Velocity Micro NoteMagix x20 (Asus C90)

The x20 is technically a sourced laptop built for Circuit City by Velocity Micro, but it is identical to the Asus C90. If you'd like to see one in person check out a Circuit City near you, they may have it in stock.

In Southern California I know Torrance has one in stock, and Rancho Cucamonga has a demo unit. I purchased the one that was there, very happy with the unit so far.

Items of note:

2GB Corsair RAM
160GB WD Scorpio 5400RPM Hard Disk
Intel wireless
Bluetooth
Cost + sales tax: $1679

I was planning on getting the C90 through another vendor in Southern California however since the hardware was exactly the same I found no reason to wait. I was also satisfied with the mostly positive customer satisfaction from the research I did of Velocity Micro.

 

What CPU do you have?

 

What's the battery life like? Also the heat?

 

CPU: E6600

After fully charging it I unplugged and started to do typical web surfing downloading and installing games from CD, battery lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. I'm guessing under lighter computing circumstances and with a more conservative power mode setting I might squeek out maybe 2 hours tops, maybe....

Regarding the heat, the left palm rest gets hot but not quite to the point of being uncomfortable for me. Same characteristics as you'll find with other C90 owners.

 

Hrmm, gotcha. I guess that battery life isn't surprising considering the components used, but it's probably why the C90 (or VM's NoteMagix based on it) probably isn't what I'm looking for in a notebook, since I'd like to be able to use it away from AC power for more extended periods of time.

 

Battery life and heat are the main drawbacks to this system. Battery life isn't much of a concern to me as the only time I'll need to go to battery would be on flights which would be rare. I am concerned about the heat though as that could damage components over the long-run.

For my needs though it fits the bill; good price/value, very good screen quality, solid construction, very good tactile feel of keyboard and good layout of buttons, CPU/GPU power, upgradeable, etc.

 

At the maximum settings, the x20 turned out to be exactly double the speed of my AMD Athlon64x2 4200 Workstation under real world working conditions (running my own programs which have a timer to tell me how long they took to execute). That was with 10% overclocking, and it does get warm under the left palm.

With that power setting, running highly recursive and floating point intensive programs, it ran the battery down in about an hour. For web browsing I clocked it down to minimum power use settings, and the battery took over two and a half hours to run down. I imagine that if I turned off bluetooth and WiFi it would have lasted longer (using a wired ethernet instead). Maybe I'll get around to testing it, maybe not.

Price/performance, nothing touched it, and I looked. Maybe cobbling a c90 myself I would have saved a couple of hundred.

The 3dMark06 benchmarks weren't that impressive running with 10% overclocking. 3170. I'm pretty sure it should do at least 3800, but I'm not sure what I need to tweak to get that.

I bought it mainly to demo my software, and I think it'll fit the bill nicely. But I'll do my best to make sure I have access to AC power whenever possible.

I haven't been able to get it to work with the latest Nvidia drivers, and the benchmarks are less impressive than they should be (but those *are* optimized for the latest Nvidia drivers).

I had a tech support issue. Since I bought the first machine Torrance got in, on the first day it was on sale, it didn't have any of the things it should have had: backup disks, manuals, nothing. They got that stuff out to me right away. Well, ok, not really an issue, since the machine worked perfectly out of the box, and I didn't really need that stuff. It's a laptop, so it's pretty self explanatory

Also, the fan sticking out the back made it nigh impossible to fit in my normal laptop backpack, but not a problem in my Targus. Running on the low power settings, it is the quietest laptop I've used.

I know this probably doesn't matter, but the folks at my work were impressed with it and said it's one of the best looking laptops they've seen.

One other thing. It's a bit on the heavy side. Annoying when I've got it in the backpack and I'm commuting by bicycle. Not too bad when I'm riding the motorcycle though.

The fact that it's upgradeable means that I can expect to swap out the CPU when either a similar performance, lower power chip comes out, or a faster one with similar power. What I really like most about this machine is flexibility for the future. Not a typical feature of laptops, y'know?

 

whats the difference besides price from the "25" version;

and does velocity micro brand the notebook(place names on it) other than asus?

 

o i found out; a nice etched arrow: not something that would bring down the value.

 

i ordered one from circuit city hope it dosent have any problems; so how is yours running and does it have a return policy?

wind up getting the notemagixx20; but the thing is the circut city website list the notemagixx25 with spec's close to or similar to the c90s. is the one i ordered improperly speced out on the circuit city web page?

im assuming this true;

plus i couldnt see why the notemagixx25 is 200 more expensive than other one.

i hope i dont get dissed for asking these questions.

 

Faster CPU and bigger hard drive in the x25.

The return policy is something like 15 days and there is a restocking charge on all computers if you return them.

 

i expext that i wont be returning it; why would i its thes best most productive put together laptop out at the cheapest price.

 

ginzero what version of vista home premium is installed 32 or the other? and is the disk of the operating system with the computer;

mine is on the way and should be here later the day.

 

so m piece showedup and it is off the hook;
peace. have fun

 

mine came with the 32 bit version.. no os disk too.. i better call them up!

enjoy

 

is there any way i can increase the battery life... i dont mind spending a little bit