Asus M6BNe first impressions

C

cuzzle

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
95
Well i got my Asus barebones today and got my system assembled. Here are the specs:

Pentium M 1.7 (2 MB L2 Cache)
512 MB Crucial Ram
Toshiba 40 GB 5400 RPM 16M Cache
Combo drive DVD/CD-RW
Second Battery for Optical Drive Bay (combined 8 Hours battery life!)
ATI 9700 64MB Mobile
15.4" WXGA (1280x 800)

Dual boot
Suse 9.1
Windows XP SP2

It took me a little over an hour assembling the laptop (that was being catious and my first time) it probably could be done in half an hour or less a second time. My first impression was that it was very sharp looking. Not like Mac cool looking but solid and business reliable.

Fist things I liked:
The screen is very nice. My old laptop actually had a nicer one (1280x854) but this is still a good screen. I wish they made one with a higher resolution because the screen physically is really big and a could handle something much higher.
Speed. I haven't run any games or anything yet but installing stuff and just playing around with it gave the impression of speed. Didn't have to wait for anything. Even on battery when the CPU drops to 600 you barely notice any lag for doing simple things. I'll update later for more intensive applications.

First things I disliked:
Keyboard layout. Nice sized normal keys but they put the damn function key in the wrong place. When will notebook designers realize we use CTRL a whole lot more than we use FN! I will remap CAPS lock to be control in a little bit to help deal with this. Also on they keyboard the arrow keys are too small. They put another FN key in with them and they could be much better.
USB ports are all in the back. There are four of them though which is very nice for a laptop. I wish they put a couple on the side.
Cdrom drive is placed under a bevel so it is very difficult to eject cds out of it. Not a huge deal because 99% of the time i will have the second battery installed instead.

Overall I really like the laptop so far. I would like for it to be a little bit lighter but I need the screen real estate for what I do with it. Also with the wonderful battery life (to be tested tomorrow) I won't need to haul around the power brick with me.

I will try and get some benchmarks up soon but it gets to go through a full day of work and school with me tomorrow which i think beats the heck out of any benchmark anyday!
 
I will post some pics later today. I took some while I was assembling it but I got excited and quit! I will get the external pics later today and then when my new internal wireless card comes I will get some inside pics.
 
could I also get the assembled weight, both with the cdrom drive installed and the second battery installed...
 
Assembled weight:

Travel Bay: 6 Pounds 4 oz (2.8 kg)
Cdrom: 6 Pounds 9 oz (3 kg)
Second Batt: 6 Pounds 13 oz (3.1 kg)

The powerbrick: 14 oz (.4 kg)

Unassembled I believe the weight is 5.6 Pounds so depending on the components you put in it can differ slightly.
 
cool, thanks...i've been looking to build pretty much that exact system, but I couldn't find any specs on assembled weight...
 
I have been playing around with Suse 9.1 trying to get everything working.

Mainly powermanagement features. It does drop the processor down to 600 on battery mode but the power meter doesn't work. Most everything else works just fine right out of the box.

I played Far Cry for a couple minutes and it was definately playable. I played at 1024x768 and seemed to have a decent framrate. I don't know what it was exactly but I couldn't complain. I will play around with different drivers (omega) soon.
 
I am actually considering purchasing that exact laptop with the same configuration. How is the battery life? I was considering a 5400 rpm Hd, but was concerned about it eating up the battery. I've heard good things about the Hitachi 7200 rpm drive, but its a bit pricey. If you could post some pics of your new lappy, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
The Toshiba drive is niice.

I don't like the Seagate Momentus line, a lot of them make a high pitched whine. Which is surprising considering their desktop fluid bearing drives are very quiet.

I went with the inexpensive Samsung Spinpoint M, they are ultraquiet. Most of the time in 600 mhz mode when the CPU fan is off, you cannot even tell its on by listening to it.
 
Asus_Fullview.jpg

Shot of the whole system
Asus_Front.jpg

Front shot of the laptop.
Asus_Leds.jpg

Front Indicator LEDs.
Asus_Left.jpg

View of leftside: Modem, Gigabit LAN, FireWire, IR, SD Reader, PCMCIA, Multimedia, Mic, Headphones, and CD audio toggle
 
Asus_Rightside.jpg

Fuzzy shot of CD Drive and CPU exaust
Asus_Back.jpg

Rear shot: Lock Port, DC plug, Parallel port, Expansion port, Monitor, TV-Out (comes with RCA dongle), 4 USB ports.
Asus_Litbutton.jpg

The really nice looking powerbutton with blue light!
Asus_Closed.jpg

Thickness shot. Cover closed.
 
Asus_Open.jpg

Thickness shot with screen open.
Asus_Arrows.jpg

Right Side of keyboard. Nice big standard keys. Small arrow w/ buttons jammed in
Asus_Screen.jpg

Fuzzy Screen shot.
 
Wow! Thanks for the quick reply with all those pics! That's a damn nice machine. What wireless card did you choose cuzzle? 'Cos your system doesn't seem to be a centrino.
 
Right now i'm using an external Orinoco Gold wireless card but tomorrow I should have my Intel Pro2200 intenal wireless card. The viewing angle is pretty good from left to right but up and down is not as good as I would like. It's actually pretty standard for this class of notebooks. Nothing wonderful but not bad.
 
cuzzle: will the expansion bay on that lappy accept an OEM drive? im planning to get one (only the m6ne, not the m6bne) and i wanted to get an oem NEC dvd-rw drive off of newegg. somewhere else i read that with a different model of asus barebone, it doesnt accept oem drives, and needs a converter. if you dont know if itll accept, can i get a shot of the connecter on the drive? thanks!
 
ya if you could pop out the cd drive and snap some shots of its backside that would do lots of people a major favor. thanks.
 
Asus_CD_Top.jpg

Shot of the Model number, etc.
Asus_CD_Back.jpg

Good view of connector
Asus_CD_Side.jpg

Side Shot
Asus_CD_Bottom.jpg

Bottom shot
 
crap, that looks alittle long to be standard... the pics ive seen of oem parts have had a shorter connecter, and not had hte back casing thing :(

my guess for this would be because it has to be able to support the optional battery and hdd too..

it looks like hte connector in my old gateway that had a dvd/ls120 combo drive
 
ya that black metal plate that surronds the whole drive is the spacer. so technically once you buy the spacer (good luck finding it) or by the correct oem drive from asus (about $94 for the burner version) and transfer the "shim" to another oem drive you are forced to use their product. good for asus = bad for everyone else. Im trying to get some stock of asus laptops so friends can get them cheaper and if i ever find a way to get a large number of those shims ill piff em.
 
is there an asus direct type store?
it would be really nice for extra batteries, hard drive mounting kits, ect. i dont want to pay 290 for the asus dvd-rw :( i wanted my 120 nec! its faster anyway...
 
The battery actually conects through a different connector in the port.

Asus_Both.jpg



The Travel case (top) which can be fitted with a second harddrive has a space in it right where the cd-rom has it's connections. It probably uses the same connector. You might be able to buy the the second harddrive kit which is probably cheaper than the actual drive from Asus. Then again you will have to find a way to fit the spacer in. Another option might be to buy the cd-rw drive from Asus take the spacer and connector off and put your DVD-RW Drive in then you could sell the slim Cd-rw on Ebay or use it for another project.

Asus_Travel.jpg
 
I seem to have absolutely the same problem with the DVD drive. I don't have the notebook yet. The only reason is this optical drive. Do you think that taking the spacer and connector off will solve the problem??? Cause I really doubt that. Is the new NEC drive gonna fit in the spacer???

I saw the ND-5500A drive on www.newegg.com, but there's a better one - the newest NEC ND-6500 (8x DVD+-R, 4x DVD+-RW, 2,4X DVD+R9 DL, etc.) www.newegg.com still don't offer it! You have any idea where one could buy it from?

I just know that those NEC slim drives are compatible with Dell notebook, but not all of them :) I'm still waiting for reply from Asus customer support for this compatibility issue!
 
A.Smith said:
I seem to have absolutely the same problem with the DVD drive. I don't have the notebook yet. The only reason is this optical drive. Do you think that taking the spacer and connector off will solve the problem??? Cause I really doubt that. Is the new NEC drive gonna fit in the spacer???

I saw the ND-5500A drive on www.newegg.com, but there's a better one - the newest NEC ND-6500 (8x DVD+-R, 4x DVD+-RW, 2,4X DVD+R9 DL, etc.) www.newegg.com still don't offer it! You have any idea where one could buy it from?

I just know that those NEC slim drives are compatible with Dell notebook, but not all of them :) I'm still waiting for reply from Asus customer support for this compatibility issue!
Click to expand...

i called them, they said regular oem drives are incompatable, it needs that damn shroud and little conecter pos. if you have the connector, im pretty 99.9% positive that till fit on te NEC drive, but im not going to buy two drives to have a dvd burner. im kinda pissed, but i dont really need the dvd burner anyway, i was just excited about getting it because it was only a tad bit more expensive. oh well. if someone finds out where to buy those damn spacers, tell me please!!
 
I'll try to do some benchmarks later tonight but it might have to wait till tomorrow. I did play an hour or so of Call of Duty 1024x768 Highest quality settings and it played like a dream. I didn't mess around with any drivers settings yet eather.
 
i was gonna rma my drive back to newegg but i figure ill keep it and not lose the 15%. Ill let you know how switching the spacers from the asus drive to the OEM go. Also from the looks of the spacer its just 1mm-2mm thick and made of aluminum. a pair of tin snips or a dremel and you could easily work out a similiar fitting piece that would acomplish the same thing. but ill post on this when i get the real spacer.
 
First Benchmarks. Completely unoptimized:

3dmark2001 - 10573
3dmark2003 - 2690

I am going to install Doom3 soon and look for some better drivers and then I'll update.
 
Does the manual include any info on the lcd (tech specs) such as viewing angle, response time, etc?
 
Doom3 Benchs - timedemo demo1
I once again didn't change anything in the drivers or game so these will be tweakable

800x600
Low 29.9 fps
Med 29.9 fps
High 25.6 fps

1024x768
Low 19.4 fps
Med 19.5 fps
High 17.6 fps

When I ran it at 640X480 they were up in the 40's. I'm gonna try the latest Omega driver now and see what happens.
 
The manual does not include anything about the LCD. I put the latest Omega drivers on and they helped a little bit. Just 2-3 frames each (10-15% on some considering how low they are!) I am going to play around with some overclocking of the video card tomorrow. I played with it a bit already and know there is some room there so we'll see.

I don't really care much about how well it plays Doom 3 because it's not particularly a game I think is fun to play. I bought this laptop to program in! The ability to game on it is just a bonus. :)
 
I played around with some overclocking of the video card and some actual doom 3 play. I boosted the core to 455 and the memory to 250 and was able to play the actual game 800x600 High quality just fine. I think there is still room for overclocking the video card as well. Even at 800x600 Doom 3 looks really nice.
 
I just got my new internal wireless card. I got the Intel 2200BG card and here are the pics of the inside of this laptop that i promised.

Asus_Kb_Open.jpg

This is the keyboard disconnected. You remove the keyboard by unscrewing the two screws on the bottom marked with a "K" and then pushing the 3 latches in at the top.

Asus_CPU.jpg

This is the CPU and cooling fan.

Asus_CPU_Close.jpg

A close up of the CPU the black bezel with the hotkeys snaps off so that you can get access to it.

Asus_RAM.jpg

This is the internal SoDIMM for Ram. There is another one accessible from the bottom of th laptop case.
 
Asus_Wifi.jpg

Black metal covers the M-pci slot

Asus_Wifi_Inside.jpg

The cover open. Notice the trim on the keyboard is popped off for access.

Asus_Wifi_Card.jpg

With the new card in place.

Asus_Multi_Leds.jpg

This is the front of the laptop showing the multiple colored leds for each different function. Very sharp looking.
 
so pretty!!! MY cd-rom wont be here till the 9th so i have to wait to get my M3Np up and running. thanks for all the pics its a great resource.
 
Does this have a serial port, I need one for my palmV. I don't think they make a usb cradle for it.
thanks

intense
 
you sould consider getting the serial-usb dongle for the palm, it is much more convenient and costs like $20...I use it for my palmIIIxe and my dad's palmV
 
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