Notebook Trio: ASUS A8JS and G2P and ABS Mayhem Z5

ASUS A8JS - Exterior and Features

The ASUS A8JS is a reasonably equipped midrange laptop, designed to handle just about any computing task that you could want to perform. The review system we received came equipped with a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 14" WXGA+ LCD, 8X DVDRW, 100GB 7200RPM hard drive, GeForce Go 7700 512MB graphics, and 2x1024MB DDR2-667 memory. Unfortunately, it appears that ASUS has decided to downgrade the final shipping versions of this laptop slightly, as we are only able to find 2x512MB DDR2-667 models available online. With Windows Vista ready to launch in the very near future, we would really prefer to see the end of midrange laptops with less than 2GB of memory. Prices are slightly lower than what we were originally quoted, likely due to the reduced amount of memory, but now some users are going to be looking at purchasing a laptop and then immediately spending an additional $200 to upgrade the memory, probably throwing out $100 worth of memory in the process. You can find the 1GB version of the A8JS for about $1600 right now, so our tested configuration would cost closer to $1800.

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Looking at the exterior of the laptop, ASUS has created a reasonably attractive system. The top surfaces of the A8JS are composed of a silver plastic material with a matte finish, accompanied by black trim and a black keyboard. The bottom of the shell is also made of black plastic. Even though the chassis is primarily composed of plastic, it still feels reasonably durable and should hold up well provided you don't plan on beating on your laptop. The silver surfaces are not particularly scratch resistant, and after enduring a couple months of what we would consider light use our unit already has begun to show various scratches and blemishes. If you're like most of us, that's not really a big deal, but the shell will definitely show signs of use over time.

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Looking at the various interface options, the front of the A8JS doesn't have any ports. There are LED indicators for power, battery, Bluetooth, and WiFi; a button that opens the top latch; and some perforations/designs for the two internal speakers.

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The right side of the laptop has two USB ports and an infrared interface, along with the CPU HSF exhaust port. During use, particularly when the system is under full load, the right side of the laptop (both the exhaust and the bottom area) can become relatively warm. In the warmer months of the year, some might even say it's uncomfortably warm, although right now in the winter it can be nice having a portable lap warmer around.

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The left side of the A8JS contains another USB port, an unpowered FireWire port, and the headphone and microphone audio jacks. Above these ports is an ExpressCard 54 expansion slot. The optical drive is also accessed from the left, and in the top-rear left of the laptop is a flash memory reader with support for MultiMediaCard (MMC), SecureDigital (SD), and Memory Stick (MS)/MS Pro flash memory. The included optical drive is an 8X DVD burner with dual layer support as well as DVD-RAM support. One minor complaint about the optical drive is that it is a bit difficult to press the eject button, though on the other hand you won't accidentally eject a disc either.

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Finishing up with the rear of the unit, and moving left to right, we have the power adapter socket, two more USB ports, TV-out, VGA and DVI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem jack. At the far right is a security locking mechanism, and we should also mention that the DVI port does not support dual-link cables/resolutions. That's too bad for those users who want to use the ASUS A8JS with a 30" LCD running at 2560x1600, but it's not really unexpected.

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Opening up the unit, we get to the major portion of the user experience. Besides the display, which we will cover in a moment, there's the keyboard, trackpad, some additional shortcut keys across the top along with the power button, and finally the integrated webcam above the display. To complement the webcam, there's also a small built-in microphone to the left of the keyboard. The webcam functions pretty well, as far as such things go, and it's a 0.3 megapixel model (640x480).

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Focusing on the keyboard and trackpad, we have to admit that trackpads are not our favorite way of interfacing with Windows. They are more of a necessary evil when you can't afford the luxury of having an actual mouse available. Like nearly all modern notebooks, the trackpad has customizable scroll areas on the bottom and right side. With the limited space available, ASUS wasn't able to include a full-size keyboard and number keypad. The keys are still reasonably sized, however, and all of the most important keys are easily accessible.

Wrapping things up with the display, the overall quality was decent but not spectacular. The maximum brightness level is sufficient for most indoor use, but it can feel a bit dim when used in brighter lighting. Contrast, viewing angle, and response time are all acceptable, and as usual there is a moderate amount of backlight bleed. We didn't have any issues using the display for gaming, viewing movies, or running typical Windows applications, but of the three laptops we're looking at this display is definitely the low man on the totem pole. Being a widescreen display, running at the native resolution can be a bit tricky at times. Most recent games will allow you to make some manual modifications in order to get widescreen support, which can be a bit tedious at times but unless you run much older titles you should be fine.