Is the z70Va reallly live up to the hype? - Page 2

Well it's a little hard to find a small form factor laptop with GPU muscle. Just have to keep an eye out. I hear Sony is coming out with a competitor in the BX series. The 14" is going to have a higher res screen than the W3, which is weird because the rest of the BX line (15.4" & 17") is only WXGA. I say gross, if my grandmother wanted a computer, I'll push her in that direction.

" also agree with you that the style of these notebooks is totally outdated and unattractive"

No way, it has the professional touch.

Laptops: Now back in solid black. May the trend never die!!!!

I honestly don't like solid black for a laptop personally, except for Lenovo/IBM notebooks. The refresh has silver accents and that definitely adds to its appearance IMO. Also, it looks like the 'hood' of the refresh is more charcoal colored. (Maybe that's just the pictures?)

The Z70V (and, I imagine, the Va) is definitely charcoal colored -- just a little darker than the background to this site's "grey" theme. It looks black in many photos, but it is definitely grey.

So I'm going to be obnoxious about this once again... would it be wise to just buy the Z70va instead of the W3V, sacrificing size, style (Come on, the W3V just looks better) and a little bit (almost miniscule) weight? I mean, they both have similar traits, and just about the same battery life. I guess I'm just stuck between these two. SOMEONE DECIDE FOR ME!!!

Okay, get the Z70VA.

I concur

"The refresh has silver accents and that definitely adds to its appearance IMO. Also, it looks like the 'hood' of the refresh is more charcoal colored. (Maybe that's just the pictures?)"

It's my understanding that the Z70va is an updated M6bne, no? I have the WXGA M6 and have had about 15 months of nearly trouble free usage. I agree with the expectations of nearly flex-free chassis, solid keyboard, and understatedly elegant business looks.

The charcoal coloring is paint over the carbon reinforced plastic. It's a bit soft, and if you have acidic sweat, you may wear it a bit thin in places. Not a big deal, as it still appears dark and fairly uniform. The silver trim is also painted, so it suffers from the same wear issues. Certainly not a deal breaker, though.

I must say that I have been very impressed with the build quality as well as the qualiy of the ASUS software. It does what it's supposed to do, does not load you up with a ton of extra junk, and is very reliable. I am an architect/urban designer/photographer and do a lot of travel for work. This laptop has been on 3 continents so far and half a dozen countries, crunching big 3D renderings and huge Photoshop files for 12-14 hours a day sometimes (when The Sheik wants it now, he wants it now!), virtually without a hitch. You can see from my signature that my spec is at the high end of normal, which means to me that this machine is a true thin and light workstation.

The Z70VA sounds like my machine with a higher res screen, double the VRAM, a faster frontside bus, and better wireless connectivity. What's not to be happy with that? I highly recommend the Z70VA (assuming it's the M6 refresh) based on my personal experience with the previous generation and high respect for ASUS products in general.

I was going to order the Travelmate 8104 on Tuesday, but I was worreid about the heat issues. This solves everything, I will be ordering one of these for sure. Basically the same laptop, except runs cooler.

well once the dvi and bluetooth options become available the downsides for me on this laptop would be the lack of sata (which means no ncq which does improve performance), no turion option (which i can live with), no wuxga (which is harder to live with for me), and a few design issues like the speakers being under the lcd screen thereby making larger borders and a longer laptop chassis, but this thing is a very nice laptop and considering i can buy it barebones and presumably put in a pinmoded p-m 735 for pretty cheap i think make up for these short comings.

When you buy it "bare bones", would it be cheaper to buy the other components elsewhere? And would it be hard to find them? I've never owned a notebook, so I have no clue how I should go about it, and I'm also tight on budget ($1300). So I was planning to get a Z70va and just buy the HD, optical drive, and RAM somewhere else (Newegg maybe?).

I believe 3rd party optical drives don't fit, so you may as well go with the drive from wherever you purchase it. As for the hard drive and ram, newegg will most likely be cheaper.

Ok, thanks for the info. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but from what I've researched, the highest storage I can get with a 7200rpm is only a 60GB HD? I would really need more than that, but I've also read that the 5400rpm HDs are slow and not very good, especially when gaming. Another thing.. should I consider getting the option for Bluetooth? How important is that in a notebook? Thanks for any further help.

and a [i]slightly better graphics card.

Ledzepp14, I would just buy all the components from the dealer that you're planning to get your barebone from. Dealer prices have really came down on components, and they'll install all of it for you- which will leave out the room for error.

As for third party optical drives- they're all "3rd party", you can order anything that'll fit (samsung, panasonice, NEC). As for saving money, buying your own components, I don't think it'll save any unless you already had parts on hand and only bought the barebone, Retail pricing on components can't compare to the dealer price when they're sold with the system. I would just look for the best dealer price instead of components from other retailers.

As for the 7200 rpm drives, they've hit the 100gb mark already. They should surpass it very soon, maybe this month.

I have to disagree with you a little mike. While I do agree the for someone that may be nervous about installing components themselves, that just getting a 'fully-built' laptop is definitely the best option. And also, in some cases, you don't save much money by buying the part yourself and installing it (CPU you might save $5, less than that for a wireless card), but on things like memory and a hard drive, depending on the capacity and such, I've seen it where you can save over $100 on memory about about another $20-30 on the hard drive.

Again, if you have reservations about doing it yourself, trust your instinct and get it done professionally. I personally made that mistake before when I tried to mod my PS2 (I suck at soldering) and I bricked the whole damn thing, $200 down the drain.

You can really save money if you do it right. I recently purchased the z70VA and bought the ram and hdd somewhere else. If I bought the ram with the barebones I could have only got 1 gig for the same price as I have gotten 2 gig. Also on the hdd I saved about $70. Although some components like the cpu there is very little difference. When you are on a tight budget every little bit counts. If you do not know anything about laptops or building computers I would reccommend getting one prebuilt instead.

Let me just say that I LOVE THE Z70VA!!! Its way cooler than it looked on pics, the build quality is awsome, the GPU is nice, the preformance is great and its an Asus

Yes I agree with you on the memory, you can get basic KVR memory for pretty cheap. Some retailers (if you ask them) sometimes use a better brand of memory, such as corsair, infiniti or crucial. I, myself, use 2 sticks of KVR in my Z70, that's good enough for me.