downsides of a W3J

How is the build quality compared to IBM/Lenovo?

 

One downside:
Paint will wear after some months.

 

What exactly do you mean by the paint wearing down. Do you mean it starts to peel or that it fades away. Is this a common problem on most notebooks?

 

has more to do with sweating palms and excessive use..which means if you're on this forum and post here you're probably and excessive user..there's protection for the palmrests but i personally left the stickers and use those instead haha

 

The only thing that prevented me from buying a W3J was its low screen resolution. If it had WSXGA+ I'd have jumped all over it. Still, you won't find a better 14.1" notebook.

 

heh, 1680x1050 on a 14.1" would be crazy small. But perhaps an option of 1440x900 + DVI output on the W3J and it could be the best notebook ever made

 

+1..if the w3j had those two there would be no contest compared to other 14"..on that topic..does anybody know the specs of the screen..from everest i figured out it was a chi mei Model#N140A1-L01..but i coulnd't find much more than that

 

Wait a sec...

Does the paint wears off? Like the other laptops out there, that are either painted silver or whatever color? That's one thing I like from Thinkpads, their casing is black not painted black.

Either way, I am still getting the W3J (or its new replacement model) when the Merom comes out.

 

well for one thing, don't use the palm rest. your hand is supposed to elevated when you're typing anyways. a little hard for it to fade if you never touch it.

 

Someone said you only get an additional hour of life from the ODD battery. For the same price you can have an extra 2-2.5 hours with the only inconvenience being the power shut off/boot up half way through your 6-7 hour laptop session. It might be slightly heavier, but you could confidently leave the AC adapter at home knowing you have 2 fully charged main batts... JMO

 

Yeah I do not like the painted chassis, A few corners are already starting to show wear, if they are going to be using different colours it should be moulded into the plastic (although you cannot get the same colour range with moulded plastic), I would much rather have a single colour than a wearing paint job! My old Compaq was 6 years old and with a wipe it still looked good, I wonder what this will look like after 12 months......what do the W3V's look like now?

but at the end of the day its still going to be a nice fast notebook no matter what the exterior looks like, although I dont want to be embaressed by pulling it out in public.......

 

Well I was worried about working on a smaller screen, but I find the screen res is good with the W3J, and I use programs like Indesign, photoshop and CAD that have planty of menu's and I have never felt it could be a higher res, at least with the wide screen gives plenty of space for menues

 

I have pretty much landed on the W3J for Uni when/if it is available soon enough with Merom. I do have a few questions however...

The touchpad - is it sticky/glossy at all? I was playing around on some HP laptops in Staples today, and they had glossy touchpads on which your finger would stick - the sliding around of your finger tip could not possibly be smooth. The two Acers I tried had a much better touchpad.

Secondly, does it come with a Windows XP disc? I'll likely reformat it and do a clean install as soon as I get it. I assume drivers are all easily accessible and won't cause any troubles?

Thanks,
Josh

 

it has a very good synaptics touchpad..initially it may feel like its less sensitive but thats because of the default settings..and to prevent problems of touching the pad while typing

 

Waverider: I just had some questions about the paint: (a) How long did the paint wear off, (b) where is the W3J losing the most paint, and (c) would you recommend one of those plastic protector things?

Thanks in advance!

 

Mainly the corners and a small scuff on the hinge, its only noticable if you look really closely, but at least the lid is brushed aluminium, so will look good for along time, I wish it was like the V6 with more brushed aluminium or carbon fibre.

the palm rest looks fine, (i took some stickers off and they didnt leave a mark) but I am wondering if I should get some clear film as described by others, just to make sure it is kept nice.

 

No Windows XP disc, just recovery. There has been talk around about using another OEM XP Pro disc with SP2 and the number on the bottom. Supposedly that works fine. The other option is to try and make your own disc using the I386 folder that is somewhere on the hard drive. Other than that, no way to clean install without buying a copy of windows. Also note that the first two methods may be against EULA.

 

The touchpad isn't glossy or sticky, it's different than the my old dell laptop and I like it much better as it is more sensitive and generally has a better feel to it. The only initial downside to the touchpad is that it's hard to know which area is the normal touchpad and which is the up and down scroll section of the touchpad. This is a minor issue though because you get used to where it is and once figured out, it's no problem at all.

 

Yeah I have used a sony TX which has the glossy track pad, it is awfull your finger sticks and jumps, I like the touchpad on the W3J, it works really well, no complaints from me.

 

What? Says who? No such thing has been reported.

 

Evidently someone just did.

 

the op? What makes you think he even owns a w3j?

 

What make you think he doesns't?

Well then why would he post a downside under the W3J.

 

the fact that the nb is only out not even 2 months makes me wonder.

 

I understood your statement in two ways:

1) the fact that the noob is only out not even 2 months makes me wonder
2) the fact that the notebook is only out not even 2 months make me wonder


... first one made me lol.

I guess then this is not a problem on the W3J. Especially since others did not come back to complain about it.

 

Just remember that the W3J non-refreshed version has been out for a several months and so maybe somebody has noticed some paint thinning/fading? I, for one, don't know as I have only had mine for a couple weeks and have noticed nothing.

 

i had no idea that the palm rest's paint chips off.. O_O. or is this case not true? and what causes it to do so? sweaty palms?

 

i wouldn't jump to conclusions on this one, nobody has clearly stated that on their personal w3j there is a major problem of paint peeling. also, rjtd, who initially brought it up in a somewhat offhand and non-clarified comment hasn't even posted here again. if there was a major problem with this i'm sure it would be all over the place on this forum

 

I have used it heavily (with sweaty palms) and have had no issues with paint peeling or anything of the like. Even managed to bump it into a steel desk, no scratches or dings. It's solid. Paint's solid. I understand that no one notebook can be perfect, and yes it does have a few minor flaws or quibbles, but it's a great notebook overall. I'm living in reality with it.

 

Wait, theres a refreshed and nonrefreshed version of W3J? What are they? I'm lost lol.

 

Yeah, when it originally came out, I think it was with T2400 and 2x512MB RAM? ,after the Intel price drops on Core Duo procs, now it's T2500 and 1x1GB RAM... someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

you are correct, and the ram was switched from ddr533 to ddr667

 

the ram was not switched..it was always 667..only difference is now u get 1stick instead of 2

 

Yup, the only difference is the faster CPU at 2Ghz and the 1 GB of 1 stick of DDR2 instead of 2 sticks of 512.

 

Is the hard drive still IDE with the refreshed model?

 

Can I assume that nobody has any issues with the screen on the W3J? As it has not been mentioned as a downside at all.........
I remember reading several comments on the screen not showing true colors or something like that. Was that just people being too fussy & nitpicking?

 

the screen is great..better than sony's

 

If you're not a graphics pro or use the unit for a lot of fine color work or touch-ups, and you don't put the same file up against a decent desktop LCD for comparison, the screen should suit you just fine. It's not being fussy if your work or projects depend on color accuracy, but most people in regular use would never look at the screen and say "ewwww, bad color." I haven't gotten a sense for whether the Splendid technology in the new Ensembles makes up for this, but that really is just a software contrast/gamma/etc package and wouldn't address the underlying issue with the screen itself.

SRD has posted in multiple threads about Asus' 14" screens and color accuracy. I've learned that I just need to use my desktop for photo color work, because my notebook screen (while good in it's own right) doesn't have the vibrance, color reproduction or contrast to match .

 

Thanks ClearSkies! Great response, as always. Great help.

 

Isn't it S-ATA? It would be very strange if it had an IDE,

 

It's an IDE.....

 

its PATA..same thing

 

no no imeant 2x1gb ddr 667

 

No, its IDE

 

OMG!!! This is where all the talk about the W3J palm rests started!!!


EVERYONE PLEASE NOTE

NZwaverider clearly stated the paint issue was around the hinges!! There was no "paint chipping" or palm rest wear.

If you find the palm rest issue concerning, please carefully read what was said rather than jumping to conclusions!!!

 

So True, I use photoshop at work and I never trust any LCD the saturation and colours are always to varied, I even have a new Cintique 21UX (a 21'' tablet screen you can draw directly onto) if I am doing any colour adjustment it must be done using a CRT.

Although saying that you have quite a bit if modification by using the colour modification settings in the display properties, but I havent bothered yet.

 

I have two questions :
1 - ARE ALL THE VERSIONS OF W3J ARE 667Mhz compatible
2 - JUST with a bios upgrade W3J can use 64-bit merom cpus?I have heard sth like that but it seems a bit far feched?

 

1. Yes.
2. That is the assumption that people have been making, but has not yet been confirmed by Asus that I'm aware? Hardware-wise, all you have to do is pull out the existing cpu and drop in the new one - Eddie @ Geared2Play (sorry, BTOTech.com ) has put a Merom into a z96 and it worked, more or less, using the Intel BIOS that was briefly posted for the S96 and was since deleted from the Intel site. PCPerspective dropped a merom into a Z96 using the current bios and it worked but ran at quite hot temps; they did the same with a (I think it was ) Dell 1710 and got similar results. Other than the brief Intel bios release, I haven't heard whether any other manufacturers (Dell, sony, etc) have released bios updates for merom to the public yet but they undoubtedly have them internally either in-hand or near completion.

 

back to the screen problem. Is has been mentioned that it only appears when you are using Windows Classic. What if using the default Windows XP Theme? Do you still notice this problem. I use photoshop for design work, but nothing serious in a notebook, just something I do for fun when I'm somewehere. Could the duo core processor run the Vista Aeroface smoothly?

 

This thread has been of great use to me as I am jin the market for a portable yet powerful notebook for school.

My question though is what battery does the current W3j with the 2gig duo core processor come with? Is it a 8 cell or the smaller cell that came with the previous lower end model?