z70va (Chembook 2370va) review

History
I began shopping for a laptop after going to work for myself doing web design/development. I wanted it to essentially be a DTR with all the bells and whistles. In addition to work, I wanted to play a little Day of Defeat: Source (half-life 2 mod) from time to time, so I knew I needed a machine with a dedicated GPU.

I first bought an HP DV4000 with the x700 because I could get HP financing and it had everything I needed. However, I quickly realized that 1280x800 wasn’t enough screen real estate for me. It also lacked a certain sex appeal and the build quality wasn’t what I hoped for. So I did some more research and quickly settled on the z70va.

I placed an order with Geared2play.com on 10/15 (Sat.) with the understanding that the machine would ship at the end of the following week. By the following Friday, Eddie at G2P was still waiting for a new shipment that hopefully didn’t have the Red Menace. By the following Tuesday, I guess it was apparent that all the new machines had it to. I appreciate Eddie being upfront about the problems with these units and letting me cancel my order.

I then decided that I still had to have the z70va (dammit!) and ordered the Chembook version (2370va) from discountlaptops.com. I had only seen one report of a Chembook having the Red Menace, but I purchased the machine knowing there was a chance that any machine might have it. Discountlaptops has a good return policy and I was assured over the phone that I could return the machine if there was a problem and only pay return shipping.

So on 10/28, it arrived. I watched intently as the Centrino logo appeared and disappeared – no Red Menace. After installing WinXP Pro, I did a bunch of black background/white foreground testing and nothing. So I’m thrilled to report that I think I’m in the clear as far as this issue is concerned. In my initial thread about this, it was said by another poster that my machine may have been from an early shipment originally bound for S. America (based on S/N).

UPDATE (11/04): I now have the Red Menace

Specs
15.4" WSXGA (1680x1050) Wide -Screen Active Matrix Display
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium-M (760) Processor (Sonoma / 2 MB L2 Cache / 533 FSB)
Standard CPU Thermal Compound Paste
128 MB Dedicated DDR2 - Ati Radeon X700 PCI-Express Video Card
1 GB DDR2 (533 MHz) CORSAIR Memory (1 GB x 1)
100 GB Hard Drive (5400 RPM) (Toshiba)
8X DVD±R (DL) / 4X DVD±RW / CD-RW / DVD Combo Drive (TSSTcorp TS-L532A)
Internal 56k Modem
Internal IntelPRO 2915ABG Wireless Ethernet/Lan (802.11 a+b+g)
Internal Bluetooth Wireless Card
8-cell Smart Lithium Ion Battery
Built-in 4-in-1 card reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO)
S-video out, 4 USB (2.0), 1 PCMCIA, IR, IEEE Firewire
10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet LAN Port
AC Adapter w/ power cord
Free Deluxe Carry Case
*FREE* Notebook Essentials Software
No Operating System Installed, drivers included on CD-ROM
2 yr ChemUSA warranty w/ 1-way paid shipping
Lifetime Tech Support by calling 800-866-2436 (510-714-4045 ext hours)

Build
Everything I’d hoped for. Very solid feel compared to the HP. Carbon fiber composite/plastic/whatever material is very cool. No creaking, including under the right palm rest as some have reported. The Ethernet port is a little tight, as well as the audio out, but neither is a problem.


Display
Beautiful display. Very bright. I can take the brightness down several levels and it’s still plenty. I don’t see any dead pixels and I’m not going out of my way to find any. The brightness doesn’t appear to automatically go down a few notches when I go on battery. Not sure how to fix that.

Sound
I don’t expect much out of laptop speakers. I would only rely on them for system sounds and the occasional video/audio clip on a news web site, etc. Having said that, the speakers on the machine are fine. They sounded a little muddled at first, but the Realtek equalizer control panel let me fix that. Sound thru the headphones is fine.

Keyboard and Touchpad
It’s well documented that the left Ctrl key and the Fn key have been swapped. This is a minor annoyance, but one that will go away with time. It’s most evident when doing a Ctrl-Z to do an Undo in some programs.
The touchpad is one of the better ones I’ve used. I updated the synaptics drivers to get the scroll working with Firefox even though I usually just use the keyboard arrows for this. One thing I noticed though after updating – the first drivers I used had a feature that turned off the touchpad automatically when a USB mouse is detected. This new version doesn’t appear to have the feature anymore.

Ports
After having the HP DV4000 for a few days, I decided that having any ports on the right side is a bad thing. The cables for whatever you have plugged in are always getting in the way of the mouse and the CD tray.
The z70va got it right by putting all of the ports on the left and back sides with the ports that you are more likely to keep plugged in on the back.

Bluetooth
I originally got Bluetooth on the DV4000 as an afterthought, though I thought it might make the laptop more future-proof. I was pleasantly surprised by what I could do with my Bluetooth phone (Motorola v551). In addition to file transfers, and modem (doesn’t really work with my cingular account, but the laptop can at least configure it), I was able to set up the laptop to answer calls and act as a speakerphone, which I thought was cool. I think I had only scratched the surface of what could be done, and I was looking forward to doing more with my new machine.
Unfortunately, the z70va comes with the Toshiba BT stack. I can’t really give an in-depth technical explanation here, but basically, the Toshiba stack sucks, the MS one isn’t any better, and the one with my HP was (I think) the widcomm stack that does it all.

Update: Got the WIDCOMM stack installed and working.

Wireless
The Intel 2915 is working fine. I installed the drivers that came on a separate CD instead of the ones on the Asus driver CD. And I’m using the Intel configuration utility instead of the Windows one. The only problem I’m having is that the wireless button isn’t working. I think it did at first. This appears to be a common problem.
Also, wireless connectivity appears to always be in an Off state when I return from standby.

Battery
Since I started writing this, the battery has gone from 3:30 to 2:43. I’ve seen the battery reading as high as 3:43 after taking it off AC. I’m using NHC with dynamic switching.
I did have a problem with the laptop freezing when I took it off of AC once. I had the NHC window up at the time and I’m wondering if that had anything to do with it.
Battery life is much better than the DV4000.

Gaming
My gaming is limited to DoD:S. I fired it up last night and initially had an issue with screen resolution. When I tried to run the game at native resolution, the display was tilted 90 degrees. Very weird. Playing at 1280x768 was fine.


Conclusion
Overall, I’m very please so far with this machine. There are a few minor driver issues that I want to get worked out, but I’m confident everything will be at 100% eventually.