W3J UK Update

Well i went down to the resellers on Tottenham court road today... played around with the W3J... some points regarding the spec confusion;

Its Bluetooth 2.0+ Edr (has even got a sticker confirming this)..

The sound card is basic spec..nothing exciting

HD as we all know is 4200rpm

Ram 667 512x2


Now regarding Vat Refunds...

Basically there are two ways of getting a refund (but not all sellers offer both options including platinum solutions)..
1) Vat Global refund... you get your money back at the airport roughly 11% refund.

2) You get the form stamped and bring it back to the reseller and they will give u the refund.. 17.5% - £10 ( processing charge)..

Platinum sols only offers the second option.. however another seller nearby (Samuel-King) offers both..


I also met this guy from Asus while I was in the shop, the seller offered me £1279 (wrote it down on the brochure) for the laptop and the Asus guy wasnt too happy, followed me to the other shop and asked me to give him the brochure in return for his business card (how weird is that??!!).. i refused but he still managed to get a copy..said it was an internal matter,
anyways weird stuff ..

Hope this helps..

 

by basic spec for the sound card you mean the azalia chip

 

its the AC 97 compliant audio ship...

 

so the US is the only region getting the azalia chip? jeeze...

 

ummmmm........we hope

Thanks for the update Nocturne. And you better lock all your doors tonight, that guy with the business card....creepy.

 

maybe that guy wanted it for the price that was quoted for you

 

I think he was either selling it for less than Asus wanted him to or selling it too high.

 

£1279 isn't that cheap. There are plenty of online sellers who will do it for slightly less than that.

 

LOL I don't know I was just "conjecturing." Maybe Asus dealers aren't suppose to write on their fancy Asus brochures? *shrugs*

 

Maybe he was trying to start up a business on the ground level - thought if he wrote it out all slyly, then you would think it was a good deal and bite (without doing further research).

You should ask the store owner what the deal w/ that guy is.

Maybe he's just crazy and didn't take his medicine that day?

 

Hey Nocturne_sa, looks good dosen't it!

Interesting stuff..

Actually the list price on the brochure is 1,499 pounds, so 1279 is quite cheap, for here in the UK maybe the reseller will get in trouble, but as you mentioned you can get it cheaper on the net but beware I saw one cheaper and it had 533mhz RAM!, mind you it also stated it had PCMCIA, which is wrong, so not easy to sort out what you are really getting unless you see it first.

In case you want to know, and are still thinking of buying from the US, I organised a bank transfer to Proportable, I purchased.

W3J
+1GB Corsiar Ram (Would have gotten 2 if I had realised it was comming with 2 x 256)
+Optical bay battery
+Optical Bay HDD kit

with all the extras above the charge to my account was 1215.69 pounds and about 36 ponds bank charges.

I am happy with that, as the US, I am quite sure will have slightly better specs.......well fingers crossed anyway it will have Azalia audio

Interesting what you said about the Asus guy, I wish I had been there, I would have told him that they should at least give consumers two options, one high spec top processor, hdd etc and another cheeper, for the masses, I hate not being able to choose.

 

Thanks for the info, but youve got another advantage that your travelling to the US anyways... i would have to go specially to get the laptop and therefore have to add the travelling cost to the final price (which makes it more $$$ than the UK).. anyways lets see how it turns out, im still gonna wait till the first week of June (since im leaving the country in Sept) in order to get the VAT refunded.

 

Yeah I'm fortunate enough to be traveling to the US with work, if I wasn't I, would probably do what you are doing and go for the VAT refund.

would be interesting if they change the spec to the UK with succcessive shipments.

Cant wait to see a review of the W3J in What Laptop mag!