U30JC discussion thread

The screen does have the same vertical viewing problem. One report says there's 10 degrees of movement where the screen is fine (I can't remember.. assuming 5 degrees either way from the perfect image angle?)

 

Alright then. I didn't see the report that said that. Thanks for the update. For the record I was going by this comment "Colors were sharp and vibrant, and the viewing angles were spot-on."

I think still that it's a much better machine compared to the ul despite the screen.

 

I'd be all over this is they threw out the optical drive... Would of been nice if the chassis was thinner like the UL30s.

If I'm looking for a similar model from Asus in the next coming months without the optical drive which would it be? Staying in the same price point as well, of course. There are so many models I don't know how to keep up... and I thought that the JC series had a USB 3.0? OR is the the 33jc?

 

4.8 lbs! No thanks, I'd throw away my ul30 when they shrink this to a 1201n package at 3 pounds

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220717

 

According to the Asus magazine images that came out, the U33JC gets rid of the optical drive, is slightly smaller in all dimensions, weighs less (3.8lbs), and has a USB 3.0 port. It's what I'm waiting for... It's like the middleman between U30JC and UL30JT, except it's kind of a more upscale version than either, since it has the full power i3/5/7 processors, but also with USB 3.0, up to 8GB ram (not 4), 2mp webcam (not .3).

One thing that I'm curious about is.. since the U33JC seems to be the same size/weight as the UL30JT (which is the same case as UL30-VT series), is if they're porting over the improvements from the U30JC to it, or if it will have the older design. ... meaning the touchpad /palmrest improvements that reviewers speak highly of on the U30JC

 

Perfect. I hope they offer something other then the brown bamboo body though, not very appealing compared to this U30JC IMO.

 

the i3 processor is loads better than the culv

 

I know lots of you are interested in the bamboo series, the U33JC etc. But I read that they are in a different price category, they seem to be more of an upscale laptop with an upscale price. So you need to consider that also. Why cant they fit the U33JC specs into a nice aluminum case instead of a piece of bamboo?

 

Wow, I didn't realize it was one of the bamboo series ones... That's kind of a game-changer, now. U33JC is perfect for a lot of people... but if it's ONLY coming out as the bamboo series.. ouch.

 

The U33JC looks like a really promising notebook, just wish there were more updates regarding ts US release.. Perhaps it needs a dedicated thread

 

I'd be fine with the bamboo as long as it comes out reasonably soon (the next month or two). That, or a U30JC with an i5 processor would be awesome.

 

does anyone know when the u30jc and the other ones come out in australia?

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/07/karvt-wooden-macbook-skins-because-sometimes-aluminum-just-is/ I thought this was kind of funny. Some of us here complaining that we hate the wood look and macbook to get some wooden skins.

 

Is replacing the processor in a notebook much more difficult than for
a desktop? If not, since the "core i3/i5" are socket compatible, I'm
sure you could swap it out at a later point. The bios may need to be
hacked but that certainly has been done before for desktops.

 

I don't see how aluminum makes a laptop better build than plastic. If you press too hard on aluminium the shape can become deformed, like people noticed with their thin alu macbooks.
I prefer matte black plastic anytime over shiny and fragile aluminum laptopbodies.

 

wait this laptops not aluminium?

 

How is this notebook supposed to better than the Acer TimelineX series?
I wonder whether it will be offered at a cheaper price here in Germany..

It is slower, battery life is about the same when not using the dedicated videocard.

The Asus also doesn't have e-Sata/USB3.0 ports...

So maybe the buildquality and the display will be better (which i personally doubt)?

 

it's better because the acer timelinex cannot be currently purchased

 

If you press too hard on a car you can deform the shape too, but that doesn't mean I want my car to be made out of plastic.

Plastic flexes, metal doesn't and if it does, it dents. That's just how it is.

 

Why don't you want your car to be made out of plastic? As long as the basic structure is being held together by a metal chassis, I think a plastic outside is way better. Isn't the Mercedes McLaren also made out of some sort of cabon fibre? I'd prefer my car to be out of plastic, since I also accidently made a dent when closing the door with my knee (hands were holding groaceries), because if it were made out of plastic, no way it would have cracked.
Well basicly its irrelevant, but I think that you might get a replacement/repair easier if your plastic laptop has cracked due to some pressure, compared to an ugly dent caused by the same pressure, which they might not replace since it doesn't look broken.

Anyhow, I still prefer this aluminium look over asus's shiny black fingerprint laptops. Perhaps apple might reintroduce matte black with their new macbookpro line, since most companies also followed their aluminium trend. Fingers crossed

 

It doesn't look like the timelinex 3820T comes with an internal DVD drive.
I know everyone else seems to hate it, but for me lugging around an external
drive would be more cumbersome.

That's also only the reason the u30jc is better than the Jessica Alba love robot.
Why won't those engineers get on the ball and finish these products!?

 

I ordered mine through Amazon. I should have it tomorrow

 

anyone think its worth the wait for a i5 u30? or maybe for the u33

 

be sure to take some pics and do a review for us... please...

 

hmmmm couple things wrong:
-u want a car made out of plastic? okay.
-carbon fiber is not plastic
-in the end, you still prefer the aluminum coating so i am not sure what you are arguing


back on-topic. i do not think the u30jc is pure aluminum like macbook pro. i think it's just plastic covered with aluminum coating.

 

Correct. Part plastic, part aluminum (or some metal sheeting).

But unibodied MBP's are unequaled chassis-wise IMO. Superb construction.

Still, I'm a PC (my wife's a Mac), so I ordered the U30Jc today. It looks pretty good and seems to have addressed many of the concerns about the UL30vt & the UL80vt. I'd have preferred no DVD drive and a pound lighter as I already have an external USB blu-ray/DVD drive, but I can't wait any more on the UL30Jt or the U33.

 

i know i will.

 

lol

I don't think you'd want that.

 

My Q to ASUS

I am about to buy an ASUS 13 inch or 14 inch laptop which will probably have an i3 processor (when it is released). Will I be able to upgrade the i3 to a Low voltage i5 or i7 when they are released?

A from ASUS:

"If he changes the CPU then his warranty will be void so we can’t really recommend he changes it.

However, if he wants to wait, the PL series may be what he is after, Core i5 with CULV, that should be out this quarter."

 

Check out Saturn's door panels, that was one of their highest selling points about their cars. You used to be able to go to their website and see videos of people kicking the doors, shopping carts hitting them, kids kicking balls or throwing them, etc. and they just popped back out. My first car was a 94 saturn sl2 and had these door panels, they rocked!

 

i hope that wasn't their only selling point! it may explain why they are ceasing operation at the end of this year.

 

Then why is the full name: CARBON fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP)
I doubt its made out of wood

But anyway back on topic, I just read someone said the laptop is made out of plastic which is covered by a small layer of aluminium, so I guess this will prevent it from getting dents?

 

lol, no.. it wasn't. Their marketing dept gets a huge FAIL to be totally honest though.

 

Ok my U30JC came in the mail yesterday, and I've had sometime to set it up and play.

First impressions were very good, I love the look and feel, it is very durable, there is nothing "cheap" about this laptop, even had a Mac obsessed friend compliment it.

The keypad has very little give, if any, the chiclet keypad is really awesome, it is very fluent in typing. The brushed aluminum palm rests are very comfortable and have none of that "give" that I saw in some reviews of the ul30vt. The multitouch pad is really nice and responsive, the only real complaint here is the pad is brushed aluminum too, so you can very very slightly feel the texture when going up and down, and I'm probably over exaggerating that.

The screen is decent, It could be better, side viewing angles are somewhat limited, but the vertical viewing angle is more limited than I'd like, but I think it just took some getting used to (I'm primarily a desktop user with a 40'' LED-LCD HDTV monitor, so ya, its not gonna look like that hah!) Other than that its very bright and even looks good under lowered brightness for powermode, very thin too.

Lets move on to the bloatware, wow I guess no one should be surprised though, I think it had almost a 30gig pre-load on it, W7 responded pretty fast, and there were no major complaints for calling up apps and stuff, but I'm really not a big fan of spinning HD's after moving on to SSD's, so I yanked it out and popped in an Intel X-25 G2 80 gig, instead of using the factory recover dvd's (WHICH I HAD TO MAKE MYSELF) I used a W7 upgrade disk, it booted and installed with ease and the OEM key just had to be activated through MS's automated service (took 5 mins). SSD galore now, starts up in about 18seconds(64bit). I just used the Asus driver CD and it was very easy getting everything back to snuff, I was worried some stuff wouldn't work, but its perfect.

Performance, Windows Performance read the following: CPU 6.3, Memory 5.9, GPU 2D 4.6, GPU 3D 5.1, HD(SSD) 7.6. I haven't really ran and standard benchmarks yet, at work right now, but at native res, I could play MWF2 on mostly high settings very easily, and BC2 on all low was playable(more than I was expecting). Dawn of War 2 benchmark had 30fps average on medium settings. I'll try to get some actual numbers soon for you guys, but I wouldn't expect anything vastly better than the UL30VT, as this laptop is really GPU bound(which is always better than being CPU bound), I might try to overclock the GPU it a little bit as this laptop stays very cool to touch. (does EVGA Precision work with mobile GPUs?)

Having that said, I had BC2 on for about 30 minutes and the keyboard was only slightly warmer than my body heat, I was very impressed as I've used other laptops which get almost too hot to touch. I ran furmark for about 10 minutes and the GPU was at 60 C.

The optimus is nice, you have to tell the Nvidia panel(ONCE) to use the GPU to do 3d stuff, switching to 3D instant, you really don't even notice anything, its so fast and I love it.

Speakers are not very good, but that's expected, I think the bigger complaint about them is that they are located under the front of the laptop, so it has a big influence on how the highs can sound from where your positioned.

I checked out the BIOS, nothing to do in there, its locked down, but I really didn't expect anything different, keeps the less know-how'd from messing stuff up.


I took it for a walk around the department and it did feel a bit bulky for its size, but fit very nicely into my palm when walking with it by my side. (I know that was a very odd description).

Battery life I haven't actually tested to depletion, but with wifi on, and unplugged low power state, it said 7.5 hours, which is understandable, CNet claimed they got about that.

I'm a college grad and I am being shipped to Germany to do research, and I needed a laptop that had everything, 2D performance, medium gaming, portability, battery life, I researched ALOT of laptops, and this one just fits so perfect. It looks great too, I don't want to carry some POS looking notebook(one of the reasons I passed on the Alienware M11X)

I'll try to get some pictures, like I said I'm in the lab right now and need to do something productive today, so maybe later, hopefully this gave some people some insight, and it wasn't a completely useless impression.

**To the person wanting to know about the Battery, +15V 5600mAh 84Wh**

 

McVla, could you (or anyone else) tell me how the U30jc's screen compares to the UL80vt or UL30vt? Can you compare contrast, color vibrancy, brightness and vertical viewing angles between the two models?

Several reviewers said the UL80's & UL30's screen seemed washed out with weak contrast and blacks. One reviewer felt the U30jc was good in this regard. All seem to say that the limited vertical viewing angle is about the same in the UL30 & UL80 (& the U30jc, I suppose).

How did you find them by comparison? Thanks.

 

Thanks man, we really appreciate you reviewing for us.

I usually like to read real people (the ordinary user) reviews and see real user pics as we as reading the reviews from the official sources, as the normal joe reviews usually answers the questions that I want answered.

Are you comfortable walking around with it? Or do you think after a while the weight and thickness will weight you down?

 

Yea its comfortable to walk with, i carry with the battery side in my palm, fits nicely. I don't find it heavy for it's size, maybe a slight on the thick side, but like i said it can easily fit in 1 hand.

I'd also like to add that the brushed silver aluminum is very finger print resistant!

 

I just got mine today. I will be away from home during the weekend and will have it with me as I try to get rid of the bloatware on it. That seems to be the only issue so far with it. The look and feel of it are great. My old laptop was an Alienware m9700 so in terms of weight, it is more than 50% lighter. The weight is no issue to me.

 

Hi Letros. I was intrigued by your WEI scores on the 2D & 3D graphics. Most others reported higher scores of 5.2/6.1 on the UL80vt & UL30VT which have slower processors and the 210M (rebranded as 310M in the U30jc)..

Any idea why is yours is 4.6/5.1? New Optimus-specific NVidia drivers that need tuning? Were you for sure on purely the 310M when you tested?

Just wondering.

 

Let me run it again, i may have had something running.

Update, same score, it's probably running it with the Intel integrated, unless it goes to 3D mode it won't flip on the 310M, not sure how to force it on, I'll look for a way.

Update, I think I can confirm it runs the test with integrated, I had EVGA Precision running the background and it showed the 310M at 0% and at very low clocks.

 

Do you mind running 3dmark06 and letting us know what the score is? I know it's on the NBR review but I'd like to see a few others do it as well.

Thanks

 

So, unlike the UL30vt, there's no mode to force the 310M on? I know you can do it by some settings on Optimus on given programs.

But no button or power scheme to keep the 310M on?

 

To be honest, WEI should be no indication of any sort of maximum performance of your hardware. There should be no real reason to ever force the discrete to be on 100% of the time... it's just a waste of power. For the same reason, I have speed stepping turned on. Same principle. Why force the CPU to run at full speed all the time?

To benchmark, use a true benchmarking app.

 

dhasek00, if you don't mind can you give us a mini review of it when you return after your weekend and let us know your initial thoughts. We already got a review from Letros, but IMO the more info the better..that is until you get analysis paralysis like I do.

 

3DMark06

3710 Overall
1419 SM 2.0
1371 SM 3.0
2321 CPU

NVidia 189.42 Optimus Drivers

 

a quick comparison between the U30JC and UL30VT screens would be great !

I'm assuming the U33JC and U30JC screens would be the same as well as the UL30JT/UL30VT screens

 

I can already tell you that I've had this thing running all day, and the bottom is no more hotter than someone with a fever. Can barely feel any heat coming off of it and it's very quiet.

The only thing so far that bugged me for a little bit is that it's setup with 2 partitions. One is for the OS and another is for data. The OS partition has about 70+ GB. The data has 200 GB. This is an easy fix though if people have a problem. I left it after I reinstalled Windows because I'm going to see if it ends up being useful.

I do notice a large difference in performance when reinstalling Win7 and separately installing the bloatware that you want. The DvD that comes with it has everything you need for software and drivers. It uses one program with check boxes to pick and choose what drivers and software you want. I found that very convenient.

 

I'v been trying to debate wether to wait for the Ul80jt or this laptop.. I can't decide! But I don't want to wait any longer for the JT.

My questions for the people who own the JC is does it have Expressgate? and why do some websites call it the UL30jc and others just the U30jc is the L just a typo?

 

and some websites are saying it's only a inch thick and others are saying it's thicker??? I know the UL series is an inch thick?? so is this one or not?

 

If anyone wants to test 197.41 drivers on Optimus let me know. I am looking for testers.

Ignore my signature btw..