W5F: Battery & durability questions

Hi All,

Like the look of the feature set offered by the W5F for the weight of the package. I'm wanting a laptopo that is powerful, light, durable, and with good battery life as I plan to take it backpacking with me. Just have three questions;

1) What is battery life like using the large 8 cell 7800 mAh battery for things like word processing, movies, image/video editing and DVD burning? Would I get over 4 hours comfortably?

2) I can't find any mention on what material the cover of the W5F is made from. Most of the ones I've been looking at come in magnesium alloy, and even carbon fibre with the Sony SZ.

3) The ASUS site states the W5F as being 1.6kgs, which is pretty good in its class. Just wondering if this is including the standard battery, and how much more does the 7800 mAh 8 cell battery weigh?

 

1. Battery life for the large battery is about 6 hours, compared to 4 hours for the regular battery.

2. Unfortunately the cover is made out of plain plastic. In fact, the plastic near the camera swivel-mount corners wore off after just a few days.

3. The battery weighs 1.1 pounds.

 

Do you have any pictures of your setup?

 

OK, so this answer comes more than a year late. While I don't have pictures of my white W5F, I just want everyone to know that mine was just put in a box to be FedEx'd to Apple's recycling facility, while suffering from:

1. A screen that showed a weird "grid" pattern on the left, which made the display distracting to use.

2. An AC plug that no longer accepts charging from the brick. I had to prop it up each time I charged it to make contact, today that was no longer possible.

To have bitten the dust in 18 months is the most abysmal record for any notebook I have owned (I can remember owning 21 laptops sofar, starting with the Apple 100). YMMV.

 

I'm on my 3rd W5F

Started with my W5Ae Sold that one (No problems)

Got a W5F (sold that as well)

Just picked up a W5Fm (Downgraded the cpu to a core solo for ultimate battery life)



I love the W5 series from Asus IMO one of the best small notebooks that was available. I havn't had any problems with mine, but i baby all my notebooks so that might be why. Its a shame their getting harder to find. I don't like the W5Fe with vista (or vista in general)

 

Oh, I liked my W5F too, when it was working. The screen fuzzies started only 10 months or so into its life. Then I switched to a ASUS V2X, which gave me nothing but Wi-Fi and sleep problems, plus overheating.

Now, I'm happily on the Sony TZ, because it's all about battery power, which ASUS has apparently completely forgotten about.

 

I actually really liked the look of the W5, aside from the thick screen border, but after the W7 came out, I really didn't see a point to it.

 

w5 is pretty much end of life
it has beern replaced by u6s and f9s both models better and less expensive