U30JC discussion thread

On sleeves: I just ordered this cheap sleeve for 4.50€ on ebay

13.3" Sleeve case for TOSHIBA ASUS ACER SONY LENOVO IBM en venta en eBay.es (finaliza el 23-ago-10 18:20:26 H.Esp)

I'll post if it fits when I get it(should be like 4 weeks lol).

 

Hey, guys. I just bought my U30JC two weeks ago and I'm really happy with it, except for the fact that sometimes after startup I receive a pop-up message saying that the Intel Graphics drivers has crashed and had been recovered.

Did anyone experienced this before?

 

Not me, try updating the intel drivers maybe? Do it through windows update(optional updates).

 

Yes, I did once. Updating the Intel HD IGP driver fixed it for me.

FYI, I am presently using these two drivers on my U30Jc-A1 and they are working great for me!

Intel HD: 8.15.10.2141 (you can get it HERE)
nVidia GPU: 8.17.12.5896 (258.96) (you can get it HERE)

 

I was going through some of the steps Quatro and others posted earlier to ensure that my Nividia GPU was indeed the one in use wile playing Starcraft 2. I realized that I had no way of accessing the Nividia control panel and had no listing of a Nividia GPU in Device manager, just the Intel one. I have had this computer since it was released a few months ago and have always wondered how I could tell if the NV GPU was kicking in or not and now I realized my system is not even detecting the hardware. Tried installing latest drivers from NV site and Asus site. Got the same error for both, something like “no recognized device found to support these drivers”. Im guessing because my computer doesn’t even know there is a NV GPU in there (if there even is). After a very brief call to Asus a very terse women asked me, “what do you want us to do”. I said send me a new one she said no, so I said then fix it and she said ok.

Anyway…anyone have a similar issue or is there anything I can do before relinquishing my computer to them for who knows how long?

I have: Asus U30jc , i3, NV 310m… standard USA model bought from amazon.

 

What to do?? I'd call ASUS as you did.

My device manager shows both the INTEL & NVIDIA graphics under "Display Adapters". And they were there at the start. Windows installs a driver at installation/opening, even if I don't.

Sorry yours is defective.

 

what's your BIOS revision?
try to reset BIOS default values, and then windows will recognize it...
if you haven't latest BIOS revision update to it...

 

Thanks Quarto & Cupra… I have already slapped the RMA on the box and think I’m just gonna send it in. I’m not too comfortable dealing with the BIOS. I thought Starcraft 2 was looking ok on just the Intel IGP so hoping it will run a little better once they get the NV GPU working.

 

Can someone comment on the screen quality?
Contrast, brightness and viewing angles.
Some reviews say is a low quality screen.

 

Contrast and brightness are good, can get very bright. Viewing angles can be a bit limited but are fine.

 

Hmmm, I currently have this version of the Intel drivers. I tried reinstalling the system once, but it didn't work. I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling both drivers. I'll try updating the nVidia drivers, though.

Thanks!

 

Great. Let us know when you get it back (how long it takes) and how it is working for you.

Brightness is excellent; above normal (by tests and my own eyes,) and the best I've ever owned. I wouldn't call it low quality, but rather unfortunate standard quality for most notebooks today, which means limited viewing angles & poor contrast ratio/light bleed, so that in full-screen the blacks look like washed-out grays. In normal work use, my screen is excellent, with great sharpness & color.

On light bleed, my wife's 1-yr-old 13" white MB and my 15" Dell Vostro 1000 both have the same poor viewing angles and light bleed/poor contrast ratio issues. See AnandTech's thorough review of the U30Jc's screen panel HERE.

What laptop do you own, IKAS V?

 

It's pretty easy to flash you BIOS, if you'd like to try before you mail it in and lose it for 3-4 weeks (it's supposed to only be 1 week, but ASUS seems slow in this).

1) Go to the ASUS download site HERE.
2) Type U30JC in upper left-hand box
3) Select U30Jc
4) Select OS: Windows 7 64-bit
5) Under BIOS, download BIOS 210 (you'll want to unzip that file and put it where you can find it)
6) Under BIOS Utilities, download Windows BIOS Flash Utility v. 2.30.1
** BTW, I use the Global to download, not Global (DML). Less complicated.
7) Turn off wifi
8) Turn off AV
9) Install WinFlash
10) Be sure your notebook is plugged in while flashing the BIOS so that it doesn't get interrupted. Be sure the power setting is on High Performance and so never shuts down or goes to sleep suddenly.
11) Open WinFlash. It will ask for where the BIOS to install is. Find for it that BIOS file 210 you unzipped somewhere.
12) It will take perhaps 30 sec to flash your BIOS then you reboot and you're done.

*Sometimes you'll need to press F2 on reboot and go into the new BIOS and select defaults and exit & save.

IF it worked, when Windows opens, it should just FIND your nVidia GPU and automatically install a driver for it. You can confirm if this happened by looking in device manager under Display Adapters.

It goes faster than this list looks!

 

My current is a G60VX so I'm used to the lower res.
Thanks for the info on the screen quality, I think my minds made up as to what's my next laptop.
I'm just looking to get a nice smaller laptop on the road without sacrificing to much performance.
I was almost ready to get a SONY Z but after thinking it over I decided my wallet wouldn't be able to handle it.
My dream ultra portable would be the Z but for what I'm looking to get out of it the U30JC is a very good second choice.

 

Yes, the Sony Z looked really wonderful to me too ... and really expensive. I considered it, but not very seriously as it was quite out of my budget.

But I could watch those promo videos on the Z site and feel my mouth water!

 

My friend bought the Z series a little before I bought my U30JC. Had it switched 3 times now, due to some kind of bug where it cant read the battery level after it has been turned off(like loosing 30% after 1 night switched off(not standby).
So I count my blessings

 

Ha. Ha. Yes, I should be grateful that my U30Jc just works really great.

 

Can anyone tell me how big the 8-cell 5600mah battery is compared to the 6-cell 4400mah? Is there any bulk added/does it rob the laptop of a totally flat profile?

Thinking of getting the 8-cell directly from asus.

 

ASUS makes both batteries the same size (no sticking out for the 5600-5800mAh).

 

Not thicker either?

 

Others have said that the 4400mAh and the 5600mAh batteries are the identical size in all respects.

 

@ Brussel

I had the same problem as you had: no recognition of 310m in controlpanel, only intel graphics card is listed. After some google-ing i've found out it has something to do with the Bios. Try this in bios:

load default settings
{screen pops up)
load optimized settings ==> first try no and look in windows if he reconise it by looking in the hardware list

It doesn't work? Try to load optimized settings by choosing yes.

Good luck. I had the same problem yesterday; watchting a video and suddenly i've had a blue screen. After a new start up the 310m wasn't there. I fixed it in matter of minutes.

 

So, I'm about a week into having my U30JC-B1, and I have some questions.

I can't seem to get more than four hours out of my laptop. I've tried every different setting, from the ones Windows provides to the Power4Gear options. I even created a custom battery plan, but no go. Also, when my cursor hovers over the battery icon, the time readouts fluctuate dramatically.

I just took it off the charger on balanced, and it read about 4 and a half hours. Then I switched it to quiet office, which changed it to 6 hours at 91%, Then a few moments later, it says 7 hours and 34 minutes at 90%. Does anyone know what is causing this? (Note, the only program I'm running at the moment is Google Chrome)

 

7 1/2 hrs on quiet office is good. Yes, there is lots of fluctuation, but the more I used mine, the more it seemed to stabilize. I assume you have the 8-cell 5600mAh battery?

Unless you're doing something to activate the discrete GPU, the battery recallibrates itself every 1% that passes.

Have you fully charged it, put it in battery saver mode, turned brightness to about 50% and then turned off wifi & use it for 60 min and watch the battery "guess-timate" to see what it reads? It should settle down and begin to give you a consistent reading. Try using it for a long session like that and tells us your readings. Then use it for an hour with the WiFi on and watch the battery readings. I did that for 2 hrs and kept Notepad open and recorded the time, battery percentage and "time left" every 10 min or so, just to see what was happening.

But if you go online and go over a web page with a flash ad on it, that can activate the nVidia GPU and the battery reading will drop.

What nVidia driver are you using? The newest 258.96 drivers work well for me on my U30Jc. You can find it HERE.

Under the new 257.xx drivers, in nVidia Control Panel, you can set the nVidia GPU to never activate while using your browser. That will save you battery. I can watch HULU, etc with my Intel HD very well. No skipping.

Right now, I'm online (obviously) with Firefox open, I have bluetooth & WiFi on, 50% brightness,"Battery Saving" mode and my battery reads "5 hrs 59 min (83%) remaining." If I do nothing else, that time decreases consistently with the passing of each percentage.

BTW, if you don't like P4G turning off your wallpaper & Aero each time you engage Battery Saving, you can easily change that in P4G.

There is a cost to power saving. P4G turns my i3-350M 2.26 GHz processor down to about 1.2 GHz in Quiet Office and down to 931 MHz in Battery Saving. To gain battery life, you must lose processing speed..

 

Alright, I just got my U30JC-B1, and am planning on doing a clean install. When I do that, what drivers am I going to need to install? The driver disk that came with it includes multiple drivers and I know I don't need them all, so which ones?

I'm also not sure about the optimus ones. Do I install both the Intel driver AND the nvidia driver? In which order?

What about the various ASUS programs? Do I need any of those?

Help appreciated.

 

Unless you are upgrading the HDD, you may find it easier (and less adventurous) to just remove those apps, bloatware & trialware you don't need.

It'll take you an hour, which is the minimum of what you'll take to reinstall, etc.

The trialware apps & trialware games are obvious and easy to remove.

The bloatware is relative. Look at each ASUS app before you remove it. Some are actually useful.

I continue to find those who are new and reinstalling their OS but forgetting certain crucial drivers and then leaving out apps that are linked to hotkeys on the keyboard.

If you want to make your HDD one partition (with one hidden for the OS restore) instead of the two it comes with, just launch Windows and at boot up, press F9. This will start the recovery partition's reinstall of the OS. In those beginning steps, it will ask you if you want one partition or two. Choose one, and it will do the rest.

Doing this still restores the trialware, etc which you'll still need to remove.

If you've a HDD upgrade like an SSD and need to reinstall the OS or just want to do it anyway, see my short post of do's & don't's HERE, write back and we'll share what we know.

As to Optimus, yes, you'll need the drivers for BOTH the Intel & nVidia GPU's.

I own a U30Jc-A1 and am presently using these drivers and they are working well for me:
Intel: 8.15.10.2182. You can find it HERE.
nVidia: 8.17.12.5896 (258.96). You can find it HERE.

As for what drivers to install, the driver install is smarter than that. It only gives you choices of what is possible. I would just check them all except TrendMicro AV (unless there are certain ASUS apps you're SURE you won't use) and then let it install. It's automated and reboots after each driver install. It doesn't install any trialware that way (ecept TrendMicro, which you shouldn't check.)

If you insist on picking & choosing, BE SURE to reinstall " Intel Management Engine Interface" (IMEI) as several have missed that one in the past.

Fn+C: ASUS Splendid Utility provides color tint templates that work via Fn+C. It's a nice app. I like it.

Fn+V: ASUS LifeFrame which activates the webcam via Fn+V and lets you set it up.

ALL of the available ATK drivers must be installed to have the hotkey functions work like sound, brightness, etc. I think they are compressed into a single install file on the DVD.

Fn+Spacebar: cyles through Power4Gear power mode. P4G provides a GUI that you can use to quickly access power saving specs. (It is not essential. Ypou can reach all of those settings under Power settings>advanced, but it's pretty and it gives you the main things to change quickly in a simple GUI.

Of course, you'll need to load drivers for the sound, touchpad though Windows 7 will do a lot of that for you, though the DVD may have newer & better drivers. The video drivers are the ones that get updated the most.

 

Okay, so Optimus will automatically start working when I install both the separate drivers for each graphics chip? Is there any way to be sure it's working?

And yeah, I have a larger, 7200 RPM disk I'm going to put in. I just spent the time making the 4 DVD backup, so from what your post in that other thread says, it is safe to delete the hidden partition, correct? In addition to all that I have my own copy of Windows 7 Ultimate which is what I'll be installing on the new disk.

Basically what I should do is install Windows, run the setup on the Drivers CD, and install most of the things except what I know I don't need. Correct? And about the touchpad/sound, are you saying that the driver cd doesn't automatically install those?

Thanks!

 

Optimus software is part of the nVidia driver install. To check & tweak it, right click on your desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel. There you will see lots of ways to set up Optimus; tweak it to be sure & use whatever GPU you wish to use with any program. It will do it's own guessing by checking your HDD first thing to see what apps & games it recognizes, which you can keep if you agree with Optimus.

Each driver release, Optimus gets a little better. In the first drivers, it wouldn't run WinDVD 2010 nor PowerDVD 9 Ultra with the nVidia GPU, even when I told it to do so. In a later driver, I suddenly found I could select nVidia GPU and it would run it, but WinDVD then kept crashing/closing. In this latest driver, it now sees my WinDVD 2010 and has that it will run it ONLY with the Intel IGP. I couldn't change that option. It had learned that the program crashes when run with the nVidia GPU. Clever.

Also, do download two more tools: nVidia System Tools (which will let you o'c the GPU) HERE and go HERE to get the Optimus nVidia Test Tool. When launched, it's a desktop gadget that tells you when the nVidia GPU is active (in case you're wondering if a certain game or program or browser page is using the nVidia GPU or the Intel IGP.)

Yes, if you're changing out the HDD, no need for that partition. I just repartitioned & reformatted my old drive & put it in an external USB enclosure as a backup & storage HDD. And you're reinstalling from an external DVD anyway, which is better IMO.

Correct. Yes, the driver DVD does automatically suggest you install them. It will give you a long list of checked apps & drivers. Uncheck what you don't want only if you're sure you don't need it. (Believe me, it's better to be safe than sorry.)

 

Okay, I think I've got it. Thanks for the tips!

 

Im loving the laptop, I just hope in 6 months from now the i3 CPU isnt outdated and regret not waiting for the i5 model.

I notice the vents are on the side and from what i see none on the bottom. So would it be ok to use this on my lap when in bed?

 

Every 3-6 mo, there will always be something newer & faster. I bought my U30Jc in mid-April w/ the i3 2.26 GHz. Now, 4 mo later, the B1 version of the U30Jc ships with the i3 2.40 GHz processor.

Just the nature of technology. Moral: buy & stop looking. You'll only get frustrated.

Air comes in at the front next to the speaker grill holes and out the left side.

Mine feels cool all of the time. Can get a tad warm on the mid-left side on the bottom, but barely warm is not hot. I use mine on my lap most of the time. No problem for me.

 

Can I remove SRS Premium panel without losing any audio quality? Has anyone done this without problems? I just want to free up some icons on the taskbar.

I already disabled the nvidia tray icon in services.msc and automatic switching still seems to work according to the tool posted a few pages back, btw.

Btw, the nvidia notifier tool doesn't work right with the classic windows theme, only aero themes.

 

Want to free up icons? Then just hide them. Better then removing whole app drivers.

And do you prefer to keep Aero off? An occasional game will turn mine off, but I try to keep Aero on all of the time. Part of the fun of Windows.

 

They reset after a while, and certain icons I don't want to hide mysteriously become hidden on their own. So that's not an option.

 

Mine occasionally reset by use, but I just customize it and 99% of the time, they stay put. The same for those I want to see & it hides. I just unhide them.

 

k thanks, just making sure. My old laptop had most of the vents under the unit (worse design ever) so not only would having it on your lap would block the vents, it would get your legs super hot fast.

I always thought using a laptop on your lap too much is bad cause of the static electricity it can get from your pants.

 

I had several notebook like that. Fan holes I could cover and heat on my lap that made me sweat!

Static electricity? Well, a notebook is full of electricity. I've never had static elec cause me a problem. Plus, electricity (including static) is looking to go down to the earth, not into the HDD or notebook.

Though in the Middle East, where I lived, most homes were not properly grounded so my notebook always had a vibrating feel and it affected the speakers, but nothing more.

 

"Vibrating feel" lol, you were getting zapped. I used to get zapped from touching some parts on a PC chassis(rear panel, jacks, etc.) when my apartment's outlets weren't grounded. Even worse, I got zapped more painfully through my electric guitar if it was hooked up through a usb soundcard or guitar pedal, and was even worse if you were touching any other metal object at the same time(window frame), since my body offered a path of less electrical resistance. It was later brought to my attention this is exactly how (replacing the window frame with a microphone that is properly grounded) many people have been fatally electrocuted by moving their lips too close to a mic.

Just thought I'd share that anecdote.

 

Oh, I know I was being zapped. Though the clothes washer was the scary one!

My point was that in spite of being zapped by an ungrounded connection through the notebook itself, it never harmed the notebook.

 

BatteryMon is a good app. for logging your batterytime, with a nice graph and everything. You can download a 30day trial which is more than enough to test your battery. Not sure if I can post links, but here goes: PassMark BatteryMon - UPS & laptop computer battery monitoring software

 

I want to order another AC power cord for my notebook, cause it would save me the hassle of having to lug around the cord to my room and office and back. Anyone know where i can buy one at reasonable price?

 

eBay has them. Amazon also has them for a variety of prices ($15-60).

Thor has it HERE with a 5-yr warranty for $15+$5 shipping. That should do for you!

 

AMazon and that other link dont ship to Canada. I checked EBAY but nothing comes up when i search for U30JC AC power.

 

Oops. Didn't realize you are in Canada. Doesn't eBay & Amazon have Canadian branches?

From the US sites, you can see that the adapter for the U30Jc is the same as for the UL30 models (for example, HERE). Search for an adapter for the UL30 as it's a more common model. They're both 90W, 19V, 4.74A.

HERE's one. But it's $30 CDN.

 

eBay - Deals on new and used electronics, clothing, collectables and more on eBay is the cdn branch and Amazon.ca: Online shopping for Canadians - books, electronics, music, DVDs, software, video games & more.

Damn $37 shipped for the one on amazon. What a joke.

Hoping to find it for $20.

Would this work? But its only 65W.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/AC-Power-Adapter...=Laptop_Adapters_Chargers&hash=item45f417f036

 

Just picked up my U30JC-B1

Can't wait to crack it open and give it a run - but that will have to wait a couple of days unfortunately

Thanks to everyone who helped answer questions on here...esp Quatro.

If anyone has questions about the laptop give me a few days to try it out then feel free to PM me and I'll tell you what I can about it.

 

Got mine today as well and I should have a full review up soon enough. I know people are interested in the performance of the i3-370M.

 

I wouldn't get it since it is only 65W instead of 90W and 3.42A instead of 4.74A. The lower Amps/Watts could result in it working, but taking FOREVER to charge. That may be why they are only listing it for the UL30 and NOT the U30Jc.

Look for one that fits the UL30 (for the tip) but offers output of: 90W, 19V, 4.74A ... like THIS ONE. I'm not 100% certain on this so get another opinion.

But it ships from China so you'll need two weeks or so to get it. I would send them a question via eBay first to be sure the tip will work for the U30Jc.

 

WOw thanks, ill get that one. I can wait 2 weeks for it, no hurry. I just hope its good enough quality.

 

I'm not 100% certain the UL30Vt & U30Jc have the same plug tip. For sure the output is identical.

Do ask them before you order.