the skinny on the U1F

Sorry Hedwig , Unfortunately right at the moment I dont have a digital cam to take the pictures at the moment , otherwise I would have definetely posted them.

 

hi Esspen,

I am also looking forward to buy a 9 cell battery , Can you kindly tell me the Battery Product Code and the place where you are buying , so that I would also like to buy that one?

Thanks in Advance.

VJ

 

Did anybody else bought a Laptop skin for U1F, I ordered one from aspoke.com before 2 days , but I havent got any reply from them yet? Hope they deliver it ?

 

Im buying it from here:
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=335922

Its a norwegian online shop. I will prob get it last week of june.

90-NLV1B3000T

 

Thanks a lot for your quick response, And by the way have u bought any laptop skin to stick it on the u1f lid, I bet the U1f is turning the heads of lot of people , In my office it does though!!

 

Actually the laptop is in my bed all time, and since i have had no one night stands - no one have seen it yet

Except when i brought it on airplane ..

I really hope ill get a one night stand soon ...

 

you really have to go by pixels, and not physical size. i believe it's what, 1024x768? not exactly ideal for photoshop, but enough for your tool pallets if you're going to use your 17" with it.

 

hi ,

I have contacted UK komplett stores, and it seems that they wont be able to get this battery at all. I dont know why its a big problem to release this 9 cell battery in UK. Nowhere in UK I have found these batteries.

Hope I might find some where soon.

 

Thats weird, because it wasent at stock here either.
I called ASUS NORWAY, they told me to contact a asus distribuiter to ask them to take in the battery.

I send a email to KOMPLETT.NO (komplett is norwegian btw, didnt know they were in UK as well) and they took in the 9 cell battery for me.

They asked if that is what i wanted, if not they would stock the 3,6 cell battery instead.

Call ASUS UK and ask what to do!!
The battery is out there


EDIT: KOMPLETT.CO.UK is not selling ASUS notebooks, thats why they dont take in the battery for you

 

I called ASUS also , but they gave a wierd answer that I have to go through retailers only and the retailers say that there is no 9-cell battery in UK , its really horrible.

 

Where did you find the 9 cell battery ? I have a U1F and would like to get a 9 cell batt too.

 

when someone finds a retailer with a 9-cell in the US, could they post a link?
get an SSD, i wish i would waited and gone with dell, i just never thought they would sell it on it's own...
if you want to pay less you guy's should go look at the place where i got mine from, if you don't mind not having the external blu-ray, i did get both a 3 and 6 cell....
i highly recommend you guys ditch vista, you'll notice better performance in multitasking with less overhead, not the mention an increase in battery life. The only downside of Xp is that the power manager from asus isn't as customizable.
you guys should try xubuntu with beryl, i squeeze 3 hours 40 minute's with the screen all the way down, with bluetooth and wireless on, and i'm sure the SSD helps. and beryl molests vista all day.
i don't do any programming, i mainly use my laptop for editing config's on my server and setting up websites, which is while i surf for info while listening to the HD audio out of this lappy. Get some shure headphone's if you intend on listening to music a lot.
BTW 32 Gig's is plenty, i have my box booting winxp, xubuntu, backtrack, and openbsd. and i still have room for my mp3's. i haven't scratched my casing yet, and i'm pretty tuff on my hardware, i've already dropped my box from table height with nothing happening. i also chose this lappy because it's made out of magnesium and carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is sexy. plus how much force can you accumulate from a drop when it's a 1 pound object? i have noticed that the metallic outer lining/finish around the edges of the corners, have started to rub away and show black underneath. there's really nothing else out there that i would rather have for a laptop right now...

 

hi guys,

Am also looking for a 9-cell battery , hope some post a link where I can get it to UK?

 

hi fallout ,

Is it possible for you to do any PCMark05 benchmarking on with SSD on U1F, it will give me an idea of how much performance gain , you are having. And I am also planning for SSD , but I am waiting for the samsung 64gb one, which they quoted will have 60% difference with 32gb version.
Hope you wont mind to do some benchmarking tests with XP and SSD on u1f.

Thanks once again.

 

3 hours and 40 mins with the 6 cell battery ? That doesn't sound much.

 

Maybe he meant the 3-cell.

 

nope, that's the 6-cell and i was using linux, which prolly isn't quite as good about using acpi, as windows is. wireless and bluetooth on. ill try to get you guy's some benchmarking info if i can get pcmark, i couldn't get futuremark to work for me. i did do some benchmarking with some other app and posted some numbers, just go back and check through this thread you should see something. The OS has alot to do with how much of a performance increase you'll notice, linux pulls it off very well, windows 2nd, and obsd seems to lag (though i'm not sure why, i think it might be because of the FFS filesytem it uses). maybe later i'll post some info on, what the best linux filesystem get's the best performance. Honestly, if you don't absolutely need some specific windows app, i think you should give linux a try. xubuntu with beryl uses between 170-360 megs of ram, and usually keeps the cpu below 5%. I'm no linux advocate, i'm more of an OpenBSD advocate, but if you wanna push this machine into getting the most out of your resources, i would choose linux. i totally recommend you guy's give it a try, use paragon partition manager ( g00gle fosi) creat a small 5 gig partition and burn yourself a copy of xubuntu. and if you have no idea what beryl is search beryl on youtube.

 

What's ACPI ?

And thanks for all the info Fallout. It's really appreciated !! I'm about to purchase the U1F.

Thanks.

 

Where did you find a 9-cell for a U1F?

 

Nobody knows yet...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface
ACPI is different on almost all machines even though it's a standard, which means that linux doesn't know how to read the sensors on this notebook, and it prolly won't be able to tweak as good as vista can, to control power consumption. at least for know, eventually, linux will catch up, since this is a relatively new product, and sometime's you have more control of your laptop's fan, clock speed, etc

 

I bought a U1F for my daughter for college (yes, she's spoiled).
I am in the US and it came with two batteries and the mouse, but no optical drive.
I had to special order the optical drive and it took about a week to arrive after the U1F.

I too reloaded it to XP, but I've had problems with the audio. It doesn't recognize there is an audio device. But after reading these comments, it appears to just be a driver issue so I'm gonna reload it.

I am intrigued by the SSD replacing the hard drive - both from the speed and the power consumption. I'll have to look into one of those.

I was very impressed with the laptop and had no problems reading the screen. (40 yo male with middle-age vision issues creeping up.) After I got it working with XP I wandered around the house updating my blog and updating some other websites. She almost didn't get it back. It was like carrying a tablet PC. I spent the weekend carrying it around in my left hand - my thumb on top and three fingers supporting it below - perching it on any nearly flat surface (including the back of my other hand) so I could enter a command, then picking it (and my drink) back up and wandering off somewhere else. I can't say enough good things about how small and agile it is. (It did take a bit to get used to the right-shift key.)

My daughter plays Pharaoh / Cleopatra and has no issues. I couldn't get a no-cd crack that works, so I installed Daemon Tools and made an ISO of the disc - it works great. I don't think it is designed to play games, but she plans to install Guild Wars soon. I'll provide a playability status from that. So not having the external optical drive with her isn't a problem. The optical drive is bigger than I thought it should be, but it isn't full sized. Interestingly, it has a special cable that plugs into a USB / power adapter on the side of the laptop, so it feeds off of the laptop - very good design.

I have never heard the fan kick on, so I couldn't tell you if it was loud. She tells me she has heard it, but she couldn't hear it across the room.

The carry case it comes with is slim and the laptop just drops into it. No scratches or anything close. It has a full-sized flap that has a magnetic latch at the bottom. It is deceptively simple and protective.
I think the shiny black and chrome look on the laptop are great and she loves it. (Her comment on the looks; "ooh, it's black and shiny!")

(I've tried to get her to install Unbuntu / Beryl, but no luck so far.)

I'm gradually building a docking station at her desk at home so she will have a 19" screen, normal keyboard and a power plug available. So the only accessories I would have ordered from Asus would be the optical drive, an extra 9-cell (total of 2), and an extra power adapter (total of 2).
[interesting aside - with an LCD plugged into the side of the laptop, you can toggle the video to be: laptop only, LCD only, LCD + laptop in mirror, LCD + laptop in "shared" - laptop bottom half, LCD top half of desktop. Interesting.]

I would rate the laptop at a 9 of 10.
The only cons are:
- the separate purchase of the optical drive
- the price of the laptop
I think $2,400 is too much to spend on a laptop, but I had help with relatives (graduation present and all), so that took some of the bite out of the price.
(Ironically, the laptop came with CD's for Vista recovery, drivers and Nero - but no optical drive.)

One other feature that should be included in the BIOS of all laptops is the LojackForLaptops. I still have to buy and install that, but I would feel better if it weren't simply installed on the drive, but physically in the BIOS.

She's happy, therefore, I'm happy.

 

Thank you for your reviews _John

I have a little problem with fan noise. It's loud now, always fully on. Nbprobe, I see cpu 75%, and fan full mode (plein régime in french). I am in battery mode.

I check temp with rmclcok and NHC (notebook hardware control), I get 50°C from CPU and 40°C from hard drive.

Do you know a driver, software in order to decrease fan noise ?

 

if you use a combination of the TPM and password the bios, anyone who tryies to steal this laptop or mess with its data, will be having a really hard time. if you forget your password or try to recover data from another laptop, you gonna have a brick. if you want an SSD, i would wait till the 64 Gig comes out in a month or two, im pretty sure Dell will have it, and also, you might want to look into getting another wireless card with more range. i went with atheros so that i could inject wireless packets all day, but i think ubiquiti has some really nice long range cards. so far i've gotten everything working in linux except for the sound, which has an issue with playing out of both the speakers and headphones. I hope that gets resolved soon...

 

How much does the 6 cell battery stick out of the laptop (further than the 3 cell) ?

 

The larger battery sticks out the back, about the thickness of a AA battery.
In fact, that's what the back of the battery looks like - a roll of AA batteries.

 

Overtime, a laptops fans and vent become clogged with dust, lint, hair and etc, in order to restore the temps back to normal and same with the fan from revving up. Use a can of compressed air to blow out the vent and the CPU fan. This will help a lot.

 

So you installed Linux on the Sandisk SSD.

Did you have to find and use any drivers for it work and perform ok?