I am new here and would like to share my experience with my new Z71v and get any feedback you can offer, thanks! 
I received my book two days a go, I have the Z71v with 1GB DDR2 533 Corsair, 80gb Spinpoint samsung drive, 1.86 cpu.
Total price 1425
The first time I turned the unit on I wanted to go into the bios and make sure ti saw everything correctly, I hit F2 to go in bios screen pops up....then it instantly freezes, the blue bar on the top of the screen stops flashing by, everything was frozen. As a computer tech I know its a very bad thing when a computer freezes before it even boots into windows, but I had hoped it was the fact I was running of battery and plugged it in. No good same thing 5 times in a row. Then I gave up and continued to load windows...hoping it was a bad bios flash or something (wishful thinking) got windows loaded without a problem and continued to load drivers and software. The computer hard froze again when I put in the driver CD. Now I'm rather annoyed and pissed off, but again more wishful thinking came into play and i thought maybe it just needed all the drivers loaded before it would run stably in windows. I got all the drivers loaded with out a problem and continued to load Office, and then 3dMark03, it scored 4300 with stock drivers and 4500 on the new asus drivers. Everything running more or less ok, although I expected a higher 3dmark score....and I could of sworn I saw a couple artifacts...but maybe it was just a glitch in 3dmark. I then loaded up UT04 and started to play. The first thing I noticed was with the res at the native res. (I forget what it is sorry) and all the graphics turned all the way down i was only getting 25fps, totally unplayable for a fast paced FPS game. Disgusted I turn the res down to 1024x768, and that got the fps up to 60....still disgusted and embarrassed at my friends little lan party, and my other friend next to me on his AMD 3500+ with a 9700 running UT04 with out a problem smirking his head off, I attempted to play, being the first time I lost a string of game ever against my friends at UT04 I was starting to get highly annoyed trying to figure out what was wrong or if it really was suppose to preform this poorly. Then the screen goes blank and the computer reboots, only the screen never came back on...I could just hear the computer booting and windows stupid chime. So i hit the button turned it off brought it back up screen came back on but was flickering real bad. I thought maybe it was the new Asus drivers so I loaded up the old ones and started up UT again. the FPS were still pathetic and I could hardly play, that is until the computer rebooted again and I couldn't play at all. Only this time the comp booted up with out video drivers installed, and it would not reinstall saying my card was not compatible, so the only thing that worked was forcing the driver then installing the software over it. Again, I tried a game, but this time Word of Warcraft, two hours later after installing and updating i opened the game up to 19-20 fps at high res with all graphics down. Now, pissed off i tried to exit the game, only before it could exit the comp rebooted again, This time retaining its video drivers though. after my friends got off the floor laughing I decided it was time go go home, I was trying to think what would cause theses problems and I came up with system memory, or video card. So i ran Memtest all night long, woke up to it still going with out recording a single error (please note this program keeps the cpu at 100% as well) So that seemed to rule out the CPU and system memory, so I'm guessing it must be the video card.
What do you guys think? would that cause the laptop to randomly freeze in the bios as well as windows?
On to my only other two gripes about the notebook.
First and foremost the screen! I know other reviewers have said that the "sparkles" are on all wsga+ screens and that you can only see it on all white backgrounds...but im sorry i have to call BS on that. It's more like a film over the entire screen and you can see it on almost any color, and even in games....and to me it really cuts down on the computing experience having to look through what looks like a bunch of huge pixels. I took it side by side next to my friends gateway laptop with the 3500+ (his screen is what made me want to get a wide screen laptop btw) his had no such "sparkles" I could tell at all, and the screen its self had quality that was simply amazing compared to mine, not to mention the gloss it has on it really gives it a nice shiny look.
2nd. Its ugly I think, the colors are dull and unimpressive, but it is very sturdy which to me is more important.
Thanks for reading guys, and let me know what you think is wrong.
I received my book two days a go, I have the Z71v with 1GB DDR2 533 Corsair, 80gb Spinpoint samsung drive, 1.86 cpu.
Total price 1425
The first time I turned the unit on I wanted to go into the bios and make sure ti saw everything correctly, I hit F2 to go in bios screen pops up....then it instantly freezes, the blue bar on the top of the screen stops flashing by, everything was frozen. As a computer tech I know its a very bad thing when a computer freezes before it even boots into windows, but I had hoped it was the fact I was running of battery and plugged it in. No good same thing 5 times in a row. Then I gave up and continued to load windows...hoping it was a bad bios flash or something (wishful thinking) got windows loaded without a problem and continued to load drivers and software. The computer hard froze again when I put in the driver CD. Now I'm rather annoyed and pissed off, but again more wishful thinking came into play and i thought maybe it just needed all the drivers loaded before it would run stably in windows. I got all the drivers loaded with out a problem and continued to load Office, and then 3dMark03, it scored 4300 with stock drivers and 4500 on the new asus drivers. Everything running more or less ok, although I expected a higher 3dmark score....and I could of sworn I saw a couple artifacts...but maybe it was just a glitch in 3dmark. I then loaded up UT04 and started to play. The first thing I noticed was with the res at the native res. (I forget what it is sorry) and all the graphics turned all the way down i was only getting 25fps, totally unplayable for a fast paced FPS game. Disgusted I turn the res down to 1024x768, and that got the fps up to 60....still disgusted and embarrassed at my friends little lan party, and my other friend next to me on his AMD 3500+ with a 9700 running UT04 with out a problem smirking his head off, I attempted to play, being the first time I lost a string of game ever against my friends at UT04 I was starting to get highly annoyed trying to figure out what was wrong or if it really was suppose to preform this poorly. Then the screen goes blank and the computer reboots, only the screen never came back on...I could just hear the computer booting and windows stupid chime. So i hit the button turned it off brought it back up screen came back on but was flickering real bad. I thought maybe it was the new Asus drivers so I loaded up the old ones and started up UT again. the FPS were still pathetic and I could hardly play, that is until the computer rebooted again and I couldn't play at all. Only this time the comp booted up with out video drivers installed, and it would not reinstall saying my card was not compatible, so the only thing that worked was forcing the driver then installing the software over it. Again, I tried a game, but this time Word of Warcraft, two hours later after installing and updating i opened the game up to 19-20 fps at high res with all graphics down. Now, pissed off i tried to exit the game, only before it could exit the comp rebooted again, This time retaining its video drivers though. after my friends got off the floor laughing I decided it was time go go home, I was trying to think what would cause theses problems and I came up with system memory, or video card. So i ran Memtest all night long, woke up to it still going with out recording a single error (please note this program keeps the cpu at 100% as well) So that seemed to rule out the CPU and system memory, so I'm guessing it must be the video card.
What do you guys think? would that cause the laptop to randomly freeze in the bios as well as windows?
On to my only other two gripes about the notebook.
First and foremost the screen! I know other reviewers have said that the "sparkles" are on all wsga+ screens and that you can only see it on all white backgrounds...but im sorry i have to call BS on that. It's more like a film over the entire screen and you can see it on almost any color, and even in games....and to me it really cuts down on the computing experience having to look through what looks like a bunch of huge pixels. I took it side by side next to my friends gateway laptop with the 3500+ (his screen is what made me want to get a wide screen laptop btw) his had no such "sparkles" I could tell at all, and the screen its self had quality that was simply amazing compared to mine, not to mention the gloss it has on it really gives it a nice shiny look.
2nd. Its ugly I think, the colors are dull and unimpressive, but it is very sturdy which to me is more important.
Thanks for reading guys, and let me know what you think is wrong.
