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Asus A8Jm vs. Asus W3J

post #1 of 9
6/20/06 at 1:58am
Thread Starter 
Which of these two notebooks, W3J or A8Jm, will be better for the college student? I will be gaming - CS:S, HL2, CS 1.6, BF2. I'll be be doing college work such as using MS Word, Excel, PPT, etc. I'll be carrying the notebook around with me. Which one of these two has BETTER build quality? Which has BETTER battery life? It seems that the A8Jm is the better laptop because it has a DVI port and MORE USB ports - 5 as opposed to 3, and it has a built-in camera. What do you guys think? I read the review for both of these notebooks on this site, but I still have these questions. Also, in the A8Jm review on this site, the reviewer said that the North American version of the notebook does not come with built in bluetooth. However, on Portable ONE, I customized the notebook and it DOES have bluetooth v2.0. So whats the deal? So, which is the BETTER notebook? Does the A8Jm have good build quality? Is it a solid machine? Please help. Thanks in advance.
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post #2 of 9
6/20/06 at 10:06am
The A8Jm should have good build quality, but the W3J would be better.

If you don't want to lug around extra batteries and shut down/hibernate to swap them out, then the W3J with both primary and secondary optical bay batteries will definitely last longer (as long as u don't use the optical drive obviously).
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post #3 of 9
6/20/06 at 10:55am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the reply. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
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post #4 of 9
6/20/06 at 3:57pm
Hey,
I see you have decided to ditch the E1705 'coz of it's size.
If I may put in my 2 cents. From my research between these two machines:
Better build quality: W3J (the A8JM is still solid, but the W3J looks better & has the alloy cover)
Versatility: W3J. The hot swappable bay is a great thing to have. You can have the main battery plus a spare OR two hard drives. Depending upon what you need at the time. Great feature.
If you need more than 3 usb ports, then the A8JM.
Built in web-cam......take it or leave it. I find the after market Logitechs are much better anyway.
The two graphics crards are so close in performance that you really are splitting hairs. They will both run all the games you mentioned quite easily.
I personally would go with the W3j, based on looks & I am partial to ATI cards.
I still have not decided what my next lappy will be. The XPS M1210 is still in the runnings, along with the upcoming ASUS W7J (damn you ASUS ).
My problem is portability. I need something that I can throw in my flight bag & forget about. So, the smaller the better...but I also want to play some games on it!! Decisions, decisions!!!
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post #5 of 9
6/20/06 at 4:29pm
I chose the A8Jm because of the nVidia adapter, which has better Linux drivers. The DVI port is also nifty.
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post #6 of 9
6/21/06 at 1:44am
Thread Starter 
Of these two, which one runs cooler?
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post #7 of 9
6/21/06 at 3:21am
I will say both not hot, about as cool as each other, but W3J takes more effort to keep is cooler, I meant the Fan on W3J kicks in more often and stays on longer to keep it as cool as A8Jm. I think that is why W3J battery doesn't really last longer then A8Jm ( or only SLIGHTLY longer ) although it has two more cells.

I had a quick side by side comparison before:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...4&postcount=42

Hope this may help a little bit.

.
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post #8 of 9
7/6/06 at 12:46am
canadasys nice comparison thread exactly what i needed.
the difference in cost well....hard to not like ASUS A8Jm.

I am selling my z70va because its a beast to carry around and I need a smaller form factor.

again nice comparison.
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post #9 of 9
7/6/06 at 10:25am
In response to your original questions:

- Better quality = W3J because of the materials used. The A8Jm is still one high quality machine, just not as good or nice looking as W3J
- Better battery = at stock battery, they're about equal (3 hrs plus minus) with W3J's 8 cell and A8Jm's 6 cell. Of course if you use the modular bay in the W3J for another battery, it'll add an hour or so to it.
- BT = The A8Jm's that came to NA didn't have BT installed by default. P1 imports them from Canada and adds it themselves, thus (I think) voids the 1 yr global warranty that comes with these machines. The warranty you get will prob only be reseller warranty. (Not sure, verify this with them)..
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