of the Home Premium DVD as an ISO image file. Do you know how to use an ISO image to burn a DVD?

There's an easier way. When you get the laptop, before you put any info on it, just launch the restore process. In it's restoration, it will ask you if you want one partition or two (the 3rd it keeps anyway). Choose one and off you go. It will still put on the extra ASUS apps and some bloatware that you'll need to remove. But the restore should take 20-30 min which may be the quickest and most hassle-free way to get to one partition.

 

Been trying power4gear, hm, not too convinced about it. How can I get 7+ hours of battery life with this machine?

I've tried all the p4g profiles and the windows preconfigured profiles and even on a full charge, none say I have more than 4 hours or so left. Only doing browsing at 50% brightness, no video.

Will disabling aero improve battery life significantly?

 

I don't know. I had huge battery time decreases with old laptops when Aero kicked in. I really lost 30 mins from 160 min battery time on my old one when i switched from XP to Vista x64... My Go 7600 couldn't go in 2D mode so that really got me a shoter battery time yes. But I think it is more optimized nowadays.

But I have Aero now turned on. I also disabled the feature to disable aero in Power4Gear. Also let Windows decide a time or better, keep an eye on the percentage and clac the estimated time yourself after you lost 10%. Mine often sais 4 hours left while it goes to 8 hours left a minute later... There is much fluctuation in it.

Also check what battery you have gotten. There are 2 models. I've got the 85Wh, 15V, 5600mAh model. 7-8 hours would be the max. The advertised 9,5 hours ofcourse is for disabling everything and do nothing....

Only Ubuntu 10.04 is bad for my battery. Seems that the battery saving features arent that great and Nvidia drivers caused problems here. I only get 4-5 hours in it....

 

Because it is on the disk? I really didn't miss anything on the disk. Just hit the automatic install wizard thingy that is on it. Add the drivers you need (I guess there is some kind of option to check what is installed and what not).

I did do a clean install as well. Just added all drivers, except for the touchpad and both VGA drivers. I didn't like the touchpad driver it came with, but it seemed to be the only one available. I downloaded the last VGA drivers and everything was fine. The touchpad did give me some trouble when installing. But after it was installed, Fn+F9 works like a charm.

As for the drivers. I would really recommend to first update Intel VGA and then Nvidia VGA. For Nvidia Optimus, they did implement a new layer in the software that is much hardware related to. This layer copies the framebuffer (the screen that you will see) and thus is very important. Updating only the Intel VGA could lead into overwriting soem driver files probably and thus disabling Optimus. That is why I always would install them in this order to be sure the Optimus layer is present in the right order.

 

I also have the 6 cell, 5600mAh battery. I would like to get 6 hours before really cutting down on wifi and brightness. I've been checking back on the battery meter periodically and it has never shown over 4.5 hours on any setting. Will keep trying out the preconfigured profiles.

What setting are you using and how much surf time are you getting?

Also does suspension use more power than hibernation? Is hibernation worth the extra load up time?

 

I hope you mean 8 cells.

Battery saving of Power4Gear, but I turned off the option to disable Aero in it. I usual lower my brightness to 50% or more, not less. I reach about 7 hours, but I haven't tested it completely. Just surfing the web with WiFi on and BT turned off.

Never really tested it. I now have an SSD which gives me a quick boot . I think the notebook will be completely turned off in hibernation while in suspension the RAM must be feeded with energy. Hibernation makes shut down times a lot longer, but it is pretty quick in booting. I always used hibernation.

 

Actually its a 6-cell, 4400mAh according to the box. You have the oversized high capacity battery then?

Bizarre, I thought the battery was 5600mah. The 6 cell batteries on Acer Timelines are 6000mah and they're about the same size.

 

I wondered if you had the 4400mAh battery. Your mAh capacity is the reason you are not going to get more than 5 hr or so out of that battery, no matter what you do. Bad luck for you. Sorry!

 

Its what it said in the specs of the site where the previous owner bought it (FNAC.es, now they have it discontinued). Several other stores in my country also list 6 cells for the battery in the 320gb model.

Guess I won't be getting 6 hours of battery life after all? I'd be pretty disappointed since every review I've read suggests it can get above that much, but none specify if they're using the high capacity battery.

 

Question: how do you get power4gear to remember your desktop settings when changing to battery saving mode? That mode makes the taskbar hide automatically, which is annoying. I disabled that option but every time I cycle back to power saving mode it changes back to hide automatically.

Btw: battery indicator is reporting 4.5Hrs in battery saving mode with wifi, 5.5 without wifi. Will try underclocking the cpu for this mode even further in p4g.

 

They do sell the higher capacity battery on some sites like Amazon & eBay. You may be able to get it from the UK websites.

 

I'm fine with the lower capacity battery, I wanted a flat profile above all, I just thought it had a little more than 4400mah. I went with the u30jc mainly because the only other modern 13" I liked only sells in my country with a huge high-heel shoe-like battery (acer 3820tg).

Looks like I can get around 5-5.5hrs of PDF reading with wifi ON but not surfing, the battery life reporting indeed fluctuates a lot. Pretty good for an afternoon at the library. I tried to underclock to 30% cpu in power4gear but the clockspeed doesn't change at all according to CPUz, how can I get it to work?

Btw is it normal for the fan to always be on? Its rarely audible if I'm just reading stuff, but I was under the impression the u30jc would use passive cooling from time to time. By far the quietest fan I've ever heard on any machine though, very impressed.

 

My fan may be always on ... but it's so quiet in normal use that I don't notice it! Gaming can kick the fan in louder but even then, this notebook is the coolest-running I've ever owned.

That was the thing I hated about my desktop, it always felt like the fan was an airplane engine. Laptops are just sooooo much quieter.

ALso, since mine can log on to any wifi spot very quickly (mere seconds), when I'm using battery and don't need the wifi, I just keep it off.

Perhaps one day you can get the 5600mAh battery for it. The size is identical so it won't make it any bigger, thicker or fatter.

 

Ah well, I didn't get bluetooth, 500gb hard disk or a high capacity battery, but at least I got a good deal on it. (586€ shipped). I'm feeling a bit claustrophobic with the hard disk though, a 640gb upgrade might be around the block heh.

I have a problem, ever since I installed Power4Gear I can't go into suspension mode in any power mode, it always starts back up immediately and loads the login screen. How can I fix this?

 

Does the u30jc support booting from usb? I'm thinking of getting an oem disc and doing another clean install from a partition on an external drive, after backing up my registration with ABR beta.

 

Oh dear. I had the IDENTICAL problem when I had made a change early on (tested a beta NVIDIA graphics driver) & I couldn't fix it.

In the end, I did a system restore to just before the problem began (2 days) ... and the suspend/sleep problem went away.

Weirdly, I've had that happen and after I restored (in the search box in the Start Menu, type "System Restore"), I could reinstall the program that seemed to make problems (like P4G in your case) ... and all was fine! Windows glitch I guess.

On your purchase ... wow! 586€ is about $741 US. That's an amazing price for the U30Jc! And, typically, things in Europe are more expensive.

 

Lavabug, what's your processor?
I bought mine in fnac.pt and it cost me 1050€ but is the i7-620M with 8 cell battery 5600mah and 500Gb hdd.

 

i3-350m, very happy with it and I'm coming from a q6600 quad core desktop haha.

The i3, 320G, 6 cell model sells for 700-750€(now unavailable in the whole country apparently). The 500g, 8 cell model sells for 800€ or more. No i5 or i7 versions out here. I'm guessing the i7 + 8 cell model is heavy as hell!

Quatro, the previous owner of my u30jc apparently installed beta drivers on it after a fresh install, plus I always disable system restore on any system I get... I sure hope there is a workaround to get suspension working.

 

I doubt it adds much weight at all.

I used to disable System Restore as well. Now I just limit its size to not more than 3 GB. It has helped me several times under Win 7 x64 when I couldn't fix a problem. The size loss is minimal (it's using up 303 MB right now).

 

If the drive is hidden, that means I can't save anything else to it, correct? And would there be any benefit to removing that hidden partition?

I don't know what an ISO even is. My family is very basic in our tech-knowledge, but I've been trying to self-educate. What is an ISO?

I like this option best at the moment. Since I don't have my U30JC yet, is it easy to begin the restoration process? Where exactly is "in restoration"? I apologize for making you go into such simple things, and I hope you aren't annoyed.

*Edit: Would anyone know if the A2B version has less backlight bleed?

 

That partition is about 17GB. You have it because you have no Windows 7 install DVD. So, unless you know how to make a Windows DVD, I'd just leave it there for now. Even if you use that partition (F9, I think, at boot up black screen to launch the restore partition and have it reinstall Windows), it won't delete that hidden partition. No, you can't copy things to it in the conventional way. They did that on purpose so that folks would let it be the "Install Windows 7" partition.

Good news is that if you bought the A2B model that has the upgraded Windows 7 Professional, perhaps the seller included the install DVD for you. You'll see once it get's there. The A1 model only comes with ONE DVD for ASUS drivers & apps. If you have more, you may have an install DVD too. Wouldn't that make things simpler for you?

Google is your friend. That's where I educate myself. Type in "How to burn an ISO".

As to an ISO, it is a file (usually very large) that has an extension ending in ISO. It is an image file (think "photocopy" but compressed) of a CD or DVD. When the right kind of program (made for using ISO files) is directed to use it, it will use it as a kind of image template and burn (create) a CD or DVD that is a byte-by-byte exact image of the original CD or DVD.

Here's a discussion that happened relating to someone wanting to burn an image (ISO) file to create a Windows 7 install DVD.

Of course, the default under Windows is to NOT let you see the file extensions (three characters after the dot at the end of the file.) You can show those endings by:
* Open Windows Explorer
* From Menu: Organize > Folder and Search Options
* Click "View" tab
* Untick "Hide Extensions for Known Files"
* Click OK

Now you can see files' endings.

Burning an image ISO file to a CD or DVD would be a great thing to learn and experiment with as you proceed down the tech road ... but not now when all you're wanting to do is set up your system with as little hassle as possible.

No annoyance. We all must learn these things somewhere.

I didn't use this method, so I am only saying what I read that others did. When you start the laptop, a program called "ASUS AI Recovery Burner" will prompt you to insert 4 blank DVD's in your DVD drive so that it can SLOOOOWWWWLY burn an image of your hidden partition restore info (should it be destroyed later.) This takes about 2 1/2 hrs to do so get something else to do in the meantime. Be sure you've bought some blank DVD's before you started.

Here is a how-to on YouTube about using AI Recovery Burner.

On kinds of DVD's to use, read here. Not all blank DVD's are created equal so be careful what brand you buy.

After it is done, you can (I think) shut down, then reboot & press F9 at the ASUS black startup screen. This launches a menu that will let you boot into Windows 7 or the AI Recovery using the hidden partition. If I understand it correctly, AI Recovery as it begins to ask if you want to reinstall Windows, it will ask you if you want to make one partition or two ... choose "one" and off you go.

Here is a link on that.

I just hope you're not biting off more than you can chew and making a problem in the process that might really frustrate you needlessly. Why not just leave it as it is when you get it (2 usable partitions)? They do that so that it's easier to manage & defragment the smaller, highly used 75GB partition that has Windows. But if you do that, you need to remember to put on the D: drive (2nd partition) whatever you can or you may fill up the Windows partition.

You can remove whatever programs you don't want, etc.

Just a thought.

... But if you want the learning adventure, try to make it one partition.

They use identical screen panels, so identical light bleed! The A2B specs on Amazon show that the difference is merely:
1) 7200 RPM HDD (faster. The A1 uses 5400 rpm)
2) Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (instead of Win 7 Home Premium)
3) Bluetooth (the A1 doesn't have one)

That's it. Good value for only $45 extra. The screen's the same in both models.

BTW, I'll be gone all week starting tomorrow so hopefully there will be others who can answer your questions. Don't be shy to ask. You can always click on someone's name & select "Send *** a private message" and send them a note asking for help.

 

You must save it. If you close it without clicking save, or just hit another powermanagement setting without saving, it will be gone...

About the CPU performance, I still don't know why they added the percentage scrollbars in Windows Vista/7. It really does not a thing at all. The Arrandale seems to know only 2 states: Full performance or Performance on demand. There is not a thing you can do to reduce the speed and voltage untill someone writes a program to do so. But the Arrandale has loads of hardware and software implemented power management features in the CPU itself. I don't think it will be easy to get all these functions that were available for the C2D....

 

I see, thanks.

I still can not get my laptop into Standby mode, what can I do? Does power4gear disable it somehow?

 

Uninstalled power4gear, I can now enter suspension mode no problem, plus I think the two Windows presets with a little tweaking are actually giving me better battery life than all the P4G presets. Does anyone else feel the same way or do you know of a setting in P4G that'll give you enough battery life to make it worth using?

 

I find P4G's "Battery Saving" (the most power-saving that P4G has) so similar in results to Win 7's "Balanced" that I'd forget about P4G and just use Balanced.

Glad removing P4G fixed your suspend problem.

 

I came across a strange error yesterday. After watching a mildly boring World Cup final and finally having Spain win, I tried connecting my laptop to the tv through the HDMI. It turned off the screen and then the entire computer restarted, and the reboot screen was coming through the tv. Strange I thought; So I let it boot into windows but it kept on crashing/restarting. After hours of troubleshooting I found what the solution. Many of you guys mayhave this problem.

Culprit: nVidia Optimus.
I was using the latest 257.21 drivers from their normal download section, as it says "supports optimus". What I had to do was go uninstall ALL of the nVidia drivers/physx/control panel from add/remove programs, and then going to nvidias page and downloading the latest drivers they suggest in the driver updates page they link on the left hand side. I then installed the 189.79 drivers and my issues were resolved.

This is also a great way to just update the nvidia drivers that are compatible with this machine.

 

The only downside is that with Windows' built in power management, to my knowledge there's no way of setting one of the modes to disablethe DVD drive and the webcam to save power like in P4G (tickboxes in the left of the P4G window).

I wonder if its possible to do this with some kind of power-user tweak in Windows, instead of going to device manager and disabling/enabling the webcam/ODD manually. Windows' own management still gives more battery life regardless, but it would be interesting to see if one could squeeze out even more minutes with that feature.

Btw before I uninstalled p4g, it was making my whole system lock up, especially buggy after coming up out of hibernation. I had to force a shutdown on 3 occasions. Unacceptable on a brand new system. A shame its such a crap program, the interface and features are great but it just doesn't work well.

 

I may be wrong about this, but I believe that unless I activate the webcam, it is just normally off already. I'm also not sure the ODD is using any power while it is not being used.

GENETX, the electrical engineering student (I think), would be a better person to ask.

I don't have this problem at all on my system under P4G so I'd more suspect you had a corrupted install of P4G or something else was conflicting with it.

 

Anyone install the 210 BIOS update and notice it made the computer take a long time to start up? Once power is turned on, the screen remains blank for around 5 seconds before the ASUS logo comes up and the computer starts to POST and boot the OS.

The problem is, the WinFlash utility supplied by Asus won't let me revert back to the 205 BIOS

 

I am using the 210 BIOS on my U30Jc and I have not had this problem.

BTW, everyone, the new 258.96 beta drivers are now out for Optimus. Gett'em while they're hot!

... Nope. Forget this "update" for me. I just lost 400 points in 3DMark06!

 

Thinking about breaking out the dough and getting the 8-cell battery for the u30jc, but I can't find it anywhere! Anyone know where or when these will be available for purchase?

I think the recovery partition on my hard disk is missing, might've been deleted by the previous user. 320gb disk, 298gb visible. How can I tell if its still on it, and if it isn't, will it effect my warranty in any way? I really hope not, I already registered.