U30JC discussion thread

Wait the bigger u30jc is lighter than the ul30vt?..and has more battery life??
You sure?

 

I read it that way at first, too.. he's saying better U30JC build quality + performance/optimus is a better deal than the UL30VT which has longer battery life and weighs less.

 

Yes, that's what I was trying to point out, sorry if it didn't came out that clear.

 

will you speak to sound quality? too quiet for movie viewing in a small room? too tinny to be enjoyable?

 

hahaha apple just "updated" their 13-in Macbook pro.

it still has c2d
and it nvidia 320m with 256 shared ram. ?


u30jc owns 13in mbp in terms of price and hardware (aesthetics is still debatable)

 

Saw this first thing this morning as well and was so happy to see it was still a c2d and still $500 more then my u30jc. What a buy this is when compared to other laptops.

 

Not bad but not great. Sound is clear and I have been able to enjoy some baseball at work in the office and at a hotel lobby bar and didnt have any trouble hearing the game.

 

yes. and i heard that the 320m is weaker than the 310m because the 320m is just a rebadge of the 9400m??? i don't know for sure though; i really wished nvidia followed a hierarchal naming system.

okay, it seems 320m is slightly better than the 310m. just slightly.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-320M.28701.0.html

 

I agree, this laptop is probably my #1 option right now for purchase this summer. Apple really dropped the ball with the 13-in.

 

So would you guys say this is the laptop to beat. My laptop just died and I need a new one and this looks like the best bet.

My only two questions:

1. Is there something better Coming out real soon..just a slight jump in proessor and gpu in the same priCe range would be great.

2. Will this be able to handel StarCraft2 and Diablo3 when they Come out? Really, I am piking this laptop beause it is portable and has a long battery life but still has some gpu power. I am a Casual gamer, so I want it to be able to play the games that are Coming out now, but it doesn't have to be at Crazy settings...just playable.

 

I haven't been able to confirm my own issue with the U30JC that I described in post #230 in this thread.
Shortly, Windows failed to resume from hibernation, when the computer had been forced to hibernate by low-battery alarm.
I discharged the battery today to critical 5%, and watched Windows to hibernate automatically. There were no problems, as I repeated the process three times. So I guess my issue should be accounted as a random glitch caused by external software.

 

Thanks for the update. Good to hear

 

Help. I just received my U30Jc and reinstalled Win 7 H Premium. Now I have 2 problems:
1) Device Manager shows "PCI Simple Communications Controller" not installed properly. I tried to look up the DEV ID but only found "Intel Management Engine Interface MEI". Any idea what it is & what driver is needed?
2) ASUS' website list FOUR drivers for the webcam (different companies). How can I find out which one to use?

Thanks.

 

I wish I could offer help specifically for your problem but I can't. I will however offer some advice for the future:

Before reloading any computer, new or old, you should go into the device manager and take note of everything in there (this is if you're able to, i.e. the computer didn't just die). Like with the issue you're having now, I've spent many a hour researching drivers/equiment on top of taking computers apart!

 

Ignore my last post. My trusty ASUS DVD had the missing "Intel Management Engine" driver (unlike ASUS' site, which was missing that one under my model.

All's well!

Well, I always tell myself I'll do that ... but never do.

Useful for the major devices, but not ALL of them ... after all there must be 40-50 drivers just under the "System Devices", and some of the drivers, like the webcam, say nothing specific.

But good advice nonetheless. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

When you say trusty Asus DVD, you are referring to the one shipped by Asus?

 

Is it possible, using the ASUS supplied DVD, to reinstall windows 7 and opt out of some of the bloatware during the installation process?
Thank You.

 

Can someone comment on the quality of the webcam?

 

Anyone know where these are in stock right now?

Thanks.

 

Does it come with both the 32 and 64-bit official Windows 7 CDs?
Or just a single OEM cd that allows you to reinstall that exact same
configuration it shipped with?

 

ecost.com has the for $914.99 showing instock

Sorry cant post URL yet have to copy and paste.

$15 over suggested but says they are in stock. Guess it depends on how desperate your are, lol. Feel lucky I got mine from Amazon while it was in stock, and to think I was hesitant on hitting buy, lol.

OEM Driver CD no Windows CD. You have to create a restore cd.

 

So what did Quatro mean when he said:

You're saying he created a restore cd and was using that to reinstall???

 

I got one for you guys that have the U30JC, what brand HDD is in it? I'd like to know what the specs are for the one in it for power consumption. Idle watts and active/max watts. I'm trying to decide on 150mW x25 SSD and see how much of a power difference it's going to make.

Thanks!

 

Dumb question, but with the great battery life on the U30 paired with the i3, is there still a reason to pursue the ul series with the culv processors?

Aside from a thinner package, what advantage will the ul have over the u series? Maybe another extra hour or two of battery life? Anything else?

 

I've been trying to tell people the same thing.

The u30jc is fatter and has less battery life by 2-3 hrs/
BUT, it has an i3 processor that should be better than any i5/i7 low voltage. plus, u can get it today whereas the JT series aren't even released yet.

 

Hi Green Lantern. Yes, the U30Jc comes with ONLY the drivers/utilities DVD. The "Win 7 Home Premium" install DVD is created from the recovery partition (4 DVD's & 2 hrs to make them!).

Sucks, I know. No, I installed using an OEM DVD of Win 7 Hom Prem & put in the product key on the bottom of the notebook.

A new problem on my U30Jc running Win 7 64-bit Home Premium (fresh install w/ basic drivers). Secret of Monkey Island & Half-Life 2 (downloaded via Steam) do NOT run.

One says "MISE.EXE has stopped working". The other says a certain dll cannot be found.

I've reinstalled DirectX. No joy.

Any ideas?

Win 64-bit issue or RealTek issue? The forums are loaded with people having problems with Steam games not running under Win 7 64-bit ... but not everyone.

My Flash works well. Hulu play HD and 3dMark06 runs fine.

 

That's interesting.

On a hunch that it's a Steam-thing, I bought & downloaded Monkey Island SE from Direct2Drive.

It works perfectly.

I hope George Lucas enjoys my extra $10.

 

Hey guys, can anyone tell me how the trackpad is? Specifically comparing it to the MacBook glass trackpads?

How big is it? How does it feel to touch? Is there any multi-touch at all (two finger scrolling, pinch to zoom etc.)

 

Do you mind pulling your cover off and hard drive out and let us know what brand and model number it is please? I posted up the question a couple posts on the previous page wanting to know the specs of the HDD

Thanks

 

I got mine yesterday. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it, but here are some initial impressions.

It is just a tad bit bigger than I would've really liked, but it's smaller and lighter than the XPS 1530 that I'm replacing. And it's not too big or heavy for me to take on the train to and from work. And since my requirements were weighted a bit more toward performance than portability, it suits my needs. My other primary need is performance, and I'll do some testing on that once I install the apps I need (I thought I had them on my flash drive to install on the train, but I didn't).

I like the trackpad. It's pretty responsive and the multitouch seems to work well, though I just messed with it for a few seconds. I did have to go into the utility and up the sensitivity as it was just way too slow for me initially, but I have that problem with every new mouse/trackpad I get. I haven't used a MacBook so don't know how it compares, except that it's $500 cheaper.

This morning I got it tethered to my winmo phone and was able to surf the web and check email while commuting to work. I had it on battery for a little over an hour, and it says I have around 6 hours left. So 9.5 hours is definitely an extremely high estimate. But I'm only looking for about 2 or 3 hours under a slightly above average load. I'll find out how it handles that tomorrow once I get some apps loaded, but I think I should be fine.

So far I haven't had any display issues. I rarely have any reason to need to view my screen from anything other than a fairly direct angle, so the reported "bad viewing angles" haven't bothered me at all. I also didn't have any glare problems, but then again I wasn't on the sunny side of the train.

The build quality seems very durable, and I like the looks just fine. Not super-sexy or anything, but I'm not looking for a piece of jewelry, just something to do some work on.

I would really love to be able to wipe out the partitions and reload Win7 from scratch so I can get rid of the bloatware. Some of the utilities are kind of cool, but nothing that is so cool that it justifies having all of the rest of it. I also don't like having multiple partitions on a single drive. There's no real performance gain, and I inevitably end up losing a bit of space. But I'm unable to reformat it yet. I created a bootable USB drive with Win7 on it, and I don't see any BIOS option for booting from USB. Anyone know how to do this? Maybe I'll hold off until I get home and can create a DVD. Or maybe I'll just go through and get rid of everything I don't want and try to optimize what's there.

 

Hitachi HTS545032B9A300

 

I ended up ordering one on XoticPC and I figure it'll ship when they get their next shipment. I'm patient, I've waited this long for a laptop like this to come out. What's another few weeks? Hopefully this will turn out better than my M11x experience.

 

Hey guys

Does someone know if there is any review of the U30JC with the i5 proc? And maybe a comparison to the one with i3? Im a bit surprised that no one compared them, in terms of battery life and performances especially. It might be interesting (also if its compared to the ul30vt as well) and would help to choose...

 

1.4W usage, thanks for posting that up!

 

u30jc with i5 does not exist. best thing to do is to compare i3 and i5 processors

 

Well, yes it does. You can find it with i3, i5 or i7 processors. But the only one reviewed is the i3 one... There is a review with the i5, posted in a previous post (#54), but it's not great... And I really want to compare the performances AND the impact on battery life of the different processors.

And the aim of this question would be : is it worth it to get a i5 instead of a i3 (so a less powerful processor, without the turbo mode) if you dont do gaming or video editing? Like can you have firefox with 20 tabs (video streaming, ...) opened, Word, Excel, itunes, skype, without ANY trouble with a i3, or should you need to get an i5?

 

Glad to, once I'm home. I'm out and on my ASUS 1000HA netbook right now.

Two major reviewers, incl NBR, received their models here in the US after they had gone on sale at Amazon. They both reported that the drive was a:

320GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B hard drive

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5591&review=asus+U30JC+nvidia+optimus

HOT Hardware listed it as:
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus-133-U30Jc-Notebook-Review/

320GB (5400RPM) Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B Hard Drive
Hitachi HTS545032B9A300

Newegg gives its specs here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...HITACHI_320GB_5400_2.5-_-22-145-256-_-Product

Once I'm home tonight, I'll see if I'm not too sleepy to pull the drive & give you the specs.

Has someone bought or found a U30Jc with an i5 processor? Where?

 

A word of advice, as I've reinstalled the OS now 3 times on my U30Jc (!)

1) Get Gparted (free) & make a bootable CD w/ it.
2) Use the ASUS AI Restore to burn its requested 4 DVD's (2 hrs) since ASUS only includes the drivers+utilities DVD (NO OS DVD).
3) Use GParted to remove the 3 partitions (incl the hidden one) and format it NTFS (then flag it as a bootable partition.)
4) Reinstall the OS clean (with NO password).
5) Use the ASUS driver+utility DVD to select the needed drivers & apps, then click OK.

The DVD will just magically install each selected driver+app and reboot cleanly each time -- all by itself. This takes a while, so go do something else.

When it's done, you'll have a new single-partitioned drive with a clean install of Win 7 64-bit Home Premium (or whatever key you have) and all needed drivers & apps in place. (At 1st, I methodically downloaded the drivers & apps files from the ASUS site. But that takes longer to unzip and install each one and ASUS' site misses at least one needed driver.

This way, if you ever need to install/refresh Windows on top of itself, you won't have to lose everything. (The ASUS restore DVD's blow away the partition and reset it up as it was from the factory.)

If you don't have the OEM ISO to make a Win 7 64-bit Home Premium DVD, look around this forum for a link. It's there. Your key on the bottom of the notebook will work fine with that fresh OEM ISO-made DVD.

 

I can only find the i3 of the U30Jc for sale in the US. The review you referenced was from Taiwan.

Do you live near enough to Taiwan to even consider getting the i5 version? (Comes w/ a 500GB HD there as well, it seems.)

 

Ok sorry, I thought it was available everywhere (so thats why i couldnt find any review...).
In France, you can find these three models :
- U30JC-QX010X : i5, 320Go, windows pro, 8 cells battery
- U30JC-QX018V : i7, 500Go, windows premium, 6 cells battery
- U30JC-QX002V : i5, 500Go, windows premium, 6 cells battery

 

Well I have given in.... seeing as I need my new laptop by 5/15 and the U30Jc is backordered everywhere I figured I better put in an order now for the next stock arrival. I ordered it from XoticPC and put in a 320GB 7200rpm HDD for a total of $914.

It was between this and the UL30VT, but I want the i3 and I like the quality of the U30Jc better. Wish me luck!

 

in US, i haven't seen any other unit besides i3

edit: it seems quatro beat me to the answer

 

I've had my U30Jc for about 3 days now. A very nice-looking & solid machine.

There are a couple of cons, but overall, I like it.

 

I can see that ASUS has really given the French lots of choice!

I think here in the US, it's only the i3-350M, Win Premium, 320GB, 8 cell 5600mAh battery, hence nearly all of the reviews are of that configuration.

 

How has your battery life been overall? Is the weight at all an issue for you? I am still tempted to cancel and get the UL30vt-a1

What are the cons for you?

Thanks!

 

Well, one of the cons would probably be a con with the UL30Vt as well: the screen. Good screen color-wise, but I seem unable to get it at ANY angle where it isn't darker on the top two edges and lighter in the bottom two edges.

I'm getting used to it. My Dell Vostro's screen was no better nor was the Sony Vaio 13" at Best Buy for $1,100. It's not so obvious when I have a normal screen full of Windows work and most obvious the more black you have up on the screen (washes out to gray). There is a lot of room for tweaking the visual contrast & brightness, etc in BOTH of the Intel & nVIDIA GPU's, so I may be able to improve this with experimentation.

I've been using as my main PC (!) my 10" ASUS 1000HA for the last 2 yrs so this is quite an improvement. I had wanted something like the UL30Vt w/ no DVD drive, 1 lb lighter and longer battery life,but I liked the idea of a faster CPU and Optimus, and the casing looked so good. I had no idea when the UL30Jt was REALLY coming out.

Another con is something I also like about it: the aluminum sheeting on the lid & palm-rest (& trackpad). On the lid (unlike a MBP's unibody) it's really just an aluminum sheet covering the back of the screen. No plastic support underneath that I can feel. It feels like it can be easily dented & bent, so I'll need to be careful with the lid. (It's the same lid as on the UL30VT & JT.) I noticed at times when I lifted up the lid grabbing it near the webcam lens, that the bezel pops against the aluminum lid. The aluminum sheet itself visibly bends in place. A solid plastic lid feels more solid than this.

But I love the aluminum look & feel. Very classy.

The central mouse bar/button is thicker than the bar on the UL30Vt. Mine works great & is easy to use.

Another con (made about the UL30Vt as well) is the black bezel around the screen is easy to pull out from the screen a bit. The plastic looks & feels as if it warbles a bit (not thick & smoothly flat against the screen.) I suspect this has to do with weight & thickness and that the aluminum in the lid (same on the UL30Vt) is not that thick and easily flexes. This is probably the downside of trying to design a thin-as-possible lid.

Beyond that (and who pulls on the screen bezel anyway?), the notebook shines with a look of class. The trim looks good.

I've not had a chance to really test the battery as I've not switched over all of my apps yet. That will take a day when I'm free and carry it off to campus & work without the adaptor.

I'd say, with wifi on and general desk work, 7 hours. I'm betting with all power-saving features on and no wifi and only Word & Excel & Quicken, I could get the 9-10 hrs they claim.

Though I wanted the UL30JT (or VT) with no DVD drive, I now find I've missed having an internal drive. Three different times yesterday, when I had unplugged & then plugged in my external DVD drive, my 1000HA netbook wouldn't see the drive until I rebooted. The internal one just works every time.

The extra 1 lb weight, to me, isn't that big of a deal carrying it around in my hand. I hardly feel it (took it to campus today & carried it around in my hand). The extra weight is about the weight of a medium paperback. It's a bit lighter than my wife's standard 13" white Macbook, if that helps. Her Macbook weighs 4 lb 15 oz.) The extra thickness is hardly noticeable (3/16" thicker than the UL30Vt and 1/16" thicker than the UL80Vt.)

Optimus is cool, but I wish I could tell which chip is running. But it just works, which is the point I suppose.

The air coming out of the vent gets warm when in game mode, but the notebook itself is as cool as ever.

I love the keyboard. Backlit would have been nice, but the battery was shortened as it is. But the option would have been useful.

The .3 MP webcam is okay (barely adequate). My ASUS $300 1000HA netbook has a 1.3 MP webcam and a much sharper image (of course). Why the cheap lens ASUS? (to be fair, the white Macbook only has a .3 MP webcam as well. The MBP just got up graded to 1.3MP ... dubbed "iSight". Cute.)

The VT has longer battery (2 hrs max extra) and I'll miss that.

Another con is that the trackpad gestures are more limited than the UL30Vt (less gestures offered). It does NOT have pinch/squeeze & zoom. But I like this smooth, brushed metal surface more then the UL30Vt's dimpled surface. ... but the UL30Vt had zoom/pinch unlike the U30Jc.

Personally, if I didn't want the internal DVD drive, and .45GHz (450MHz) extra processing power wasn't that big of a deal to my work (it isn't. the SU7300 overclocks to 1.76GHz. The i3 is stock at 2.26GHz.) I'd go with the pound lighter, $200 cheaper and 2 extra hrs battery life and get the UL30Vt. Or if $200 isn't an issue, then spend it and get the UL30JT.

The UL30VT still looks nice. Not as fast as the i3, but how fast is fast?

 

Hey im i also have a xps m1530 and am considering the switch. Is the u30jc considerably different in like weight when your carrying it around in a shoulder bag, as currently i find it a nuisance to carry my 1530 between classes. Also compared to the m1530 what is the gaming performance like? Thanks.

 

Hi guys, does anyone where I can get this laptop for less than $900 in stock? Thank You!

Please also tell where they actually have in stock

 

There wasn't as much of a difference between the size/weight of the m1530 and the U30JC as I'd hoped there'd be, but it's still definitely a huge improvement. It's easier to pick up one-handed than the M1530, and more comfortable to carry.

I haven't done any gaming on it yet, but the overall performance is definitely better than the 1530 (though that's fairly obvious due to the overall better specs). It's definitely not a "gaming laptop", but it is certainly a "laptop that will play games."

 

NBR review puts the Dell XPS M1530 at 5.9 lbs (6-cell) and 6.3 lb (9-cell) and 15" screen. That's the weight & size of my Dell Vostro 1000 (without the class )

My 15" Dell feels like a heavy weight to me now and sooooo bulky heavy to carry around.

My new U30JC is 13" and about 4.8 lbs. Those few inches each way and the lower weight make it feel so much lighter & thinner & smaller.

I really like my U30JC, in spite of my lengthy fault-finding with it.