newegg is selling a new N80Vn-X5

troublesome that is even better! you still have a lower price then us here in the us. if i were you i'd go for it

 

LED hurts my eyes, way too bright. I wouldn't mind if its CCFL.

 

You can turn it down if it's too bright. I'd be surprised if the lower levels were too bright for most people.

 

I've played around with Crysis some more, and stuck those results in the GP011C thread. I didn't know how to get it into SM 3.0 mode before.

 

There is a Fn+F5 "brightness down" combination.

 

Yeah, it's printed on the keyboard, and you can tell Windows to default to whatever you want.

At home I'm liking between maybe one notch from the bottom to a few notches past the mid point...and I like have several more notches above that I can go if I realy need it brighter! Plus florecent bulbs get dimmer fast-especially in notebooks. Can't believe how dim a coworker's screen is.

 

yeah i keep it around 5-60% as well at home. Any brighter and my laptop screen looks like the 2nd coming of jesus.

 

I posted the results or 3.0 Crysis in that other thread. Went pretty darned well!

But...I am REALLY getting frustrated with 64-bit Vista. Half the programs I try act 'weird', in a way Windows normally dosen't. I think/hope it's the emulation layer they have to use and not Vista itself, but it sometimes has me ready to throw the system out the window

 

LOL too funny

 

I read all 16 pages and no one has said anything about battery life. How long has this laptop lasted for you guys? Thanks.

Max life.
Min life.
Normal usage life.

 

I might be the only person who buys a laptop and never runs it on battery. It's a UPS for me ;D

 

I have a very powerful desktop PC. A laptop, if I bought one, would only be used on battery. It's very important for me.

I'd buy a netbook, but I'm looking to play h.264 video media. (Linux mind you)

So, if anyone can post some battery numbers I'd appreciate it.

 

i get about 2hr playing games and 2.5 to 3 all other.

also a much better experience with xp

 

both run fine on max.

 

Glad to hear! I just bought a N80Vn-X5. W00t.

 

really? xp?

 

I like Vista so far aside from 64-bit related issue

 

I've only had my labby like 2 weeks. started to hate it from vista...

it may boot a hair slower and loos the ir but well worth it...(don't need that last gig of ram yet)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4404376#post4404376

 

i got right at 3hr battery on xp looking at this site....

i spend way to much time on here lol

 

What did you dislike about Vista? I've had 64-bit issues, but overall I like Vista pretty well.

 

No DVI? No thank you.......

My Acer has dual DVI / VGA out and supports native dual screen support without a 3rd party adapter. Nice price tag, just wish it came with a few more bells and whistles for the price

 

It has HDMI. You just use an HDMI to DVI cable like one Tripp Lite makes. Most laptops seem to ship with HDMI now, but it makes no difference actually.

 

I didn't see the hdmi, I recant my previous statement.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't have bought it without HDMI/DVI, 'cause VGA really looks terrible IMO for the Windows desktop by comparison.

 

you had to get me started lol. hmm lets do the top 3

1. my centro only charges with the driver installed...don't work with 64
2. my nero version don't work with vista at all i think (its old but paid for)
3. ya know i want to say bloatware but that's not vista's fault.
4. I got around 15-20% boost in game performance
I was able to play RA3 on full in xp...ran a lil slow in vista...both were updated drivers

Hurry up win 7...played with it on my desktop and loved it

 

haha. I run mine at 50% too.

 

your not kidding. OMG it hurts

 

Supposedly there's no game performance difference now between the two though. Sounds like some of that is just 64-bit or other compatibility issues.

I've run across weird incompatibilities (the included DVD burning program doesn't work with 64-bit!) but still, personally I can't see trying to go back to an ancient OS that doesn't even support the hardware fully. Oh well

 

That's why you install Linux. It's never out of date and it Just Works(tm).

P.S. Games work, too.

 

Linux never works for me when I try it I had better luck 10 years ago with Linux than I have recently. I mean I like open source software and all, but I just have no luck with Linux, woudln't be able to run most of the programs I need (at least not natively), etc.

 

Ah right, like your "legal" copy of Photoshop, etc. Gotcha. (Except they run natively with Wine)

I know we're OT now, but I've brought tons of people over to Fedora (if you want a name) over the years and they've stuck to it. Laptop and desktops.

 

Wine isn't native by definition, I don't use photoshop, but there are a ton of programs I use constantly that aren't available for Linux. Heck-almost everything except Firefox (and probably Pidgin) actually.

 

so my x5 just arrived in the mail =)

 

Mine's due in just 24 hours. Yay.

P.S. Wolfpup. Oh how little you know.

 

well on wolfpop's defense, i tried to use linux for a year without switching back to windows...went from slackware to gentoo too ubuntu...and didnt like any of them at all...and quite frankly, its ugly. i can see its merits when ur programming or u dont mind command lining most of the commands, but i find windows more intuitive. probably cuz i've been using it all my life

 

What is it exactly I don't know? All but like 3 of the programs I use regularly will not run natively on Linux...that's just a fact.

 

can anybody tell me why my hdd shows only 298.09gb?

 

What about it is "ugly"? If you mean in terms of aesthetics, I prefer Linux distros by far. Please give an example of something that has to be done by command line in most Linux distros that doesn't have to be the same in Windows.

 

Its the difference between GiB and GB. You lose ~7% of the hard drive space in how the computer recognizes the sectors on the hard drive.

Someone else can probably give you a more technically correct reason, but its basically just that. Its normal on all computer hard drives.

 

well then i guess our preferences are not the same...and with kde and gnome, they're adding more shortcuts without using the bash prompt...i guess in the future i'll look at linux

 

cool thanks.
what program do i use to test out my laptop? like max out specs and check if everything's working as it should be...
and does anybody know what the 7200hdd is supposed to read at? i got 90MB/s and i dont know if thats good or bad

 

Heh, but it's so much harder to do this in Windows!


Seriously though, excluding aesthetics I by far prefer using Compiz to Aero.

In any case, has anyone tried booting to a Linux distro? I wanted to confirm everything works fine prior to purchase. I'd rather have the N81VP but the ATI card is scaring me away and I have no idea how long it will be until the N81VG is out (or if it will run on GDDR3).

 

I'll be loading one with Linux tomorrow when it arrives. I'll let you know my results, but I don't see any problems with it. I won't have to edit config files. I won't have to use the command line. Oh boy, what will I do?

 

Heh, thanks. I don't see any reason for incompatibilities though I rather be safe than sorry. By chance you feel the need to test battery life on Linux, feel free to post those results also .

 

Removing the bloatware from the N80 is easy. Put in your restore disk like usual and run the restore. eventually it will ask for your driver disk (not disk 2). run that. it will do some copying but dont worry its not dumping everything on your install.

it will come to the desktop and say system audit or windows oob experience. windows oob experience is default so choose that (no idea what system audit is). anyway choose windows oob experience. it drops you off at your desktop. you will have default install of vista. no lan driver no video driver nothing.

now put in your driver disk and either let it auto start or click the setup. instead of just dumping all the applications and drivers it pulls up a nice little list. it lists if its a driver or application and even if its optional. uncheck the stuff you dont want and click install. it should go right down the line and install what you checked off 1 by 1. it takes some time because there is hardware discovery going on but it does work. its a quirky little application but its better then dumping everything at once.

ive tried this and hapily running minimum.

 

That sounds fantastic!

I run Memtest on a new system overnight. But since I also run Folding @ Home all the time, that's probably a better stresser than anything, so it wasn't a surprise at all that Memtest checked out. I was running it on both the CPUs and GPU for quite a while, although I'm slightly worried about running it on the GPU now so I mostly just do the CPUs.

Do we have any idea what that "Disc 2" is? I was confused by that when I did a clean install. I tried it first, before I realized it actually needed the driver disc. And...Disc 2 was never actually used for anything! :laugh"

What did you end up installing? I think all I did were network drivers and chipset drivers maybe. Then once I got Windows up and running I've installed the touchpad drivers (which work well, but ask for permission to run EVERY SINGLE BOOT!), the webcam driver, and one of the "Asus Key" programs, which enables the bluetooth and wifi buttons at the top so I can keep them toggled off (Plus it pops up that little notification when you change brightness or things like that.)

Other than that, I just got drivers directly from Nvidia, and just let Windows install everything else. I don't seem to see any advantage to the official audio drivers over the generic ones, so I'm not even using that.

I'm left with four devices in Device Manager without drivers. Two "Base System Device" entries, a "Fingerprint Sensor" (which i don't care about so didn't install), and an "Unknown Device".

Everything seems to run fine, so I've felt the other stuff off. Some of those other hard keys Asus includes seem really silly.

 

Fedora is working a million times better than Vista on this thing. I'm typing to you now from the laptop and Fedora.

Vista wouldn't see my wireless router, but I booted off my Fedora USB drive and it connected instantly.

The wireless chip is an Atheos card instead of Intel like the ASUS website says... I'm a little disappointed there, but it seems to be working OK.

 

Good to hear . Seems like I will definitely be getting either one of these or the N81s.

 

To remove bloatware wouldnt it be easier to just go to Program options (formerly add remove programs) and just remove the programs you dont want thereby avoiding the drivers.

ie Symantec etc

 

Depends on what you want. I like having a clean install.

And the Wifi worked just fine for me at work, jumped on instantly. I think it's the same company's chip that I had in my Macbook Pro and that worked great too.