Note: Originally posted in NBR, I have equal love for both forums.
In appreciation for what these forums have done for my "laptop education", I want to document my experience with my s96j for your reference. If it wasn't for this forum I would have probably ended up with a Dell.
May 11, 2006
I received my s96j today after ordering on monday May 8, 2006 from GentechPC. SUPER FAST turnaround and delivery from Ken Lee at Gentech. PROPS!
Prelude-Why I chose s96j...
I was a hardcore asus fan since before the pentium M... (2 years ago?). With each passing hype (Z71V, Z70VA, W3J), I watched and wondered if the laptops were for me. With the W3J I realized this is the perfect laptop for any student/gamer. Power packed in a light, sleek, sexy package. My heart was set on it, then I read a review by hyperluminous that shattered my world. He reviewed the s96j, a model I had not payed much attention to. All i cared about was W3J BABY!! He gave specs and quoted that a well built system would cost about $1400. This sparked my interest. The next day I called Ken Lee at GentechPC and talked for about 45 minutes-1 hour, at the end of the discussion I decided I couldn't let this great bargain pass me by. I ended up paying $1651 for a powerful notebook manufactured from an extremely reputable company: ASUS.
The Specs
CPU: Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (2X1024)
HD: Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Internal Wireless Card: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 Tri-mode
Display: 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 Color Shine (Glare)
VGA: ATI Mobility X1600 256MB PCI Express
Optical Drive: 8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi
Camera: Built-in Camera
3 year warranty
Free Hardware Install
No OS
Anybody can see this is a great deal for an Asus, I can't believe I thought twice about it. I guess W3J had me on a chain.
Initial Reactions
LCD: The past couple days I worried about if I would be so excited to be installing windows and after the install a dead pixel would stab me in the eye. Thankfully, that daydream never happened. HALLELUJAH! Zero dead pixels on a BEAUTIFUL screen. I was very impressed with the even lighting and the vibrant, sharp colors. Asus splendid is as great as I hyped it up in my head to be. It's better than my Sony LCD desktop monitor.
Keyboard: I love it! Very responsive, and sturdy. I've never typed on the laptop keyboard before and the transition was instant.
Heat: From the moment I booted it up to install windows the fans were running very quietly, and they've stayed that way all day. While surfing the web and installing various programs the CPU stayed a steady 55 degrees C,
and the HD was around 47 degrees C. Considerably this is good because the dvd drive was running almost nonstop. The palmrest got warm after about 2-3 hours, but nothing to be worried about.
Batterylife: With the LCD at it's brightest setting, and speedstep enabled the notebook clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes before it went into standby mode. For the 2 hours and 30 minutes I was surfing the internet and installing programs via the DVD drive.
Looks: one of my main concerns as is expected when I was a few weeks from owning the most beautiful laptop: W3J. Surprisingly, the s96j is not ugly, not beautiful, just nice. I'll post pics soon. It looks nothing like the pics given from Asus or Intel. While it's no W3J, i love my baby for who she is, including her looks.
Speakers: Honestly, they are pretty worthless. Music sounds like a garbled mess, and the highest volume is not so great. I will probably be getting headphones anyway. Does anybody know a way to improve sound? I have just the standard drivers that came with the laptop. There is a equilizer in the Realtek HD audio manager, maybe i'll try messing with those later. I'll let you know how it goes.
Overall, I am very happy with this laptop. If there's any aspects I missed that you would like to know about, let me know.
Program Install
Installing programs took all day. Maybe its because Im not accustomed to using the touchpad. The touchpad works well, and I like the feature where you can just tap the pad and it works like the click of a mouse, instead of pushing the "mouse buttons" underneath the touchpad. The buttons make a fairly loud click if you don't hit them in the "sweet spot". I miss about 80% of the time, which means this "spot" is small. No big deal though. Life could have been easier if buy.com was more reliable. To give you an idea of how fast GentechPC was in sending my laptop; I ordered the laptop and a logitech v400 mouse from buy.com at the same time. By the time I received the laptop, buy.com finally shipped my mouse. Its already 2 days late.
Anyway, I used this guide that I found linked from ProPortable's website. Thanks guys at ProPortable! http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=33
It provided usefull freeware/shareware to keep your system performing well. I also installed AVG free, spybot, and adaware.
After all this installing I was curious what my favorite anime, Bleach would be like on my new baby, so i transfered a few of my favorite episodes from my desktop, and enjoyed the wonder of splendid technology. At times I felt like I was watching T.V. It was GREAT!
I also installed Windowsblinds and Object Dock. Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like so far...
Question: Does anybody know of a good system monitoring tool that will display on the desktop? I want readouts for CPU and RAM usage, batterylife, temperatures and possibly fan speed. I tried Samurize but didn't like it
Updated to come shortly: GAMES! Need for Speed Underground: Most Wanted, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Tomb Raider: Legend, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and even Ragnarok Online. Also pics and integrated camera performance.
In appreciation for what these forums have done for my "laptop education", I want to document my experience with my s96j for your reference. If it wasn't for this forum I would have probably ended up with a Dell.
May 11, 2006
I received my s96j today after ordering on monday May 8, 2006 from GentechPC. SUPER FAST turnaround and delivery from Ken Lee at Gentech. PROPS!
Prelude-Why I chose s96j...
I was a hardcore asus fan since before the pentium M... (2 years ago?). With each passing hype (Z71V, Z70VA, W3J), I watched and wondered if the laptops were for me. With the W3J I realized this is the perfect laptop for any student/gamer. Power packed in a light, sleek, sexy package. My heart was set on it, then I read a review by hyperluminous that shattered my world. He reviewed the s96j, a model I had not payed much attention to. All i cared about was W3J BABY!! He gave specs and quoted that a well built system would cost about $1400. This sparked my interest. The next day I called Ken Lee at GentechPC and talked for about 45 minutes-1 hour, at the end of the discussion I decided I couldn't let this great bargain pass me by. I ended up paying $1651 for a powerful notebook manufactured from an extremely reputable company: ASUS.
The Specs
CPU: Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (2X1024)
HD: Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Internal Wireless Card: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 Tri-mode
Display: 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 Color Shine (Glare)
VGA: ATI Mobility X1600 256MB PCI Express
Optical Drive: 8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi
Camera: Built-in Camera
3 year warranty
Free Hardware Install
No OS
Anybody can see this is a great deal for an Asus, I can't believe I thought twice about it. I guess W3J had me on a chain.
Initial Reactions
LCD: The past couple days I worried about if I would be so excited to be installing windows and after the install a dead pixel would stab me in the eye. Thankfully, that daydream never happened. HALLELUJAH! Zero dead pixels on a BEAUTIFUL screen. I was very impressed with the even lighting and the vibrant, sharp colors. Asus splendid is as great as I hyped it up in my head to be. It's better than my Sony LCD desktop monitor.
Keyboard: I love it! Very responsive, and sturdy. I've never typed on the laptop keyboard before and the transition was instant.
Heat: From the moment I booted it up to install windows the fans were running very quietly, and they've stayed that way all day. While surfing the web and installing various programs the CPU stayed a steady 55 degrees C,
and the HD was around 47 degrees C. Considerably this is good because the dvd drive was running almost nonstop. The palmrest got warm after about 2-3 hours, but nothing to be worried about.
Batterylife: With the LCD at it's brightest setting, and speedstep enabled the notebook clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes before it went into standby mode. For the 2 hours and 30 minutes I was surfing the internet and installing programs via the DVD drive.
Looks: one of my main concerns as is expected when I was a few weeks from owning the most beautiful laptop: W3J. Surprisingly, the s96j is not ugly, not beautiful, just nice. I'll post pics soon. It looks nothing like the pics given from Asus or Intel. While it's no W3J, i love my baby for who she is, including her looks.
Speakers: Honestly, they are pretty worthless. Music sounds like a garbled mess, and the highest volume is not so great. I will probably be getting headphones anyway. Does anybody know a way to improve sound? I have just the standard drivers that came with the laptop. There is a equilizer in the Realtek HD audio manager, maybe i'll try messing with those later. I'll let you know how it goes.
Overall, I am very happy with this laptop. If there's any aspects I missed that you would like to know about, let me know.
Program Install
Installing programs took all day. Maybe its because Im not accustomed to using the touchpad. The touchpad works well, and I like the feature where you can just tap the pad and it works like the click of a mouse, instead of pushing the "mouse buttons" underneath the touchpad. The buttons make a fairly loud click if you don't hit them in the "sweet spot". I miss about 80% of the time, which means this "spot" is small. No big deal though. Life could have been easier if buy.com was more reliable. To give you an idea of how fast GentechPC was in sending my laptop; I ordered the laptop and a logitech v400 mouse from buy.com at the same time. By the time I received the laptop, buy.com finally shipped my mouse. Its already 2 days late.
Anyway, I used this guide that I found linked from ProPortable's website. Thanks guys at ProPortable! http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=33
It provided usefull freeware/shareware to keep your system performing well. I also installed AVG free, spybot, and adaware.
After all this installing I was curious what my favorite anime, Bleach would be like on my new baby, so i transfered a few of my favorite episodes from my desktop, and enjoyed the wonder of splendid technology. At times I felt like I was watching T.V. It was GREAT!
I also installed Windowsblinds and Object Dock. Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like so far...
Question: Does anybody know of a good system monitoring tool that will display on the desktop? I want readouts for CPU and RAM usage, batterylife, temperatures and possibly fan speed. I tried Samurize but didn't like it
Updated to come shortly: GAMES! Need for Speed Underground: Most Wanted, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Tomb Raider: Legend, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and even Ragnarok Online. Also pics and integrated camera performance.
