Review: S96J Review - Page 4

Downloading CS:S right now and will hopefully get some play time in tonight and leave my impressions.

Will also run a Cakewalk benchmark and report how this system stacks up to others.

Still looking for a utility to monitor X1600 temps.

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Resolved the error by installing the UAA driver

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CS:S, as expected, ran like hot maple syrup. What I was looking at this time around though was the response time and the brightness and color saturation of the screen and I was very impressed. Ghosting is minimal enough that it's imperceptible if you're into the game. Compared to a high end desktop LCD, the colors are a little washed out, but brightness is absolutly sufficient even for murky games like CS:S.

Cons: I had the UWXGA+ screen on the E1705 and could never get it bright enough(my main complaint). I also wasn't happy with the DVD playback as the ghosting on the Dell screen was slightly more perceptible than the Asus. DVD-RW drive in the E1705, as you know, sounds like a hurricane and will make your whole desk shake. Not much of a difference in 3DMark and the X1600 uses less power. Lower res means fewer pixels to draw at native res which means more frames per second in many cases. The footprint is a little smaller. The text on the UWXGA+ at normal font size and dpi settings was just too small and any other setting made it look less crisp. I have 20/15 vision, so that's not the problem.....I just like being able to quickly read things at a glance and from varying distances and positions.

Pros: E1705 comes with Direct Media which is sweet. The hinge was stiffer on the Dell. I was expecting the Asus to feel a lot smaller, but it doesn't feel that much smaller. The touchpad and touchpad drivers were very good on the Dell for things like scrolling. The touchpad buttons made no noise. They offer you a sweet deal on the extended warranty after you buy it, so you've got 4 years of worry-free useage.

I may have just kept it, but I got several stacking coupons and the resale on it was more than I paid when I sold it due to the 7800Go being discontinued at the time, so I couldn't resist. I suspect the non-UWXGA+ screen might have suited me better.

What ultimately sold me on the Asus was being able to save money by reuing my old OS and memory and being able to hand select every component that went into my notebook. It fluctuates, but Asus motherboards have also generally been the best overall boards for systems I've built and I wanted something that would last me a long time as one of the main reasons I'm moving to the notebook is to get myself away from constantly upgrading my home computer.

It's not a night and day difference, but after selling it, there were enough reasons for me to consider something else instead. If you're happy with your notebook, this won't make you any happier.

Holy smokes! Nice find! Seriously, that manual is pure gold.

I just saved it and if it disappears will be able to email it to anybody asking.

Hell, if you check the bottom of the S96J it even says Z96J in at least one place. That manual you found clearly shows how to remove/install the internal Bluetooth and if G2P can do it so can we. But, man, it looks like you'll need to remove everything down to the motherboard to install it. I'm glad I have no use for it.