W2Jc questions, may apply to other models as well

Hi all,

I've had my w2j for a good month now, and I must say, I'm very pleased with it. It's a fantastic machine that's ideally suited for my needs. But all that doesn't mean I don't have any questions(problems) for you guys to solve.
Here goes

1. Apparently I can start my laptop by putting a disc in my optical drive (slot-in). How cool is that! When I start the computer this way it even starts up with a different bios-bootscreen. Instead of the plain white, animated ASUS-logo, I get a colourful ASUS-logo. I discovered this yesterday just before messing up my MBR and thus my Windows installation(this message is being typed on a clean install ). Hope these things aren't related. (I was also trying to install linux). Has anyone of you tried this with the optical drive? Same results?

2. Has anyone installed linux and got the sound working? I must admit I'm a total n00b with linux.

3. Another sound-related question (btw: sound is great, also on headphones, so the problem of the w2v is gone I guess). When recording video with the tv-capture card I want to hear the sound that is recorded through the capture-card. This works with the bundled Asus MediaPortal software (=cyberlink powercinema 4.0) but the video compression options are rather limited, not to say, non-existant. Some capture-software gives me the option to play the sound from the capture-card, others don't. The one I'd like to use doesn't (virtualVCR). Is there a way to do this through the sound settings in windows or other software? I can't find a solution.

4. What should I do to get the IR remote to work in windows? I probably have to write my own driver . I'd like to try, but I wouldn't know where to start. Any suggestions?

5. What are the extra pins on the s-video connector for? A regular s-video cable works also.

6. I'd like to get a second charger with DC and AC capabilities (like charging in a car). I've looked at the Kensignton chargers but I don't know if they're compatible, or does asus make their own travel-chargers?

7. When the driver for the media-buttons is installed, there is a cd-autorun function that opens mediaportal 4. How can I turn that off? Maybe reverse-engineer the driver and recompile

8. BOOT-times. I find it takes quite a long time to boot. It takes about a minute. My girlfriends old dell recently got an 7200rpm HD and boots in about 15 secs. Does this have something to do with the amount of hardware installed in my laptop? (ps: mine has an 7200rpm disk to). There I was with my brand new ASUS laptop, I couldn't even beat a dell.

9. Should burning a 700Mb CD at 24x really take 6minutes. I'm just nitpicking a bit here but I thought it would go faster.

10. With the bad and cold weather here in belgium for the last couple of weeks I've begun to like the heated mouse and palmrests. I really have. It's a shame they didn't heat the palmrests equally, only the right one. This last point wasn't a question that needed answering, I just wanted to assure people this isn't an issue with this model.


SIGHH. What a post, I hope some of you have had the courage to read it till the end.
Thanks

 

1. I've done this, on demos, but I'm not sure if the US models have this feature enabled out of the box..... nifty feature of the slot load drive though.

2. the sound driver for the w2j is different than most other 945 chipset notebooks and therefore harder to find a driver for now.... the more time that passes, the better chance someone will have it down the road.

3. Asus' units are always feature packed, but sometimes that means they need to go out and find software to work some of them.... this area is really one where you've got to try some things and see what works for you.

4. write your own..... exactly what you need to do........ Your "Jc" model doesn't have media center edition I take it.... because the MCE remote would work in many windows programs.......

5. Those extra pins are honestly supposed to be for sound.... The only problem is I've never really used it. I found one cable that output left and right rca's and s-video from a connector with the exact same pins that come out of these ports on the computer..... never really tried to use it though.

6. I know Asus hasn't imported a 90w car adapter yet and yet I'm sure you can find one that works. Honestly, for this much power, I'd suggest a dc convertor for your car and just plug in your normal ac adapter into that.

7. I'm not sure where the option in, but I've changed that so media player opens.

8. First - a 7200rpm is going to boot faster than a 5400rpm....... but there is a lot that plays into that, a TON has to do with what you have loading in the background and honestly there is a lot that is loading on a stock W2j.... you may want to look at it and stop loading whatever you don't always need.

9. you're nitpicking - software, media, and what you're burning could be playing a part...... the drive in your system is the best notebook drive out there....... so you really can't complain much...... but I could have sworn there is a downfall to the super multi drives......... and I think it is that they burn cd's at 16x instead of 24x....... weird, but I think that's the case.. I know one of the media burned slower than on regular 8x dual layer drive..

10. it's your hard drive...... and it's the aluminum palmrest... you can't have everything, but the w2 is closer than anything else.

 

AMEN to that

 

I do wonder the same about question 8.

whats the cache on the hard drive, and latency?

 

7. When the driver for the media-buttons is installed, there is a cd-autorun function that opens mediaportal 4. How can I turn that off? Maybe reverse-engineer the driver and recompile

Hi all,
I'm having the same problem with my W2Jc. I've tried reconfiguring the autoplay function of my optical drive through the properties settings, but mediaportal still auto loads.

anyone know how to fix this?

 

There is a startup command in msconfig that relates to this. I disabled mine and it keeps media center from loading when you insert a disc. Disabling this doesn't seem to have any negative effect on any other functions. I'm sorry I can't remember exactly what the command is because I'm not on my W2J right now. If you can't find it by experimenting, I'll post back after I get a chance to check the startup config on mine.