So how long is everyone's battery lasting? I get right around 2 hours 45 minutes on the office/email setting. That’s with my wireless card on, surfing the net (or something equivalent) and listening to music.

[Edit] Did anyone else notice that ISTNC has a $75 student discount on the Z71V now? That sucks! I just missed it... Us poor starving students need all the help we can get.

A few times I have got 4 hours but that was on a very dark screen and basic typing, but with the screen on 75% bright and normal use on net about 3.20 hrs. Man you guys in the USA are lucky getting student discounts, in the UK nothing like it

WOw...75% brightness when on battery? that'll drain it for sure..
when on battery with my M6Ne, I usually use 50% or lower... usually 25%

Yeah, this was just a guess of the brightnesss as I use it on ambient light assist, so I would think 50-75% it would be on. Although you can turn it off and adjust the brightness yourself I'm too lazy to do that

Tummy, quick question. What version firmware does your NEC-6500A drive have, and where did you buy it? I've heard of some problems with laptops which only have one IDE channel (like the Z71V) with the NEC firmware causing a conflict because its bios is set to MASTER instead of SLAVE.

Kai

I get around 3 hours in a combination of 2 hours word processing, 1 hour running 3DMarks & tweaking video clock settings,
2.25 hours for a DVD movie,
3.5-4 when just word processing
all on ALS in a bright room.

does anyone know who you email your student ID picture too on the IST site for the $75 discount for being a student?

Okay, after over a week of using this and putting it to the "REAL" test, here are my updated comments.

Before the comments, a little background on my usage. I bought this laptop primary as a laptop for me to do photoshop, webdesign, and play games with. I recently had to do a wedding photoshoot so I used the laptop for that purpose...

LCD:
On the LCD piece, there was talk about sparkle screen and such. In the past couple of weeks, I've done some research. In order to understand the LCD you much first understand the LCD technology. There are WSXGA, WSXGA+, XGA, and WUXGA to name a few of the many out there. Each of them have a max resolution it can support. Usually this max resolution is also their native resolution. Meaning the screen will only look crisp, clear, and nice in this resolution. Any other resolution out of it will look a bit blurry and sometime distorred. You have to be aware of this when deciding on a laptop. So if you are getting a 15.4" screen, the WSXGA+ runs at 1680x1050. Which is pretty small fonts and icon. If you get a WUXGA on a 15.4" screen, expect it to be even SMALLER!. So before you go out and get a Laptop, keep in mine just because it say it is UXGA or WSXGA, etc make sure you are able to bare the small size of the resolution. Especially when it is on a laptop with 15" or smaller. If you are getting 15" or smaller, SXGA and XGA is plenty for it. Don't even bother with SXGA+ or higher because you will complain about it being a bit small if you are weak eyes.

Now as for the Asus Z71V LCD. After you understand LCD Technology, I have to say the Asus Z71V LCD is a very good LCD. It is not glossy like Sony or as bright as Toshiba TruBright, but it does hold up on its own weight. The quality is super. Clear, crisp, and no sparkle. Yes you do see a faint rainbow effect against a white background, but after looking through at least a dozen laptops that are non-glossy, non-trubright, non-all those fancy stuff, you have similar screen as this one. So it is not sparkle.

The screen performs very well with Photoshop. I used a Nikon D70 and a Canon 20D over the weekend. The D70 was a 6.xMP and the Canon 20D was a 8.xMP. So both of the files are fairly large and high quality as you can see. Both shown on this LCD very sharp, correct color contrast, and perform beautifully.

Weight:
This laptop was extremely comfortable to lug around. I also bought a nice Swiss Gear laptop from bestbuy to use with it. It was not heavy, but in fact it was extremely portable to use.

Heat / Noise:
This was an important factor. I have several IBM thinkpad and a few Toshiba and Gateway in my time. All of which have this little heat in the palm rest area after long usage, which is annoying. Since I will be doing a lot of photoshop and multimedia design / authoring, it will utilize the system CPU a lot. In this laptop heat wasn't an issue and the palm rest area was not hot one bit. The fan was on, but you have to really listen to it to hear. It is very quiet!!


Others:
The DVD drive performed nicely on this laptop. It burned at 8x fairly fast given I had to do a few SLIDE-SHOW DVD on the fly, which worked out well. I used this laptop to link up on a projector for a few slideshow, it performed nicely as well.

----

Those are my updated and revised comments on this laptop. PM me if you have questions on it.

Notebook being returned The problem with the CPU/GPU could not be resolved, so either IST will fix it or a new unit will be shipped. This really sucks

At least you'll get it fixed! THat's all that matters... if not, a whole NEW notebook

Maybe. It might just be repaired which would be fine... but I don't think I can stand it without my baby And its my main computer as well

Hey, sorry only just saw this now. Answered your post in PM but for the rest of the crowd, if they're interested, the NEC should fit fine and work and be detected fine as long as it's version 2.xx. Version 4.xx firmware (reverse ATA NEC's) might have some problems. Not 100% sure.

does this mean we'll have to take out our cryptography books again to decipher typing from the broken keyboard of your old machine?

I play Counter Strike alot, so BN has nothing on noobs that do it on accident :-/

You know what, fellas? I think that within the next two weeks, I will have ordered a notebook. It is weighing in at between 75% Z71v and 25% XPS2. I basically just have to find them and hold them to see which one I'd feel most comfortable with, but giving a few points to the XPS2 for GFx and a few to the Z71v for battery and size... *sigh* this is so hard!

Hey, can anyone else a slight buz in the fan? It's weird because it cuts out briefly if you click on something. It's not by any means loud, but if your in a quiet area it can get a little annoying.