Ul30vt

Anyone know if the UL30VT is actually coming out or is this just a "throw a cent in the water fountain" wish for those who are desperately waiting for the ultimate 13incher?

 

It was first mentioned by Anand from Anandtech when they previewed the UL50VT in regards to the Turbo Boost and graphics switching features. However, nothing else has come from ASUS, and the rep at Amazon has replied that it won't be out, at least for now. Maybe in the future? I wouldn't really get my hopes up though, as theres no telling until there is hard evidence from the sources(ASUS) themselves.

 

It would be awesome if the Asus did come out with a 13" switchable gpu laptop. I, for one, am willing to lose 3-4 hours from the 10-12 hour battery life the UL series laptops come with.

 

i will be waiting for this ul30vt to be comeout i even go oversea to get it in my hand!

 

Get me one while you're at it.

 

I'm really hoping that the UL30Vt comes out....

If it doesn't, I may just settle for a UL80Vt, as it's small-ish and has the same specs. The only downer is the weight. The added thickness is negligable.

The UL30Vt would be laptop perfection, and a total win (for me, anyway).

}:^)~

 

A UL30-VT would be a consideration to me. I would prefer a UL20-VT especially with the larger battery, Back lit keyboard, Bluetooth and HDMI but that I'm sure will never happen. If it did though Asus would have totally ruled the ultra portable market..........

 

Posted on Oct 25, 2009 8:15 PM PDT
ASUS says:
We have heard you loud and clear. Early December, UL30VT. Simlar specs to other VT models, similar price. BT. No backlit keyboard, sorry. Can't reveal more at this time.
Thank Amazon's discussion boards and two of Asus's core competencies -- agility, and ability to innnovate.

http://www.amazon.com/UL30vt/forum/Fx1978M98LGJ2GT/Tx3TJDDWOALGBIS/1/

Nice...

 

Nice, though don't expect too much IMO. However, it looks sweet.


Switchable graphics, however I'm not sure if it'll be the G210M. Turbo33 will be awesome though!

 

It would be disappointing if it wasn't the G210M...

 

I can only imagine the price premium on this thing...will be interesting to see i suppose

 

YES!! Thank you ASUS for listening to the consumer!! I will buy/pre-order this when it comes out!!

 

at least it will not be 4500

 

hmmmmm i just find that this doesnt have ODD/CD drive....hmmmm~ let me guess they are selling external one that is real thin and light???? please tell me they do..

 

Yeap, no optical drive which is great for many people. I remember my first three notebooks, I barely used the optical drive and was just there.


You can buy an external optical drive for $40~ or so.

 

Now I'm wondering if I should hold out till they release the VT or just stick with the A2 I have... *sigh*

 

advantages of VT: switchable graphics, bt
disadvantages: higher cost, decreased battery life (with the use of the higher graphics)

am i missing anything? to me, it's not worth the change if that is all that is different.

 

It's worth it for people who want portability, and to be able to play some games or do anything graphic intensive that the integrated card can't do.

 

well, next to a dedicated GPU which is several times faster,
the CPU can be overclocked 33%, which actually means 33% speed increase on processor intensive tasks.

According to
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3637&p=2
it will perform almost as well as a 2.26Ghz P8400!

which does not mean battery life is per se reduced, you can still use the on-board videocard and set the CPU to power saving.

 

Also getting a VT laptop with the G210M is future-friendly and IMO the smarter choice. Here's why:

1) OpenCL.. The simple fact of the matter is that many apps are being optimized to use the stream processors on the latest GPUs to greatly improve performance. ATI recently released their STREAM api, and CUDA has been available for a while which has OpenCL support planned. Computers with modern GPUs will be able to take advantage of these speed optimizations for: faster 3D rendering, faster encoding of video, faster encoding of audio, faster calculations, faster vector performance (think web vectors), real-time filters in apps like Photoshop/Gimp, etc. Computers that don't have a modern GPU will not be able to take advantage of these features (which have already started to break into the market).

2) Web 3D... The web is about to seriously get a tremendous amount of 3D content via APIs such as google's O3D and webGL. This will affect everything from games, to interactivity, to visualizations. These have already begun to come out and are *incredible*. Download the following plugin, and check out these examples:

http://tools.google.com/dlpage/o3d/index.html (plugin download)
http://blog.largeanimal.com/demo/
http://o3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/beachdemo/beachdemo.html
http://www.patapom.com/O3D/Cathedral.html (my inspiron chokes on this)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uofWfXOzX-g&feature=player_embedded (video)

I personally refuse to get a laptop without proper 3D as it will be important for more than just games in the near future.

}:^)~

 

It says about the same price point as the other vt's, so not much more hopefully.

 

Yeah, an external DVD is more than adequate.

How often do you carry around a stack of DVDs on the off-chance that you'll play them on the road? I've never seen anyone do this, and I bet the number is really low. My GF has a macbook, and we've only ever used the DVD drive at home when lacking a proper TV. With the TV, it never gets used. It's simply dead weight.

It's better to leave the DVD drive on your desk, and plug it in when you need it. For those that want to watch a DVD or two on the road, either pack the drive, or rip the DVD to the harddrive. For those that want access to backed up data, the solution is the same. Copy and use.

The savings in weight is very much worth it.

I'll likely get an external drive DVD rom, but I'll leave it at my desk, or pack it up if I'm going a good distance, and/or there's a chance I'll be using DVDs on the road (extremely unlikely as it's never happened before).

}:^)~

 

This discussion just made me think about my current order on UL80vt. Get it or cancel and wait another month or so ?

 

This is what I do. Most laptops come with fairly big hard drives nowadays. I also have a 2.5" portable hard drive where I keep installers for essential software, a couple of movies and a few anime series.

 

I have old dv4000 which I had it for 3 years and I was waiting for ul80vt for 3months now i'm little bit too much disappointed about 80.... So I'm waiting bit more but remember technology changes every seconds u have to decide sometimes otherwise u will never get a laptop lol

 

How do u keepinstaller for softwares?? Like Microsoft offices ???

 

What are you waiting for ? And what did you not like in UL80 ?

 

Waiting for this ul30vt I don't like the fact that 80is haevier than I thought it will b and also the ,I kno this may sounds silly but the location of speaker is most down side for me lol

 

Most of the installers are in executable format. For programs like Microsoft Office, I keep them as ISO (CD/DVD image files). I have an installer for Virtual CloneDrive so I can mount the ISO's. What Virtual CloneDrive does is create a virtual CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drive. You mount the CD/DVD/Blu-Ray image files and the operating system thinks you have the actually physical disc inserted.

 

You can get a free download from MS that will let you mount ISOs (possibly only theirs, haven't tested with 3rd party files) to a USB stick. Used it to install MS Office on a new HP DM3 with no issues.

http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool

 

this is not much (no confirmed specs) but the model number ul30vt is already appears on asus support website, with bios posted on 23/10

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?product=3&model=UL30VT&SLanguage=en-us&os=8

I am thinking getting one as a 'gift' for my wife

 

So can any of the popular basic graphics chips can meet this 3D standard? For example:
Intel x4500MHD?
Nvidia 9400M
Nvidia 9400M GT
ATI 3470
ATI 3650


Also can any of the above do the open CL?

 

AWESOME FIND! Rep for you!

This is great news! Although it's not confirmed, it's kinda leaked, and that's good enough for me! Here's hoping that we see more details soon.

}:^)~

 

I would guess that all of the cards should "support" open CL eventually, but only the ATI/Nvidia cards listed have multiple stream processors that will actually improve the performance of open CL apps. This is just a guess, based upon very limited information. I'd seek alternate answers.

Here's the openCL wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

}:^)~

 

Thanks - I found this as well:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_opencl.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html

 

Great find! It lists the G210M as cuda supported and thus OpenCL supported. Very nice!

}:^)~

 

Hmm, the UL30A is available now in the stores near me... I'm finding it really hard to stop myself from buying one.

I have to be strong and wait for UL30VT ;-)

 

i have bad news and good news..
tell u bad news first.
my old DV4000 died yesterday...blue screen...i dont know what to do...about to install windows 7....till ul30vt comes out.

good news is i found this webpage
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=3&model=UL30VT&SLanguage=en-us
tho there is no posts but i think it's asus's official website and they put the ul30vt for one of there product....
so hoping that it will be out in next 50000 seconds...lol

 

Indeed. Thanks for the heads up! A similar link on the asus support site listed the UL30Vt with a link to a BIOS file (presumably firmware).

It does indeed seem that this product is coming to market. Why else would it surface on the vip *and* support sites? One appearance could be an error, but two seems a little too coordinated to be a mistake.

This is good news, as I'm looking to snatch up the UL30Vt. I was able to check out the Acer aspire timeline thin-and-light, and was astounded at how thin it actually was! It was chained down, so I didn't get to feel the weight, but it was quite slim. To think that the UL30 is actually *slimmer* overall is something indeed!

Such a thin, light package, with great performance is simply unheard of. UL30Vt? Where have you been all my life?

}:^)~

 

i heard that some timeline has hydrid graphics between HD4330 and 4500.
i think HD4330 is better than 210...but they are not selling HD4330 version in US. so the ul30vt is best thing to wait. plus acer do not have turbo thing.
i miss my DV4000....hate that stupid virus that got me yesterday....
do u think it is better to put windows 7 on 75GB hard drive or just stick wit xp
i heard windows 7 takes 16Gb just itself...and xp takes 8GB?

 

I'm not sure. I think you could try Win 7 out and see how you like it. There are companies installing it on netbooks, so I'm sure your DV4000 should handle it well.

The turbo33 is a very compelling reason to purchase the UL line. The other aspect is the 8-cell 84Wh battery. This ensures that you'll be using your laptop for ~10 hours before looking for an outlet.

Aside from that, the UL50/80/30Vt seem to do everything else well. For example, I've heard that the multi-touch works well on these machines, but not so much on the Aspire Timeline thin-and-light. The UL30a runs cool to the touch, so I suspect we'll see similar performance from the UL30Vt under modest usage situations. Etc.

I'm really looking forward to this machine!

}:^)~

 

Well moat netbooks have hdd with at least 160gb but mine only has 75gb that's main concern about me to try windows 7...

 

Actually most lower end netbooks have Win7 Starter, a non aero version. This is a smaller and leaner install that can run on lower end machines, epecially those that will have aero issues.........

 

It was called the acer timeline 3810TG-944G50N
Keep in mind it cant do overclock though. And the battery is smaller. And it costs more. And the warranty isnt as good as asus's

 

So with my old dv4000 it's better that I reinstall the xp on my computer ?

 

I really can't make that call for you. Everyone has their usage and desires of usage for a system. Personally I like the eye candy and features. XP though is fully functional and other than features anything that can be done in Win 7 can be done in XP. There are some enhancements in Win7 gearded towrds newer equipment but if you have older equipment like that it may make no real difference.

There is an old saying that maybe holds true for you, "If it ain't broke dont fix it". In the end though only you can decide.........

 

thank u cause i was about to get xp and enjoy the windows7 with ul30vt(hopely very soon)
is there any tip to back up my data before i format the hard drive?
i want to back up pretty much every music files and pictures and programs like MS office, things like that...

 

here some updates from Asus rep in Amazon.com

he said "I cannot reveal all the specs'(of ul30vt)' yet.
But take the UL30A-X5, add the NVidia G210M + Bluetooth, tack on some $$'s, and you pretty much have it."

so my guess if
SU7300
500GB HDD (maybe reduced to 320GB)
4GB DDR3 RAM
Switchable G210M(yea it's finally confirmed)
Bluetooth
altec lansing speaker
little more weight than 3.74 pounds with battery
0.3 megapixel webcame it would be really nice if it is 1.3-megapixel
same demension hopely
warranty 1 year global 1 year damege warranty...(i dont know why it has reduced to 1 year global from 2 years.)
8cell battery

est. release date????? not yet notified......hopely in 3 weeks!!!! no more than that ASUS!!!



almost forgot more $$ too,,,,

 

Makes very little sense, but...

X5 = Black, 4gb, 500gb, 1 year warranty, 8 cell 4400mAh, Win7 Home Premium, $699
A3B = Black, 3gb, 250gb, 2 year warranty, 8 cell 5600mAh, Win7 Pro + XP Pro, $775


I guess they're trying to retain the price point? But why the XP Pro downgrade?

My ideal setups:

UL30VT = SU7300, 4gb, 500gb, 2 year warranty, x4500mhd/G210m, 8 cell 5600mAh, Win7 Pro, $849
UL30VT (2) = SU9400, 4gb, 250gb, 2 year warranty, x4500mHD/G210m, 8 cell 5600mAh, Win7 Home Premium, $999

 

Does anyone know if this model come with Turbo33? I thought that "T" at the end of UL30VT stand for turbo.