W3J, A8Jm, W2J ETA

I still believe I can deliver these models to our customers at the following dates:

W2J: around May 15th;

A8Jm: around May 20th;

W3J: a week after A8Jm.

A few other questions people asked me:

---the HD interface in these models:
For this moment: W3J and A8Jm both PATA; W2J, A7J already SATA; but we have a very good chance to see SATA in W3J and A8Jm later.

---Z96J ETA: 30 days plus.

---Z62J ETA: end May

 

WTF - why wouldn't the W3j be along w/ the W2j? What a buzz kill.

 

Hey, I'm just glad you are expecting a date in May .

 

Yeah...I'm a little salty right now -and anxious...how cool would it be if some of the W3js made it in the shipment with the W2js?

 

LOL it would be great (assuming we're low enough on the pre-order list) but I refuse to get my hopes up. I'm so jaded...

 

My too bro - my order went in around April 4th if I recall correctly (or close to then anyway). Maybe I'm not that close - would almost be worse to know that I just missed the first cut.

THAN again, who knows why the delay - all I know is I hope she's rock solid when I get her so I don't have to fret about it.

 

Yeah Kierkegaard. Don't complain and don't hope until the W3J's set foot onto our continent...

 

Danny, the review at PCPop suggests that the HD is SATA. Are the ones coming to NA confirmed PATA only?

 

At least PATA was what Asus NA notebook PM confirmed TODAY, I believe he was not day-dreaming because he said "it may change to SATA later", so I think he knew what he was talking about.

 

Ditto, even though this has been confirmed for some time.... The W3 and all of the notebooks should be converted to SATA by November. As Danny will atest to, even though Asus will push SATA in the models that have the, as a selling point...... PATA doesn't make it not a selling point in terms of performance... They're going to continue to make PATA drives, so upgrading shouldn't be an issue for many years to come either. Now, when SATA2 makes it to notebooks, that'll be another story..... but even the SATA notebooks aren't going to be compatible, so it's not really a life changing thing at this point in time.

 

So can you please clarify, even thought the W3J will have a PATA drive, would it support an upgreade to a SATA drive?? I would have gussed that the interface would be different and this wouldn't be the case, but hey ... I could be wrong.

 

I guess he meant upgrading to a better PATA drive like 7200rpm etc since they will still be in production.

 

hmm, from my understanding after reading all of this.

The W3J will come to NA at the end of May with a PATA.

Later on, it will get SATA, however there are 2 ways to get SATA. (i think)

1) FAKE SATA (my term): This is something that you can find in the ASUS Z71v, where yo will find NO performance boost from PATA to SATA. Hence yes the Z71v does support both PATA and SATA, but SATA doesn't do anything.

2) TRUE SATA (my term): This is what we want. I think all notebooks that have SATA are NOT backwards compatable with PATA, hence you'll recieve the 20%-25% boost in performance from SATA.

So if your laptop supports both PATA and SATA, stick with PATA. But if you laptop supports only SATA stick with SATA only.

So do not upgrade your HD right away for your W3J to a SATA HD.

Danny did the PATA/SATA comparison on the Z71v several months ago and found that since the Z71v supports both, SATA does nothing in terms of performance, when compared to PATA.

But if you compare 2 similar laptops one that solely support SATA and one solely support PATA, then you can see the performance gain of SATA.

Now if ASUS makes the W3J PATA only compatable on release, and then changes to SATA only by November (why would they make em when Merom is out :S) anyways yes it's technically better to get SATA. <- (I suggest NOT waiting for SATA!)

IF I AM TOTALY WRONG HERE IN THIS POST PLZ CORRECT ME

This is all based on information given to me while i've been on all 3 forums.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

z96j has sata
s96j has sata
z62j has sata
all 3 of the above have the express card slot instead of the pcmcia like the z62f which has pata. Logic dictates the following
If the w3j has a dedicated graphics card (like the 3 above) and it has a express slot then it will have sata. Maybee i am being optimistic and simplistic but thats my take on it.

 

And for anyone wishing to know if its fake or real sata its real sata. It offers the same pcmark score for a 80gb sata 7200 2.5" drive as do desktop drives that are also 7200rpm. Actually almost double all previous scores for last years z series.

 

Eddie Z96, S96j, Z62j... you say they support SATA, but are they able to support PATA?

Cos in my post above it says, if the laptops supports both PATA/SATA, then its FAKE SATA.

But if the laptop only supports SATA then its REAL SATA and therefore you'll recieve the SATA bonus in performance

Also you saying that the W3J will be SATA upon release? Despite what Danny said about it being PATA and then it will get a SATA upgrade from ASUS inthe future?

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

for them to change it to SATA would mean redoing the motherboard, wouldn't it?

 

Yes, it requires a new motherboard..... you can't put an sata drive on the w3j..... when they redo them (like I said, my guess is in Q4 sometime), they'll have to change how they're making the motherboard.

 

No they do nto support pata however through a cheap adapter you can fit an ide drive into any sata controller laptop or desktop. So all sata controllers have native support for pata all you need is an adapter. I have no idea what w3j will support. Read my post above. I am meerely stating facts. Fact is that all current models with a express port and a dedicated card support sata. w3j should share the same properties. Who the heck knows.

 

My understanding is that, by itself, PATA vs SATA (true, fake, left or right) is a negligible difference. Without other mitigating factors (such as RPM rate, transfer speed or cache size) the hard drive speed will be pretty much the same between the two. So it really depends more on the hard drive than the interface.

The only significant differences you really see are when you get into SATA2. And even then it will be fairly small in terms of overall system performance.

 

Great, so that means I have to wait till November to buy this notebook.... I dont understand why they say SATA will come later instead of now? Other than making revisions similar to the powerbook, what's the point other than sales?

 

This is also the way I see it, based on benchmarks of SATA vs. PATA desktop controllers when they first started becoming mainstream. For the moment, it's HDD sustained transfer speeds that are the bottleneck, rather than the interface. The only time you'll notice a boost (more so with SATA2) is when reading data from the HDD's onboard cache.

Unless we start seeing 10-15K RPM drives in notebooks, it shouldn't be a major purchasing factor.

 

Does anyone know the ETA and specs of the upcoming Asus tablet?

Thanks =)