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!
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!